Let It Snow

by Heidi Cullinan

Marcus headed back down the stairs, and Carl smiled wearily at Frankie. “Come on in. I can’t offer you coffee because the power’s still off, but we have water.”

  “Thank you, I’m fine.” Frankie stepped out of his boots and left them in the hall, not wanting to track snow inside, but as soon as the door closed behind him, he wondered why he’d bothered. Something brushed Frankie’s ankles, and he looked down to see a young boy with only four visible teeth beaming up at him, wrapped in his snowsuit and holding up a broken plastic truck.

  Carl picked up the child, ignoring his son’s complaints and attempts to wiggle free. “This is Jimmy. Don’t mind him—I’ll keep him occupied and out of your way. Cindy’s back in the bedroom. We tried to set up a work area for you.”

  It was cold in the apartment—incredibly so, and Frankie wondered how in the hell he’d cut hair with his hands as numb as they were likely to be as soon as he took them out of his gloves. The whole adventure seemed like it would be a mistake, and as he rounded the corner to the bedroom as directed, he tried to figure out a way to extricate himself from the situation.

  Then he saw Cindy Felderman, and all his thoughts of leaving fled.

  She was so small. Carl wasn’t exactly Marcus-sized, but he was a mountain next to little Cindy, who even with her belly swollen enough to hide three watermelons wasn’t big enough to be medium-sized. Frail, swathed in blankets, her red cheeks sunken—well, she might as well have been in an ad out of those gut-wrenching Save the Children! mailers. Her hair was matted, greasy, and plastered to her head. She looked at Frankie, unsure, tense, embarrassed—defeated. She was a perfect picture of misery.

  Frankie tried not to let his nerves show. “Hi there. I’m Frankie.”

  He failed, clearly, given the way she averted her eyes and further stiffened her posture. “I know I look awful. I told Carl this was a stupid idea.”

  Frankie came closer to the bed—carefully, as the floor was strewn with dirty laundry. “It’s a fantastic idea, I thought. The only trouble I just realized is we can’t wash your hair without hot water, and I can’t cut your hair without it.” He glanced around the room, then gave up and shook his head. “Honestly, Cindy, I think you need to go to the church shelter until you get your power back. It’s freezing in here.”

  “I don’t want them damn bitches judging me. They’re all so high and mighty, think they know everything about me.” She snorted and wrapped her blanket tighter around herself.

  Having grown up going to one of those churches, Frankie knew exactly what she meant. Still, she looked so miserable he felt like he should keep pushing. “You’re right, they might judge you. Wouldn’t it be worth it, though, to swallow a little of their gossip to be warm?”

  Cindy’s expression only hardened. “They think I’m some whore. Maybe I wasn’t great when I was younger, but they don’t know. They don’t know.” Cindy kept crying, wiping her eyes on the blanket. “I’m so tired, and so cold.”

  Frankie ached for her. He put down his bag and reached out for her. “I’m so sorry—”

  She slapped his hand away with enough force that the contact stung even through his glove. “Go on, get out. Forget this.”

  “Cindy—” he began, but she only slapped him again, and this time he drew back.

  “Go,” she repeated, her voice unyielding. She waved her hand at the door. “This was a stupid idea. Get out. I don’t want my hair done by no faggot.”

  The slur caught Frankie up short, and for a moment he stood there, stunned, uncertain, hurt.

  “Get out,” she said again, and threw a pillow at him.

  Frankie went. Grabbing his duffel, he stumbled over the pile of clothes and to the door, where a red-faced Carl could not meet his gaze.

  “Sorry,” Carl said, gruff and embarrassed, a whimpering toddler clinging to his leg.

  “It’s okay,” Frankie lied, adding a smile in case his faking it was that obvious, but when Carl still couldn’t look at him, Frankie gave up and wove his way back to the door. His chest hurt, and his shoulders were tight, and he wanted out, out of the stinking, freezing apartment, out of the building. This had been a stupid idea, just like Arthur had said. He wanted out of there now.

  In the hallway, he searched for his boots, ready to put them on and run like hell, but he couldn’t find them. He knocked on the door to ask Carl if he’d pulled them inside, but Carl shook his head and said no, he hadn’t. He also blushed and averted his gaze, and that was when Frankie realized his boots hadn’t been moved. They’d been stolen.

  True colors, Andy had said. If these were Logan’s, they certainly weren’t rainbow-hued.

  And why, exactly, had you thought they would be?

  Faking one last smile, Frankie padded stocking-footed down the stairs, wincing as his socks soaked through within seven steps. He could hear Marcus and the others speaking on the first floor, and Frankie realized he’d have to confess that a pathetic pregnant lady had called him a fag and turned him out, and that someone had stolen his boots because he’d been polite and left them outside the door.

  No. He didn’t belong in Logan at all.

  WHEN MARCUS FOUND out someone had stolen Frankie’s shoes, he’d been shocked, then embarrassed, then furious, and he’d wanted to go door-to-door, ready to smash heads until the boots showed up. Frankie wouldn’t let him.

  “I just want to leave.” He looked small and miserable and mortified, and Marcus nodded, changing his mind and wanting to simply get Frankie out of there.

  “I’ll carry you to the snowmobile,” he offered, gesturing to Frankie’s stocking feet. “We can swing by Fleet Farm and get you some new boots.”

  Hollering at Arthur and Paul, telling them to let the fucking pipes stay busted for all he cared, Marcus swooped Frankie into his arms as he took him away.

  “I shouldn’t have suggested this,” he said, grimacing as he trudged through the snow. “This is all my fault.”

  Frankie shook his head, leaning into Marcus’s shoulder. He hadn’t put on his balaclava, so Frankie’s gently spiked hair nestled into Marcus’s neck. “No, I should have had Carl bring her into the care center, or better yet listened when she said she didn’t want my help. I was riding high and not thinking. I should have known better.”

  Marcus hated the resignation in Frankie’s tone. “You still have the mayor’s mother this afternoon. And as many old ladies as you want to see.”

  Frankie nodded, but the light had left his mood.

  At Fleet Farm, they picked out new boots for Frankie—sturdy ones that were truly warm, not just the slight nod to snow cover that Frankie’s old ones had been. Frankie got new socks as well, since his were soaked, and afterward Arthur treated them to luch at the café.

  “Don’t let them get to you,” Paul said as they waited for their order in a booth.

  Frankie shrugged, keeping his gaze on his hands. “I’m used to it.”

  Something about the resignation in Frankie made Marcus nervous. “That place isn’t Logan. Nobody thinks that place is anything but full of trash.” I am so sorry I took you there.

  “Cindy’s a miserable woman, and probably so is the jerk who stole my boots.” Frankie looked out the window, his expression sad. “It’s the same in Saint Peter—we have a lower income area too, and I should have known better. I just forgot is all.”

  Marcus wanted Frankie to remember the good parts of Logan, but then their food came, so he stopped trying to figure out how to cheer Frankie up. He’d work on him later, he vowed.

  The afternoon at Logan Manor helped a little, he was pretty sure, and the mayor’s mother was as effusive as Mimi had been over Frankie’s styling job. The mayor thanked Frankie with tears in his eyes and pressed, with great insistence, a hundred dollar bill into Frankie’s hand. Frankie accepted it and smiled graciously, but Marcus couldn’t help but notice the cloud that hung over his lover.

  He made love to Frankie with a tenderness he didn’t know he had in him, trying to soothe the injury of the sch
oolhouse apartments, trying to rekindle the magic that had carried them this far. Maybe he managed to erase some of it, but the truth was that even as they spooned together after, Marcus knew something fundamental had changed. He didn’t like it, and he didn’t know how to change it. He told himself he’d start again tomorrow, grateful for the first time in his life for the promise of a blizzard.

  Except when he woke in the morning and went to the window, he found fate had another blow in store for him. It hadn’t snowed. At all. And as he watched out the window, staring in disbelief, he saw a county plow go by on the road, an electrical truck behind it.

  There was no blizzard. There was no more time to make up for the disaster at the apartments.

  There was no reason for Frankie not to go home.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “IT DOESN’T GOTTA be the end of the world,” Arthur said to Marcus when Frankie had disappeared into the shower. “Maybe he’s leaving, but it doesn’t have to mean things are over.”

  Marcus failed to see how it meant anything but that. Frankie was leaving—first thing Monday morning. Jed had called, letting them know Frankie’s Festiva was ready to roll. Marcus grimaced and shook his head. “How’s that supposed to work? We talk on the phone? See each other on the weekends?”

  “Maybe to start. You try it out, see how it goes.”

  “And then what? I go back to the city? I don’t want to. And he doesn’t want to come here.” Marcus ran his hand over his beard, pulling on it and feeling lost and sad. “I shouldn’t have taken him to Cindy. That’s where it went bad.”

  “If he’s scared of one bad apartment building, you were never going to make it anyway.”

  “We were never going to make it, period.”

  Arthur slugged Marcus lightly—but meaningfully—on the arm. “Stop it. We just got you out of your Oscar the Grouch routine. Don’t slip back in yet.”

  Marcus knew when Frankie left he was going to explore whole new levels of misery. “It was only the snow. It was the snow and the blizzard and the way everything was out of its usual time. It was never going to work.”

  “Bullshit.” Arthur put himself squarely in front of Marcus, making their eyes meet. “If that’s true, then what the fuck are you doing here? You have a goddamned law degree. You have several degrees. You’re smarter than shit, you could do about anything you want, but you’re dragging logs. You want to talk about aberrations? You, Marcus, you back in Logan? That’s an aberration.”

  “I’m here for my mom.”

  “Bull. Shit. You’re here to hide. To hide from your life, to feel bad that you aren’t happy and to say goodbye.” Arthur pointed at the bathroom. “That. That boy right in there—he’s life again for you. And if you don’t grab him with both hands and hold on, I’m going to kick your ass so hard you’ll have to shit my boot out.”

  Marcus felt the insulation peeling off the surface of his life. “What if it doesn’t work? What if I do this, Arthur, and I just end up alone and fucked over again?”

  “No way Frankie’s gonna fuck you over. Not like Steve—not a chance in hell.”

  “But it might not work.”

  “That’s true. It might not work. But it might work too.” Arthur put a hand on Marcus’s shoulder. “And if it doesn’t, I’ll be right here for you, buddy, just like always, and so will Paul.”

  Marcus couldn’t say anything, so he reached up and squeezed Arthur’s hand.

  NOW THAT MARCUS knew it was the last day with Frankie, he didn’t want to share him, but he could hardly complain when Frankie asked to stop by the care center. The four of them went into town together, and Marcus watched patiently as Frankie accepted love and affection from his many admirers, but he felt a tug at his heart as Frankie had to firmly turn down requests for any new appointments.

  They spent a good half hour with Mimi, and her hair Frankie did touch up, though it was bittersweet because she was having a bad morning and could barely remember Marcus, let alone Frankie. While this clearly upset Frankie a little, he took it in stride, reintroducing himself and focusing on “doing her up pretty” as he put it. She enjoyed that, but Marcus could tell it made Frankie sad to realize Mimi wouldn’t remember him stopping by, and in a few days she wouldn’t know she’d met him at all.

  “There isn’t much she holds on to now,” Marcus explained as Arthur drove them back to the cabin. They sat together in the backseat, even though it meant he was squashed and turned sideways. He held Frankie’s hand, gently stroking the back of his knuckles with his thumb. “She’s actually doing remarkably well given how far the disease has progressed. They tell me in a few months it’s going to be a struggle for her to remember me at all. If it doesn’t take her completely by next Christmas, this will still be the last one when she’ll be able to remember anything.”

  “That’s so sad.” Frankie turned his hand over, lacing their fingers together. “How do you stand it? I’d be a hot mess every day.”

  Marcus shrugged. “I muddle through, mostly. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve gone through my share and then some of angry. I hated that I wasted so much time away from her. So now I visit her every day as much as that’s possible, and I take what I can get.”

  Frankie splayed his fingers inside of Marcus’s grip, his gaze focused on their joined hands.

  They stopped at the gas station that doubled as a mini general store on the south side of town before heading home, because Arthur declared Frankie wasn’t going anywhere without a cell phone. Marcus agreed, and he went one step further and bought the phone himself. It was a no-contract, pay-by-the-minutes phone, but he got one that had web capability and added a generous number of calling minutes and texting. It was the same one he had, so he knew it would get signal coverage in the North Woods as well as in the city. Before he handed it over, he programmed in his number, Arthur’s, Paul’s, the café’s, and even the logging company’s and the care center’s.

  “You didn’t have to buy that,” Frankie said, but Marcus could tell the gesture had touched him.

  It felt like a good start.

  After that, they headed back to the cabin, where a quick test showed the power was back. The wood stove was retired and the furnace turned on, and Paul declared he was making calzones and a big fat salad in honor of having full access to his usual stove again. Frankie and Marcus helped him while Arthur went back into town for the greens, and when Arthur returned, he had news of the logging mill.

  “Opening back up tomorrow,” he declared. “Which is good, because I sure as hell could use a paycheck before Christmas.”

  “So.” Paul nudged Frankie with his elbow as they worked together at the counter, filling the rolled-out dough. “You coming back up to see us for the holidays?”

  Frankie blushed and glanced at Marcus. His face was a riot of emotions, hope, nerves, and caution all trying to hide behind a rather thin mask of coolness. “Sure. I have to check what being gone did to the schedule. Originally I had vacation booked, but I might have to give it up now.” He frowned as he folded up the calzone dough and pressed the edges together. “I hadn’t even thought of that. I had a few days with my family planned. Hmm. I might only have Christmas Day off now.”

  “You’re welcome here for the holiday,” Paul said.

  Frankie faltered, and Marcus realized the problem. “He’ll want to go to his parents’ on Christmas Day.”

  Paul shrugged. “Weekend before then.”

  Frankie smiled, the gesture a little strained, and Marcus’s gut started to knot.

  Coming up on the weekend before meant driving up to northern Minnesota twice. That was gas money Frankie didn’t have, and this said nothing about the weather. He could go down and pick up Frankie, or better yet just be the one to do the visiting. But they were talking a day or two here and there at best. A visit a month, and then only when the weather held.

  Still, Marcus couldn’t help but wonder where it all was headed. Would he really go back to the Cities? Could he do that? Even if he didn
’t practice law, what would he do? Take some other white-collar job? The whole point of leaving the business world was to get out of that rat race. He’d open up a law practice here first, or take the logging company up on the managerial position it had offered him more than once. Hell, he’d do PR work or sales for the logging company before he’d go back to the city.

  Was it shitty of him that he’d give up a potential relationship to stay out of the city? Awful as that would be, the idea of going back into that headache seemed worse. Living in a small town, putting up with the shit people would flip at him, was the same kind of deal-breaker for Frankie.

  Why were they even bothering to try?

  He felt Frankie’s eyes on him all through dinner, and when Arthur volunteered to help Paul with the dishes, Frankie caught Marcus and pulled him aside.

  “Something’s wrong. You’ve been upset all afternoon, and I can tell it has something to do with me.” When Marcus started to deny this, Frankie poked him in the belly. “Don’t tell me it isn’t. You’ve been running your grouch routine hard ever since Paul asked me about coming up for Christmas. The thing is, I hadn’t even said I wasn’t coming, so I don’t understand why that made you upset.”

  Marcus grimaced and looked away. “Frankie, I can tell this is no good. It’s never going to work.”

  Frankie drew back, surprised. “What won’t work? Us? Why?”

  Marcus gestured at the cabin. “You don’t want this, living up north, and I can’t imagine living back in the city.”

  “Yes, but that’s what we think now. Maybe things will change.”

  Marcus’s gut twisted. “I know I won’t. I can’t. And if I won’t change, I can’t ask you to either.”

  He kept waiting for Frankie to get it, to maybe become sad and resigned, but all he did was get mad. “Why can’t you? That doesn’t make any sense. Anyway, I’d think that’s my decision.”

  “You can’t move up here. You’d never be happy.”

  Forget mad. Frankie was pissed. “Oh, now I can’t move up here. I see.”