She feels so cold. Brrr. Cold like an icicle, like snow, like ice cream. Cold. Very cold.
Too cold.
It’s August. August in Pennsylvania. It’s hot. Humid. The temperature is easily over ninety degrees. And she’s wrapped up in blankets, in her room, alone, the sun sifting through the window’s blinds and infringing on her solace. She hates the sun, mornings, daytime.
She likes things to be black, dark, night. Nighttime’s the best, even though it’s colder.
At dusk, usually, she leaves her bedroom and takes a shower, drinks soup, drinks wine—to stay warm. During the day though, it’s just blankets and tears and shaking. Shaking from the cold that comes from somewhere as the sun beats about ninety degrees of heat on her bedroom window.
Today she feels different though.
Today she feels like shopping, maybe for a red dress. She never had a red dress. She thinks that maybe she’d like one. Red like an enormous apple. Or red like the cold cheek of a frozen child, playing alone and making a snowman in the pure, soft snow of January. She likes red; sometimes it reminds her of fire though, which does remind her of heat, but she likes it anyway. She just simply likes red.
She likes things that she doesn’t like. She’s one of those people. She likes being sad, being sad makes her happy. One of those people. But, she doesn’t feel that way about the cold, that’s the only exception. She truly hates the cold.
Brrr.
Her name, ironically, is December.
Her own name reminds her of snow and Christmas and Santa Claus. She always shivers when someone addressees her. She loathed roll call in school. She even hates her dead parents for naming her that.
She hates her name.
She hates the month of December too, but loves Santa Claus—she thinks he’s adorable, cute. She even likes to pretend that she still believes in Santa, but she knows, verily, that she doesn’t—even though she leaves cookies out for him every year, which she eats before he gets a chance to.
She figured out one day that if the month of December never existed—if it was called Bubember, or anything else—that she’d never have her name. She didn’t want to be called Bubember either though. She really didn’t want to be called anything, especially not a whore, or a slut, or a liar and a pig.
She didn’t think she deserved to be called names, not at the age of thirty-four—which was two years ago. She’s now thirty-six, single, alone—alone, but not lonely.
In high school, yes, name-calling was acceptable. But, at thirty-four-years-old it wasn’t acceptable.
But, William, her old boyfriend, is now gone—living with some girl in a trailer park in New Hampshire. She wants to replace William with someone else, but only someone from the movies—someone nice, not someone who will debase her and hit her when she’s wrong. She wants Brad Pitt. She knows that Brad Pitt wouldn’t do that. Brad Pitt, to her, is the quintessential man. She loves the movie Fight Club.
So, today she figures she will get that red dress. She’ll walk out of the house with the ninety degree sun beating on her face, her shivering body wrapped in a shawl, go into a department store, and simply buy the dress. Maybe she’ll wear the dress home, allow all the guys to stare at her in her car.
It can, and will, be that simple.
She’ll probably, she thinks, buy a bottle of Chardonnay, and throw in a Brad Pitt movie when she gets home. Maybe Fight Club again.
She’ll sprawl on the couch with her legs spread as wide as they’ll go, her red dress ruffled up around her hips, a glass of cold wine trapped between her smooth-inner thighs, just watching Brad Pitt and all his muscles, and forgetting, hopefully, for a bit, about everything outside that’s real and cold.
