The winter of 1993 had been particularly distressful for each of them. Jen, a substitute teacher, was not called for many jobs. Schools were closed for a week in the middle of January. While she iced and stormed over her poverty, Lisa, who was employed steadily at St. Vivians, told her she did not want to find a permanent assignment, that the children were dullards and loud-mouths. Christine thought she had more to complain about than either of the others. While Jen and Lisa were shivering in the shelter of sub-standard housing, with every blanket the three of them owned in common thrown over their bodies, Christine's position as an administrative assistant was a far cry from the accounting classes in which she had wrestled such good grades. Apparently Christines dream of blazing into the world of business required the course of walking inadequately heated hallways to deliver messages from one cold-hearted executive to another. Like a choris of huddled squirrels their refrain was "want one," "want a different one," "want a better one," and they were not talking about men.

The winter had dehydrated each of the women of every emotion endearing them to the bare walls where pale hours spent pallidly in each others company. Solitude became such a premium that they bickered about who would be the lucky one to use the single shovel shared between them to clean away the fifth day of snow. The argument was carried outside to keep them warm as they raced in half zipped jackets to the shed where the implement awaited. An anonymous track of early morning footprints had crushed the snow which cut across their path and molded icy tombs over which they skipped. The women ran across a hill of freshly sprayed snow powdered with a sooty necklace of exhaust fumes. A snowball fight began in mock anger, traveled not a few trajectories with real hostility and, once the yard had been reduced to slush and clumps of snow which resembled tar, errupted into subtle, good clean fun. The women played joyfully for, in spite of it all, they were three light-hearted friends trapped in a dream of cruel reality.

Inside, cold, damp clothes fell on their few pieces of furniture and every open spot on the floor as the race for the shower ensued. Two of the women ended up on their steadfast couch with a bevy of towels and blankets earnestly wrapped around their naked, waiting bodies. They thought nothing but contempt for the one who was relaxing in the steam and heat of the shower. One by one they were replaced on the couch until, each shower being completed, all three sat plantively watching television.

During the news, dinner was prepared and the idea arose that, poor as they were, the women ought to treat themselves. A number of options were proposed and hurriedly discounted. Chocolates. Too fattening. A movie. Too cold to go out. A bar. Too cold, probably not get hit on, probably fall while trying to get to drunkenly climb into the car, probably break our necks, probably wreck the car. So three women sat on the couch until eleven-thirty when, after the investigative reporter measured the new depth of snowfall and told heart-warming stories of things people were doing with their lives, Lisa and Christine went to bed, leaving Jen to stretch as far as the blankets would allow. She lay in the foetal position, enjoying the silence and solitude, until her eyes would not longer stay open. Then she tip-toed quickly across the bare wooden floor.

The next day was increasingly cold weather, more school closings, additional running from blizzardly room to blizzardy room where short-tempered men with college degrees thought this gave them the obligation to "warm" Christine's fury. Luckily, a prediction of eight more inches challenged the pragmatic owner to send everyone home early. Better to lose a half days work, since employees were ditracted by what was going on outside the window anyway, than have even one of them killed or injured. Can't take time out to interview replacements. So Christine went home and struggled to find room under the blankets with Lisa and Jen.

Shivering people have occasion to remmeber, and re-live, their childhood. Girls and boys make angels in the snow until they no longer believe in angels, not even snow angels. The taste for soup and hot chocolate, once loved, never departs. Every winter, newscasters talk about the decreasing population of New York and Los Angeles and the increasing flux of people to Florida, where there is rarely the chance to make snow angels, and hot soup is redundant. What these migrants take with them is exactly what they had hope to escape.

The love of bickering and arguing, hollaring, shouting, and demanding which is a method of keeping warm.

"We really should treat ourselves to something nice," Lisa said.

"We've been through that," Jen replied. "Can't you come up with an original thought?"

"Shut up, will you? And give me room."

"You've got plenty of room," one said to another, "It's all in your ass."

After discussing the lack of room the sofa offered through every way one person could blame another for the size of a piece of furniture, one of the women off-handedly suggested they purchase a chair.

"That's a great idea," Lisa said as she pulled the cover over herself.

The three women immediately began debating the style, the color, the material of the illusory chair. The more they talked, the larger and more comfortable the chair became. At one point, Jen was convinced she was sitting in the legendary chair and threw her legs over the lap of Lisa, who pushed her away with a cruel, cold word of reality.

The discussion continued for half and hour, until Christine and Lisa had decided, amid protests of poverty from Jen, that the chair was not a luxury but a necessity, not a tan one but a brown one, not a leather, but a fabric which did not have to absorb spilled liquids, but had to emit warmth. And definately a lounger.

"And you," Lisa told Jen, "Can't use it."

Life can be cruel. The three women sat on the couch until eleven thirty, luxurating in the velvety warmth of the chair which was yet to be. Jen leaned close to the television, relinquishing none of her space on the couch, to absorb the warmth of the anchor persons.

The next day, Saturday, Christine and Lisa investigated barcoloungers. Christine did not mind running from shop to shop, nor Lisa studying and reciting the beneficial facts of this years offering to dullard sales clerks who spoke too loudly. Brochures in hand, they had hot chocolate at a mall restaurant, decided which chair they wanted, and returned to the store to unburdon their wallets of money extracted from the bank.

Saturday evening, Christine and Lisa sat on the couch with Jen, giving her a detailed description of the chair they had purchased, the steps they had traveled to find this "perfect chair," and reminded her repeatedly that, inasmuch as she had not contributed to the cost of the chair, she was not permitted to sit on it.

Sunday was the last day the three of them would be forced to share an uncomfortable closeness. As if to bid goodbye to the cramped good times they had shared on this couch, they kicked one another, pushed one another, shoved one another, and resolutely refused to leave the apartment.

Monday, Jen was called to a public school to sub for "poor Mrs Delmont" who fell in the snow and broke her hip. Later, Jen would say that if she had that class on a permanent basis, she would try to break her hip as well. Christine and Lisa were concerned because they had anticipated Jen being there to accept delivery of the chair. They had hauranged the salesperson to schedule delivery on a day they were sure Jen would not be at work and, after much denial of the possibility of having the chair delivered as soon as Monday, he was finally persuaded by their charms, that is, their indefatiguability. He was persuaded, that is, by their waving cash at him.

The salesperson said the truck would be at their apartment between two and six. "Can't pin it down more than that," he told them. "Those drivers have a mind of their own." The women were convinced the chair would be delivered closer to two. It would be just their luck. Leaving for work, each expressed concern that the chair would be left in the snow to rot, or stain, or else be taken back to the warhouse where it would be irrevocably, irretrievably lost.

"Don't worry," Jen told them, "You can simply reschedule."

"I want that chair tonight!" Lisa demanded with a demented look in her eye.

There was a race to see which women would be the first to arrive home. One by one, Lisa, Jen and Christine discovered the chair had not been left in the snow and had not been taken back to the warehouse as drivers with a mind of their own left a nasty note on their door. In fact, their chair was not delivered until six thirty by brutish men who complained about the hour in unflattering terms and commented about the bevy of women they had "discovered."

The papers signed, the chair was positioned to the left of the couch. Christine jumped into the chair immediately, swirled on her hip, drapped her legs over the arm of the chair, and cooed and moaned complements concerning comfort. Lisa demanded her turn and, finally prompting Christine from the seat, imitated her cooing and ahhing.

"My turn again," Christine said.

"Oh, wait. Just wait a while."

So Christine and Lisa took turn coaxing one another from the chair, then took turns inventing as many unflattering body positions as they could imagine. Jen ignored their "childish" behavior." She sat on the extreme right side of the couch, legs tucked under herself, blankets protecting her from the skirmish and, when one leg ached because of prolonged refusal to move, she chose to ignore the pain rather than remind them she was there, which would do nothing more than offer Lisa and Christine another opportunity to tell her that, inasmuch as she had not contributed, she was not allowed to sit in the chair. For nearly four hours, Lisa and Christine alternated like squirrels jumping from branch to branch. They spoke of the chair in magical terms. The chair had muscular arms, yet was so soft. The chair was claimed to be kind and understanding, encouraging yet not domineering. The chair had a wonderful sense of humor; was child-like, but not childish. The chair was everything a woman would want. Jen felt distant, which allowed her to lose herself in late night programming about which she cared nothing.

They settled down for the evening news, Lisa having commandeered the chair. Throughout the announcement of the days e vents, their eyes grew heavy. At eleven-thirty, like squirrels whose habits were modified by the struggle of winter, Christine roused herself and pulled Lisa from the chair.

When they had left the room, Jen eyed the chair. She dreamily thought it seemed to be awaiting the presence of her body. She attempted to move a leg which had apparently stretched across the couch on its own. She imagined the chair possessed with intelligence and charm, a haven from weariness and winter. One leg moved beneath the blanket to the floor. Aware of the restriction her roommates had plaed on her, she intended to steal a moment in the sun. The chair whispered to her. It belonged to others, but it was willing to be hers. If only she was up to the effort.

When finally she wobbled to her feet, she tip-toed across the floor and fell into the lap of the chair. It was colder than she expected, but she soon snuggled up and pulled the blanket over herself. She was anticipating a complement which would fructify her presence in the chair when she suddenly was looking through a window upon which ice had formed messages. She thought: If one were a mystic, or a near-blind poet, one might read her destiny in this design. Yet to understand the fate frostily formed, one would have to scrape off an etching of ones one diagram.

So she began scratching at the window. She looked though the window and saw a man hunched over a work-bench. He was a heavy, morose man, composed of pitch and sawdust, deep crimson wine and brimstone. Jen rubbed her eyes and tried to see the features of his face, yet as she did so, he leaned back. She saw a model he was working on. He was building a miniature castle. His model was a dream-like construction based on the most memorial castles he had seen during his many travels as a young man. He pointed to parts of his castle and mentioned the Warwich on the Avon, the turreted Alcazan in Segovia, Spain, the Chateau du Loulin at Lassay, and numerous other structures high upon hills throughout Europe.

Jen could tell by the pleasant nod of his head that he admired, and wanted to capture, the stoney resiliance of castles. He appreciated their angelic assault against the sky. He marveled through the intricacies of the afflicted protection of the feudal family as well as their ornately oblivious orientation to the peasants who belonged to the land and, therefore, the lord. Surely these were not her politics. In truth, she imagined she had crumbled into sleep like suddenly dry clay. Surely she must be asleep, for she could not imagine a man with tussled gray hair and a gray apron. He had gray stubble on a ruddy face. His clothes, once black, were covered with clay and dust. He squinted at his structure and was thinking how years ago he had given up his wish of finding others interested in his interests. He had the dexterity of a person who had begun with a vision and had labored to trace his ecstasy through clay and chisel, pen-knife and sandpaper. His fingers were tired and raw from the vision.

Jen did not too frequently remember her dreams. When she did, they were bland, uninspiring productions you might expect to see in neighborhood playhouses where the actors had more ambition to sell insurance, or successfully advertize shampoo, than to have a playwrite's words bring life to them. But this vision through the window was powerfully vivid and keen.

The man had built a viscous moat which could only be crossed by a seductively suspended drawbridge. The drawbridge backed into a marvelous barbican which was attached to an intricately sculpted portcullis. Behind the portcullis was an extremely detailed chemise which led to the guardhouse. Three ramparts supported four corner towers. The front chemise grew into a keep bordered by a parapet walkway. Flanking towers were carved into either side of the ramparts. Now the man leaned forward and reached into the structure to sand the bailey. Turrets and machicolation ridges scraped the under-side of his arms. Gashes appeared as the result of reaching between the ring of battlements. Crowned merlons alternating with beveled open spaces slashed his flesh, but he seemed not to notice. Blood at first dripped, then flowed freely, into the courtyard. Before he was finished, the castle was supported by the ropy substance which had oozed from him.

Nearly finished, the man leaned his face toward the middle of the castle and peered into the alcoves one by one to inspect the results of his labor. With one eye closed, the man scrutinized the interior of his work. Each alcove had beveled walls and delicately carved pannels. He had built the structure as he imagined the irregular, circular patterns of bricks would have been laid. He was in the midst of smiling an appreciation of his own handiwork when suddenly he saw something which made his other eye open wide and his jaw drop. He leaned closer and, in the alcove reserved for the lord himself, he saw three women bouncing on a couch, heads bobbing, television throbbing, discussing something pleasant they should do for themselves. He rubbed his weary eye and looked again, but they were gone.

Jen, convinced now this was a dream, was about to pay no more attention to the scene when she noticed the structure was carved in ice. Only now did she notice the man was shivering. How long, she wondered, had this man had to endure the torturous cold if he was to accomplish his goal. Suddenly her own plight did not seem so damaging. Nevertheless, she shivered, and imagined she pulled the blanket more tightly around herself. She reach a hand from beneath the blanket, thinking to touch the sculpture. Yet when she reach, the turret wavered. The shingles began floating away, staggering into the frosty night air. The structure was disassembling in shivers of fumes. When Jen understood the castle was not even as solid as ice, but composed of the very breath of the man, she was shocked awake.

She shivered as a bead of sweat ran from her brow to her chin. Her body was aching. She stretched involuntarily and looked around the room. Her husband, always calm Ben, was just waking up on the couch. He stretched, interrupting himself into motionlessness when he noticed the worried look on her face.

"Honey?"

"Nothing," she said.

He accepted this answer and turned to sleep on his other side. She, struggling to be awake, tried to imagine that he was real. When she decided he was, when she remembered they had had two children together, she breathed over his sleeping body in a dream-like attempt to capture him in perpetual warmth. By the time he was snoring, she imagined what he had in common with summer or winter.

G. David Schwartz, author of "A Jewish Apprisal of Dialogue and co-auhor, with Jacquline Winston, "Parables in Black and White." Schwartz curently is a volounteer at Drake Hospital.