A gentle, drifting, Hollywood-set snow. The kind that lovers strolling in the park pause to kiss in, dogs bound and frolic in and kids in puffy snowsuits attempt to catch on the pointed pink tips of their tongues.

Of course, this being Michigan, the first snow is also the psychological harbinger of the frozen apocalypse to come: The wasteland months of isolating grey days with temperatures plummeting to subzero. Mountainous snowdrifts suffocating any and all hope. The creaking, jostling and groaning of sturdy houses against relentless freezing winds that infiltrate the smallest concrete crack, the tiniest fissure in mortise and tenon.

And the heating bills!

Jesus.

I gave brief thought, as most Michiganders do, to moving south. Equatorial south.

Then I remembered: it’s either suffer this deep freeze temporarily or relocate to a southern land soon to be made uninhabitable because of the crap humans have vomited into the air and oceans.

I was in my kitchen celebrating my Black heritage by making one of my father’s favorite dishes, baked macaroni and cheese with barbequed pulled pork topping (my mother always added chopped jalapeños because, well—Mexican). I was trying not to think about the dying Mr. Ochoa and his perishing business. Shamefully, my thoughts settled mostly on Jackie Ochoa’s legs, shapely and California tanned. I hadn’t been able to tell if her stoicism during our meeting at Authentico had been the emotional depletion of someone grieving her father’s slouched march to death or the impassivity of someone who had long ago left the unloving patriarchy of her family behind.

All I knew was I could still hear the way she’d laughed as a kid. See her dimpled cheeks when she smiled. Feel her secret voltage.

There had been no evidence of any of those at the Authentico meeting. Okay, maybe a bit of her secret voltage, but then that could very well have been just me . . .

I was about to mince four large cloves of garlic—no garlic powder for me; there’s a staleness to it I can’t get past—when my doorbell rang.

Since thieves, killers and zombies rarely use the doorbell, I answered with relative confidence I wouldn’t be mugged, beaten or eaten.

Jackie Ochoa, swaddled in an expensive and so very politically incorrect three-quarter-length mink. “Mind if I come in?” she asked.

“Not at all,” I said. “In fact, you might want to get in here fast before one of my neighbors calls PETA.”

She laughed and came inside.

Dimpled cheeks . . . secret kilowatt voltage . . .

I was about to offer her a hanger from the front closet, but she’d already tossed her dead animal coat with elegant disregard on the back of my forest-green leather sofa. It slid to the floor, and I, being a good manservant, quickly brushed it off and hung it in the front closet.