His for the Holidays

by LB Gregg, Harper Fox, Z. A. Maxfield

  Not happening anymore, ’cause he was newly trim, down to a lean 190 pounds on his six-foot-four-inch frame. He was now defined by good habits and clean living and muscles he hadn’t known were there before they put the stent—and the fear of God—into his heart the previous January.

  So this year, Monrovia’s best-loved Santa was heading out of town.

  Vegas, baby.

  ’Cause if anything in the world could soothe a man who’d lost his holiday cheer, it was the garish excesses of the one place on Earth that could afford to blow a billion bucks on a seasonal display that sucked the joy right out of the season itself.

  Merry. Fucking. Christmas.

  Cha-ching.

  Vegas wasn’t the worst place for a dysfunctional man to go for the holidays. He could watch a couple of the shows and wallow in the absurdity of being an out-of-character Santa at Christmastime. And if he was in Vegas he wouldn’t have to think about all the people he was letting down this year.

  Especially, he wouldn’t have to think about them.

  Hell, he might be able to find some company for an evening or two. A like-minded holiday escapee maybe. A man who didn’t mind a slightly scrawny bear. Or possibly he’d even score himself a fuzzy little bear cub with a glint in his eye for the weekend. Someone who hadn’t had his twinkle surgically removed by a cardiologist.

  That could rev up Rudolph’s specially rebuilt six-pack engine.

  Steve needed to hit the head. The drive from Monrovia to Vegas, short as it was, always seemed far longer after a few cups of coffee. Or what passed for coffee when he was at his sister Kelly’s place. She’d poured him several cups of limp decaf and baked him a tray of something she called “health yummies” while trying to persuade him to stay in town. He planned to leave the coffee in the next rest stop he saw, and the baked goods… Well. If he had a flat tire or parked on a hill, they’d be great for blocking the wheels.

  Once he was out of Rudolph and stretching his legs under the beginnings of a pretty desert sunset, he felt better. The wind bit his cheeks a little. It was barely cold enough to even work up a goose bump, but it was still colder than it had been when he’d started out. He stared up at the sky, still indigo and fathomless, filled with the first spatters of stars and the barest sliver of a crescent moon. Somewhere he could hear Christmas music playing and it felt like a splash of cold water.

  Everything he was—everything he’d ever wanted to be—would fly across that sky in a million imaginations on the night of December 24. Only two days away. And he was only half the man he’d been the previous year, when he’d been round and jolly and full of life. Even in the cartoon shows Mrs. Claus knew best. Who likes a skinny Santa?

  It seemed a terrible irony that in order to save his life, he’d had to give up the very thing that gave it meaning.

  He’d talked it over with a counselor, who tried to tell him that this was the natural response to a health crisis and a major change in lifestyle—that he could and would find another healthy outlet if he simply looked for one. The doctor said that eventually Steve’s image of himself would shrink to his new slimmed-down size and that his mirror image would cease to be strange and alien. That he would begin to visualize the possibilities inherent in his brave new world.

  As if his physical size was the problem.

  No. He hadn’t even begun to explain the problem to the shrink before he realized he couldn’t. Doctor, I’m not feeling the Claus anymore.

  Ergh. Reality. Way to harsh my December mellow.

  Yeah. Maybe he’d gotten in a little too deep. He’d undergone an enforced lifestyle change and didn’t know how to deal. And of course, like always, his first instinct had been to run.

  Never mind.

  It would all be waiting for him when he got back.

  * * *

  As usual, Poppy had Chandler pinned with her enigmatic liquid-blue gaze. Par for the course, he thought as he pulled his keys from the ignition. He was bone tired and stiff from driving. They’d started south of Poway but the holiday traffic made a normally bad drive perfectly impossible, plus there’d been a terrible accident. Poppy hadn’t spoken a word since they’d passed it. Well. That was probably normal, right? Given Poppy’s history, he was lucky she hadn’t started screaming.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “You need the bathroom?”

  She nodded again.

  He got out of the car and walked around to the passenger side and opened the back door. He leaned in and braced his knee on the seat so he could unlatch the restraint system of the child safety seat and then he held his hands out. She wrapped her thin arms around his neck and let him pull her from the car and once again he was taken aback by how slight she was for her age. Had he been that small at five? He didn’t think so. His other nieces and nephews were sturdy, almost chunky little leaguers and girls who played tiny tot soccer. Compared to them, Poppy, the youngest of his siblings’ offspring and the only one who was an only child, was like a snowflake.

  Poppy felt like nothing in his arms, like a ghost child. The only thing about her that seemed to take up any space at all were her rich blue eyes, which seemed huge in a face made all the more dramatic by a sharp, sophisticated haircut that he always thought looked a little too grown-up for her. The dark silky strands conformed to her head like a cap, cut straight across her brows and blunt along her jawline. With those striking blue eyes it gave her the look of an eerie French doll.

  “Remember what we talked about?” he asked, unable to accompany her into the women’s room and too embarrassed to take her into the men’s without a plan in place.

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll go in first and make sure no one is in there,” he reiterated, because as plans went, it was a lousy one. “Then I’ll keep watch while you go.”

  “All right.” Her small mouth pursed as they approached the cinderblock building.

  “Jeez. This isn’t going to be easy.” It was late enough that there were few people there, but that only made it seem deserted and ominous.

  How did people do this with kids? How could a guy traveling with a daughter ever take her to the bathroom without looking like an overprotective maniac, a total perv, or both?

  “You stay right here.” He left a hand on her shoulder while he poked his head around and looked into the public bathroom. “I admit to being a little paranoid about this… Hello?”

  No sound came from the bathroom. He could feel Poppy squirming a little bit under his fingers. Maybe he was gripping her harder than necessary, but gods. He was responsible and he didn’t want to mess this up.

  “Is anyone in the men’s room?”

  His words echoed in the seemingly empty space. He caught Poppy’s hand and took her in, settling her into the stall after peeking to make sure it was marginally clean and there was paper.

  “Close the door there, honey, and I’ll be going right here. Knock before you come out, okay?” Chandler prayed harder than he’d ever prayed that he could pee faster than she could. He heard her fiddling with paper, and he glanced back at the stall while he shot his stream only to see the backs of her shoes. Apparently she was facing the toilet.

  Okay, that’s odd.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m making a paper seat, Uncle Chandler,” she told him. “Mama showed me for when they don’t have those things that come from the wall.”

  Chandler shook off and zipped back up, then washed his hands as fast as humanly possible. “I’m going to go stand by the door and keep people out, so hurry up, please.”

  “’Kay.”

  “Maybe we’ll get lucky and no one will need the men’s room for a couple more minutes.” He stationed himself at the door, arms folded, with the most pleasant look on his face that he could manage. He tried to make it a face that said, Hi, I’m just a guy with a kid, have mercy on me because I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. He waited for a few minutes, then called back inside. “You o
kay?”

  “Mmm-hmm, Uncle Chandler, I gotta go number two.”

  He managed sentry duty for a few more minutes without asking Poppy if she was all right—more than once or twice anyway. Her voice pretty much said these things take time and he should have more patience than he did. He was going to ask again when a vintage red Dodge rumbled up and parked. It was a perfectly beautiful little muscle car that looked to be from the sixties, all shiny red paint and chrome, sporting white racing strips down the nose and around the back end like war paint. It had one of those hoods with bumps like nostrils and a wreath tied between its headlights with a big red bow. Christmasy. A man stepped out, and Chandler watched him turn and lock the door with a key.

  You hardly ever saw that anymore, he thought. Most cars had remote locks, and if they were higher end they had those keyless entry systems, like a Mercedes, which locked automatically. He heard a flush and turned to say, “Wash your hands,” to Poppy, who liked to think a passing acquaintance with a drip or two of water should be all that was required to satisfy the letter of the law, as if his rules about sanitation were just guidelines, really. “With soap.”

  Poppy made some comment, and he turned to find the man who’d driven up in the red car standing right in front of him. He prepared his best explanation for why he’d seemed to be talking out loud to no one in case he was asked. The man just stood there, waiting patiently. It got awkward after a minute, and Chandler gave up.

  He smiled. “Have you noticed how often you see people who appear to be talking to themselves these days? I’ve stopped wondering if they’re crazy. I don’t even look for the Bluetooth earpiece anymore.”

  The man smiled back, a very wide, white smile. Some people looked like their pets, but this man resembled his car. He was smooth and solid and the way he wore his hair was a little old-fashioned. He was strong and upright, he seemed special, in the good way, and he put Chandler at ease almost immediately.

  “I know what you mean. People standing around having half a conversation used to be a bad thing.”

  “My niece is in there.” Chandler jerked a thumb toward the door behind him and shrugged apologetically. “I didn’t want her to go in the women’s by herself. I’m just waiting for her to be done.”

  “I see. I can wait.”

  “Awkward traveling with a little girl.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes,” Chandler sighed. “Especially—”

  “Uh-oh.” Poppy’s little girl voice echoed off the tiles.

  “Poppy? You okay?”

  “I got my pants wet on the floor.”

  “How bad?” Chandler called. “Do you need to change them?”

  “Is the floor pee water?” Poppy’s voice rose in alarm. “I don’t want pee water on my pants, Uncle Chandler.”

  Two more men walked up, maybe college age. One was hopping a little from foot to foot. They stood behind the white-haired man with the nice smile but didn’t look as patient.

  “Okay, just…dress and come out,” Chandler begged. “If you need to change, you can change in the car, okay? I have your duffel bag in the trunk.”

  “But…”

  “I’m sure it’s not pee water, honey.” Chandler was starting to sweat. “Sometimes they uh…hose the place down and it takes a while for it to dry.”

  Poppy called out. “Do I still have to wash my hands?”

  Chandler looked toward the sky. “Not this time, Poptart. We have hand sanitizer in the car and you can use that.”

  “Okay.” It wasn’t a minute before she was coming out the door trailing a bit of toilet paper on her shoe. She tried to use one foot to get it off the other and succeeded after a couple of tries. “It was all wet.”

  “I know, Poppy.” He put a protective arm around her as he walked her back past the line of men waiting to use the bathroom, which was now up to four. “Let’s go, shall we?”

  “I need new pants, please.”

  So polite.

  Sometimes he wished she’d say something absurd or just a little bit rude. Something that wasn’t necessary. When he was a kid he barraged his parents with endless chatter. He’d had to identify every single animal, orange tree and oil well. He’d been compelled to read every sign out loud, pointed out every McDonald’s, and he’d begged to be set free at every play place along the highway. His parents would have been praying for him to shut up or administering motion sickness pills—although he’d never gotten carsick—because it made him sleep.

  He didn’t blame her for being quiet, but he saw any talking she did as a good sign. The doctors said that after the accident she hadn’t spoken at all for nearly two days, and they were worried she might not for a while. They told him that when he’d arrived she seemed to get her bearings. Not even a month had passed since her parents died. She didn’t have to chatter like a magpie, but he’d hoped that she would loosen up more with him.

  She turned her head and looked back the way they came. “Did you see that man?”

  “What man?” He followed her gaze. No one lingered outside after they left so he didn’t know which man she was talking about.

  “The white-haired man? That was Santa Claus.”

  “Santa—have you seen him somewhere before?”

  “No.” She tugged his hand and pointed to the car with the wreath. “But look at that car. It must be Santa Claus.”

  “I don’t think so. Don’t you think Santa drives a sleigh?” He stared at her in amazement. She had just talked more than she had all day. He unlocked the car and helped her into her seat without fastening her in so she could change when he found her something to wear.

  “If I was Santa, I’d drive that.”

  But just how paranoid was he? He locked her in when he went around to the trunk to get her pants out, as if someone would take her, or drive off with the car while Poppy was inside it. How had his brother lived with the weight of his responsibility, this crushing sense that he had to protect this perfect little person, day in and day out?

  “How does anyone do this?” he muttered.

  When he returned, Poppy was watching the white-haired man as he came back from the bathroom. He didn’t seem to be in any hurry to get to his car. He gazed up at the sky, flicking the top of a Zippo lighter with his thumb, open, then closed, open, then closed again.

  “Here are your pants, sweetie. When we get to Grandma’s, we’ll wash up the ones that got wet.”

  She put her blanket over her legs and he looked away while she changed. After she’d accomplished that, he fastened her safety harness and walked around to slump into the driver’s seat. He was more than ready to key the ignition and be on his way, but when he tried to start up the motor, nothing happened. It didn’t even turn over. He fussed with the key a couple more times and pumped the gas to get it to turn over, and still nothing happened except that he smelled gas through the rolled-down window.

  “Shit.” He slumped.

  Poppy put her hands over her ears.

  “I’m sorry, sweetheart. The engine won’t start.” He cursed again more softly, then got out and knelt on the pavement to look under the dash where the latch to release the hood was hidden. “I’m going to go have a look.”

  He didn’t tell her that he had no idea what to look for. She’d find out soon enough. In fact, he expected that it wouldn’t take her long to realize that men came in two different flavors, and one of those flavors could fix cars. The other, the group to which he belonged, were utterly useless without a cup of coffee in one hand and a computer mouse in the other. He looked under the hood of the car and felt like the apes at the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey. He peeked around again to shoot Poppy a smile. A voice from behind him made him turn.

  “Something I can help you with?”

  The man Poppy had called Santa stood right behind him. Except a less Santa-like person could not exist. This man was tall, buff and fine. He was probably less than ten years older than Chandler, if that.

  “Hell yes. I hav
e no clue what to look for. I raised the hood as a cry for help.”

  The big man’s nose wrinkled as he sniffed the air. “Did you flood it?”

  “Probably, but only as a last resort. It didn’t start before I pumped on the gas. Didn’t even turn over.”

  “Gas won’t help you if she won’t turn over. You can’t start a fire without a spark.”

  “Ha, like the song.” Chandler peeked at Poppy again and said the first thing that came to him, straight from The Boss himself. “Just dancing in the dark here, care to join me?”

  The man pulled his head back and looked Chandler over thoughtfully. Wow. Sky-blue eyes held an erotic challenge that was unmistakable. He followed up that look with a slow grin. A guy smaller than him and with less presence would probably get himself killed giving some guy a look like that. “Maybe some time when you’re not so preoccupied.”

  That got Chandler’s full attention, and he rose, except he misjudged where he was and hit his head on the hood. Ow. He slapped his hand over it to stop the sting. “What did you say?”

  “Are you nervous about something?”

  “No. Why should I be nervous?” Chandler wanted to disintegrate under that curious stare.

  “Okay. Yeah. I’m taking care of my niece. I keep thinking I have to keep an eye on her the whole time. It’s very distracting. I mean…I don’t want to be distracted from watching her…”

  “Is she likely to try to escape?”

  “No.” Chandler laughed. “It’s not that. I’ve only…I didn’t even think about public bathrooms and leaving her in the car if I need to look under the hood. I never considered what would happen if we got stuck.”

  The man’s lips twitched. “Kids are pretty popular these days, though. People seem to take them lots of places.”

  “Yeah. I know,” Chandler acknowledged with a sigh. “I just never had one before and I’m not used to thinking like a parent. What will I do if I can’t get the car started? We can’t just sit here. It’s not safe, is it? I just need to get to my mom’s. Once we’re there we’ll figure this out.”