Christmas Without Snow

Lit Up: December’s Prompt

Christmas. Fifteen minutes past one a.m.

Picture this:

We’re five blocks from New York’s financial district on a frigid cloudless night. Ice sheathes abandoned sidewalks. No pedestrians tonight. Travelers prefer to coast on ice-crusted asphalts in warm cars than freeze in open air.

What can’t we see? Sparkling skyscrapers of steel and glass that reflect the evening stars. We see warehouses. Concrete and aluminum siding sketched with shadows of barbed wire.

Into this image steps a man on the wrong street at the wrong time of night. His unbuttoned Brioni flaps in the slicing wind. His Tom Ford Oxford shoes skate and slide on the ice. Only his blonde hair, plastered to his scalp with mousse, is untouched by the elements.

He refuses to miss his rendezvous. He needs that Sixty Two for his Christmas Party, whose guests arrived hours before. He sent their invitations in November. His supervisor promoted him to the Tokyo desk today (a market that closes an hour after midnight).

Ice sheathes abandoned sidewalks. No pedestrians tonight. Travelers prefer to coast on ice-crusted asphalts in warm cars than freeze in open air.