Snow Blind Read Free Page B

park, watching piles of snow take shape under frozen hands, and Magozzi wondered how he was ever going to find his partner in such a vast sea of anonymous bipeds swaddled head-to-toe in fur, down, and Thinsulate.
    He finally spotted Gino on the far side of the field, his modest five-foot-nine-inch frame cutting a towering figure amid all the crazed, screaming little munchkins who swirled around him in a rainbow of brightly colored coats, scarves, and hats.
    Gino, on the other hand, was dressed all in black, as if in mourning, bundled up in a huge down parka so puffy he could barely bend his arms. He had some kind of animal on his head, and his hands were encased in leather snowmobile mittens big enough to be pizza paddles. It was obvious that his mood was even blacker than his outer-wear, because he was planting nasty kicks to the base of his nascent snowman.
    ‘Nice parka, Gino. How many ducks died for that thing?’
    ‘It’s about time you showed up. And to answer your question, not enough. I can’t feel my extremities. I think I have frostbite. And hypothermia. Goddamnit, I hate winter, I hate snow, I hate cold. Remind me why I live here again?’
    ‘Because you love mosquitoes?’
    ‘Wrong answer.’
    ‘Must be the change of seasons, then.’
    ‘No, it’s because every goddamned winter, the brain cells that know how miserable it is here freeze and die. It takes ’em all summer to grow back, and then it’s winter again and the whole ugly process starts all over.’
    ‘But you look great – most places you just can’t get away with earflaps anymore.’
    Gino adjusted the black pelt on his head a little self-consciously. ‘Laugh now, freeze your ass off later, Leo. The wind chill is about fifty degrees below zero, and dressed like that, you’re going to be running for the car in five minutes. What, are you shopping with the Chief now? You look like a mobster.’
    Magozzi smoothed the front of his new cashmere overcoat – a Christmas gift from Grace MacBride. ‘I heard it was supposed to warm up. Look, the sun’s coming out already.’
    ‘When the sun comes out in Hawaii, it warms up. When the sun comes out in Puerto Vallarta, it warms up. When the sun comes out in Minnesota in January, you just go snow-blind.’
    ‘And therein lies the real truth as to why you live here.’
    ‘So I can go snow-blind?’
    ‘No, so you can complain about the weather.’
    Gino mulled that over for a good, long time and finally nodded. ‘That’s actually a good point, Leo. The only thing worse than bad weather is boring weather.’ He bent down and swept up a mitt full of dry, powdery snow. ‘You want to tell me how the hell I’m supposed to build a snowman out of this?’
    Magozzi gestured toward a group of kids who were working with spritzer bottles full of water. ‘Watch and learn. You use the water like glue.’
    ‘Okay, Michelangelo, go pull your gun on them and requisition a water bottle for the MPD.’ He looked hopefully at the thermos Magozzi was carrying. ‘Tell me you got schnapps in that thing.’
    ‘Hot chocolate. You’re not supposed to drink in the cold. It dilates your blood vessels and you get hypothermia faster.’
    ‘I already have hypothermia, so what’s the difference?’ Gino turned back to his misshapen, pathetic half-snowman that was shedding vast portions of its body with each gust of wind. ‘Christ, look at this.This is the worst snowman in the whole contest.’
    Magozzi took a few steps back and eyeballed it. ‘Maybe there’s a conceptual-art category. You could enter it as Snowman with Psoriasis.’
    ‘You’re just full of wisecracks today, aren’t you?’
    ‘I’m trying to cheer you up. Aren’t Angela and the kids coming?’
    ‘Later, for the judging. And I want to get at least an honorable mention, so help me out here.’
    ‘Okay, I’m ready. Where do we start?’
    ‘I think we need a theme.’
    Magozzi nodded. ‘Good plan. Like what?’
    ‘Hell, I don’t know. Maybe