March is a command. It implores us to do something, something other than staring at computer screens and biting our lips, wistful. I have things up my sleeves, wishes, hopes, even dreams. I plot. I scheme. Sometimes I do something rash, then I point fingers: March made me do it. That cold, wet beast of a month.

***

When the wet rain falls heavy on my coat, I go underground. Hibernate; eavesdrop. F Train, Saturday night. A man sitting across from me calls out names like fairytale lands to the woman at his side. I tip an ear away from my book.

"Kiawah Island. Oakmont. Pebble Beach. Pinehurst. Riviera."

These sound like magical places. Warm places.

Seven years ago we saw an alligator while riding our bikes down a path in Kiawah Island. Two men in chinos pointing some numbered iron at it as it scurried back into its algae-filled pond, each man with a hand in his pocket, white teeth, good hair, an image out of a catalog. A fantasy catalog with reptile props. Lizard bags carried by lizards! Svelt snakes wrapped around the necks of belles in boas! I see the thick catalog now in full color, fifties illustrations, a section at the back for camping equipment: iguanas carrying windup radios, tin pans for turtles, tight-knit nets for catching salamanders. We scooted our bikes further along the path, under great old oaks and loblolly pines. I imagined the alligator scurrying after me, nipping at my tires.

"St. Andrews." A golf course, of course. "Torrey Pines. Turnberry. Wentworth. Wolf Creek."

Here on the subway those warm and sunny places feel so distant. I imagine shading my eyes from the sun and digging my toes into sand as I blow into my hands and watch the couple sitting across from me sinking into their downy coats.

"Hazeltine National," she says, choosing one.

"Tiger Woods?"

She nods as she applies her foundation from a compact with a smudged mirror. He hands her the PS3. Has to look good to play video games.

"Mr. Woods it is."

I play games like this too. I choose my warm place, fiddle with the settings in my brain. A, B, up arrow, right arrow. The top of a pyramid in Palenque. A table under a broad umbrella at Moscenicka Draga. The rough cement blocks that served as the last shady spot at the public pool in Ohio, where you'd place a wet hand and watch the mark quickly disappear. A swimming hole amidst tall grass in the rolling hills of the Latvian countryside, mud squelching betwixt toes.

I close my eyes and go there. Out of the subway I march through the cold, determined to make it through to the next round. Let's agree it must be warmer there.

(SB, you are partly responsible. And inspirational.)

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.