Yeah, so the Amazon contest is over for me. It was fun, obsessive, but fun. Now I can back to my regularly scheduled life.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for taking the time -- reading, downloading and reviewing. And as a thank you to those of your who wanted MORE and in respect to our snow day today -- I'm posting a chapter from OH and SHE HAS A DOG from much later in the book, when an unexpected March snowstorm makes the roommates housebound together . . .

Enjoy.

--Hildieblog

March 1991
S'no Lobster like Snow Lobster


Snow doesn’t scare me the way that other storms do. Of nature’s bag of tricks, snow is pure, romantic. Sure there’s always the Knickerbocker Storm of 1922 that left 98 dead and 150 injured when the movie theater at 18th and Columbia collapsed from the weight of the snow, but as far as I’m concerned snow is just white and fluffy and cleansing. It means life slows down, snowmen get carrot noses and formerly important, required stuff gets cancelled. It means blazing fireplaces and hot chocolate with little marshmallows. It means you get stuck. Inside. Home.

That doesn’t mean we were ready for it in the middle of March. March is about spring, crocuses, warm earthy soil, buds, baby rabbits, sun and wind.

But the snow didn’t ask us if it was convenient. It just came. Slowly, peacefully, steadily. The way it always does.

“Hey, it’s snowing,” Claire was kneeling backwards on the couch, looking out the front window. Even with her shaved head, her tattoos and ornate piercings, something about her looked like a little girl. Her new deaf girlfriend Alicia was staring out the window next to her. I stared at Claire wondering what snow meant to her. Did it snow where she grew up? Were the memories good? Or terrifying? What crazy thing would she and Rip think up to do in the snow – they wouldn’t dance naked in it, too, or would they? I got a vision of DaVinci-esque anatomically correct snow angels, and a quick trip to the ER for frostbite treatment of delicate places.

A bundled-up Rip came in from outside and shook like a wet dog. He was carrying logs for the fire. Lena was gone for the weekend, actually presenting a paper at a conference at NYU. Stephen was oil-popping popcorn in the kitchen. Adde was hiding out in his room with his girlfriend, starting to pack for his move back to his country next month.

As soon as we woke up that Saturday morning, we were trapped inside, by the warmth and coziness. I felt like the guy in that Robert Frost poem – man, I have things to do – I should go to work and run errands and . . . and just sit here and drink tea and watch the flakes fall.

No one turned on the TV.

I guess I didn’t think it was strange that Fiona the lesbian pastry chef was there, too, stranded with us.

We played team Scrabble because there were so many of us. I played with Rip, Claire with Alicia, and Fiona was partnered with Stephen, Adde with his girlfriend whose name I can never remember. We played and played. Janis Joplin, then Melissa Etheridge, then Tori Amos took turns whining, the fire crackled, smoked and snapped and the snow piled up to new heights outside.

But then, suddenly, Stephen stood up. I guess we all thought he had to go pee or something, so no one said anything. Fiona and he were a team and she just took their turn without him.

QUIXOTIC. You don’t even want to know how many points that was.

I was so bummed that the game was over like that, over one word that I almost knocked Rip’s beer over. Well, I did knock it over, but only a little spilled.

“Go get a paper towel,” Claire said to me sternly, sounding as if her hands were on her hips. I scowled, but her deaf teammate didn’t even look up. Heading into the kitchen, I ran smack into Stephen. He was wearing army surplus boots and a Manchester United scarf, a ski jacket boasting of many lift tickets and a touque. (That’s Canadian for ski cap.)

“What the hell are you doing?”

“I’m taking a walk to the store.”

“Why? It’ll take you forever. Dude, it’s March, the snow will be gone
tomorrow. Whatever it is, it can wait.”

“No, it can’t. I’m going.”

“Just tell me what it is; maybe someone can lend it to you.”

“No, I have to go to the store.”

I thought about this long and hard. Pieces of the puzzle started to click. Fiona was here. She was here in the morning, when I got up. What was she doing here? They were partners for Scrabble. He’d been in love with Fiona for months, but she’d slapped him the only time he’d tried to kiss her and he’d been pining ever since. She was a lesbian after all. But maybe, finally, all the waiting. . .

“Hang on, don’t go anywhere – I mean it.” I ran to the living room and grabbed Rip by the arm. I whispered in his ear, “Go talk to Stephen – he’s going out in this – I think it’s for condoms – go offer him some, quick!”

Rip got a big smile on his face – he gave Fiona a knowing nod that she didn’t notice and walked to the kitchen.

Rip came back a few minutes later and leaned over and whispered to me, “He says it’s not condoms; it’s lobsters.”

I said out loud, “Lobsters? What’s that code for?” Claire shot me a look. I looked at Adde’s girlfriend, could it be “Rock Lobster”? Maybe some reference from the B52s song? I tried to remember the lyrics for a clue. "Hop in my Chrysler it's as big as a whale and it's about to set sail . . .". No, that's not it. "He was in a jam . . . He's a giant clam!" Fiona was deep in concentration on her tiles, no doubt coming up with another jillion point word. Alicia was silently making patterns out of the tiles still in the box.

Claire got a smile on her face and came over to me, grabbed me by the arm and dragged me into the bathroom.

It’s not every day that a bald lesbian drags you into the bathroom. I surveyed the walls, but they were the same moldy walls with the peeling wallpaper. The screws holding the shower curtain rod to the wall were rusting.

“What?!” I asked her.

“What’s all this about lobsters?”

“Stephen is all winterized and going out right now, because he needs something at the store.”

Claire looked puzzled, stared through the door at Fiona and then got a shit eating grin on her face. “Just offer him some condoms,” she said. “If you are too much of a wuss, I’ll do it.”

“I got Rip to do it. And Rip came back, having failed, saying that Stephen wasn’t going to the store for condoms, but for lobsters. What’s lobsters, Claire?” But she was gone.

I could hear her in the kitchen talking to Stephen.

I went back to help Rip figure out a word longer than SAT. But Rip and Fiona were deep in discussion about the wonders of yeast and something, I didn’t quite hear but sounded like “cat with a lisp,” so I started having a one-sided conversation with Alicia, who was still making patterns out of the tiles left in the box.

“Hey, Alicia, what do you think of yeast?” She didn’t answer. “Do you know what lobsters are for?” She still didn’t answer. “I don’t get it,” I mumbled, “and no one will enlighten me.”

“So you are asking a deaf girl?” Alicia answered in that Marlee Matlin garbled speech of a person who couldn’t hear. She had looked up from her tiles and must have been reading my lips.

“Woman,” I said. “Deaf woman.” And I got up and went to the bathroom.



“He’s going for lobsters,” Claire said as she sat down. I was back from the bathroom and play had resumed without her. Alicia had spelled out CLITORIS. I was about to quit.

“Whatever,” I said, having given up completely, still not knowing what lobsters were. Living in this house was an education in the lingo of drug and sex paraphernalia, but clearly some things would remain a mystery.

When it was Fiona’s turn, she put down LOBSTER and only the “L” was on a double word score.

I heard the back door close and I knew Stephen was on his way. After the game, Fiona went into the kitchen and made a totally decadent flourless chocolate torte, with things we had just laying around. She’s a magician.

I went into the kitchen just as Fiona was cleaning up. “What’s going on?” I asked her.

“What do you mean?” she replied, but the blush was spreading from the middle of her cheeks outward. It was if someone had just electrified her freckles. I wondered if she knew she had rosacea.

“You know,” I said, going fishing.

“What?”

“You. Stephen. Come on. We all know. The walls have ears.”

“I’m not sure what you are talking about.” Suddenly she was all business. I
checked out. I had the info I needed. We were right. Something was going on.

When Stephen came back from the store, he had two large paper bags from Safeway. In one of them was two live Maine lobsters. You know, the crustaceans with the big claws. But they weren’t live for long, they had a nice bath in some boiling water. Claire said some kind things about them before they had their last
swim.

Then Stephen set the table for a candlelit dinner for two, and we all cleared out and gave them some space. Some things are more romantic than condoms. Sometimes a plain old lobster is more than just a lobster.


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