eyes, and the corners of her mouth, he said, “How about tonight …
when the snow’s falling … after we’ve had . . . a glass of wine or
two . . . by the fire . ..
romantic music … on the radio … when we’re feeling relaxed . .
.”
“…
relaxed,” she said dreamily. “Then we get together …”
“… mmmmmmm, together …”
“. . . and we have a really wonderful, wonderful . . .”
“… wonderful…”
“Snowball fight.” She smacked him playfully on the cheek. “Beast.
I’ll have rocks in my snowballs.”
“Or we could make love.”
“Sure you don’t want to go outside and make snow angels?”
“Not now that I’ve taken more time to think about
“Get dressed,
smartass. We’ve got shopping to do.”
Heather found Toby in the living room, dressed for the day. He was on
the floor in front of the TV, watching a program with the sound off.
“Big snow’s coming tonight,” she told him from the archway, expecting
his excitement to exceed her own -because this also would be his first
experience with a white winter. He didn’t respond. “We’re going to
buy a couple of sleds when we go to town, be ready for tomorrow.” He
was as still as stone. His attention remained entirely on the
screen.
From where she stood, Heather couldn’t see what show had so gripped
him. “Toby?” She stepped out of the archway and into the living
room.
“Hey, kiddo, what’re you watching?” He acknowledged her at last as she
approached him. “Don’t know what it is.” His eyes appeared to be out
of focus, as though he wasn’t actually seeing her, and he gazed once
more at the television.
The screen was filled with a constantly evolving flow of arabic forms,
reminiscent of those Lava lamps that had once been so popular. The
lamps had always been in two colors, however, while this display
progressed in infinite shades of all the primary colors, now bright,
now dark. Ever-changing shapes melted together, curled and flexed,
streamed and spurted, drizzled and purled and throbbed in a ceaseless
exhibition of amorphic chaos, surging at a frenzied pace for a few
seconds, then oozing sluggishly, then faster again.
“What is this?” Heather asked. Toby shrugged. Endlessly recomposing
itself, the colorful curvilinear abstract was interesting to watch and
frequently beautiful.
The longer she stared at it, however, the more disturbing it became,
although for no reason she could discern. Nothing in its patterns was
inherently ominous or menacing. Indeed, the fluid and dreamy
intermingling of forms should have been restful.
“Why do you have the sound turned down?”
“Don’t.” She squatted next to him, picked up the remote control from
the carpet, and depressed the volume button.
The only sound was the faint static hiss of the speakers. She scanned
just one channel farther up on the dial, and the booming voice of an
excited sportscaster and the cheering of a crowd at a football game
exploded through the living room.
She quickly decreased the volume. When she scanned back to the
previous channel, the Technicolor Lava lamp was gone. A Daffy Duck
cartoon filled the screen instead and, judging by the frenetic pace of
the action, was drawing toward a pyrotechnic conclusion.
“That was odd,” she said. “I liked it,” Toby said. She scanned
farther down the dial, then farther up than before, but she could not
find the strange display.
She hit the Off button, and the screen went dark.
“Well, anyway,” she said, “time to grab breakfast, so we can get on
with the day. Lots to do in town. Don’t want to run out of time to
buy those sleds.”
“Buy what?” the boy asked as he got to his feet. “Didn’t you hear me
before?”
“I guess.”
“About snow?” His small face brightened. “It’s gonna snow?”
“You must have enough wax built up in your ears to make the world’s
biggest candle,” she said, heading for the kitchen. Following her,
Toby said, “When? When’s it gonna snow, Mom? Huh? Today?”
“We could stick a wick in each of your ears, put a match to them, and
have candlelight dinners for the rest of the decade.”
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