Hot and Cold

  

Welcome to the Spot Writers. This month’s prompt is ‘heat wave’.

Phil Yeats wrote this week’s story.

In April, 2024, he published The Body on Karli’s Beach, the third book in his Barrettsport Mysteries, a series of soft-boiled mysteries set in a fictional South Shore Nova Scotia town. For information about these books, and The Road to Environmental Armageddon, his trilogy about the hazards of ignoring human-induced climate change, visit his website: https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com/

Hot and Cold

by Phil Yeats

 

Heat domes, atmospheric rivers, ice storms, what crazy names will they come up with next? He didn’t know what an atmospheric river might be, but, as he trudged home with his weekly supply of groceries in unseasonably hot spring weather, the idea of ice storms and heat domes was easy enough to understand. 

The sweltering day reminded him of a day during a period of boiling weather fifty years earlier, when he was a student at the University of British Columbia. They called it a heatwave rather than a heat dome, but the effect was the same. The heat, even in the early morning, made struggling up the Point Grey escarpment on his bicycle into a greater challenge than usual.

He watched as an idiot in a car roared past rather close to him, then swung wide, almost off the pavement onto the shoulder on the next curve. He heard, more than saw, another cyclist shout before crashing into the roadside bushes. 

After several minutes of peddling furiously, he reached what he assumed was a crash site. He found a young woman, obviously another student, struggling to extract her bike from a thorny-looking bush. He glided to a stop, lept from his bike, and rushed to help her. “Didn’t the asshole in the car stop?”

She shook her head as she slumped to the ground. “He was so close he caused me to veer onto the shoulder. Look at the drop. I lost control and ended up in the bushes, but he didn’t hit me.”

He extracted her bike and spun her front wheel. It wobbled. “Not good. You won’t be riding this,” he said.

She stood and watched the wheel’s unsymmetrical gyrations. “Oh, dear. What should I do?”

“There’s a little bike shop off University Avenue. Old guy who runs it has helped me in the past. If you’re feeling okay, we could walk there. He should be able to sort this out.”

“But you’ll miss your classes.”

“No worry. Nothing until 10:30 and it’s not everyday I get to help a maiden in distress.”

She looked down and mumbled something he didn’t catch.

“Sorry,” he said, “I didn’t mean to sound pushy, but the guy’s old and mostly retired. His shop looks like a shed in his back garden. You might miss it.”

They walked, pushing their bikes up the hill and along a street that bordered the UBC campus. He learned she liked folk music.

That seemed like a good omen because he was also into folk music, and Joan Baez had a concert scheduled at the Pacific Coliseum for one evening later that week. He mentioned buying two tickets outside the repair shop. She agreed without hesitation and passed him a scrap from her notebook with her name and phone number. 

She entered the shop, and he rushed to the place where he could safely leave his bike and then to the Student Union Building, where he could buy the tickets. Tickets in hand, he charged to his class, paying no heed to the oppressive heat. He made it just after the buzzer sounded.

The Joan Baez concert became a rather complicated affair. The tickets were inexpensive, but they were all rush seating. Rush seating in the 20,000-seat coliseum meant leaving early with food and drink on a long bus across the city. After the concert, they faced another bus ride before dessert in their neighbourhood White Spot. Two simpler dates followed. 

Then on Sunday afternoon, almost three weeks after they met during that early autumn heat wave, she told him it must end.

“It’s me, not you,” she said when he stared slack-jawed. “I’ve enjoyed every minute of our time together, but it just can’t be. I’m leaving now, and please, don’t contact me.”

She walked away, and he let her go. His heart had turned to ice, but he didn’t know what he could do. 

Now, fifty years later, every heat wave revives fond memories of those few days together. The cold that followed is forgotten.

 

The Spot Writers—Our Members:

Val Muller: http://valmuller.com/blog/

Catherine A. MacKenzie: https://writingwicket.wordpress.com/wicker-chitter/

Phil Yeats: https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com/

Chiara De Giorgi: https://chiaradegiorgi.blogspot.com/