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all the time in the world, was introducing various cats as Eric stood in the open door, Tingle and Pete and Round-Eye and Pretty Miss and Little Hunger-Tum.
    Eric’s mind raced: his office. But that was no help, only slightly closer than home—four hours at the rate he’d been proceeding, and with the wind higher and the snow deeper every minute. The closest houses were at least two miles. A year back he might have called Jane and Bill or Drew and Sarah, these couples like friends of the marriage, but they had proven themselves aligned with Alison, or if they hadn’t they’d been neutral and that had irked him and he’d backed away, isolating himself. Alison liked to say. He started back down the list of his acquaintances, lots of whom might be helpful. Or, what the heck, call the police: he knew them all anyway from his work. They’d come and get him.
    If he had a goddamn phone.
    Some hell creature shrieked from back in the packed bowels of Jack’s castle. “Hunger-Tum!” the old man cried.

Seven
    ERIC BANGED ON the cabin door this time, banged and called out. His own fresh tracks had already been thoroughly buried, and he was soaked to the skin, his wrists aching from falls, but he’d made it down and now it was dark, no going back.
    He was too miserable to stand on courtesy: when she didn’t answer (and why would she, even if she could hear his banging?), he took a deep breath, blew it out, grimaced, then shoved the old door, a desperate push. It fell open easily. “Halloo,” he said, though she was only at the big butcher’s block, hacking at something.
    She spun, startled: “Okay, no,” she said.
    “My car was towed.”
    More than startled: “You’re scaring me, mister.”
    “No, no. It’s not like that.”
    “You’re scaring me
badly,
mister! Get out!
Out!
”
    He held his hands up to show them empty. Also in case she came at him with the knife she’d been using, which it looked like she might. Quietly he said, “I’ve got nowhere else to go. Don’t be afraid. Please. You know me. I mean, I’m a nice local person. I just need help as you did. I throw myself at your mercy. All the power’s out up there. My phone was in the car.” He knew he had to up the ante: “The fucking vet bitch had it
towed.
And that place is like a fortress—I couldn’t kick the door in. I bruised my shoulder on it, I’m telling you, and I’m not exactly a shrimp. And I’m
freezing.
The snow is coming down like, like I don’t know what. Like an
explosion,
like a building coming down, okay? There’s not a car passing up there. Not one car. There’s like one house and the guy in there is completely nuts. That’s as far as I could get, all this time. And now it’s
dark.
” His voice broke, surprising him. Tears started to his eyes; he couldn’t help it.
    She’d been cutting oranges, or so it smelled. The lantern light was reflected in her eyes as if it were they that burned and not the kerosene. Her big bag of tortilla chips was ripped open and half spilled on the butcher’s block. His groceries were on the floor where they’d fallen amid the ripped bags. She was still in the robe, had found her thick wool socks, still with the Rasta cap.
    She said, “You made a big mistake. You think you’re nice but you’re not. What you are is you’re an idiot. You’re an idiot to help me, and you’re an idiot to come back down here. Of course there are people up there. What do you want from me? What do you
wan
t
?”
    He looked to the stove, the beautiful hot stove.
    She said, “Stay there. Right there. When Jim gets here? You’re
grease.
Do you understand me?
Grease.
”
    “Let me just warm
up,
” Eric said. He’d seen her soften. Just one tick, but something.
Grease.
That must be her husband talking. One of those solid guys on the road crew, say, or in Maxi’s garage, tough and funny, shaved heads and rough tattoos, tender inside if you didn’t cross them, though crossing them was hard to avoid. The