The Date Before Christmas: A Novel

  It was after three by the time they struck the ice and made their first circumnavigation beneath the magical New York City skyline, under heavy gray snow clouds and a busy wet wind. Several times, Paul wobbled and nearly fell. Dina seized his arm, steadied him and guided him around the turns until he gained balance and confidence and began to relax. They skated together for a time, eventually finding the perfect glide and comfortable speed, circling the space, as the fresh cold wind rushed across their faces, whistling in their ears.

  It was after 5 o’clock, and darkness had settled in, when they left the lighted rink, mixing into the busy throngs on their way to the nearest subway. Dina had never been on a subway, and she was anxious to ride one. She’d researched the downtown train they should take to her next surprise destination. She tugged a curious Paul down the stairs to the crowded platform, assuring him she knew what she was doing.

  “Where are we going?” Paul asked, his ears still stinging from the cold.

  “It’s a surprise,” Dina said, glancing about at the crowds, waiting anxiously for the next train.

  Minutes later, they were inside the congested rush hour train, hanging on to the pivoted grab handles as the train went shuddering and thundering down the tracks.

  “This is fun,” Dina said, with a big smile. “It’s like a roller coaster.”

  Paul shrugged. “If you say so.”

  They left the train at Christopher Street, heading toward Washington Square Park.

  “What are you up to?” Paul asked.

  “I hope you’re in good voice,” Dina said, pulling her ski hat more snugly over her ears.

  As they approached the Washington Square Arch, taking in the glorious, glowing 45-foot spruce Christmas tree under the iconic arch, they heard a brass quartet cranking out Christmas songs. An enthusiastic group of carolers was singing along, many off-key, many singing the wrong words.

  Paul stopped short, with a spread of hands. “What’s this?”

  “We are going to sing Christmas carols.”

  Dina snatched his hand and yanked him into the crowd. They were handed complimentary song books by a lanky, teenaged girl, and Paul watched in amazement as Dina broke into Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly, in a rich soprano voice.

  She nudged him in the ribs and urged him on, and Paul struggled to find any true notes to Santa Claus is Coming to Town and Winter Wonderland. Just as the brass quartet erupted into Jingle Bells, it began to snow, and the carolers broke into cheers and thunderous applause as they bounced through the verses, kids clapping, dogs barking and Paul trying to keep up, his wandering tone-deaf baritone fortunately swallowed up by the brass and spirited singing all around him.

  They ducked into a cozy, packed café in Greenwich Village with open brick walls, track lighting and a roaring fireplace. Over the bar, a wide TV lit up a football game, and there was a sense of fun and vitality about the place.

  Seated at a rickety corner table, Dina hovered over a hot chocolate, cold fingers laced around her cup, and Paul sipped a cognac. Dina teased him about his singing, and he shrugged, saying, with some pride, that he’d held his own during the last chorus of Jingle Bells.

  Dina happened to glance down at her phone, and she saw a text from Charlie Taylor that had just blinked in. Paul saw her shoulders slump and her features fall into concern.

  “What is it?”

  “A text from my boss at the restaurant I work at in Colorado.”

  Paul sat up straight. “What does he want?” Paul said, sharply, annoyed.

  She sighed. “I don’t know.”

  “Ignore it.”

  “I can’t. I have to be back to work on Christmas Eve.”

  Dina tapped the message and read:

  Need you back, Dina. Tomorrow. Patti is out sick with the flu or something, and your replacement is a disaster. I’m going crazy here! All the regulars are asking about you. We’re going down in flames. Get back as soon as you can.

  Dina sat back in her seat and her head slipped to one side, as if she were wilting. She exhaled a breath of resigned disappointment.

  “What is it?” Paul asked, leaning forward.

  “My Cinderella moment is over.”

  “What are you talking about? You have one more day.”

  “No, I don’t. I’ve got to leave as soon as I can.”

  “What? For a restaurant job?”

  “Yes, a restaurant job. It’s the only job I have. It’s how I pay my rent, Paul.”

  “That’s just silly. One more day won’t matter. I’ve made plans for us. It was going to be a surprise.”

  Dina forced a bright expression. “So, tell me.”

  “You can’t leave now. No way. He can’t do that. That wasn’t part of the deal and he knows it.”

  As soon as the words left his mouth, he wanted them back. He saw something flicker in Dina’s eyes. Her expression changed. She blinked rapidly.

  “What did you say?” she asked, her throat tightening.

  Paul sniffed, looking away. “Nothing. Nothing.” He took a quick swallow of the cognac. “It’s nothing. I mean, you said you didn’t have to leave until the morning of the 24th. That’s what I meant.”

  “No, you said, ‘That wasn’t part of the deal, and he knows it.’”

  Paul stuttered. “Well… Yes. Yes, right. The deal being you were not supposed to leave until…”

  She cut him off. “You said he can’t do that.”

  “Yes… Yes. That’s what I meant. You know… he can’t do that. He can’t just tell you to come back like that. Text him and tell him you’ll come back on the 24th, like you’re supposed to.”

  Dina slid her half-drunk cup of hot chocolate aside and straightened a little, watching him closely. Her mind worked it over—turned it over—the words, the images, her first impression, and little by little her mind began to clear. She’d seen him somewhere before. She knew him. Yes, she knew Paul.

  In the shaft of track lighting, Paul looked deeply into her twinkling, distrustful eyes.

  He swallowed, afraid he’d given himself away before he could tell her the truth.

  Dina focused on him, trying to really see him, and some vague image swimming around in her head began to surface.

  “Dina, look, it’s loud in here. Let’s go someplace quiet and talk.”

  A long moment passed, as the surrounding laughter, talk and TV noise fell into the silence and remained on the periphery of Dina’s mind. All she could hear was a conversation from the past—that night in early December—the night she’d truly met Paul Smith or whoever his name was for the first time.

  “I hope you’ll come back,” Dina said. “Please give us another try. Things are always so hectic in December, before the holidays. Are you from out of town?”

  He slid his credit card back into his wallet and picked up the pen to sign the credit card slip. “Yes, I’m from out of town, but I come to ski at the resort nearby.”

  And then Paul’s original face began to appear, just a fuzzy, out-of-focus image at first, like the hazy sun covered by clouds. Slowly, like clouds parting, that first face—his original face—shined brightly, and the painful truth came crashing down on top of her. Now she saw, with crystal clear eyes, the man she’d waited on at Gallagher’s back in November—the same man who was now sitting opposite her. The man she had fallen for and made love to. The man she’d trusted was good and kind and honest.

  In Paris, at the Louvre, for a split second, she’d recognized him, but their meeting had been out of context and out of time—so far away and so foreign a place from Gallagher’s Restaurant in Pine Village, Colorado. She’d disregarded it, pushed it away.

  But that’s how it was when you first meet someone. On first meeting, a person takes on a particular persona, and that often changes as you get to know them. The original impression is erased, replaced by the new one, the now familiar one. How many times after you get to know a person have you said, “When I first met you, I thought you were totally differ
ent than you really are.”

  Dina stared hard at Paul, and she had that sinking feeling that she was seeing someone she’d never truly seen before. Who was this guy she’d made love to? He had lied to her. He had manipulated her.

  Paul saw recognition and disappointment in her icy stare. He lowered his head, steepled his hands and lifted his troubled eyes.

  “I wanted to tell you, Dina. I wanted to tell you from the beginning. I wanted to tell you the other night. I wanted to tell you yesterday.”

  She was silent, feeling her heart kick in her chest, feeling her head throb. She was feeling nauseous. She was feeling so many battling things going on inside.

  “Yes, so you did. Yes, you did want to tell me,” she said, her voice dying away in a low monotone.

  The waitress picked her way through the crowds and came up to their table. She was thin, and had very red lips and a tight cap of blonde hair. “Everything okay over here?” she asked, her timing perfect in a dark sort of way, speaking in a Southern accent.

  Paul didn’t stir.

  Dina raised her eyes, smiling faintly. “Just a check, please.”

  “I’ll pay,” Dina said, reaching into her purse. “It’s your money anyway.”

  Dina stood up and tossed down two 20 dollar bills onto the table.

  Paul shot up.

  “I want to be alone, Paul,” Dina said. “I need to think.”

  “Dina, at least let me explain. Please. Don’t walk away like this.”

  She shouldered into her coat and nodded. “No. Leave me alone.”

  “Dina, please. Please, can we talk? Please?”

  Dina glared at him. “Okay…but not for long. I need to pack and get home.”

  CHAPTER 19

  They hurried along McDougal Street, past the cafes, the crowds and the shops, shoulders hunched, their heads bent against the wind, slinging snow into their faces.

  “Why didn’t you just tell me from the start, Paul? I don’t think I would have cared. I would have been flattered. I am flattered. I mean, what girl wouldn’t be flattered? I’d be one crazy girl not to be flattered by all you did. When I think of all the arrangements and the money and the…” She lifted her hand and then dropped it, the words trailing away. “I don’t know, I just don’t know, Paul. I just wish you’d told me, that’s all. It just gives me a weird feeling. It’s confusing. I just don’t know if I can trust you.”

  “Dina, would you have taken the trip if you’d known I’d given it to you? If I had personally offered it to you?”

  She glanced over. “I don’t know. Yes… I don’t know. Probably not. It wouldn’t have seemed right, but maybe I would have.” She shook her head. “I just don’t know.”

  “Dina, I never intended to meet you in Paris. I never intended to go to Europe at all. It wasn’t part of my original plan.”

  She looked at him, doubtfully.

  “It’s true. As silly or as corny as it sounds, I gave you the vacation on some sudden impulse that even I didn’t understand at the time. I saw you working there in that stressful place and you were so good at it and you were so kind. I saw how people responded to you—how much they liked you. You were always smiling, even though I saw how tense you were. So, maybe it was the tinny sappy Christmas music or the tree or the lights, or just because it was the Christmas season, I don’t know. I just wanted to do something nice for you. The idea just popped into my head, and I wanted to give you something you couldn’t give yourself. It’s just that I hadn’t done anything good for anybody in a long time… in a very long time, so I planned it. That’s it. That’s all there was to it. So, I followed my impulse, never intending to follow you.”

  She stopped, studying him, as snow blurred the world, settling in his hair. A snapping wind was biting into their faces and they winced.

  Paul glanced about, trying to find the right words. “Look, can we go somewhere out of this weather? Somewhere we can talk? It’s vicious out here.”

  Minutes later they were in a cab traveling uptown in silence. When Paul had told the driver to take them to the Empire State Building, Dina turned with interest, but didn’t speak.

  “I assume you haven’t been yet?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “No, I ran out of time. I was going to go tomorrow.”

  They left the cab at 34th Street and passed through the revolving door into the luminous marble art deco lobby. Fortunately, the lines weren’t as long as normal because of the harsh weather, and Paul easily purchased tickets to the 102nd floor Observatory.

  In the elevator, as they whooshed up past floor after floor, Dina’s feet were still numb from the cold, and she shrugged away a shiver, as she felt her entire body begin to sink into a dark depression. Why did her relationships always end this way? Yes, she was feeling very sorry for herself.

  They exited the small elevator on the 102nd floor, feeling the breath of heat as they strolled to the glass-enclosed area that surrounded an outdoor open-air terrace, equipped with high-power binoculars.

  Dina was astonished by the view, feeling a little dizzy and light-headed as she took in the wide, expanding New York City skyline, its brilliantly lit towers, the distant ghost of the Hudson River and the grid of blinking lights and busy streets, shadowy and impressionistic in the falling snow.

  Paul pointed. “You can see Central Park on a clear day, and all the way up to the Bronx.”

  “It’s beautiful in the snow,” Dina said. “I do wish I could stay longer. There’s so much I wanted to see and do.”

  “I wish you’d stay.”

  “I can’t. I’ve got to get back.”

  Paul shoved his hands into his coat pockets, watching the flecks of snow strike the glass. “My name is Paul Michael Alexander. The company I own and run is called Imperium and it’s a publicly traded company on the Nasdaq. My first wife, Olivia, used to love to come up here.”

  Dina faced him, searching, waiting.

  “Olivia was 23 when we married, I was 28. We were only married a little over seven months when she was killed.”

  Dina stared with a new, urgent interest.

  “It wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been so…immature and jealous. I loved her, but I’m not sure she knew it, or that I was even capable of letting her know it, if that makes any sense. I didn’t know how to tell her or show her. I worked too much. I left her alone too much. I wanted to be successful. I was obsessed with work and making money. Well, it’s an old story, isn’t it? Once, Olivia asked me why I had married her, because I was never home…only to sleep, and sometimes on the weekends. Do you know what I said? I said, ‘Because you’re always here when I need you.’”

  Paul lowered his head. “What a selfish thing to say. What an awful thing to say. I know it now, but I didn’t know it then.”

  He turned his sad face to her. “And then Olivia spent the weekend with one of her old high school sweethearts, who’d become a somewhat famous sports figure. I didn’t know about it because I was…well, I was in Paris on a business trip. Olivia loved to ride horses and she was a good rider. She’d grown up with horses down in Lexington, Kentucky. Well, anyway, she and her old lover were out riding together in upstate New York. Something must have spooked Olivia’s horse and he threw her. When she hit the ground, her neck snapped. She died instantly. She’d just turned 24. That was eight years ago.”

  Dina looked down and away. “I’m so sorry, Paul.”

  “I’m not telling you this for sympathy, Dina. I’m telling you because I want you to know everything. I want it all out in the open. I want you to believe me when I tell you that I didn’t intend to follow you to Paris. Paris was the last place I wanted to go. I heard about Olivia’s death when I was in Paris, and I swore when I left Paris that hot summer day, I’d never return.”

  Dina’s voice was low, nearly at a whisper. “So, why did you?”

  Paul considered her question. He shrugged a shoulder. “Curiosity. I wanted to see if you were having fun—or maybe I wanted to face
the past—face the pain and try to move on. Maybe that’s why I went. Maybe it was a little of both.”

  “I don’t understand, Paul. You didn’t even know me. It’s still hard for me to believe you did all this for me.”

  “Dina, I didn’t know it back in Colorado, but I was already falling in love with you, maybe even the first time I saw you I was falling in love with you. I’d been so closed up inside for so long, I didn’t know what to feel or how to feel. So, I gave you the vacation you couldn’t give yourself, and then…well, I just conveniently showed up. I followed you to the Louvre, to the Mona Lisa. But if you hadn’t bumped into me, I would have walked away, and that would have been the end of it. I do believe that.”

  Dina sighed and turned again to gaze out at the mass of lights and towers and drifting snow.

  “What are you thinking?” Paul asked.

  “I don’t know. I’m just confused or something. I thought I knew you. I mean, I saw you one way, and now you’re somebody else.”

  “I’m not, Dina. It’s still me. I’m the same.”

  “Okay, well then, I’m not the same, Paul.”

  “Will you stay, Dina? I can give you money, all the money you need.”

  She met his eyes. “No, Paul. I need to go home and think. These last few days have been wonderful, impossible and unreal, like something in a dream—even better than a dream, but I need to be alone for a while and get my balance back. I need to try to put this whole relationship of ours back together, piece by piece, to see if I can understand myself and you.”

  Paul nodded. “Okay, if that’s what you need to do. But when can I see you again?”

  Her smile was faint, not the warm, radiant smile that had always touched him.

  “I don’t know. I just don’t know. I should go now. I’ve got to pack and see if I can get a flight.”

  “You can take my corporate plane. I’ll make the arrangements.”

  “No, Paul. I want to make my own plans now. I want to get back to real life. No more fantasies.”