cold.
Not worse pain than his own, different pain than his own.
Maybe that was why Mr. Theodore had sent him, knowing there would be something here to keep him distracted as Christmas approached. Christmas, a time of family. A time of pain for families who had nothing.
And for a guy who had nothing instead of a family.
He drew his breath in sharply, forced himself to focus. It was one day at a time, one step at a time, one task at a time. Right now, his task was fifty jackets and an elf. Michael shook his head like a boxer who had been sucker punched.
It seemed like the most unlikely lifeline, but it was the only one he was being offered, and if he didn’t find something to give a damn about, and soon, that question was going to burn a little deeper into him.
How will I survive?
His world gone. Nothing left of it. The snow swirled around him, and he realized he should be cold, but he didn’t get cold anymore. Twice a year, he’d given up carpentry. The whole family put their lives on hold and headed to Alaska for the crab fishery.
After surviving six hours in the icy, gray waters of the Bering Sea, Michael did not get cold anymore. Or really ever warm, either. He was stuck in a place where it was neither hot nor cold. Purely a place of survival.
He focused on the task at hand, just as at Mr. Theodore’s house he focused only on what was in front of him: broken stairs, a rotten window casing, a leaky faucet. There were many ways to shut off the human mind. He stopped at the nearest phone booth. Most of the telephone book was gone, but his righteousness was being rewarded today. The clothing section of the yellow pages was intact.
But then he realized he wasn’t quite sure what he wanted. Big coats or small coats? Boys or girls? What about babies? Styles? Sizes?
He glanced back down the street. He could go ask her exactly what she wanted, but he didn’t want to. He found himself wanting to surprise her, because it had been clear from the look on her face she had no expectations of him at all. She didn’t even think he’d be back. Maybe didn’t even want him to come back, which was not the normal reaction he got from women.
And he still had that option, of not going back, of leaving that strangely engaging encounter one hundred percent behind him. Looking at coats some little kids needed might make him feel something, in fact he felt jumpy thinking about it. How could he do an assignment like this and not be touched in some way? It was a fact the crafty Mr. Theodore had probably already considered!
Didn’t Mr. Theodore know that if the dam inside of Michael ever broke open, the torrent would be dangerous and destructive, wrecking everything in its path?
No. He could not go shopping for coats. But, on the other hand, fifty kids without coats? He swore under his breath, and the word came out in a frosty puff that reminded him how cold it was getting. Michael realized he could not not go shopping for coats.
He said the word again, and realized it was not an appropriate word for an emissary of the Secret Santa Society, not even an unofficial one.
Michael looked again at the pretty much demolished phone book and guiltily tore out one of the few remaining pages, the one that listed coats on it. And then he tore out the preceding one, as well, the one that listed clowns. Clowns were related to elves, weren’t they?
Guilt, he thought with surprise. That was a feeling of sorts, the first one he’d had in a long time.
Unless he could count what he felt talking to Ms. Santa back there.
Not actual warmth, but a remembrance of warmth. A remembrance of what it was to want something. What had he wanted? He frowned. To connect with her. To share a little normal, everyday banter with another human being. He’d liked making her blush. It had been amusing.
It had been a long, long time since he had felt even the smallest shiver of interest in anything or anyone. So here he was less than an hour into his mysterious assignment, and having feelings sneak up on him.
But was it going to be enough to save him? Or would it destroy what was left of him? He decided to have a little tiny bit of faith, and realized with a sigh that was another concept that had been foreign to his world for a long, long time.
Well, he thought, if a man starts messing with the spirit of Santa, some surprising things were going to happen. That was a given.
He found the address he had ripped out of the phone book. It was in a different world than the office of the Secret Santa Society, part of a brightly lit strip mall that housed upscale factory outlets on the edge of a neighborhood where the houses started in the half-million-dollar range. The Christmas displays were up in the windows, and lights blinked cheer against the colorlessness of the day.
He entered a store called West Coats. More Christmas: a tree decorated totally in white, updated versions of carols blaring from a public address system. He hated this.
Then he was nearly bowled over by a salesclerk who was exactly his type. Blond, tall, willowy, her lipstick a perfect match for her fingernails, a red Santa hat at a jaunty angle on her head. Her tag said her name was Calypso.
The woman at the Secret Santa Society had not been wearing a name tag. He realized he had not asked her name. He bet it would be a good, sturdy, practical name like Helen or Susan or Gwen.
“I need fifty kids’ coats,” he told Calypso, who leaned way toward him and gave him a look at the top of her lacy bra. Red, to match her hat. The surprising thing happened: not one vision of her fingernails and his back, no matter how hard he tried to conjure it.
“Fifty coats!” She giggled and blinked her heavily madeup lashes. Considering how he was freshly aware of wanting to connect, he was now aware of not wanting to connect with her in more than a businesslike way.
Somehow, painfully, he managed to pick out fifty children’s coats. He wanted practical coats that would keep them warm and survive snowball fights and the making of forts and snow angels. He picked out coats in as many different sizes and colors as he could find. He tossed onto his growing stack a few little sleeping bags with hoods, which Calypso cooed over and called bunting bags.
And at the last minute, hesitating, he chose three little pink princess jackets with fur collars and cuffs on them. They felt in his hands the same way those dolls had—foreign, fragile, too delicate. He knew they were totally impractical. And yet he could not put them back.
“There,” he said, “Done.”
“What do you want all these coats for?” Calypso asked.
He was afraid if he explained his mission it would just bring more cooing, so he only shrugged.
“I can get you a discount if it’s for a charity,” she said.
“No, it’s okay.” He was aware as he passed her his credit card that this was the first time he had enjoyed one single cent of all that money, huge state-of-the-art plasma television set included.
She insisted on helping him carry the coats out to his car, even though he tried to discourage her.
“Oh,” she breathed when she saw the car. “A Jaguar.”
He saw his appeal to her had just intensified. Once upon a time, he would have
