I got some place I got to go,” Victor said. He flung open the car door and got out quick, before the wind could come in after him. Before, he thought grimly, they could wish him a Merry Christmas, but he was too late. Don said it, and then Ellie, and even little Robbie.
“Same to you,” he said back, closing the door, and started off. He cursed himself for a fool all over again. Here he was now, in nothing but a light windbreaker, his food all gone, and nothing but three dollars in his pocket. Talk about your Merry Christmases.
* * * *
He wasn’t sure how far he had walked, or how long—he was light headed now, and he could scarcely feel his feet, lifting and coming down in the snow—when the little girl walked up to him, seeming to come out of nowhere. She was dressed in white, and her face was so pale, she could almost have been conjured up by the snow.
“Mister,” she said without preamble. “I am so cold and hungry, and I got no place to go.”
“Oh, hell’s bells,” he said aloud. He ought to have known, he thought angrily, the way this damned night was going. He yanked the last three dollars out of his pocket and thrust it toward her, but to his surprise, she took a step back from him and did not take it.
“It won’t work if you resent giving it,” she said. “You have to let it go.”
“Won’t work? Won’t work for what?” There was a buzzing in his head, like a host of wasps was in there. He handed the money to her again, but she only shook her head.
He dropped to his knees in the snow and took hold of her shoulders. She felt thin as a bird.
“You are one strange little girl,” he said. “I been giving and giving all night, and you’re the first one refused to take.”
“You have to share it. Not what we give, but what we share, for the gift without the giver is bare.”
He smiled into her face despite everything. There was something about her, a luminescence. She almost seemed to glow in the dark and the falling snow.
“I don’t understand what you are saying,” he said. He had a vague idea there was something else, earlier this evening, that he hadn’t understood either, but he was too tired and cold to think straight.
“If you bless it, we will both share in the blessing.”
“Well, then, if that’s the way of it,” he said wearily. “Take it then, and I surely do bless it, and I bless you.”
She did take the money then from his frozen fingers. Hers felt oddly warm when he touched them. She closed her eyes and looked down, and seemed to be praying. He closed his too, and tried what she said, tried to let the money go, to bless it.
He thought, out of the blue, of his mother again, of an incident when he had been just a boy, he couldn’t have been more than eight or nine. His mother had loaded up a basket of food from their cellar, to take to an aunt who was doing poorly. Mostly, in the winter, they lived on what she had put up in the cellar, and seeing the jars disappear from the shelves, he had said, “Won’t we need this food before the winter is out?”
She had given him a stern look, and said, “I never have been and never will be too poor to share what I have, because that is the worst kind of poverty: that is the poverty of the spirit.”
Yes, she was right, and the little girl, too. He had given what he had, but he hadn’t let go of it, he hadn’t shared it. He had resented everything that he had given, and his resentment had held on to everything even when it was gone from his possession. He thought back on his coat, and made an effort to bless the warmth that it might give the old man, and he thought of the family huddled in their car, and blessed the food he had given them, and the money; and the little girl...he opened his eyes, but she was gone.
Probably she was somewhere looking for shelter, or more likely, something to eat. He hoped she found it, before the night got any worse. The snow seemed to be coming down harder now, although, oddly, he didn’t feel anywhere near as cold as he had before. He felt hot, if anything. He undid a couple of buttons, and stumbled to his feet. He was light headed, though. He couldn’t exactly think where he was, or where he was headed. No place, really, he supposed. He had no place to go, did he, and nothing to do when he got there?
He began to stagger through the snow, singing softly to himself. “What child is this...?”
“Mister?”
He looked, and there was the girl again, right beside him. “Why, I thought you had gone,” he said. “Why’d you want to hang around, anyway? You ought to be looking for something to eat. The Seven Eleven is open, I bet, if I knew which way that was.”
“Come with me,” she said, and took hold of his hand.
He held back, but she tugged at him. “Hurry,” she said. “This way.”
“Well, that’s just a back alley,” he said, “There isn’t going to be anything down that way.”
But there was. They came round the corner, and the night fled before the light that spilled out of the windows ahead of them, and the lamp shining over the door, and the sign that said, Antoinette’s.
He stopped in his tracks, gaping in astonishment, and while he stared, the door of the restaurant opened, and there was Antoinette herself framed in it, she looked a lot like Karen Delvecchio. She saw him and smiled, and waved.
“Hurry, come on in,” she called to him.
“Little girl,” he started to say, but she had disappeared again, and when he looked down, he saw only his own footprints in the snow.
Why, there she was, in the doorway with Antoinette, and as he stared, the others came out and crowded around them, too—the old man, still in the blue parka, and the family from the car, Don and Ellie, he could see now that she was pregnant, and Robbie, balanced on his crutch.
“Come on,” they called to him, and “Supper’s ready,” and “The fire is warm.”
“We’re all just waiting for you,” Ellie said, “Hurry, now.”
He did. He began to run, and then he was flying, and they waved and called, and Antoinette laughed gaily and said, “Welcome, come on in, welcome to Antoinette’s.”
THE MUSHROOM KING
It is a paradox of sorts that though they are often people who most enjoy solitude, writers are nonetheless inevitably intrigued by people. This is not to say that they do not dislike some of them or find themselves bored with them. Still, I have said often that even boring people fascinate me.
Mr. Maugham said that he never spent fifteen minutes in the company of another person that he couldn’t have written a story about. I have no doubt that he was speaking sincerely. I can certainly say that I have never spent fifteen minutes in the company of another person that I didn’t discover something of interest about him or her (well, yes, all right, there have been times when the fifteen minutes seemed like fifteen years).
I have always found people infinitely fascinating. This is something that I have discovered about my fellow men and women over the years: everyone—but everyone—has something special about them, something they do better than anyone else, something they know better than anyone else,
