Wayne flashed his headlights at his friend. Jaime turned around, reeling under the heavy bag hanging off his shoulder, and grinned and waved. Wayne pulled up, shifted into neutral, and popped the trunk before hopping out to hug his friend. "How was the flight?"
"Pretty good, only two babies and one of them slept the entire time." Jaime grinned and dumped his sole piece of luggage; the car's old shocks heaved slightly. "Not gonna be here long enough to get used to this weather, though! I don't know how you guys live like this up here."
Wayne laughed. "Meh, you know. The human body can acclimate to nearly any circumstances. That's how we've survived so long!" They joked about apex predators as Wayne wedged his way into exiting traffic and left the airport.
"Whoa, what's going on out here?" Jaime nodded at a tremendous gouge in the earth beside the eight-lane highway. "Looks like you're making room for a new sports stadium or something."
Wayne shrugged. "Huh, never thought about it. Yeah, either a stadium or condos. Maybe a new hotel, that'd make sense, right next to the airport."
"I guess... hey, look, there's another one."
"Another what, buddy?"
"A big, deep, round pit. It's like..." Jaime glanced behind the vehicle. "It looks exactly like the other one. I mean, not exactly, but a mirror image. Same shape." He squinted. "What is that shape?"
His friend turned the radio on. "Lotta construction around here, you're gonna see that. We're a busy town! Up-and-coming metropolitan hub, just you wait!" He pounded the steering wheel enthusiastically. Jaime settled back and glanced at the ventilation controls: the heat was cranked. Despite the new down jacket he'd purchased for this trip, he just couldn't seem to get warm enough.
He looked up when he heard sirens. "Uh-oh, accident?"
Wayne shrugged, staring dully ahead. "Likely. We get out-of-towners here, takes 'em a while to get used to driving on icy roads. Hell, seems like it we have to relearn it all ourselves, every year!" He laughed, braking cautiously at a red light and glancing in the rear-view mirror. "Like this guy. He's coming up on me like it's spring and the roads are clear. Every goddamn year." He shook his head. "Oh, I wanted to tell you: we actually have a pretty decent Tex-Mex place here, just opened up a month ago."
The visiting friend grinned. "Decent, huh? I'll be the judge of that. You Northerners don't really know from hot sauce, far as I've seen. What's it called?"
"Cocina de la Gran Mujer."
"That's a really weird... holy shit!" Jaime craned hard and gaped out his window.
"What's going on?" Wayne glanced at his friend.
"Big fucking accident!"
"You be my eyes, I'll slow down."
"Okay." Jaime strained to pick out the important details. "Two cruisers blocking traffic. Don't see any EMTs. Bunch of people on the sidewalk." He paused. "There's a blue station wagon, completely totaled, but I don't see how."
"No damage? What's the other car look like?"
"No, it's crushed like a can. No other cars, just this one, flattened like a pancake, like something fell on it." Jaime scanned around as they left the intersection. "There's nothing else there, though. Something would have to have fallen on it to do that." He jumped. "And there's another one behind it!"
"Another cop car?"
"No, another regular car, flattened! What the hell!"
"Huh. Guess it's that time of year."
Jaime boggled at his friend. "What does that even mean?"
Wayne shrugged. "Cars flatten in January."
"No, they don't!"
"Something to do with low temps rushing in quickly. If a car's still warm and all the doors and windows are closed," Wayne made a sucking noise, "the hot air turns cold and the car just crumples in on itself."
Jaime stared at him for a long time. "Are you fucking with me? I can't tell if you're fucking with me."
Wayne just shrugged and slowly picked his way through snowy streets. "Judy and I cleared out the second bedroom for you. She was using it for sewing projects and stuff, but most of it fits in the closet and there's a couch in there that opens into a bed."
"Cars don't just collapse in cold weather, Wayne."
"Then you explain what happened."
Staticky music played over the growling motor and the hissing vents, finally putting out hot air. "I hope this isn't going to be a weird fucking weekend. Do I need to get a hotel?"
Wayne laughed lightly. "Cool down, you're just tired and jet-lagged, probably letting this weather get to you. It's colder than Arizona. We'll hit a bar on the way to my place, get something in you to warm you up. But we'll save Big Kitchen for tomorrow."
Jamie started to point out that wasn't what the Tex-Mex place's name meant, but instead sighed and stared ahead. A long line of cars was trudging through deep ruts of old, dirty snow. He wondered how humans ever adjusted to these conditions, when they knew it was going to get snowy, icy, and miserable up here. He wondered how they ever did it when they were settlers, inadequately prepared, dragging covered wagons through hostile territory. He wondered how the ancient Native Americans managed it, bulking up in hides, temporarily unable to farm.
Going to the bar meant slipping through narrow streets, slowly crawling up an unattended and unheated parking ramp, then taking a slush-filled elevator back down to street level. They pushed themselves into a Scottish-themed bar and sat in a booth, and Jaime waited to feel the heat on his cheeks before he even considered unzipping his jacket. Their first shot, tequila and a small, red pepper, helped warm him up and loosen up a little.
They were laughing about college antics when distant thunder overrode all the noise in the room. "What was that?" Jaime asked.
Wayne looked at a TV behind the bar. "What was what?"
"Hey. Listen." Jaime snapped his fingers in his friend's face, and Wayne looked up, irritated. Another boom of thunder, louder, happened at the right moment for Jaime, who raised his eyebrows. "Thunder in January?"
His friend looked at him like he was stupid. "Yeah, it happens all the time, actually. It means a cold front's moving in."
Jaime looked at the pedestrians struggling along in a foot of snow. "Colder than this?"
Wayne leaned on his elbows. "Two things you gotta understand about living up north." He held up his index finger, with a bandaid on it. "One: it has to be warm enough to snow. If it was bitter cold today, like twenty below, that's too cold to snow."
"That sounds stupid."
"I agree. Two?" He raised his middle finger. "Thunder in winter means snow in seven days. At least that's what they told us in school. Probably not entirely accurate."
An enormous bare foot plunged from above and, with a deafening roar, pounded into the street right outside the windows of their booth. Jaime's entire body jerked and he sprang up into the table, knocking over their drinks. His blood turned to ice as he stared at the fleshy sole, expanding as more weight was placed upon it, at the vast ankle where immense bones churned beneath a thick layer of skin. Petrified, he stared at the monstrous mechanism of a leg that reached upward further than he could see, angling forward in a cumbersome arc, when suddenly the sole retracted, the ankle flexed, and the foot lifted from the street. Jaime could see a cloudy half-ring of dense calluses around the heel. He could count the deep grooves in the sole's tread. He watched the long tendons of the instep slowly building up with power, before the ball of the foot lifted and flew out of sight.
Wayne nodded at the car parked outside, flattened and driven into the asphalt like foil lining a crater in the shape of a footprint. "January," he said, shrugging.
It was difficult to order a drink for Jaime, as he was unresponsive to shouting, slapping, or flashing lights. A waitress helped Wayne ease his friend out of their booth and stand up, and Wayne said he'd take it from here. He walked his stupefied friend back to the parking ramp, packed him into the passenger seat, climbed into the driver's seat, and turned on the radio. He rolled down a window, lit a cigarette, and waited.
After a couple minutes Jaime began to scream. Wayne put out his cigarette and rolled up the window. "That's right, let it all out," he told his friend, who only stared at him with wild, wide eyes and screamed.
"The fuck! The fuck!" Jaime said, when he could form words, but that was all he said for a while.
"Calm down, it was just winter thunder. I guess it's scary if you're not used to it."
"That wasn't fucking winter thunder! What the fuck was that!"
Wayne bit his lip and started the car. "You know what, buddy, if you're going to be this weird, maybe I should just take you back to the airport, huh?"
"That was... that was..." Jaime's horrified eyes rolled around the interior of the car, looking for the words. "You know what that looked like!"
"Yup, airport." Wayne threw his arm over the back of his friend's seat and backed out of their spot. They spiraled up and then back down to pay, then rolled back out into the street.
"Wayne! What the fuck, Wayne! Talk to me!"
"Hey, easy, buddy. Getcher hands off my drivin' arm, 'kay?" He chuckled at his friend.
"Tell me what the hell's going on around here!" Infuriated with his friend's lack of reaction, Jaime stared out the window, desperate for something to connect with. He screamed, instead. "Wayne! Why are those buildings ruined?"
"They're not ruined, everything's still standing, buddy."
"Look, look! Ten or fifteen floors up, the windows are all broken!"
"That so? January's a strange month to do that kind of construction." Wayne turned on his blinker and peered through the ice of his exterior rear-view mirror. "Ain't unheard of, though."
"No, it's not construction! There are three or four deep gouges in the side of the building! Like something just raked the side of it, like, like..." He struggled to put ideas together. "Like tiger claws, or Wolverine, but that's not it."
Wayne laughed. "Arizona turn you into a lightweight, buddy? Am I gonna need to apologize to the flight staff because you had one too many?"
Jaime screamed again. "There! Wayne, there! Look!" He pointed down a dark and narrow corridor of buildings. Sighing, his friend arched an eyebrow and peered out the passenger-side window.
"What'm I looking for, Jaime?"
"An arm! It was right there!" Jaime looked from his friend to the street again. "I saw his arm! And I think his leg!"
"Someone on the street? Yeah, they all got arms and legs."
Jaime swung around and punched his friend in the shoulder. "No, asshole, up in the sky! I mean..." He looked again. "The sky between the buildings. Up high! Like a hundred feet, I saw a man's arm for a second. I saw his hand, it was definitely a man's hand!"
Wayne laughed. "And his leg?"
"Yes, a big, bare leg, just for a second! It flashed past those buildings... hey, speed up! I'll show you!" Jaime's eyes were savage. "We can catch it! Let me prove I'm right!"
Wayne considered his friend for a while. "No, I think I'm taking you to the Extra Airport."
Jaime's question died in his throat as they passed a large billboard, upon which was scrawled in wide, thick letters: EXTRA AIRPORT, with an arrow beneath. As the thunder rose behind them, they drove down to a large platform that, from Jaime's perspective, resembled a vast white plate with an enormous fork resting in the center.