Archive for December, 2010
Not a Happy Ending
Thursday, December 23rd, 2010
I didn’t want to be an elf, but when you’re broke and hungry and it’s Christmas Eve, that’s how you end up—a fill-in, last-minute elf, cold in tights and a jumper, swimming through the squirming mass of screams and germs that is a pile of kids waiting to sit on Santa’s lap.
Me, in tights. Clearly desperation working somewhere. Maybe that’s why the old guy started to screw with me in the breakroom. He wasn’t wearing a wig, or a beard. The belly was his, the cheeks were his; the twinkle was probably bourbon in his coffee. He winked at me when I walked in. He said, “Carol!” and he held out his arm like I was going to sit on his lap or something.
“Yes,” I said. “Hello, Santa.” He knew my name, but that was something the manager of the mall must’ve told him.
“Do you still have that Holly Hobby doll I brought you when you were six?” But he just knew that because every six-year-old loved Holly Hobby.
I was hungover, and I did not need this shit. “No,” I said. “Are you going to tell me what the meaning of Christmas is now?”
He put his finger on the side of his nose and twinkled at me.
“I’m Jewish,” I said.
“Don’t lie to Santa,” he said.
The door banged open and Harry the manager came in and shooed us back out into the sea of snot. I tried not to meet his eyes again all night, but I felt him twinkling at me across the heads of screaming children. The lights spasmed and the tinsel burned and if he was trying to fill me with the Christmas spirit, he should have given me a sandwich.
Once the kids were shoveled out the door and the lights went out, I tried to dodge out of there before he could catch me, but he was waiting by the door, looking tired, still twinkling.
He said, “Merry Christmas, Carol,” and his voice was kind, and he held the door for me. I couldn’t answer him. I ducked my head and I raced home.
I don’t know what I was thinking, but my heart was pounding. He hadn’t gotten to me, but my heart went thump, when I swung the door of my apartment wide. I don’ t know what I was expecting—not a happy ending.
When Love Goes Wrong
Wednesday, December 22nd, 2010
“There you are,” Nessa said when Guy walked into the apartment. “I was worried you’d have trouble finding it.” He took off the coat and looked around the place, his eyes skimming over some things, resting perplexedly on others. She hung his coat on the rack and wrapped her arms around him.
“Home,” he said tentatively. Then he kissed her behind the ear and buried his face in her hair. He breathed in deeply and said it again, with more confidence. “Home.”
She took him by the hand and led him to the kitchen, where she had set out scallops and other ingredients. He immediately began to cook, visibly brightening as he did so. There had been very few of Guy who didn’t love to cook. “Is it much different in this universe than the one you’re from?” she said.
He made a face. “Let’s not compare notes again. We always do that. Some things are the same, some things are different. Although I think the government’s better in this one than in mine. It got very dark there by the time I started traveling.”
Despite what he’d said, this launched them into a conversation that carried them all through cooking, dinner, and cleanup, right onto the couch after dinner, where they sat drinking little glasses of sherry, a taste she had developed specifically because it wasn’t natural to her. Guy always seemed to enjoy when she was a little different. She leaned back against his chest, and he wrapped his arms around her.
“I love the beginning,” she said.
“As if we ever have anything else,” Guy said, smiling.
“I’ll miss you when you go on to the next me, though.”
“Me too.”
They sipped sherry.
“I hope I never see the first you again, though,” she said. “Three years with that bastard …”
“I know. The first you was awful after a year or so.”
“Somewhere, I bet he’s saying that about me,” Nessa pointed out.
Guy nodded, but neither of them was really unhappy about it. When you love someone, they both felt, you find a way to stay together regardless.