Thaw
by Murray Dunlap
I drive across Richmond through an ice storm, trying to make the Christmas Eve flight to Mobile. Icicles cluster in trees along the roadside, overloading them with unnatural weight and causing some to pop and fall. I chew gum and focus my eyes on the road. At the airport, they will only tell me that the flight is delayed.
"How long?" I ask."We don't control the weather," they say.
"This is Christmas."
"We know that."
I sit in a blue plastic chair for an hour waiting on updates. There are none. Then I wander the food court and newsstands for two hours. I buy three packs of gum and a copy of Architectural Digest. The feature article is a tour of Sting's English manor. At least one of his two Irish wolfhounds makes it into every photograph. In the last picture, the hound named Finbar is wearing a red woolen scarf. When I return to the gate, the monitors blink from Delayed to Canceled. I reschedule for Christmas morning and drive home, chewing gum through a tunnel of exploding trees.
In front of my apartment, I look over my shoulder to the neighbor's undecorated door. I know Charlotte has been gone for days, but I can't stop myself from knocking. No one answers, of course, yet I stand there for more than a minute. I let my forehead nod down and press against the cold wood before turning around to unlock my own door.
In the kitchen, I unwrap one of a half-dozen frozen rib eyes my brother sent me for my birthday. I drop it into hot water to thaw, but it floats, so I pin it down with a butcher's block. I pour a scotch and water and dial my mother's number.
"I'm iced in," I say.
"How long?" she asks.
"I don't control the weather."
"This is Christmas."
"I know that."
After hanging up, I check on the rib eye. It has turned light brown at the edges and when I slit open the plastic wrapper, a smell like unwashed feet rises to my nose. I sip my drink and tap my boot against dirty linoleum. I look back in the freezer. Five left. I pull one out and drop it in the water. I pin it down. I take the rotten steak to the balcony and throw it in the direction of the apartments' dumpster. I miss by thirty yards. The scotch has turned my gum hard, so I throw it out too. The parking lot is mostly deserted, but the gum is small and it is impossible to see where it lands.
I finish my drink and check on the steak. It looks mostly the same with light brown edges, but I also notice small patches of cloudy white. I slit open the plastic. This rib eye smells less like unwashed feet and more like baitfish left overlong in the sun. I step out on the balcony and hurl it across the lot. I miss the dumpster again but manage to hit the only parked car in sight. Everyone else has gone to visit loved ones, so of course, the car is mine.
I open the freezer. Four left. I drop one in hot water. I pin it down.
I pour another scotch and dial my father's number. His wife answers.
"Hello," she says. I cup my hand over the receiver.
"Hello," she says again.
"Ho, ho, ho," I say. "Have you been naughty or nice?" My hand still covers the receiver so she can't hear me.
"Is that you sweetheart?" she asks. "Come home baby. I miss you too much."
She begins to sob so I hang up. I finish the drink and unwrap a stick of gum. I hold it between my fingers for a moment, tapping my boot against linoleum, then drop it to the counter. In the upper cabinet, I find my cigarettes.
The next rib eye has the same light brown edges and the same cloudy white, but I also note a sooty dark spot between the flesh and the fat. I decide this one smells exactly like the crawlspace under my childhood home after my stepfather laid out twenty-five rat traps. I take it to the balcony. I light a cigarette, inhale deeply, and chuck the rotten meat with everything I've got. It lands on the roof of the mailbox hut, causing icicles to fall and shatter on the cement sidewalk. I find this very satisfying.
I return to the kitchen and pull all of the remaining rib eyes from the freezer. I skip the hot water. Instead, I line them up on the balcony railing. One by one I throw them. They are hard and dense and sail through the purple sky. One hits the playground slide with a resonant thump and another bounces across the pavement, skittering into darkness.
In the morning, I'll drive back to the airport under a bright round sun, chewing gum as icicles melt away from the surviving trees. I'll board the airplane and drum my fingers and chew as if chewing could make everything right. I'll land in Mobile and spend what is left of Christmas Day with my family. At one house, there will be a tree adorned in white lights and presents tied with looping red bows. At another house, there will not. Before leaving, my mother will tell me that thawing meat in hot water is unsafe, and I will tell my brother that they tasted just fine.
But right now I am only able to focus my attention on what is directly in front of me. It's the very last rib eye arcing up and out, spiraling tight and smooth and fast. And finally, after an impossibly long flight, I focus on how it disappears, soundless, into an airy pillow of snow.
Murray Dunlap's fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Virginia Quarterly Review, Post Road, New Delta Review, Red Mountain Review and others. His stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, as well as Best New American Voices, and his first book, Alabama, was a finalist for the Maurice Prize in Fiction. He is currently working on a novel.