1.
Last nig ht.
It’s snowing in Cleveland. When I was a girl, that used to happen a lot in early February.
Now, not so much. Well, you remember.
I open a window in the office. I’m at the peak of the rush right now: my skin so
hypersensitive even a silk blouse feels like sandpaper. The taste of batteries fills my
mouth and the smell of snow is overpowering.
Wake up at 4:30, get to the rink by 5:15, two hours of practice before breakfast. Skates
laced so tight my feet go numb. Cold leather, cold ice, stiff fingers, Madame Olga’s fat
sleepy eyes and cigarettes.
A cascade of memories, all dense with smells: exhaust fumes waiting at the bus stop,
latex gloves stinking of bleach, the harsh chemical tang of the decon team at the Star
Chamber. And before that, when we first walked in: the smell of 112 bodies two days
dead.
That must have been what it smelled like after 2/22. Thousands of cars parked on the LA
freeways, windows rolled up. The ultimate American coffins, I-5 like a new Arlington,
glossy tombstones by Chevy and Honda and BMW.
Is that why I took the job when they offered it? Partly. I lost something that day.
I hate to lose.
*
A flake of snow comes in from the night sky: lands on my arm like a white wasp: stings.
Time to go.
For obvious security reasons, they don’t let us take our computers home from The Office.
This one time, that’s going to work out well for me.
Step 1: take a new gelled hydrogen power cell and swap it out for the old one in my
machine. The point here is—
--well, I’ll get to that in time.
1 - > 2 -> it has six letters, all in alphabetical order
1.
Last night.
It’s snowing in Cleveland. When I was a girl, that used to happen a lot in early February.
Now, not so much. Well, you remember.
I open a window in the office. I’m at the peak of the rush right now: my skin so
hypersensitive even a silk blouse feels like sandpaper. The taste of batteries fills my
mouth and the smell of snow is overpowering.
Wake up at 4:30, get to the rink by 5:15, two hours of practice before breakfast. Skates
laced so tight my feet go numb. Cold leather, cold ice, stiff fingers, Madame Olga’s fat
sleepy eyes and cigarettes.
A cascade of memories, all dense with smells: exhaust fumes waiting at the bus stop,
latex gloves stinking of bleach, the harsh chemical tang of the decon team at the Star
Chamber. And before that, when we first walked in: the smell of 112 bodies two days
dead.
That must have been what it smelled like after 2/22. Thousands of cars parked on the LA
freeways, windows rolled up. The ultimate American coffins, I-5 like a new Arlington,
glossy tombstones by Chevy and Honda and BMW.
Is that why I took the job when they offered it? Partly. I lost something that day.
I hate to lose.
*
A flake of snow comes in from the night sky: lands on my arm like a white wasp: stings.
Time to go.
For obvious security reasons, they don’t let us take our computers home from The Office.
This one time, that’s going to work out well for me.
Step 1: take a new gelled hydrogen power cell and swap it out for the old one in my
machine. The point here is—
--well, I’ll get to that in time.
2 -> it has six letters, all in alphabetical order