Original -- Ironic
Title: Ironic
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2600
Warnings: views expressed by characters are not my own: no offense intended to Wal-Mart shoppers, inhabitants of the Midwest, inhabitants of the South, hipsters (especially since apparently I am one for ordering a specialty drink at Starbucks), and anyone else I insulted
Prompts: 1. mistletoe set-up; 6. a kiss in the snow; 16. family reunion; 22. visible breath; 38. stranded somewhere unusual by a snowstorm for Baubles to It at pulped_fictions
Summary: “We’ll just keep going until the money runs out.”
Author's Note: Two weeks ago, I had dinner with my step-mom, and her BFF who lives in the city met up with us afterward. The two of them spent an hour trying to convince me to buy a plane ticket and abandon my dissatisfactory life. As is probably evident from the following three thousand words of nothing… well. Thanks a million to eltea for excellent editing suggestions, as always. ♥
IRONIC
Wrote it for the ones who want to get away
(Keep running)
- “Sing” - My Chemical Romance -
Apparently, when people said “Life has a cruel sense of humor,” what they actually meant was “If you don’t play by rules no one will tell you, you’ll get snowed in at a Wal-Mart someday.”
On the upside, starvation would take a while.
Marcia chewed on her lip.
“This is what we get for patronizing a Wal-Mart,” Alex said when both the loudspeaker announcement and the shoppers’ protests had faded. Alex was a quintessential hipster, at least by the definition Marcia knew-he was never caught without an ironic T-shirt, glasses with thick, black square frames, and tight jeans that might have been organic, though it didn’t seem wise to taste them and find out-so he was allowed to say things like that. It was probably in the Hipster Code of Honor, actually, and he’d get expatriated from Hipsterdom if he didn’t criticize major retailers.
“Maybe we’ll get free gift cards,” Marcia said. Alex raised an eyebrow, and she shrugged. “Sometimes they do stuff like that. Although I guess this isn’t their fault.”
“It’s our fault,” Alex sighed. “We were the ones naïve enough to think we could walk into a Wal-Mart without incurring God’s punishment.”
Actually, it was Marcia’s fault. Marcia was the one who had sat down in the middle of the floor in the food court of the shopping mall and explained to her hipster best friend that she couldn’t take Phoenix anymore, and they needed to go somewhere. More recently, Marcia was the one who coaxed him into the warehouse store with promises of discount-price cookies.
“We have time to enjoy it this way,” Marcia said in a very low voice. “This is Oklahoma. Wal-Mart is practically a national monument.”
Alex smiled his best ironic smile. “I don’t know why anyone would leave his heart in San Francisco when he could lose it in any cornfield in the Midwest and never find it again.”
“We should go try out the bikes,” Marcia said.
“Yes,” Alex said, “we should.”
They passed some of the junk food on the way, at which point Marcia picked up a bag of Oreos; and then the bathwares section, where she didn’t look in any of the mirrors. Some people thought that spending a lot of time getting ready every morning meant Marcia was vain, but it wasn’t vanity; it was desperation. She had to become a better person than she’d been when she woke up-and if she couldn’t, she should at least look like one.
Marcia knew how she looked without the mirror’s help. Marcia was the kind of girl/young woman/streak of nothing who could never quite make her eyeliner even and never quite fit her butt into her jeans. She fell somewhere into a Bermuda Triangle between punk, loser, and low-life nerd, and for a category of society that no one could name, it was amazing how it clung like skunk spray, and everyone could tell.
Alex selected a pink tricycle with plastic streamers on the handlebars, presumably because it was the most ironic option. By some feat of contortion, he managed to pedal down the aisle and back.
“You should get that,” Marcia told him. “It’s only thirty bucks. They are rolling out low prices.”
Judging by Alex’s pained expression, he caught the pun. Or maybe that was the trike. “They’re also rolling out sexist hiring practices, sweatshop labor, and artistic censorship.”
“You can’t be the most interesting place in Oklahoma without breaking a few eggs,” Marcia said.
“I’m hungry,” Alex said, slowing to a stop.
“Then let’s go get some food,” Marcia said.
“It’s probably produced in sweatshops.”
Marcia made sure to spend a full ten seconds rolling her eyes.
“We can’t go get food,” Alex said, shifting a bit.
Marcia folded her arms, which was difficult around the Oreos. “Why not?”
“Because I’m stuck.”
They were twenty miles into Texas when they reached the dregs of the Oreo bag and of the gas tank at the same time. Marcia picked a 76 station so she could watch the giant ball rotate while she waited. She got to wondering what the “76” referred to, but it was hard to learn useless information without Wikipedia. They’d left all of the electronics except the iPods in Phoenix, and they’d taken to making up the answers.
Alex’s neon green jacket-presumably an ironic color; looking like a lime could be ironic-blinded her for the umpteenth time as he dragged himself out of the passenger seat and stretched.
“Oh, my Gawd,” someone twanged. “Alex, sweetheart?”
Alex spun on his lime-green-sneakered heel and stared. “Cassie?”
A large woman wrapped him into something that resembled a choke-hold more than a hug. “What the hell you doin’ out here?”
“Just driving,” Alex said-gasped, really.
“What do you mean, just driving?” the-woman-Cassie asked, releasing him just enough to frown at him.
Alex seemed to be trying to shrug. “Marcia wanted to go,” he said, “so we went.”
“But it’s right about to be Christmas,” Cassie protested. “What about your mom and dad?”
Alex made another strong effort.
“What about school?” Cassie pressed, vocally and physically at once.
Alex gave up on body language. “We have a week or two before next quarter. And I don’t really care anyway. We’ll just keep going until the money runs out.”
Cassie stared at him in unmitigated horror. “What do you mean, you don’t care?” She let go of him now-as if he had Ebola.
Alex paused. “It’s just a vacation,” he said. “We’ll get back eventually.”
“What about Christmas?” Cassie attempted one last time.
“It’s just another day,” Alex said. “And now it’s another day I’m not wasting.”
Cassie was mortified. “Well, I… nice seein’ you, Alex. You tell your mom I said hi.”
When the woman had retreated to her Cherokee, Alex leaned against Marcia’s passenger door and watched the rising numbers on the pump.
“I didn’t know you knew people here,” Marcia said.
“She’s my second cousin or something,” Alex said. “Or third. Or first, once-removed. I’d be down with a couple more removals.”
“You have a lot of family in Texas?” Marcia asked.
Alex shrugged, properly this time. “Family is voluntary.”
She let it go. “I don’t think that’s permitted by the definition of the word.”
Alex whistled tunelessly, blowing out a long, thin stream of mist that spread and then dissipated like a mushroom cloud. “You bring a dictionary?” he asked, despite knowing very well that he’d taken the one off of her shelf and hidden it just in case.
“No,” Marcia said anyway.
“Then it doesn’t count,” Alex said. “Out here, things are what we make ’em.”
Marcia decided that seventy-six percent of her would wither and die without Alexander Ebramitch.
“I think this place would be nice in summer,” Alex said from his place at the window, the 80s-vomit curtains pushed aside so he could gaze out at the motel parking lot.
“Dallas?” Marcia said. “In summer, it can’t figure out whether it’s in the tropics or the desert.”
“I can’t figure out a lot of things,” Alex said, “and you don’t hate me.” He paused to grin at her. “Or if you do, you’re really good at hiding it.”
Marcia tried not to smile and ultimately failed.
Alex leaned back against the windowpane, folding his arms across his chest and crossing his legs at the ankle. “Where to next, Captain?”
Marcia flattened the map a little-carefully, because the creases were getting fragile-and frowned down at all the little dots. “I dunno. I was thinking New Orleans.”
Alex’s face lit up, and the decision was made. “The Big Easy,” he said. “The city that rose from the flood and rebuilt.”
“Is everything a metaphor for you?” Marcia had to ask.
Alex shrugged, crossed the 80s-vomit carpet, and flopped down on his back across the bed.
“It’s about fifty-fifty,” he said. “I mean… most things probably don’t happen for a reason, but knowing that doesn’t make it any easier to change the unreasonable stuff.”
“What do you recommend, Life Guru?” Marcia asked.
“Becoming a Buddhist,” Alex said. “Or inheriting a lot of money. Maybe both.”
In Louisiana, on Christmas Eve, they paid for a parking space at a campsite.
“Freakin’ bathrooms,” Alex noted, giving Marcia a double thumbs-up, which was presumably meant to be ironic.
There was also a freakin’ fire pit, a tangled canopy, and a path that led out to a bayou, which shimmered in the weak light of the frosty afternoon. They stood at the edge of the jetty, Alex with his toes just over the edge, and looked out over the marsh.
“You think there are alligators?” Alex asked.
“I think the raccoons are a bigger threat,” Marcia said.
“I think you don’t watch enough straight-to-SyFy horror movies,” Alex said.
“I think it smells like snow.”
“You can’t smell that. And it doesn’t snow this far south.”
“Did you bring a climate map?” Marcia asked.
Alex grinned.
“We’re stupid,” Marcia said.
“We’re definitely above average intelligence,” Alex said. “Don’t sell us short.”
“Okay,” Marcia said, “fine. We’re above average intelligence. What we’re missing is a molecule of common sense between us.”
“I’m pretty sure common sense is an element on its own,” Alex said. “What brought this on?”
Marcia gestured to their unimpressive supply of blankets and then to the world outside the car. “We’re going to freeze to death. Actually freeze to death. We’re going to be found dead by park rangers in the morning.”
“No, we won’t,” Alex said. “This place is too small to have rangers.”
Marcia gave him a look, and he beamed with no irony at all.
A glance at his numberless analog watch, however, had him shoving the unimpressive blankets off. “Midnight,” he announced. “I’m going to take advantage of the freakin’ bathrooms with a shower.”
“It’s a quarter-mile in the dark,” Marcia said. “You’ll turn into a popsicle.”
“I’d make an amazing popsicle,” Alex said. “This is mandatory; I stink.”
He didn’t. He smelled like himself-like hipster-cynic and hope with a hint of organic jeans; like sweat and boy with a hint of man-and Marcia liked that smell. She wasn’t quite so enthusiastic at the prospect of him coming back smelling like Fresh Pine or something else “natural” and muskily masculine. There were enough real pines around; the last thing she needed was a boy who smelled like a fake one.
Not that she was about to explain any of this to Alex, who unlocked the door, hopped out, and, by the looks of things, immediately began to regret it.
Marcia pulled her blankets up to her chin and wished herself a merry little Christmas.
She was roused from a shivering doze by the alligators breaking through the levee and biting at-
…or, apparently, by Alex banging on the window a little too loud.
She opened the door a crack. Frigid air invaded without delay. “What do you want, vagrant?” she asked.
“I found something,” Alex said, his glasses shining in the moonlight. “You should see it.”
Marcia stared at him. “It’s one in the morning and twenty degrees. In the middle of nowhere in Louisiana.”
“You’re only ever going to live once,” Alex said, “and not for long enough.”
Marcia glared at him. Then she got out of the car to follow, slamming the door and locking it behind her, because life was also too short to get your car jacked and end up stranded in the situation she’d so lovingly described.
To Marcia’s dismay-but not really to her surprise-Alex led them directly into the woods, and in moments, they were tramping through frost-licked undergrowth. Marcia made the conscious decision not to think about what they might be unwittingly stepping on or through in the dark; at least that left the opportunity to plead ignorance later.
After some thorough tromping and treading, by which time they’d made one full circle that Marcia had noticed and perhaps others she hadn’t tracked, Alex burst out with a promising “Aha!”
Marcia should have known better from the start, but since she was already here, she figured she might as well see it through.
Alex caught her elbow and towed her into a small clearing. At her blank expression, he grinned some more.
“Look up,” he said.
Marcia looked.
The whole dense ceiling of foliage was composed of dark, spiky leaves dotted with vibrantly red berries. It was like a giant, shining, moonlight-iced umbrella of…
“Holly?” Marcia said.
“It’s mistletoe,” Alex said.
Marcia hugged herself against the cold, craning her neck. “No, it’s not. It’s holly.”
“Prove it,” Alex said.
“Mistletoe has round leaves and white berries. It’s on Wikipedia. And everywhere else.”
“Prove it,” Alex said again.
Marcia opened her mouth, took a breath, sighed with it, got mist in her face, and shut her mouth again.
It was unfortunate that Alex looked so drastically cute when he was smug.
“Mistletoe,” he concluded. “Put here for us, and you can’t prove otherwise.”
“Shrödinger’s plant,” Marcia muttered.
Alex leaned down and kissed her cheek. His mouth was cold but very soft, his breath was moist, and he didn’t smell like Fresh Pine; he smelled like Alex.
“There,” he said, and he started back in a direction that might have led towards the car.
Maybe it meant something, but Marcia couldn’t prove it.
“I think we made this happen,” Marcia said.
Alex lifted the hood of his dark magenta coat-apparently hipsters thought that straight men wearing pink was also ironic; what Marcia wanted to know was where in the heck he bought these things-and looked at her through a sampling of halfhearted white flakes. “The snow?”
“We’re within spitting distance of the Gulf of Mexico,” Marcia said. “Not exactly the tundra.”
Alex peered up at the clouds, possibly looking for silver linings, and smiled faintly. “Then we caused something out of the ordinary. I’m pleased.”
They were standing in the middle of a freak snowstorm 1,500 miles from home, with two hundred dollars left on his credit card and half that in cash, and Alex was pleased.
Marcia loved him. She also thought he was an idiot. There was a distinct possibility that the coexistence of these conditions made her an idiot, too.
“You remember where we parked?” she asked.
“On a street,” Alex said. “With signs.”
She was favoring the idiot part.
The snow was starting to gather around their sneakers; the first few layers had dissolved when the flakes touched the pavement, but now it was starting to stick. This street, which had various signs and did not have Marcia’s car, was lined by two-story buildings with balconies and latticework decoration. All of the flowers that usually embellished them had withered with the weather, but Marcia thought it was beautiful.
“You know why I came here with you?” Alex asked.
“Because you had a very specific death wish?” Marcia said. “Dying of exposure in New Orleans is a tall order.”
“Because you’re the only person worth coming here with,” Alex said, without an iota of irony.
Marcia looked at him. He leaned in and kissed her, cold-soft-Alex, and all she could see was dark magenta.
“There,” Alex said.
Marcia snaked her arm through his and kicked at the snow obscuring the sidewalk, wondering if there was steam hissing as snowflakes melted on her flaming cheeks.
“More like ‘here,’” Marcia said. “Here’s good.”
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2600
Warnings: views expressed by characters are not my own: no offense intended to Wal-Mart shoppers, inhabitants of the Midwest, inhabitants of the South, hipsters (especially since apparently I am one for ordering a specialty drink at Starbucks), and anyone else I insulted
Prompts: 1. mistletoe set-up; 6. a kiss in the snow; 16. family reunion; 22. visible breath; 38. stranded somewhere unusual by a snowstorm for Baubles to It at pulped_fictions
Summary: “We’ll just keep going until the money runs out.”
Author's Note: Two weeks ago, I had dinner with my step-mom, and her BFF who lives in the city met up with us afterward. The two of them spent an hour trying to convince me to buy a plane ticket and abandon my dissatisfactory life. As is probably evident from the following three thousand words of nothing… well. Thanks a million to eltea for excellent editing suggestions, as always. ♥
IRONIC
Wrote it for the ones who want to get away
(Keep running)
- “Sing” - My Chemical Romance -
Apparently, when people said “Life has a cruel sense of humor,” what they actually meant was “If you don’t play by rules no one will tell you, you’ll get snowed in at a Wal-Mart someday.”
On the upside, starvation would take a while.
Marcia chewed on her lip.
“This is what we get for patronizing a Wal-Mart,” Alex said when both the loudspeaker announcement and the shoppers’ protests had faded. Alex was a quintessential hipster, at least by the definition Marcia knew-he was never caught without an ironic T-shirt, glasses with thick, black square frames, and tight jeans that might have been organic, though it didn’t seem wise to taste them and find out-so he was allowed to say things like that. It was probably in the Hipster Code of Honor, actually, and he’d get expatriated from Hipsterdom if he didn’t criticize major retailers.
“Maybe we’ll get free gift cards,” Marcia said. Alex raised an eyebrow, and she shrugged. “Sometimes they do stuff like that. Although I guess this isn’t their fault.”
“It’s our fault,” Alex sighed. “We were the ones naïve enough to think we could walk into a Wal-Mart without incurring God’s punishment.”
Actually, it was Marcia’s fault. Marcia was the one who had sat down in the middle of the floor in the food court of the shopping mall and explained to her hipster best friend that she couldn’t take Phoenix anymore, and they needed to go somewhere. More recently, Marcia was the one who coaxed him into the warehouse store with promises of discount-price cookies.
“We have time to enjoy it this way,” Marcia said in a very low voice. “This is Oklahoma. Wal-Mart is practically a national monument.”
Alex smiled his best ironic smile. “I don’t know why anyone would leave his heart in San Francisco when he could lose it in any cornfield in the Midwest and never find it again.”
“We should go try out the bikes,” Marcia said.
“Yes,” Alex said, “we should.”
They passed some of the junk food on the way, at which point Marcia picked up a bag of Oreos; and then the bathwares section, where she didn’t look in any of the mirrors. Some people thought that spending a lot of time getting ready every morning meant Marcia was vain, but it wasn’t vanity; it was desperation. She had to become a better person than she’d been when she woke up-and if she couldn’t, she should at least look like one.
Marcia knew how she looked without the mirror’s help. Marcia was the kind of girl/young woman/streak of nothing who could never quite make her eyeliner even and never quite fit her butt into her jeans. She fell somewhere into a Bermuda Triangle between punk, loser, and low-life nerd, and for a category of society that no one could name, it was amazing how it clung like skunk spray, and everyone could tell.
Alex selected a pink tricycle with plastic streamers on the handlebars, presumably because it was the most ironic option. By some feat of contortion, he managed to pedal down the aisle and back.
“You should get that,” Marcia told him. “It’s only thirty bucks. They are rolling out low prices.”
Judging by Alex’s pained expression, he caught the pun. Or maybe that was the trike. “They’re also rolling out sexist hiring practices, sweatshop labor, and artistic censorship.”
“You can’t be the most interesting place in Oklahoma without breaking a few eggs,” Marcia said.
“I’m hungry,” Alex said, slowing to a stop.
“Then let’s go get some food,” Marcia said.
“It’s probably produced in sweatshops.”
Marcia made sure to spend a full ten seconds rolling her eyes.
“We can’t go get food,” Alex said, shifting a bit.
Marcia folded her arms, which was difficult around the Oreos. “Why not?”
“Because I’m stuck.”
They were twenty miles into Texas when they reached the dregs of the Oreo bag and of the gas tank at the same time. Marcia picked a 76 station so she could watch the giant ball rotate while she waited. She got to wondering what the “76” referred to, but it was hard to learn useless information without Wikipedia. They’d left all of the electronics except the iPods in Phoenix, and they’d taken to making up the answers.
Alex’s neon green jacket-presumably an ironic color; looking like a lime could be ironic-blinded her for the umpteenth time as he dragged himself out of the passenger seat and stretched.
“Oh, my Gawd,” someone twanged. “Alex, sweetheart?”
Alex spun on his lime-green-sneakered heel and stared. “Cassie?”
A large woman wrapped him into something that resembled a choke-hold more than a hug. “What the hell you doin’ out here?”
“Just driving,” Alex said-gasped, really.
“What do you mean, just driving?” the-woman-Cassie asked, releasing him just enough to frown at him.
Alex seemed to be trying to shrug. “Marcia wanted to go,” he said, “so we went.”
“But it’s right about to be Christmas,” Cassie protested. “What about your mom and dad?”
Alex made another strong effort.
“What about school?” Cassie pressed, vocally and physically at once.
Alex gave up on body language. “We have a week or two before next quarter. And I don’t really care anyway. We’ll just keep going until the money runs out.”
Cassie stared at him in unmitigated horror. “What do you mean, you don’t care?” She let go of him now-as if he had Ebola.
Alex paused. “It’s just a vacation,” he said. “We’ll get back eventually.”
“What about Christmas?” Cassie attempted one last time.
“It’s just another day,” Alex said. “And now it’s another day I’m not wasting.”
Cassie was mortified. “Well, I… nice seein’ you, Alex. You tell your mom I said hi.”
When the woman had retreated to her Cherokee, Alex leaned against Marcia’s passenger door and watched the rising numbers on the pump.
“I didn’t know you knew people here,” Marcia said.
“She’s my second cousin or something,” Alex said. “Or third. Or first, once-removed. I’d be down with a couple more removals.”
“You have a lot of family in Texas?” Marcia asked.
Alex shrugged, properly this time. “Family is voluntary.”
She let it go. “I don’t think that’s permitted by the definition of the word.”
Alex whistled tunelessly, blowing out a long, thin stream of mist that spread and then dissipated like a mushroom cloud. “You bring a dictionary?” he asked, despite knowing very well that he’d taken the one off of her shelf and hidden it just in case.
“No,” Marcia said anyway.
“Then it doesn’t count,” Alex said. “Out here, things are what we make ’em.”
Marcia decided that seventy-six percent of her would wither and die without Alexander Ebramitch.
“I think this place would be nice in summer,” Alex said from his place at the window, the 80s-vomit curtains pushed aside so he could gaze out at the motel parking lot.
“Dallas?” Marcia said. “In summer, it can’t figure out whether it’s in the tropics or the desert.”
“I can’t figure out a lot of things,” Alex said, “and you don’t hate me.” He paused to grin at her. “Or if you do, you’re really good at hiding it.”
Marcia tried not to smile and ultimately failed.
Alex leaned back against the windowpane, folding his arms across his chest and crossing his legs at the ankle. “Where to next, Captain?”
Marcia flattened the map a little-carefully, because the creases were getting fragile-and frowned down at all the little dots. “I dunno. I was thinking New Orleans.”
Alex’s face lit up, and the decision was made. “The Big Easy,” he said. “The city that rose from the flood and rebuilt.”
“Is everything a metaphor for you?” Marcia had to ask.
Alex shrugged, crossed the 80s-vomit carpet, and flopped down on his back across the bed.
“It’s about fifty-fifty,” he said. “I mean… most things probably don’t happen for a reason, but knowing that doesn’t make it any easier to change the unreasonable stuff.”
“What do you recommend, Life Guru?” Marcia asked.
“Becoming a Buddhist,” Alex said. “Or inheriting a lot of money. Maybe both.”
In Louisiana, on Christmas Eve, they paid for a parking space at a campsite.
“Freakin’ bathrooms,” Alex noted, giving Marcia a double thumbs-up, which was presumably meant to be ironic.
There was also a freakin’ fire pit, a tangled canopy, and a path that led out to a bayou, which shimmered in the weak light of the frosty afternoon. They stood at the edge of the jetty, Alex with his toes just over the edge, and looked out over the marsh.
“You think there are alligators?” Alex asked.
“I think the raccoons are a bigger threat,” Marcia said.
“I think you don’t watch enough straight-to-SyFy horror movies,” Alex said.
“I think it smells like snow.”
“You can’t smell that. And it doesn’t snow this far south.”
“Did you bring a climate map?” Marcia asked.
Alex grinned.
“We’re stupid,” Marcia said.
“We’re definitely above average intelligence,” Alex said. “Don’t sell us short.”
“Okay,” Marcia said, “fine. We’re above average intelligence. What we’re missing is a molecule of common sense between us.”
“I’m pretty sure common sense is an element on its own,” Alex said. “What brought this on?”
Marcia gestured to their unimpressive supply of blankets and then to the world outside the car. “We’re going to freeze to death. Actually freeze to death. We’re going to be found dead by park rangers in the morning.”
“No, we won’t,” Alex said. “This place is too small to have rangers.”
Marcia gave him a look, and he beamed with no irony at all.
A glance at his numberless analog watch, however, had him shoving the unimpressive blankets off. “Midnight,” he announced. “I’m going to take advantage of the freakin’ bathrooms with a shower.”
“It’s a quarter-mile in the dark,” Marcia said. “You’ll turn into a popsicle.”
“I’d make an amazing popsicle,” Alex said. “This is mandatory; I stink.”
He didn’t. He smelled like himself-like hipster-cynic and hope with a hint of organic jeans; like sweat and boy with a hint of man-and Marcia liked that smell. She wasn’t quite so enthusiastic at the prospect of him coming back smelling like Fresh Pine or something else “natural” and muskily masculine. There were enough real pines around; the last thing she needed was a boy who smelled like a fake one.
Not that she was about to explain any of this to Alex, who unlocked the door, hopped out, and, by the looks of things, immediately began to regret it.
Marcia pulled her blankets up to her chin and wished herself a merry little Christmas.
She was roused from a shivering doze by the alligators breaking through the levee and biting at-
…or, apparently, by Alex banging on the window a little too loud.
She opened the door a crack. Frigid air invaded without delay. “What do you want, vagrant?” she asked.
“I found something,” Alex said, his glasses shining in the moonlight. “You should see it.”
Marcia stared at him. “It’s one in the morning and twenty degrees. In the middle of nowhere in Louisiana.”
“You’re only ever going to live once,” Alex said, “and not for long enough.”
Marcia glared at him. Then she got out of the car to follow, slamming the door and locking it behind her, because life was also too short to get your car jacked and end up stranded in the situation she’d so lovingly described.
To Marcia’s dismay-but not really to her surprise-Alex led them directly into the woods, and in moments, they were tramping through frost-licked undergrowth. Marcia made the conscious decision not to think about what they might be unwittingly stepping on or through in the dark; at least that left the opportunity to plead ignorance later.
After some thorough tromping and treading, by which time they’d made one full circle that Marcia had noticed and perhaps others she hadn’t tracked, Alex burst out with a promising “Aha!”
Marcia should have known better from the start, but since she was already here, she figured she might as well see it through.
Alex caught her elbow and towed her into a small clearing. At her blank expression, he grinned some more.
“Look up,” he said.
Marcia looked.
The whole dense ceiling of foliage was composed of dark, spiky leaves dotted with vibrantly red berries. It was like a giant, shining, moonlight-iced umbrella of…
“Holly?” Marcia said.
“It’s mistletoe,” Alex said.
Marcia hugged herself against the cold, craning her neck. “No, it’s not. It’s holly.”
“Prove it,” Alex said.
“Mistletoe has round leaves and white berries. It’s on Wikipedia. And everywhere else.”
“Prove it,” Alex said again.
Marcia opened her mouth, took a breath, sighed with it, got mist in her face, and shut her mouth again.
It was unfortunate that Alex looked so drastically cute when he was smug.
“Mistletoe,” he concluded. “Put here for us, and you can’t prove otherwise.”
“Shrödinger’s plant,” Marcia muttered.
Alex leaned down and kissed her cheek. His mouth was cold but very soft, his breath was moist, and he didn’t smell like Fresh Pine; he smelled like Alex.
“There,” he said, and he started back in a direction that might have led towards the car.
Maybe it meant something, but Marcia couldn’t prove it.
“I think we made this happen,” Marcia said.
Alex lifted the hood of his dark magenta coat-apparently hipsters thought that straight men wearing pink was also ironic; what Marcia wanted to know was where in the heck he bought these things-and looked at her through a sampling of halfhearted white flakes. “The snow?”
“We’re within spitting distance of the Gulf of Mexico,” Marcia said. “Not exactly the tundra.”
Alex peered up at the clouds, possibly looking for silver linings, and smiled faintly. “Then we caused something out of the ordinary. I’m pleased.”
They were standing in the middle of a freak snowstorm 1,500 miles from home, with two hundred dollars left on his credit card and half that in cash, and Alex was pleased.
Marcia loved him. She also thought he was an idiot. There was a distinct possibility that the coexistence of these conditions made her an idiot, too.
“You remember where we parked?” she asked.
“On a street,” Alex said. “With signs.”
She was favoring the idiot part.
The snow was starting to gather around their sneakers; the first few layers had dissolved when the flakes touched the pavement, but now it was starting to stick. This street, which had various signs and did not have Marcia’s car, was lined by two-story buildings with balconies and latticework decoration. All of the flowers that usually embellished them had withered with the weather, but Marcia thought it was beautiful.
“You know why I came here with you?” Alex asked.
“Because you had a very specific death wish?” Marcia said. “Dying of exposure in New Orleans is a tall order.”
“Because you’re the only person worth coming here with,” Alex said, without an iota of irony.
Marcia looked at him. He leaned in and kissed her, cold-soft-Alex, and all she could see was dark magenta.
“There,” Alex said.
Marcia snaked her arm through his and kicked at the snow obscuring the sidewalk, wondering if there was steam hissing as snowflakes melted on her flaming cheeks.
“More like ‘here,’” Marcia said. “Here’s good.”