The Geographer's Library

Jon Fasman
heard the wind groaning against the house’s sides. I got even colder. I tucked
my hands inside the sleeves of my sweater and closed them into fists around
the fabric.
“You look like a little boy when you do that.” I looked down at my sleeves
and unclenched my hands, extending them out of the sleeves. “No, no, I
didn’t mean ...I know it’s cold. The temperature drops all of a sudden
when Mrs. DeSouza turns off the heat. Fortunately, I have a solution.” From
her closet she produced a huge, obviously hand-knit woolen afghan: brightly
colored squares in blue borders made it look warm, homey, like the board of
some sort of children’s game. “My grandmother made it,” she said, unfolding
it and shaking it loose. “Come here.”
We held each other tight on the couch, under the blanket. She smelled like
whiskey, rose perfume, and herself. I kissed the side of her neck closest to
me, and she grabbed both my hands. “You’re shaking,” she said.
“I’m cold.”
“Is that the only reason?”
Of course it wasn’t.
i woke up at 3:36, confused and with a thick whiskey headache before I
remembered where I was. Hannah was asleep next to me, her hair nimbused
across her pillow. I bolted three glasses of water standing next to the bathroom
tap and tiptoed through the cold back into bed. When I got there, Hannah
wrapped her arm around my chest, tucked her knees into the backs of
mine, and kissed my ear. We fit.
Sunday was momentous and unremarkable. Everyone is entitled to one—
maybe two—such days in a lifetime: a day spent not in the middle of love but
at the beginning of it, maybe, a day that passes like the morning after a snowstorm
or a broken fever, when everything seems almost too sharp to bear. Our
actual activities that day were prosaic: we rose late; I made toast and fried
eggs; we went back to bed; we drove to the New York border and took a long
walk along a river; we stopped at a large and empty roadside tavern with the
memorable slogan “Flyin’ Darts and Chicken Parts,” where we ate wings
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