Endless Winter Vacation

It was so terribly cold. Snow was falling, and it was almost dark. Kaori’s break was only halfway over, and she was already on her third cigarette. The butt glowed like the last rays of sunset, pale orange fingers splatter-painting a wall of violet-black.

Kaori shivered in her jacket. Flannel did little good against an icy wind and snow melting down the nape of your neck. The weather had been nice today, for the dead of winter. The high, almost fifty degrees. The low, a chilly but doable thirty-five. With a coat. Which she had forgotten on the kitchen table.

Like a fucking idiot.

She stubbed out her third cigarette and then lit another one in a motion so fluid it might be considered one. She took a drag. Blew out a cloud of smoke. Looked up and down the alley.

At the end, she saw that prostitute she would see at the street corner sometimes when leaving a closing shift. She was young, probably on drugs, judging by the unnatural thinness of her exposed legs. Still, she was pretty: tatted up with a curled bob of sandy blond hair and an hourglass curve. She was leaning on the back wall of the dry cleaner’s, trying to flick on her lighter. It wasn’t catching.

Kaori watched her for a while, numb to everything but her plight. She pulled her lighter out of her pocket. “Hey!” she called. God, what was wrong with her?

The prostitute turned, sandy curls catching in the frozen wind. She stared at Kaori, sizing her up.

“Need a light?” Kaori asked.

“Yeah,” the prostitute said. Her shoulders drooped a little as if in relief. She walked over to Kaori, long-limbed and elegant like she belonged in a ballroom waltzing, not on the streets of Chicago in bleak midwinter. She held a cigarette between her teeth and bent down so Kaori could light it. 

So Kaori did.

The prostitute deposited herself by Kaori, that elegance from before lost. She took a drag, then another, then another, and eventually, Kaori returned to her own cigarette. They smoked in silence for a minute before the prostitute said, “Thanks.”

“Yeah,” said Kaori, “no problem.”

Silence reigned again. This time, it was a bit of a longer time until the prostitute broke it, “On your break?”

“Yeah.”

“How long you got?”

Kaori knew that question. “Not why I gave you a light. Just saw you struggling and wanted to help.”

“Oh. Thanks. No ‘I guess’ this time.”

A smile stitched across Kaori’s face. “You’re welcome.”

The prostitute’s lips twitched in the semblance of a smile. It didn’t quite make it to her eyes though, but Kaori didn’t expect it to. Why would it when she was on a street corner at five PM in thirty-degree weather, wearing booty shorts, a tank top, heels and a fur coat that wasn’t buttoned?

Kaori checked her phone. She had to be inside in five minutes but part of her didn’t want to leave, not even as night took full effect and street lamps winked on. Well, some of them. You couldn’t expect them all to work. This time, it was her who broke the silence, “Weather’s shit.”

“Better than yesterday.”

It had snowed yesterday. Not a lot but enough to be annoying. Kaori could imagine it had been more annoying for the prostitute. 

“Yeah, better than yesterday.”

“Think it would be better to live somewhere that’s hot all the time? But they got those tropical storms, right, them monsoons?”

“Oh. Yeah. Monsoons.” Kaori knew nothing about meteorology. She knew the basic weather patterns, knew the sky turned green before a tornado like it was about to throw something up, but nothing beyond. “That would suck.”

“Maybe somewhere, like, in the middle. Like Tennessee or Kentucky.”

“I always forget Kentucky exists.”

“I don’t. I was born there. Hard to forget it exists when your mom popped you out in a van while her boyfriend was on tour with his deadend band.”

“If they were on tour, they probably weren’t that bad.”

“The band called it a tour. No one else did. Plus, they didn’t even sell tickets or have a copy of their tape to sell.”

“Oh.” Kaori stubbed out her cigarette. Checked the time. She had two more minutes, and she still didn’t want to go back inside. Her hands were shaking, and the flannel wasn’t helping at all anymore, but the prostitute. The prostitute didn’t even seem bothered by the cold. “I wish I had your armor against the cold.”

“You wanna borrow my jacket?” the prostitute asked, a sly… look on her face. It wasn’t quite a smile though she was showing her teeth. She had chipped one, and the rest looked like they were bruising.

“Nah, I’m good. Thanks—”

“Warmer than it looks.”

“I’m good.”

“Okay.” 

Her facial expression returned to its baseline, halfway between a frown and complete neutrality. 

Kaori stood. She checked her phone again, just for good measure. Time to go in.

She glanced at the sky again. A helicopter fluttered across the blackness, winking like a shooting star. No trace of the sun remained. Kaori sighed and looked down at the prostitute who hadn’t moved an inch. She was still smoking: inhale, smoky exhale, inhale, smoky exhale. She looked so cold, but she wasn’t even shivering. Maybe she was used to it. “See ya,” said Kaori.

“Yeah,” the prostitute said. 

Kaori opened the door to the restaurant, lingered in the blast of warmth for a moment, then walked in when Martha yelled that it was fucking freezing outside and Kaori better get in here and stop letting all the heat out. So Kaori did, leaving the prostitute all alone on the back doorstep. She put her apron back on and rubbed her hands together, trying to coax some warmth back into them before Martha yelled at her to do something. Anything. As long as it wasn’t standing around and looking like a fucking rat. Martha was intense for the family-run Mexican restaurant they worked at. And for not being part of the family that ran it. 

Part of Kaori wanted to go back outside with the prostitute and the helicopter-slash-shooting-star and the wind that could kill her if she stayed out long enough. She wanted to talk about what could be, where she could move, where she could live, what the weather would be like. But she had to pay bills so she stayed inside and worked and when she left after the kitchen was closed, the prostitute was gone. She wasn’t on the street corner either, so it was pretty easy to guess where she was, what she was doing. Well, she had to do it. For one reason or another, she had too because Kaori knew she would do it too, if she had to.