CHAPTER ONE David sat in the driver's seat of his Saab. "I don't know why they call it a driver's seat," he though to himself, frustrated. "I spend very little time sitting here actually driving." He sighed and watched his steamy breath freeze on the windshield in front of him. Again he turned the key. The radio scritched some noise, the seatbelt warning, normally a ding, gonged ponderously. Footsteps crunched in the snow outside the car, a fist knocked at the window. "It's way too cold for you to be outside in your bathrobe. Get back into the house," David said to the very pregnant woman. She didn't hear him as the door was closed and the windows were frozen shut. A cup of coffee in his wife's hand left its steam frozen on the outside of his side window. He carefully cracked the door open. "Come inside. I don't think anybody in Chicago is going to work today. It's colder than a witch's tit and there's two feet of snow everywhere," she said, turned around, and went back in the house. He shut the door again, turned to face the windshield. His eyes changed focus from the distorted bushes at the end of the driveway to the complex crystal shapes of the ice on the inside of his windshield. He turned the key once more, hoping that the frustration he felt could somehow have turned into electricity, recharching the car's battery while his wife told him to call in sick. Wub, said the engine. At this moment, he would have laid his head on the horn and cried, had he not been worried that the horn would sound pathetically without a sufficient charge from the battery and his tears would freeze his face to the steering wheel. An arm swung into view, another arm pulled the sleeve back. The face of his watch showed the minute hand menacing the twelve, the hour hand dangerously close to the nine. "I'm not late yet!" David yelled at his car. His face tightened up, turned red. He balled his hands into tight, frozen fists inside his gloves, raised them to his shoulders, and pounded them against the steering wheel. He heard parts inside the steering column squeak and groan in the icy air, and decided after the fourth pounding to stop before he caused permanent damage to the vehicle. Frustration can only take you so far. As he walked up the walk to his back door, he though to himself, "Sven will pay." He knew, in fact, that _he_ would pay _Sven_ to jumpstart his car. Most likely, Sven would jumpstart his car later this afternoon, after David had had some breakfast, read the paper, and taken a nap. His wife had been right, as was typical in these situations. They both knew it, and fortunately for David, they wouldn't discuss the matter further. ---- At five o'clock his alarm went off. She got up to pee, climbing over him to get to the door of their bedroom. The light from the bathroom shined on his face like a bare bulb in a police interrogation room. In the thoughtlessness of sleepyness he cursed his wife, turned over and tried to go back to sleep. "She'll have to pee again before I have to get up for work," he convinced himself as the world closed in around him. "Why the hell didn't you wake me up!" he yelled from the shower, secretly knowing Emily couldn't hear him. He didn't keep any clocks in the bathroom so that his morning routine could be relaxed and unhurried. For the fifth time he dropped the soap in the shower, for the fifth time he considered how hopeless he would be in any kind of prison, and for the fifth time he blamed his lateness on her refusal to keep any kind of clock in the bathroom. "Why does the world hate me!" he bellowed at lime stained shower head. He half expected it to look up at him and say, "You think it hates you more than anyone else?" David skipped his shave that morning, running out of the house with a quick I Love You. His drive to work was brutal. Half the lanes were open on any of the streets. He longed for Emily the entire ninety minute, eight mile commute, wishing she were there in the passenger seat next to him. In his isolated loneliness, he talked to the radio, laughing out loud at their stupid jokes. Braving the cold wind, he rolled down his window to smoke a private cigarette. The office was nearly abandoned. With the weather so bad, the salesmen had mostly decided to stay home and sacrifice some commission for quality of life. For David, the commission was quality of life for his unborn son. He sat at his desk while a phone in another city rang and rang. David had thought that even with the weather in Chicago being bad, he'd be safe calling some out of state clients. "Hello." "Hello, we're here to see Dr. Seward." "Please have a seat." David and Emily sat in the boxy waiting room chairs. Copies of Esquire and Redbook failed to interest either of them. Their four hands were clasped together, fidgeting as one. "There's nothing quite as painful as a waiting room," he said to his wife. "You only say that because you don't have to give birth in six months," she replied with a smile. He winked at her, a signal of their partnership, hoping she'd realize how much of the pain he wanted to bear for her once the baby was born. "The doctor will see you now," said the nurse, with no sense of irony. David was briefly disappointed at that as he followed his wife into the doctor's office. "Hello. Hello?" The voice on the other end sounded agitated. "Excuse me, hello, this is David Wehr..." and he trailed off, another part of his brain taking over. On a day like today it was alright to space out a little, he tought to himself. He had been in space a lot lately, though. Again he felt himself missing Emily. Only seven more hours on the phone and he could begin his trip home. His mind drifted to the evening. If the drive wasn't bad, he would make dinner for the two of them. He'd have a glass of wine, she something that wouldn't give their son brain damage. An evening for just the two of them, one of the last before their lives would be devoted to something totally dependent on them. The drive home was bad. David called home a few times from the car before his phone battery died. "Where could she be?" he thought to himself. This close to her due date, Emily was only working half days three days a week. At her parents' house? Too late to try there, the phone's dead. Why didn't she call and say where she'd be? David considered picking up dinner on the way home, but decided he'd use that as a weapon. "I was going to pick up dinner on the way home, but you weren't answering the phone so I didn't know what out plans were." "David, I'm sorry. I was at the hospital. I had a miscarriage." David slammed on the brakes and swerved onto the shoulder, narrowly avoiding a Subaru in front of him. "God," he thought to himself, "this is probably a bad time to blame your wife for communication problems." Despite this moment of post traumatic clarity, his anger grew as his drive continued. The Chicago drivers on the road with him didn't help. An old BMW kept trying to pass him on the right at every stoplight on a one lane street, and David's Saab barely managed to keep ahead. He reminded himself to have Emily send a special thank-you to Sven on Ashland. ---- Over the phone, Steve amiably agreed to help David. "Sure, I'll be there in five minutes." David sulked on the porch for five minutes until Steve's SUV pulled up outside the house. "Alright, let's get this piece of shit off the street," said the behemoth of a man. While the same height as David, Steven Phelan must have been as wide as David was tall. David saw similarities between Steve's girth and his wife's. Emily couldn't push a Saab off a patch of ice onto a driveway, though. "Get in," Steve smiled at David. David took his spot in the driver's seat, put the car in gear, and waited for Steve to move his car. As Steve's tremendous weight pushed against the Saab, David managed to get enough traction on the ice he had chipped with his window scraper to get into the driveway. The bushes at the end suffered a little as the Saab slid into them. "I'll call me dad, he'll get you some snows!" yelled Steve as David climbed out from the car and through a foot of shrubbery. "Don't bother," yelled David, "The minute your dad gets me some snows, winter will be over for ever. I'd hate to put him out of business." And hate to take tires from Mr. Phelan, David thought. He waved a goodbye to his friend, set the parking break, and went inside. Despite his better judgement, he said, "I would have picked up dinner on the way home, but I couldn't find you and my cell died." "I've told you a million times to just get a car charger. It's less than twenty bucks, we can afford it. Besides, I was at my mom's all day, she made me eat like a madwoman. I brought some leftovers home, they're in the fridge. And I picked up some dessert for you, too." David hid a scowl as his shed his winter coat and boots. "Do you want me to heat up these leftovers for dinner?" "No, mom had me eating all day. I'm not hungry, maybe I'll have something later. You can have what's left," Emily said with a yawn and a stretch. David ate in the kitchen and watched television while Emily started work on their baby book in the living room. He angrily tossed each of the detested mushrooms into the garbage as the weather came on. More snow. David brought his alarm clock a large glass of water. "Dr. Seward said you should make sure you don't get dehydrated when the weather's this dry." Emily smiled up at him. "Look at what I made. What do you think?" David thumbed through the scrapbook. Lists of baby names they had discussed and discarded. Pictures he had taken of her belly as it grew over the months. Printouts of the ultrasounds for which they had waited together in various waiting rooms. David put his fingers lightly against the last ultrasound. "My son," he thought to himself. He moved his hand from the book to Emily's abdomen. He held it there for a long while, looking at the photographs in the handmade book. Emily wrapper her arms around his neck and nuzzled against his neck. David was finally getting the night he wanted. The two of them on the couch together, touching each other. Warm and happy inside despite the inhospitable winter outside. Emily's arms grasped his neck tightly. "Easy!" David said with a smile, "You'll strangle me!" "David," she said seriously, "Take me to the hospital."