Unnerving, that. David thought he had things pretty good, you know?

In truth, this blankness had lived in David for years. Dozing perhaps, tossing in bed and hitting the snooze button, only recently hungry, up and at ’em.

His articulation of this fact, internalizing in the noon bedside quiet of his apartment that warmed-over adolescent moodiness was not, in fact, his problem: it was frightening, achingly gradual, a celestially slow and skyless dawn.

David dumped Iris on her porch as she ashed in a beer can, staring away from him in a T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, oblivious to the cold.

“I’m impressed with your performance, sir,” she finally said. “Because it seems like just yesterday we were fine.”

He left her there, her arms outstretched. “Babe, no! Come on,” she said. Come to me. “Tell me what’s going on. We’ll work this out. Let’s just talk about it!”

Nope. “I have to go,” David said with a warm smile, because even now, he couldn’t help his reflexive comforting it’s-not-that-bad bullshit.

I feel like I cheated on her. His hands pulled on his face as he walked home. But no! No. He didn’t have regrets. He wouldn’t string it out just to dump her later anyway, when she’d assuredly have been even more furious as she eventually cottoned on to his play-acting. (Or would she have cottoned? Anyway.)

The wispy snowflakes became a sudden hard snowfall, parked cars fast turning into mounds of feathers. Are you fucking kidding me? he thought. I get the message, God! I’m an asshole, sure! The anomalous snowdump fell through the night, a whole foot. A forty-year record, said the radio the next morning. When David got up, it was layered everywhere and getting mulched by cars and still falling. He watched a Subaru start across the road and spin its wheels trying to get into the street. He did not rise to help.

There was a house party that afternoon for his English class, but he figured that was probably cancelled. He opened his laptop and saw the email from the women hosting—

Wait, holy shit, it wasn’t cancelled! If you can slog through the snow, we’ll be here! said the subject line.

The house was thirty blocks away. He put on his black dress and left early; the buses were running at fractional speed, slush-churning tractors in Day-Glo tire chains. Snowpocalypse someone had written in the dust of a car window. At the party (David! You came!) he sat on a couch in a big living room with hardwood floors and so much natural light. It felt like a kinder version of those childhood apartments with his mother somehow. David sat quietly in his dress, listening to his classmates as the diffracted light moved through the room, clear and grey and open. The two women who lived in the house asked him if he’d thought about grad school (Who knows?), what he was doing for Christmas (Boring!). They liked guys wearing dresses, the women said. They thought he was so cool. Liberated. They were in their early thirties.