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sitting down again, relieved to be rid of a city-slicker lutefisk tourist.
     • • • 
    As Lars drove back to St. Paul, it began to snow, and on the radio he heard reports of “glare ice” and an accident on westbound Crosstown between Minneapolis and St. Paul. He thought about Cynthia in Australia or New Zealand and how it was summer in that part of the world. Jarl and Fiona were so incensed that Cynthia didn’t send Eva a present for Christmas that they were threatening to hire a private investigator to find out where in Australia she was.
    But Lars didn’t want that. He’d viewed Cynthia neglecting Eva’s first Christmas as a litmus test, confirmation that she was serious, that she was forever done with being a mother and would never come back. On the drive, he thought of a story that he’d maybe tell on Christmas: that he’d gotten a call from the police in Sydney and they’d told him that Cynthia had died alone in a one-car accident, and they were going to just bury her out there. Cynthia wasn’t close to her own mom, and her dad had died when she was a teenager, so it was perfectly feasible that no one would blow the lid off of this story; he couldn’t think of anyone left in the United States who would hear the news and buy tickets to Australia for the funeral.
    As he climbed the stairs to his apartment—he always took the stairs now—he wondered about Cynthia’s friends at the restaurant. Did she still keep in touch with any of them? With Allie, Cayla, Amber, Amy, or Sarah? He hardly spoke with them anyway. Maybe he wouldn’t tell them.
    The concrete stairway was cold, but Jarl was right, getting into shape was important. He’d lost four pounds in two weeks and the stairs were a big part of that. If he was ever going to attract someone who could be a good mother to his daughter, he thought he should probably at least get below two-sixty. A person had to start somewhere.
    He was on the third-floor landing before he realized he’d forgotten the lutefisk in the trunk and had to go back down to get it. Well, it was an excuse to get a little bit more of a workout. Maybe he had even forgotten it subconsciously, knowing what a calorie explosion the holidays were. He jogged down the stairs, his breath clouding in his face, and kept jogging toward the rusty blue, salt-streaked Dodge Omni, where he retrieved his surprise for Jarl out of the back.
    Halfway up the third flight of stairs, he felt a pain in his shoulder, and he gasped for air in the cold, opening his mouth. He sat down in the middle of the staircase to take a rest and felt a stabbing pain so intense, he felt tired. He closed his eyes, dropping the lutefisk, leaned his head against the railing, and felt his body tumble down to the landing without him.

CHOCOLATE HABANERO

    I t was 7:00 a.m. on the day before her eleventh birthday, and Eva was on her knees in her favorite stretchy blue jeans, hard at work in her closet. She was checking the dryness of her hydroponic chile plants when her mom knocked on her door.
    “Come in.” Eva straightened her back and turned to look at her mom, Fiona, who was wearing a pantsuit the color of a serrano pepper with matching shoes and big silver hoop earrings. She looked like a shorter, wider Hillary Clinton, but with the posture and attitude of someone fifty-eight hours into a sixty-hour workweek.
    “What kind of treat do you want to bring your class for your birthday?” Fiona asked her daughter. “I’ll pick it up after work tonight if I have the energy.”
    According to Eva, the worst birthday tradition ever in world history was the one where
you
had to bring some treat to class when it was
your
birthday. Well, she figured, if she had to feed the entire sixth grade, she might as well feed them something she’d actually eat.
    “I was thinking, vegan blueberry sorbet from New City Market.”
    “Oh Christ. Really?”
    “Do you know what they put in ice cream—especially chocolate ice