"Skylar!"
Skylar turned from the mostly empty shelves. "Lucy! You look good in blue."
"I hope so, it's a common color. My clothes, my fingers, my lips every morning."
"I hear you. Long time no see."
"Well what do you expect with you spending all your time here."
"I do not!"
"Not what I hear."
"I'm just watching the store while Dale's out making trades."
"How long has it been since we hung out? If you're not here, then you're at home with the sub-defective. Don't know what you see in him."
Skylar reacted. "First of all, we stopped hanging out because my stereo stopped working and you never came around after that. Second, he's not my boyfriend, he's my roommate. And Third, don't call him that."
"I didn't. You did. Two days after the bomb went off."
Skylar reacted again. "That was a lifetime ago."
Lucy smiled. "I know, but I heard he was mooching off you and I had to come and see if it was true."
"And that took you four months?"
"Hey girlfriend, I'm a survivor too now. Tends to take up a lot of the time."
"Tell me about it."
"But, I'm here to shop. Got any coffee left? My wicked step-mom's going through withdrawal again."
Skylar searched the shelves. "Odd. Usually we have plenty. Dale and I don't drink it much...Where is it all?"
"I came because I heard you had plenty. Dale's been handing it out all over town."
"For what?!" Skylar barked.
"Scrounging rights. He's going though garbage cans all over town."
"Bull."
"I heard this from Jake and Eric Green. he wanted their empty coffee cans."
Skylar stared at her. "Look..."
"The freak didn't even tell you?"
"Where is he?"
Dale tossed the plastic bag over the edge of the dumpster and climbed out. Brushing himself off, he turned and found Skylar directly in front of him, arms akimbo. "Tell me. That you. Are NOT. Rummaging through dumpsters."
"I am not rummaging through dumpsters." Dale said without hesitation. She glared. "I'm not, but Eric had already tossed out..."
She reached around him into the bag he was hiding behind his back. "Empty coffee cans!?"
She gave him a look that would freeze lava. "There's a reason I swear!"
Skylar looked him over disdainfully, still smarting from Lucy's crack. "Don't come home if you still smell like that, Caveman."
Skylar dragged herself out of bed the following morning. "Lousy, stupid, icy, cold stupid cold evil cold." She chanted in her typical morning routine, and got dressed.
She made it to the staircase...
And stopped.
Something strange was singing through the air of her home, something sweet and gentle from a half forgotten memory. It was a tiny, primal relic from a long forgotten era that she barely recalled or recognized.
Warmth!
The house was warm!
And the closer she got to downstairs, the warmer the house got.
Sprinting down the staircase, she threw open the kitchen door.
Holy of holies...
Heat, glorious heat!
There, sitting in her kitchen, where her mother's ridiculous $20,000 fan-forced stainless steel monument to waste had lived, stood an absolutely gorgeous pile of bricks and mortar.
Dimly, Skylar realized it was one of the barbecues from the park, the kind that anybody could use at a picnic. But something was different, it was bigger. That same dim, confused, soulless analytical part of Skylar Stevens realized that replacing the fuel-tank underneath, was a real live honest campfire, and sitting on top of the grill, was the lower half of a second, identical barbecue, keeping all the smoke contained, except for one of the hotplates, which had been removed, and replaced by a large coffee tin. Tilting her head back, she saw that at least ten coffee tins had been taped together with masking tape, end to end, creating a chimney, that actually led to the exhaust fan above where the electric stove used to be.
But more than that, was the joyful, rapturous feeling of a cold person in the middle of a long harsh winter, reveling in the sight of an improvised furnace, and an improvised chimney, leading the smoke safely out of the house, and leaving the phenomenal sensuous sensation of heat within her house.
Skylar had never considered herself to be a religious person, but lo behold surely an angel had visited during the night.
And there He was, cleaning up the trail of dirt and concrete chips that he had tracked into the house putting this wondrous thing in their home.
All this passed through Skylar's mind in a second, as Dale looked up at her.
"Morning." He said, matter-of-factly, with just a hint of a self-satisfied grin. "Oh, you'll find the hot chocolate in that cast-iron kettle on the stove, but use the dishcloth when you pick it up, it can get pretty hot now that it's on an actual flame. How'd you sleep?"
For a long moment, Skylar drank him in. He was wearing a t-shirt. It had to be the first time in two months that a citizen of Jericho wore less than three layers. Those two months of physical labor had been good to him, but Skylar almost didn't notice.
"Skylar?" Dale was aware of how stunned she was, but she really needed to say something. All the effort she had put into convincing him that this was his home now too...were renovations going to far too fast?
Matter-of-factly, Skylar nodded and spoke for the first time. "Don't get up mister, I'm gonna do you right there on the kitchen floor."
She seemed okay with it.
Skylar actually took a step toward him when there was a hammering on the front door. "DALE! SKYLAR!"
Dale looked up. "Is that Eric Green?"
"Sounds like it."
"THERE'S SMOKE COMIN' FROM YOUR HOUSE!"
Skylar laughed, a musical joyful sound. "Shall we let the heathens in here to glory in the magnificence of your creation?"
"It's your house."
"Our house." Skylar corrected him doggedly and went to meet their guest, leading him into the kitchen.
For a long moment, Eric stared at it with a shell-shocked grin, then cast his gaze upward and saw the coffee tins. He whirled on Dale. "You fiend! You sneak! You Criminal!"
Dale grinned back in victory. "Not my fault you're a caffeine junkie. Seriously, what do you think?"
"I think it's brilliant!"
"I'd offer you some coffee, or other hot drinks, but I've recently traded away the last of my supply."
Eric looked at Skylar, who blushed. "Except for this cup right here." She added, and then took a sip. "Ahhh. Hot."
"Showoff." Eric commented, heading for the door. "I'd steal it from you, but I'm on my way to the Tavern."
"Bye."
Skylar grinned at Dale. "Ahhh, that poor man still needs his girlfriend to warm u-" She stopped mid-zinger and sniffed. "Is that bread baking?"
"As it happens, Gracie had one of those bread-mixes left. Just needed a bread-maker." This time, he was most definitely smug.
"Breakfast is served!"
Twenty minutes later, Skylar pushed away her plate. "Fresh bread, still warm. Remind me to needle Eric about that next time I see him."
"Don't be mean." Dale told her. "I didn't think of that. I honestly didn't think it would cause too much of a stir outside the house."
A moment later, there was a pounding on the front door. "Let me IN!"
"It's Open!" Skylar grinned at Dale. "Face it honey, today you're a rock star!"
Mary Bailey came in shivering in her parka, with Eric Green behind her. She took one look at the addition and whirled on Eric. "I WANT IT!"
Skylar was about to say something when Dale clapped a hand over her mouth. his timing was good, because in came Heather, Jake, Gail, Mayor Johnston and tagging along at the back, was Lucy. Skylar saw her look at the furnace, look at the chimney, then grinned in pure malicious victory as Lucy finally stepped fully into the room.
"May I take your coat?" Skylar asked with venomous relish.
Lucy sighed and handed it to her, accepting defeat.
Jake looked at the makeshift chimney, then at Dale. "Remind me never to play poker with you kid."
"I made an honest profit on an honest trade."
"Honest. Sure."
"Anybody gonna miss these?" Skylar asked, gesturing at the furnace.
"Naw. They were no good to anyone. The propane tanks got stolen for the gas, and meat's getting scarce too, nobody's gonna cook it out in the open."
"Seriously, Dale, you think you could build us one?" Mary asked.
"Seriously, Miss Bailey, I couldn't build this one. I rigged it by breaking it off the ground cement at the Park."
"How'd you do it dale? Confess!" Heather demanded.
"Wasn't as hard as it sounds actually. With nobody maintaining the park, the plants have been making a mess of the cement at the playground, the benches, the duck pond, and..."
"The barbecues!" Everyone chorused.
"So the plants opened little cracks in the cement under the BBQ, the weather puts water into the cracks, and when it gets cold at night, the water freezes and splits the cracks wide open. The rest was many nights of chipping the rest away, then dragging it here. That was the hardest part."
"It wouldn't have been easier to build a new one here?" Johnston asked.
"You'd think so, but we couldn't get the mud to do what we wanted." Skylar put in. "Neither of us knew how to make bricks, or cement, let alone how to fire them in a campfire. You need something to contain the heat."
"Which...we now have." Dale commented.
Skylar was in love.
"Wish I'd thought of it first." Jake muttered.
Now Dale looked worried. "Is the smoke going to get too much attention?"
"Well, some people in the area have old furnaces under their homes, so wood smoke isn't that odd. It just was from your house." Mayor Green explained. "We never could figure out how to get one to work indoors without actually cutting holes in the walls."
"Nows not the time to have a furnace sized hole in your kitchen, open to the outside for two weeks." Eric added.
"We're actually trying to build one much bigger behind the Town Square, for incinerating, we cant spare the gas to run garbage trucks and the refuse is piling up."
"I've got an appointment to keep at the library." Heather announced. She gestured at Skylar, who followed her out. "Listen, Skylar, If you're gonna keep telling us that he's just your roommate, you've gotta stop mooning over him in front of everybody."
"I don't 'moon over him'. Today I'm 'mooning over him'."
"Hey Heather, you're letting the heat out." Mary called lightly from the kitchen, and everyone laughed.
"'You're letting the heat out'" Skylar repeated, laughing. "I'm gonna name my firstborn after him, I'm gonna write him a ballad, I'm gonna make a statue of him in town square."
"I give up." Heather threw up her hands. "We'll have this talk tomorrow when Dale is a mortal to you again."
As Heather walked out, Lucy came up the hallway. Skylar gave her a look.
"Okay." Lucy admitted. "I'm just going to say it. I'm seething with jealous hatred for you and the freak."
"That's all I wanted to hear." Skylar said forgivingly, gave her a warm hug and handed her back her parka.
And as Lucy left, the others were saying their goodbye's to Dale in the kitchen, making their way out.
Skylar went into the living room, and proceeded to drag one of the couches into the kitchen.
Dale was washing out his mug as Skylar stretched out. "I have to go open up the store."
"Go ahead, because I'm not moving till spring."
Dale chuckled. "See you tonight."
And sure enough, she hadn't moved when he got back.
The wind had turned the mist into rain, which the cold had turned to slush. Dale shook it off his sweatshirt as the wind howled violently outside. "The weather's ugly out there."
Skylar jumped up and went to the record player. She had traded her I-Pod for it when he realized she'd run out of batteries one day. Dale had also provided Gracie's complete LP collection not long after. Skylar wound it up, and started playing the record. Ella Fitzgerald's voice filled the room.
"Oh the weather outside is frightful
But the fire is so delightful
And since we've no place to go
Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!
It doesn't show signs of stopping
And I've bought some corn for popping
The lights are turned way down low
Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!"
Skylar pointed at the table. "Hot food, hot drinks, and me, hot company."
Dale reacted. "You're feeling frisky today."
"My blood's circulating again!" She chirped joyfully. "I felt like celebrating. Enjoy it, because we're running out of meat."
"No we aren't." Dale said, sliding over a long sheet of paper.
"What's that?"
"IOU's. The mayor came to see me today. he wants us to cook the bricks for the town incinerator, and twelve other people want us heating the bricks for their home furnaces." He was glowing. "I'm getting offers. Bread, eggs, meat, clothes, gas..."
"Once the mayor gets his own built-"
"He'll have a four months of garbage to burn through first."
Skylar gave him a truly hungry look.
Dale swallowed. It was the first time in months she wasn't wearing five layers, and Man she looked good by firelight. She was smiling at him. "I still can't believe it. How did you think of this?!"
"Well...I was looking around and I thought that our home could use a caveman's touch."
It was the first time he had called it that, and Skylar felt warm all over again. Dale sat down at the table, her across from him and the two of them sang along with the final verse.
"The fire is slowly dying
And, my dear, we're still goodbye-ing
But as long as you love me so
Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!"
THE END