He stopped and the sound of the footsteps stopped too. Obviously, it was his own. Besides the bicycle that quietly zoomed past him with its blinking rear red light, there wasn't anyone else on the street so far. He noticed, again, that when he breathed in, slowly, the insides of his nostrils contracted to the inflow of the frigid air and his nostril hair huddle up like penguins in that movie he had seen.
That was a while ago. Well, a few years ago. He watched it alone, in his room, which was all quiet like this street except during the time he was watching the documentary. He inspected his surroundings. It was downtown on a Saturday night. The cold was very distracting, yanking his exposed ears, his toes despite the thick boots, his nose, and even his eyes. All held prisoner in the attention of the coldest night of the year, yet. He didn't wear a hat. He was vain, too vain to wear a silly hat over his well-styled hair.
He remembered being called vain, and admitting being vain. There was a woman involved. Suddenly, for a moment, the cold air wasn't that cold in comparison.
Feeling every little muscle in his feet moving, as if watching the little gears of an intricate machine turning and affecting one another, he resumed his walking. And no sooner did his second foot started pushing his bundled up body forward did the air respond with a howling wind that brought the temperature down instantly even more. He stopped and wondered if he should take a different route, away from the wind tunnel in the middle of downtown. Perhaps he should just go back.
But back where? To the familiar? To that same place where he watched the penguins on a 2-D screen trying to survive Antarctica? Where no one was waiting for him. Where he was supposed to feel good about being alone, about being independent, unhindered, unchained. He would pay for his vanity and go on walking.
He had walked this route many times. But tonight was different. He had just had a very short haircut and it was the coldest night of the year, so far. The wind was picking up. But he wouldn't die. He wasn't a penguin in the Antarctic. So he kept on going. Moving into the painful but still less painful than the familiar. Away from down the street whence he came. Even though he had walked this route so many times, tonight it felt very long. He felt almost as if he wouldn't make it. The big toes were the first of their little platoons to feel the fiery fury of the frigid wind. He had to tuck in his already gloved hands in his pocket. His eyes started tearing as the winds irritated it with unfamiliar dryness. And his legs felt bare in icy water despite the thick pants. And by the time he had crossed through the wind tunnel, his torso, so well bundled, had started tasting the sinister smiles of the sobering wind.
At the corner a woman turns and walked his way. She seemed absorbed in her thoughts. She was beautiful, he noted. Then, having passed her, he realized he was obsessed with observing and judging the physical features of women. And guilt distracted him momentarily from the merciless cold. The street was lit but most buildings, being classroom buildings, were dark. Once again, he was alone with his thoughts, interrupted sporadically by the night squalls. He thought a bit more about the woman who had passed him just now. He didn't really get a good look at her face. She simply left him with the impression that she was beautiful. But in his mind, he had pasted a face on her. The face of some woman. The one whose little hair clip he had by accident found in the backseat of his car.
What was it doing there?
He had to climb many mountains of memories in vain to recall how it could have landed there. But there was no mistake about it; it was hers. It was tiny, of dark brown color, not uniform. One of the teeth was missing. She had a lot of them like that, with at least one missing tooth. In passing through all those mountains of memories he remembered her, how she put them on, even where she had kept a whole box of them in which drawer in which room of her apartment. The pang of this remembrance, the pang of the ending, the pang of longing, all came in harsh, frequent assaults as he lumbered through those mountains only seeking the moment when she could have left that little clip behind, there, in that crack on the right passenger seat in the back. He found it when he was retrieving the groceries he had placed in the back after today's shopping trip.
That woman who had just passed him probably didn't have any of those clips. But as he crossed the street he recalled all these moments surrounding the different clips she had. In the darkness, consumed by his own deepening thoughts, he found everything to look the same, the buildings, the trees, the vehicles parked on the curb, even though he had seen every building and tree and knew how different they were from one another. But tonight, distracted by his thoughts, his emotions, and by the nearly unbearable cold, he felt he was walking in a dream where nothing was familiar but neither was it important. His nostrils continued to contract, with its hairs huddling at each inhale. His ears felt the sting at the sound of every howl. He squeezes his shoulders together a little more, to warm himself up in his already thick bundle.
And he stopped, for a moment. He was almost there, at the library. Farthest point he could get away without freezing his toes off. And as he looked around his surroundings and savoring his desolation, he took off his right glove, and put his cold fingers on his even colder right cheek. And his right cheek noticed his fingers too. It was as if two people suddenly realized each other's existence even though they had been walking their whole lives together. And as his freezing fingers glide with utter anguish along an imaginary path on his right cheek, he found himself suddenly as a human being in this coldest night on a deserted street frequented, tonight, only by the winds.
