“I’m hurryin’!”

Rhonda turned and started toward her back door and stopped at the stoop so she could kick the snow off her boots. And then she turned back to Dave and called, “Before I change my mind, pal.”

“I’m comin’!”

As Dave approached the back door, Rhonda could see that he was carrying a flat, medium-size, square package under his arm. It was wrapped in brown craft paper. And looked like it was a present.

Unsure of what to make of what was happening, Rhonda went up the stoop’s two wooden steps and pulled open the silver aluminum storm door and then pushed open the wobbly wooden door to her small home and went inside.

Dave reached the stoop and kicked the snow off his boots and followed Rhonda up the steps and inside.

Rhonda flicked on the interior light and turned to Dave when he had barely stepped inside and said curtly, “Okay. This is it. You’re in. You’re inside.”

Dave didn’t quite agree. Because they weren’t quite inside—they were on Rhonda’s porch.

“This is the porch,” said Dave, implying that he’d like to go farther inside.

“It’s winterized,” said Rhonda, shrugging, and letting Dave know that, as far as she was concerned, he was as far inside as he was going to get.

Dave wondered if Rhonda’s porch actually was winterized. Because it wasn’t much warmer on the porch than it was outside.

And then he looked around and saw pretty much what you’d expect to see on a northern Maine porch.

To his left was a pile of wood that had a pile of old newspapers stacked on top of it.

An old telephone bench sat by the door that led to the rest of the house, with old sneakers and shoes and boots piled underneath. Jackets for all types of weather hung on a coat rack above it, and a bin full of hats and scarves and mittens sat beside it.

Across from the bench was a wicker table with a dead plant and some tools on it. Some plastic chairs sat at the table.

And the rest of the space was full of everything from snowshoes to old SnowGoer magazines to an old hibachi.

Rhonda’s porch was basically a giant closet.

While Dave took in his surroundings, Rhonda pulled off her neck gaiter and gloves and stuffed them in her snowmobile helmet, which she tossed into the bin full of hats and scarves and mittens.

And Dave pulled off his gloves and his balaclava and shoved them in his helmet and set his helmet down by the door near the woodpile.

As he did so, Rhonda couldn’t take her eyes off the flat, medium-size, square wrapped package that he was holding under his arm. Impatient and a little irked, she asked, “So, Dave, what? What do you gotta do in here that you couldn’t do outside?”

“Well, I got somethin’, here, for ya, here.”

Dave offered Rhonda the flat, medium-size, square wrapped package he had brought her.