The Winter People

 

Isn’t it about time to get to work? Gary asked her now, voice teasing, soothingly familiar, as she sat at the kitchen table in her new apartment. Katherine stood up, went over to the counter to refill her coffee cup, then made her way into the living room, between its stacks of boxes, and over to the art table. It was an old farmhouse kitchen table that she’d had since graduating from college, three feet wide and five feet long, made from thick pine planks. It was scarred with saw, knife, and drill marks, splattered with years’ worth of paint drops and smudges. There was a vise set up on the right side, which was also where she kept her tools: hammer, saws, Dremel, soldering iron, tin snips, drill and bits, along with a plastic toolbox full of various nails, screws, and hinges. In the middle, at the back, was a coffee can full of paintbrushes, X-Acto knives, pens, and markers. In a carefully labeled wooden cabinet to the left of the table were all her paints and finishes.

 

There, in the center of the table, was the latest box, the one she’d stayed up late into the night working on. A four-by-six-inch wooden box, it was titled The Wedding Vows. On the front were two double doors, styled like church windows with stained-glass designs. When you opened these, there was the wooden altar with a tiny photo of Katherine and Gary on their wedding day, both looking impossibly young and happy, not noticing the shadowy crow that peeked out at them from behind the curtain. Until Death Do Us Part was written in neat calligraphy, a promise held in the air like a sweet cloud above their heads. But down in the shadows below their feet were miniature skid marks on a narrow winding road, and over at stage left, half of a ruined matchbox car poked its way through the side of the box, its front end smashed. At the very bottom, two simple lines in quotation marks: “I’ve got a wedding to shoot in Cambridge. I should be home in time for dinner.”

 

This morning, she’d put the finishing touches on this box—a bit of silver trim around the windows, gold paint for the cross on top—then coat the whole thing with matte varnish. After that, she’d start work on the next in the series: His Final Meal. She didn’t have the details for this one worked out at all, only that the door would open onto a scene in Lou Lou’s Café: Gary and the mystery woman. She was counting on Gary to help out, to lead her along and show her what details to add. Gary as Muse.

 

Sometimes, only sometimes, when she was good and lost in her art, if she closed her eyes, Gary was right beside her again, whispering his secrets in her ear. She could almost see him: his dark-brown hair with the funny cowlicks, the freckles across his nose and cheeks that multiplied when he was out in the sun too long.

 

Gary, who loved a good ghost story. Gary, who once teased her by saying, “You better hope you’re the one to die first, babe, ’cause if I do I’m gonna come back here and haunt your ass.”

 

She smiled now, thinking of it. She picked up the blue pack of American Spirits—the last of the carton she’d found in Gary’s studio. She hadn’t smoked since college, and was always hounding Gary to quit, always complaining of the smell on his clothes and hair. Now she found the smell of cigarette smoke comforting, and allowed herself one cigarette a day. Sometimes two. She shook one out of the pack and lit up, knowing it was a little early, not caring.

 

“What were you doing here, Gary?” she asked out loud, watching the smoke drift up; she secretly hoped that if she started building the next box, adding in details, the answers might come. “Who’s the woman with the braid? And where can I find her?”

 

 

 

 

 

Ruthie

 

 

“Eighteen, nineteen, twenty,” Ruthie shouted out, hands covering her face. She opened her eyes, stood up from the couch, and hollered, “Ready or not, here I come!”