Trying to recover, he announced that anyone who really wanted to be outside comfortably in weather like this simply needed to dress properly. He said it with total confidence, apparently missing the fact that he himself had failed that test in spectacular fashion.
I spread my mittened hands and gave him a good look at my own round, heavily insulated silhouette. I was, in fact, dressed exactly as he claimed a person should be.
Then I let my eyes drift to his trembling frame in that thin coat. In my most concerned tone, I remarked that he didn’t seem to have followed his own advice. I asked whether he was quite sure he wasn’t cold.
Male pride would not let him admit defeat. He barked that he was perfectly fine. Meanwhile, his whole body was shaking so hard it was visible even in the dim light.
We had been walking maybe ten minutes when we finally reached the park’s central square. There, all by itself, stood a small kiosk that sold hot drinks.
Unfortunately for him—and, I’ll admit, a little conveniently for me—it was closed tight for the night. The people who ran it had clearly made the wise decision to go home long before the temperature bottomed out.
Walter stopped dead and stared at the shuttered stand with the expression of a man watching his last hope disappear. In that moment, I think he would gladly have paid twenty dollars for the very coffee he had condemned as a symbol of female greed.
Once he accepted that no miraculous cup of hot anything was coming to save him, his spirit seemed to give out. He turned to me and, in a shaky voice, suggested that maybe we should head back. As an excuse, he said the wind had picked up.
I was not about to let him off that easily. With bright, almost alarming enthusiasm, I said no, no—our lovely walk was only just getting started.
