It Got Colder and Colder and Colder.
When it started to get cold outside, which happened in early fall, Larry and I got cold, too.
We had no choice. We had no car.
Once we were riding in the middle of nowhere and passed an old stone pub off the side of the highway. We were so cold, Larry actually pulled over. I thought we were there for heat but Larry wanted a drink.
“Brandy warms ya up!” he taught me. It was my first taste of blackberry brandy.
While there was probably one heat vent in our apartment, there was no way to get warm during the hundred-mile motorcycle ride between my two homes. I had my thin leather jacket and Larry bought me a pair of thin leather gloves. There is nothing warm about leather. It may look cool, but it’s cold.
If I’d been drinking (which was always) my body temperature dropped below a respectable level even before I got on the bike. I rarely wore socks so my feet were like ice cubes; I’m lucky I didn’t lose a toe. My hands were so cold they regularly turned blue. Every time I rode the motorcycle I froze.
Larry froze, too. Of course he was used to it, having grown up in Pitcairn.
Larry actually had a home in Florida – something he had not forgotten – and he was only supposed to be in Pittsburgh for the summer. Then he met me, and I was still in college, so he got a job and he stayed.
This wasn’t really what he’d planned to do. He’d come with a week’s worth of clothes and a pack of cigarettes. He’d planned to go back to Florida when it got cold. But that didn’t happen.
As time passed, it got colder and colder and colder. In the mornings, it was brutal.
“Fuck this shit,” he said regularly, stepping into the under-40-degree weather and rubbing his hands together. “Fuck this fuckin’ shit!”
Sometimes I would try to re-create songs in my head using my teeth as they chattered rhythmically while we puttered down the highway. Sometimes I would suck on a cigarette, my hands barely able to hold on, believing I had conquered some kind of primal beast. Sometimes tears sprouted without sadness, in response to the cold air. Sometimes I would actually cry, I was so cold.
“We’re fuckin’ moving to Florida,” Larry would say. “We’re fuckin’ movin’ as soon as you’re fuckin’ done with college.”
“Okay,” I would say.
“Okay,” he’d agree.
Then he’d start up the bike, wait for the sputter to turn into a roar, pat me on the knee, and we’d freeze our way to wherever we were going.
We were always going somewhere. There was nothing in our apartment. If we weren’t riding the bike to buy a case of beer, we were walking three doors down to Barry’s Bar for a burger and a draft.
I preferred the latter, since walking was warmer and “a draft” usually meant two drafts, or 12 or 35. If we didn’t have anywhere to be, I could drink until I fell off the bar stool.
On cold days, there was no reason to leave Barry’s Bar. It was substantially warmer than our shoebox apartment. Sometimes Larry would disappear to the gas station down the street to buy cigarettes, but only for the six minutes it took to walk there and back.
As the semester went on, I didn’t want to see Larry on weekends any more. It was too cold.
Larry didn’t care for that idea so he hatched a plan.