slick
About two feet of snow have fallen since then, and the highway is slickly plowed, a layer of graveled white on which cars tend to go too fast, with little thought of lane boundaries or chance, but secure in the hope of their destination.
Then one returns to the fireplace and the books, where comfort is punctuated by excursions to chisel out the ridge of compact snow shoved against the driveway by the snowplow. The dog leaps through the snow in dolphin bounds. Everything is new. Everything is now. A blank.