Christmas Bliss

by Mary Kay Andrews

  “You have a real job,” I said finally. “I’m not asking you to give up fishing, just because we’re having a child. I would never expect that. I just want you to keep your cell phone charged. That’s all. Just make sure your phone works!”

  “And I appreciate that,” he said gravely. “But this is something I need to do. There’s a guy at the marina, he’s been bugging me about selling him the Jitterbug. It’s running great, so now’s the time to sell it. Maybe I’ll pick up a spare charter on weekends, or something, after the baby’s older, but I promise you, BeBe, from now on, you won’t have to be living The Old Man and the Sea.”

  “Don’t you dare,” I said, my eyes flaring. “If you quit fishing, what will you do? I don’t want you hanging around here all day, telling me how to do my job running the Breeze.”

  “I’ve got options,” he said. “Plenty of ’em, and none of ’em involve me second-guessing you.”

  He stood up and yawned widely, and I did the same. He extended his hand. “Come on. If I’m gonna lay a roof tomorrow and find a job, you better take me to bed.”

  * * *

  An hour later, with Harry spooned up behind me, his breath warm in my ear, the baby kicked so hard, it jolted me awake. A moment later, I heard rain falling softly on the inn’s tin roof. It was late. Too late to wake Harry. I fell back asleep, praying our blue tarp wouldn’t blow away. That we’d find another roofing crew. That Harry would give up the idiotic idea of selling the Jitterbug. Mostly, though, I prayed that I’d wake up and discover that I was not still married to Richard Hodges.

  Chapter 10

  Weezie

  Cookie Parker was standing behind the cash register, counting out the day’s receipts, when I walked into Babalu. His dyed blond hair was slicked back from his receding hairline, and he was decked out in his favorite Christmas finery: a Burberry plaid bow tie, cashmere argyle sweater, and dark green corduroy slacks.

  He looked up and gave me a broad smile. “You’re just in time,” he said, coming out from around the mahogany store counter. He went to the door and pulled down the shade and locked it. “Manny’s upstairs, and he’s got dinner almost ready. Boliche, black beans and yellow rice, fried plantains, and flan.”

  “Oh nooo,” I groaned. “It sounds divine. I adore Cuban food, but I’ve just come from a baby shower, and I’m still stuffed from all the goodies. Besides, I don’t dare gain an ounce. Mama’s altering her wedding dress for me, and she’ll have a cat-fit if I’m too fat to fit into it.”

  “You? Fat? Never happen,” Cookie said. “On the other hand, Manny and I have already made our New Year’s resolutions. Come January first, we’re going to start running and hitting the gym. And no more Cuban food.” He shrugged. “Anyway, that’s what we’re telling ourselves.” He tugged at my hand. “If you won’t eat, at least come upstairs and have a drink.”

  “I’ll come upstairs, but only for a minute. I actually came over to ask a huge favor.”

  I followed Cookie through the gift shop’s back room and up the staircase to their sumptuous apartment above the shop. The irresistible smell of garlic and roasting meat wafted into the hallway.

  We found Cookie’s partner, Manny, in the kitchen, chopping onions and humming along to the Christmas music blaring from an iPod deck. The polished mahogany table in the kitchen’s bay window was set for two, with Spode Christmas tree china, heavy crystal goblets, and highly polished sterling silver flatware laid out on an antique deep red paisley cloth. A footed silver compote held a tight cluster of lush white roses. I’d had dozens of meals with these two men, and this was how they always dined—even if they were just having a breakfast of Pop-Tarts and coffee.

  “Weezie!” Manny put down his knife and kissed both my cheeks. “Thank God you’re here! I’ve made this huge feast, and there’s only the two of us for dinner tonight.” He reached into a glass-fronted cupboard and grabbed a third plate.

  “Sorry, I can’t stay,” I said. “I’ve got to go home and pack. I’m going to New York in the morning!”

  Manny put the plate back into the cupboard but brought out a wineglass and poured me a glass of merlot.

  “You’re going to New York? What fun! Oh my God. Christmas in New York.” Cookie got a dreamy look in his eyes. Although he was over fifty now, and closing in on three hundred pounds, Cookie loved to regale me with gossipy stories of life in the big city, and on the road with the touring company of Les Misérables.

  “This trip is pretty sudden, isn’t it?” Manny asked. “Has something come up?”

  “Not an emergency or anything like that. It’s just that Daniel’s been working so hard, and he’s got a terrible cold, and he’s lonely, and I’m lonely … and after all, I’ve never been to New York, and I might never get another chance like this, and before I could stop her, BeBe bought me a ticket with her frequent-flier miles … so I guess that means I’m going to New York.”

  “Does he know you’re coming?” Manny asked.

  “I haven’t told him. I’ve got the address of the place he’s staying. I thought I’d just take a cab over there and surprise him.”

  “That is so romantic,” Cookie said. “So, what kind of a favor do you need? A ride to the airport? We can keep an eye on the shop if you need us to, but I’m assuming the girls can handle everything while you’re gone.”

  “Actually, I could use a ride to the airport, and the girls do know how to keep things running at the shop. The thing is … I’m going to stay until Friday. And with the wedding just a week away, I know it’s really crazy and irresponsible to just take off like this, but…”

  “Say no more,” Manny said. “We’ll take care of everything. You know I’ve already ordered all the flowers, and I’ll check in with the boys over at Guale later in the week, just to make sure I have all the silver serving pieces we’ll need polished and ready.”

  “Leave everything to us,” Cookie added. “Now. Tell us what exciting plans you have while you’re in the city.”

  I blinked. “I really haven’t had time to make any plans. The main thing is to be there for Daniel. I want to see the restaurant, Cucina Carlotta, where he’s guest chef, and then—I’ve dreamed of going to New York at Christmas since I was a little girl and watched Miracle on 34th Street.”

  “You’ll see a Broadway show, of course,” Cookie said. “You absolutely must.”

  “I’d love that. It doesn’t matter what, since I’ve never seen a real Broadway show. Whatever it is, I know it’ll be wonderful.”

  “The theater’s nice, but as a retailer, you really must take a stroll down Fifth Avenue to see all the fabulous Christmas windows,” Manny said. “There’s Saks and Tiffany and Bergdorf Goodman and Lord & Taylor…”

  “And Chanel and Bloomingdale’s and Cartier,” Cookie added.

  “And the FAO Schwarz toy store, so amazing at Christmas. And whatever you do, you absolutely have to go over to the Upper East Side and see the Ralph Lauren town house,” Manny said.

  I laughed. “Guys, I’m only going to be in the city for five days.”

  “I wish I were going with you,” Cookie said wistfully. “Savannah’s lovely, of course, and I do not miss the cold weather and the dirt and the noise…”

  “And rude New Yorkers,” Manny put in.

  “They’re not really rude. They’re busy. Preoccupied,” Cookie said.

  “Rude,” Manny insisted.

  “Christmas in New York,” Cookie said. “Enchanting. Promise you’ll take lots of pictures, Weezie.”

  “I promise. So you really don’t mind taking over the wedding planning? There’s really not that much left to do, but you know how things crop up at the last minute…”

  “Leave it to us,” Manny said. “A wedding like this is nothing for Manny and Cookie.”

  * * *

  I laughed uneasily. “But, now guys, remember, this is just supposed to be a quiet, understated wedding. Simple. Charming. Not fussy.”

  Manny offered me a bland, noncommittal s
mile.

  “No snow machines,” I said sternly, a reference to an over-the-top Christmas display the two of them staged in order to win the historic district decorating contest a previous year. “No children’s choir from the orphanage.”

  Cookie looked crestfallen.

  “And definitely, positively, no horse-drawn Cinderella carriages arriving to whisk us away on our honeymoon. We’re not Prince William and Kate. We’re Weezie and Daniel. Remember that. Simple, understated.”

  “What about a simple, understated pair of bagpipers greeting your guests?” Manny asked hopefully.

  “Negatory.”

  He exchanged a worried look with Cookie. “Photo booth with period costumes for the guests?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Borrr-ing!” Cookie said. “So unimaginative. You might as well just have punch and cookies at your mama’s house.”

  We both laughed at that suggestion. They’d been to my mother’s house and tasted her atrocious, if well-intentioned cooking.

  “I better go,” I said finally. “I’ve got a million things to do yet. I’ve got to pack and call Mama and let her know I’m leaving town…”

  Manny and Cookie walked me downstairs and out the front door. The temperature had dropped after the sun went down, but it was still in the low sixties. A trolley car full of tourists rounded the square, and we heard the patter of the tour guide over her microphone, explaining the history of Troup Square.

  We stood on the street outside Babalu, gazing at the hundreds of tiny twinkling lights that illuminated their storefront.

  “I can’t believe anything on Fifth Avenue will be any prettier than this,” I said, giving both men a hug. “Thank you so much for agreeing to take care of all the wedding stuff. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate all you’re doing for us. Just remember—it’s only a wedding, right? Not some Broadway extravaganza.”

  Manny sighed dramatically. “Well, it’s your party,” he conceded. “But so far your version sounds like a perfectly grim affair.”

  “Positively Mormon,” Cookie agreed.

  “Or Mennonite,” Manny said.

  Chapter 11

  Weezie

  I squeezed my way through the crowds at LaGuardia’s baggage claim and inched toward the carousel, craning my neck to look for my black suitcase with the jaunty red bow tied to the handle. But two beefy men with European accents and thick gold chains around their necks blocked my vision. I tried to sidestep them, but was cut off by a tall bored-looking blonde in a full-length mink coat and tall, black patent-leather boots with six-inch spike heels.

  It was noisy and stuffy, and people were jostling me around like I didn’t exist. Finally I gave up and started jostling back. Fifteen minutes passed. The crowds gathered their luggage and dispersed, until there were only three battered black suitcases circling the conveyor belt—and none of them were mine.

  “Excuse me?” The baggage clerk in the Delta office was busily texting on her phone and didn’t look up.

  I coughed loudly. “Ma’am? Excuse me. I came in on a flight from Savannah, and my bag wasn’t on the conveyor belt.”

  She still didn’t look up. “Flight number?”

  I had to check my boarding pass. “Twenty-seven-eleven.”

  She finished sending her text, put the phone down, and checked the computer monitor in front of her. “All bags on that flight have been unloaded.”

  “Not mine.” I handed her my baggage claim check.

  She slid a piece of paper in my direction. “Fill that out. Put your cell phone number or the phone number where you’ll be staying in the city. Also the address. Your flight was full, so maybe your bag is coming on a later flight. We’ll give you a call when it arrives, and have it sent out to you.”

  “Today?” I asked hopefully. “All my clothes are in that suitcase.” I’d dressed hurriedly that morning, blue jeans, a white shirt, red cashmere pullover sweater, and my favorite shoes, a pair of gorgeous black crocodile Stuart Weitzman loafers I’d picked up at the Junior League thrift store in Atlanta for five dollars. I was thankful that I’d kept BeBe’s coat with me on the flight.

  She shrugged. “Whenever. It’s Christmas season, you know.” Satisfied that she had exerted the absolute minimum requirement for fulfilling the absolute minimum amount of customer service, she looked over my shoulder at the people lined up behind me. “Next.”

  * * *

  It didn’t seem possible, but the terminal was now even more crowded than it had been an hour ago. I moved with the crowd, like a salmon swimming upstream, heading for the exit doors. I felt a hand tugging my sleeve.

  “Miss?” A man I could describe only as short, thin, and swarthy gave me an eager smile. “You are needing a car?” He was wearing a faded black suit coat, white dress shirt, and skinny black necktie. He looked semi-official to my untrained eyes.

  “Well, a taxi.”

  “I have car. Much better. You are going where?”

  “Um, the East Village, I think, but I was just going to take a cab.”

  He shook his head vigorously. “Car is nicer. I take you. Very fast. Very safe.” He put a hand at the small of my back, and I tried to shrink away, but he kept it firmly in place, steering me out the doors of the terminal.

  Where a cold blast of arctic air nearly sent me running back into that hot, noisy terminal. BeBe had been right. The temperatures must have been in the teens, and the air was raw and damp and howling. Something cold and wet touched my cheek. A snowflake.

  “Wait,” I said, struggling to don my heavy coat. He stood, shifting impatiently from one foot to another. When I’d barely managed to get my arms into the sleeves, he was tugging at my arm again. “This way to car.”

  He led me past a long line of yellow cabs, across two strips of tarmac, to a parking area. I had to trot to keep up with him. Finally, we came to a row of parked black sedans. Still pulling at the sleeve of my coat, he led me to a black Buick that had seen better days.

  He opened the back door with a flourish. “Car.”

  * * *

  I gazed out the grime-smeared window, eager for my first glimpse of the big city. It soon struck me that I wasn’t actually in New York. Yet. My first impression was of a world etched in charcoal. Gray highway, gray sky, black cars, twisted leafless gray trees, the only real color was from the yellow taxis packed in on the road ahead and beside and behind us. The snow was falling softly, wiped away by the sedan’s screeching windshield wipers. A lifelong Southerner and native Savannahian, I’d seen snow, of course, mostly while I was living in Atlanta during my first marriage. But only once or twice. That snow was innocuous, fluffy, and white, a thin covering barely enough to coat streets and yards before it vanished in the next day’s sunshine.

  Traffic was the thickest I’d ever seen, a solid unmoving mass of cars. The driver muttered to himself, laid on his horn, and swung the car sharply to the right, directly in the path of a long black limousine beside us. I closed my eyes, already feeling the inevitable collision. The limo honked back, but somehow the driver forced his way into the lane.

  The sedan’s radio was tuned to a sports talk station, and the discussion, mounted at top volume, seemed to be a heated debate about the prospects for the Rangers, which left my driver in a fury. He was screaming obscenities and pounding the steering wheel. “Fuck the Rangers. Nobody care about Rangers.” He jabbed at the radio’s push-button controls, changing stations, tuning now to an ear-splittingly loud rap music station with a thumping bass that made the whole backseat vibrate. My temples began to throb.

  “Could you please turn that down a little?” I asked timidly. No response. Finally, emboldened by the driver’s bad manners, I tapped his shoulder.

  “Hey! Turn it down, please. Okay?”

  He glanced at me in the rearview mirror, and I could see his scowl, but he did finally turn the volume down.

  The Buick’s thermostat was turned up to the blast-furnace setting, and I could feel perspiration bead
ing up on my face and neck, and sweat trickling down my back. My driver was sweating too, but he seemed oblivious to the thick garlic-scented fumes wafting through the car’s interior. I tried rolling my window down for a breath of fresh air, but the crank window handle was broken. Out of desperation, I shed the heavy coat, laying it gingerly across my lap.

  We paid some tolls, and eventually we merged onto an elevated highway that seemed to cut directly through a gritty gray morass of industrial buildings and tenement houses shoved right up against the highway’s edge. At one point, as we inched along, I looked over to the right and found myself staring directly into an apartment window, eyeball to eyeball with a fat man in a greasy undershirt who appeared to be standing at a stove cooking something. I looked away, embarrassed to intrude on his privacy, but when I looked back, he gave me a jaunty salute with his spatula. So far, it was the friendliest encounter I’d had since landing at LaGuardia two hours earlier. I smiled and waved back.

  Suddenly, the driver floored the Buick’s accelerator, zipping in and out of lanes, alternately speeding and tailgating. I was desperately searching for my seat belt when the car hit a pothole so deep, it bounced me nearly off my seat.

  “Hey!” I said sharply, but the driver didn’t even turn around. Anyway, the search for a seat belt was fruitless, so I simply hung on to the cracked plastic seat back and prayed we’d reach our destination before I got jounced out of all my dental work.

  After we left the elevated highway we were on an ancient steel truss-work bridge which the signage declared to be the Williamsburg Bridge. This, I concluded, was definitely not the scenic route to Daniel’s apartment. Snowflakes swirled around in the air outside, and I longed for just a lungful of what I was sure was cold, clean air.

  We drove through dense, urban streets. No signs of Christmas here. Just more stunted trees, soot-blackened buildings crowded up against streets, and sidewalks heaped with bags of trash, which were now receiving a picturesque frosting of snow. I saw street signs, but of course, they meant nothing to me. My driver hunched over the steering wheel, muttering in a low voice and an unfamiliar language.