all, he liked the hero worship that went along with it. He supposed it didn’t matter if your battles were on a playground, in a war, or on the street, they made a bond between men that couldn’t be broken. Women just didn’t get that.
He’d been still for too long, and the cold was starting to seep in through his Gore-Tex suit. He was just opening his mouth to holler back at Toby when he finally heard the shush of skis heading toward him. He listened for a second, frowning, because the sound wasn’t coming from the trail behind; it was moving toward him sideways, through the woods. And then he saw the little beams from skier headlamps, jittering through the big tree trunks.
He snorted out a plume of frost, irritated that he’d have company on the trail in a few seconds, and unreasonably angry that he was no longer the best, strongest, and fastest skier in the park. Skiing off the trail through unmarked woods with nearly a foot of new snow took a lot of strength and endurance – more than he had – and nothing pissed off Tommy more than being second best.
He thought about shooting off down the trail while he still had a little head start, then thought about the humiliation of skiers that strong passing him. No way he was going to let that happen. I’m just waiting for a friend to catch up, he’d tell them, standing there casually while they skied away, as if he could have taken them if he really wanted to.
He side-stepped off the trail to give them space, then watched them come, his own headlamp showing a glimpse of black suits and ski masks moving steadily toward him. They might be strong, but they sure were stupid, he thought, wearing ski masks when they were working up a sweat like that.
Twenty feet back on the trail, Toby was shoving himself along by the poles, trying to keep his skis in Tommy’s tracks to make the going easier. He didn’t have his ski legs yet this winter, and the trip up the long hill into the woods had left his thighs weak and quivering.
It surprised him a little when he spotted more than one headlamp through the snow just ahead, especially since he’d been following only one set of tracks. A few feet closer and he could make out Tommy, standing loose and casual off the trail, watching other skiers approach from the woods. He shook his head at the foolhardy souls who’d ventured off the trail at night, dug in with his poles, and gave a last, strong push that sent him gliding toward them. In the middle of his glide, he saw the first skier out of the woods slide in close, raise a gun to Tommy’s head and pull the trigger.
Toby Myerson kept drifting in and out of a delicious sleep, and each time his eyes fluttered open, the landscape changed, as if someone had pushed fast-forward on a movie.
Earlier, the big sledding hill across the field had been a rush-hour kiddie freeway, jumbled with the primary colors of a hundred miniature snow-suits, and the air had been sweet with the delighted squeals of children. Happy music that warmed him from the inside out.
Toby loved watching the little bodies sailing down the snowy hill, tumbling off saucers and sleds and the occasional toboggan at the bottom. They rolled like balls and then skittered up the slope like colorful insects; so animated and tireless, so very alive. Occasionally he would focus on one child who seemed a little taller and more coordinated than the others, and he would wish with all his heart that the child would cross the stretch of open parkland and walk up to greet him. He was feeling a bit strange at that point, and worried that he might seem intimidating. Youngsters frightened so easily, and if they were frightened, they would run from him, and Toby thought he would just die if that happened, because he had to tell someone about… something… something bad. He just couldn’t remember what it was.
Things seemed darker when he opened his eyes again. At first he thought the park lights had been turned off, but that couldn’t be it, because when he moved his eyes up to look at them he could still see pinpoints of brightness, as if none of the light could get out of the bulbs. Odd.
Only a few shadowy stragglers remained on the sledding hill now, and the only sounds he heard were the shouts of the last parents calling their kids up the hill, home to bed, because the park was closing.
Don’t go. Please don’t go.
And then Toby realized he was very, very cold. He’d been still for so long, watching the children. Probably hours. My God, what had he been thinking? He had to move, get the blood flowing, get home and warm.
Funny how the scenery remained exactly the same, no matter how far he went. And the really funny part was that his mind recorded every movement of his legs and arms, and yet he couldn’t feel the snow sliding beneath his feet or the good stretch of his triceps.
That’s because you’re not moving, Toby.
Oh, my God.
There was a brief flutter of heat as his body tried to find some adrenaline to send to his heart, and he concentrated on not blinking, on screaming as loud as he could to the last kid climbing up the hill, omigod he was almost to the top, screaming, screaming, splitting the silence with terror and outrage because now he knew he was dying and he couldn’t move and Why didn’t the kid turn around?
At the top of the hill, the last child grinned up at his father, and the two of them turned to look out over the empty, absolutely silent park.
2
Traffic on Theodore Wirth Parkway was an unmitigated disaster – the twelve inches of yesterday’s fresh snow had been churned into treacherous slop before the overworked battalion of snowplows had been able to catch up, and when the temperature had plummeted overnight, the slop froze into icy furrows. Instant bobsled track. Magozzi had stopped counting fender-benders long ago.
Still two blocks from the park’s main entrance, he’d been sitting in his car at a dead standstill for almost five minutes, watching enviously as throngs of pedestrians waddled cheerfully and unimpeded past the gridlock in their warmest winter garb, heading for the Winter Fest Snowman Sculpting Competition. There were too many to count, all of them braving the wind and cold and traffic just to watch people play in the snow, and amazingly, they all looked happy about it.
This town was absolutely nuts for winter. Or maybe they were just nuts; Magozzi hadn’t decided. Once there was enough snow on the ground, streets were always blocked off for one thing or another – sled-dog races, cross- country ski marathons, hockey demonstrations, or bikini-clad residents making a big fuss over the idiocy of diving into a frozen lake or river. Every winter sport the world ever thought of had a home base here, and when they ran out of sports, they took art outside.
Give Minnesotans a block of ice and they’ll harvest twenty thousand more from whatever lake is handy and build a palace. Give them a little snow and you’re likely to find a scale replica of Mount Rushmore or the White House on someone’s front yard. Ice and snow sculpture had been elevated to artistry here, and competitors came from all over the world to participate in any number of winter festivals. Who would have thought that a snowman contest that the department sponsored just for kids would attract this much attention?
He moved another half-block by inches, past a wooded section of the park, and got his first glimpse of the open field that fronted the boulevard. Like all the drivers before him, he slammed on his brakes and stared out his window in amazement.
The park opened up here onto a good thirty acres of empty, rolling land that looked a lot like a golf course in summer. Today it looked like a blindingly white battlefield for an invading army of snowmen. Magozzi gaped at what looked like hundreds of them sprouting up every few yards, up and down the hills, staring out at the boulevard with their black lifeless eyes and silly carrot noses.
When he finally got into the park, he pulled into the first illegal spot he could find, between a Channel Ten satellite van and a NO PARKING AT ANY TIME sign. He grabbed his gloves and a thermos from the passenger seat, and stepped out in time to catch a frigid gust of wind square in the face.
Hundreds of spectators were milling around the 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,
