Marc was baffled by the weather. He endured the single digit cold, tensing his legs to balance in the wind gusts.
The road trip from Houston to Buffalo took three claustrophobic days in the Camry. Nancy had looked dumbfounded when he told her he would rather drive than fly as she would. She wondered how she’d married such a lokshen kop, what her mother had teasingly asked her for the last thirty-three years. He did not explain, and she did not comment.
Just south of the SUNY Fredonia exit, the window defroster died and the light dust of snow turned to a translucent blur from the battering wipers. He stopped for some hot coffee to toss on the window in a badly thought out attempt to melt the ice.
Now he was in front of a CVS pharmacy fumbling with a bottle of rubbing alcohol, trying to turn the plastic cap with his gloves still on. He’d read on the internet that alcohol removed window ice. It worked, more or less, and he threw into the glove compartment the cheap ice scraper that the clerk had recommended for possible future emergencies.
As he started the car he mumbled to himself asking why the CVS guy had seemed amused by his purchases.
As Marc approached south Buffalo, the expected rush hour traffic never materialized. Tiny diamonds fell through mercury vapor light.
He took the long way into Amherst, north to Hertel Avenue, more worn than he remembered from ten years earlier, past two-story retail fronts, a few still with the names...
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