It was one of those unusual days in which I had to dress presentably enough to meet with a client. I elected for casual attire, by DC standards, but in a bow to conservative professionalism I left the ear cuff at home. This particular client seems to adore me, not because I've done anything very outstanding for them but because they dislike the previous consultant with naked contempt. You can practically smell the bile in the room when his name comes up. In this context, I very carefully make sure to present myself as his complete opposite. They hated the way he didn't respond to emails. I answer them almost instantly. They thought he used confusing technospeak in his explanations. I, the onetime art student who only barely manages to keep up with the technology that drives my medium, explain reseller programs in terms of hot dog vendors, and everybody nods.

One of the staff members in the meeting has the most intense gray eyes, which kept siphoning my attention from everyone and everything else in the room. I kept wondering: flesh or contact lenses? It is not so easy to check out someone else's eyes without looking like you're trying to mesmerize them with the intensity of your gaze. Fortunately, my on-the-job experience in preventing myself from glancing at people's bosoms came to the rescue. All you have to do is pretend that the part you're not supposed to look at is the sun. You wouldn't look in the sun, would you?

Problem is, I've always enjoyed spectating people's bods, and for reasons which are only partially conjoined to sexuality. The many phenotypes of the human race are truly awe-inspiring, regardless of whether one has any sexual utility for them. I would like few things more than sitting under a little umbrella on a nudist beach frequented by people of every ethnic affiliation, make and model in the world, and watch the wide parade of our myriad shapes pass by. Beautiful and butt-ugly, ribby and roly-poly, wrinkled and dimpled, let them all stroll past.

Snow started a few minutes before I walked into my meeting. By the time I left, taxis were slithering around and revving furiously, as if exuberant at the business being generated by the bad weather. Maybe the drivers were just making a big deal so they could get away with charging the doubled "snow emergency" rate. I slung my long, conical gnome hat over my shoulder and picked my way home across the slick sidewalks and treacherous intersections. People I passed seemed to react to the snow with either drab stoicism or loopy frivolity. When I skidded for an instant while crossing the street, a woman behind me let out a long "woooOOOOOee!" that was like a cartoon soundtrack. Other folks just walked with their heads down and necks sunk as deeply as possible into their coats, like highly evolved turtles.

It snowed in tiny flakes for the remainder of the afternoon, but never really accumulated much. The streets, however, were sheer ice. Shortly after five, Susan and I began to hear the telltale sounds of spinning wheels and slippy braking. I abandoned work for the window alcove on the third floor, where I warmed my feet on the radiator and watched the rush hour chaos bloom below me. Virtually every car that approached the stop sign near at the corner locked up its brakes and slid gracefully into the intersection. I had never had the opportunity to observe so many vehicles skidding from a single vantage point before, and it was highly educational. Almost all made the same errors: they kept their feet on the brakes even after the wheels had locked up, and they inevitably steered away from the direction of the skid, instead of into it. I tried to store this information in a simple, behavioral form that might be useful to my body, should I find myself in similar extremis.

Of course, there was also the more prurient possibility that these nasty conditions would lead to an accident. It's a disgusting human trait to anticipate entertainment from others' misfortune, but at least I'm not alone in it. I would guess that at least half of NASCAR fans watch the races more for the chance of a horrendous wreck than the stimulating sportsmanship of watching cars going around a loop time after monotonous time. And I was fully prepared to leap into action and render medical aid should someone be injured.

After twenty minutes, I witnessed the only collision: one giant SUV skidded and smacked its swollen bumper into the back of another lumbering SUV. The two men jumped out, peered at the minor damage, exchanged information, and were back in their behemoths within ninety seconds. They transacted their business in the street with such efficiency, it was like they had car accidents every single day. I derived some pleasure from the fact that, of all the cars I watched slide around, it was two "sport-utility" vehicles that ended up colliding. Those two road warriors probably justified purchasing their new bigass vehicles by imagining themselves ploughing through winter storms that left other commuters helpless. When the first snowflakes fell, they jumped in their "trucks" and commenced crunching into things with all the manly bravado of old folks driving Lincoln Town Cars.