The winds had died down by the time Olfstead arrived. Still, he made a show of the trials of his travel. An hour earlier and we might’ve cared. If he’d swung wide the great-wood door, soggy with the storm behind him and launched into his story of spooked horses and no-good assistants, of the roofs of houses spiraling skyward, their subsequent groundward falls, and of walls of impenetrable cold we would’ve sat at seats’ edges in anticipation of the next detail. Instead, it was the door swung wide, Olfstead dry and warm, and a sunlit backdrop that belied the week of wind and rain we’d come to loathe and fear during his absence. And he blathered through the details. And we tapped feet, checked watches, and imagined finer moments as we awaited the point to which it was all preamble.

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Timestamp: 12:10 AM. Filed under: Fiction.  Comments: 0.  References: 0.