Christmas in LA

by Herb Scribner

  If he didn’t catch the significance of the story, he does now. I watch his eyes glisten and widen with the realization of what’s going on. This wasn’t just the lack of a present. It was the moment I learned the truth about Kris Kringle. It was the moment I learned that the man in the red suit was nothing but a folktale and legend.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “That’s a terrible way to find out.”

  “Yep,” I reply. “I got the game, though.”

  “How was it?”

  “Couldn’t play it. It made me too sad. Every time I went to play it, the magic was gone. I think part of getting Christmas gifts is knowing that there’s some magic involved, knowing that something more powerful and extraordinary can produce these gifts. So when I learned my dad just went to the grocery store and bought it, it didn’t mean anything to me anymore.”

  That was something I discovered back in the early days of adulthood, when I had my first round of therapy. That is a long story for another time.

  “Damn,” he says.

  “Yeah,” I say, sighing so heavy that I cough. I reach for my cup of egg nog, but pause because there’s nothing there. A buzz fills the air as Chives lowers himself down to the cup and pours another round. “Thanks, Chives.”

  “You’re welcome, ma’am.”

  I take a deep sip so that my throat is moistened and my stomach is full. Our eyes meet from across the room. The sympathy is raining out of him.

  “Your turn,” I say.

  “Oh man. Not sure I can top that.”

  “Try your best.”

  “Alright, are you sure?”

  “Of course.”

  “Alright. Here we go. So, when I was nineteen years old, there was this one gift I really wanted. I know, I know. You probably thought this was a kids tale. I asked an ex-girlfriend for it. Not Santa, not my parents. My ex-girlfriend Cate.. Spoiler alert. I never got it. And I’ve spent my entire life trying to find it since that moment. See, it all began when…”

  17.

  See, it all began when he worked in retail during the summer before his sophomore year of college. JC Penney, to be specific. Not a common place for college students to work in the summers. Most of his co-workers were single mothers who needed a reliable job to keep the lights on. This was one of those jobs.

  Ryan Rain sold shoes. Yes, a shoe salesman. The position even existed back then in 2007, and it’s still something that exists today. He wasn’t your traditional shoes salesman like your grandmother might have been used to back in her heyday, but he still did his best to convince people to buy shoes. Commission was three-hundredths of his salary, so it matters a lot how much he ended up earning.

  As most people do, Ryan made friends at his work. He’d walk into the store, dressed in his black slacks, collared shirt and tie, JC Penney name tag draping around his neck, and spoke pleasantly to almost everyone. He learned from a young age that making friends in various places often bred a better lifestyle. He befriended the women over at the Sephora corner of the story, instantly gaining him access to free samples of cologne and beauty products. He also befriended a few of the more party-driven co-workers, who invited him to all the fun extravaganzas in and around his hometown. The ability to keep his tolerance up even when he was out of school excited him. He could hold onto his party lifestyle even longer.

  And he met Cate.

  They met under circumstances that bewildered him. One night, one late night, he was leaving the store with heavy purple circles weighing down on his eyes. The elevator wouldn’t work, no matter how many times he shoved his finger against the button. Footfalls announced their pretense behind him. He turned and saw a woman standing there, luscious brown locks down past her wide bosom, her eyes dark brown and glaring, her smile entrapping and coy all at once. Her skin was a dark olive. She wasn’t white, not by any stretch, but not dark-skinned either. Somewhere in between.

  She pressed the button to the elevator. One ding later and it arrived before them. They both walked into the elevator together.

  “Sorry, I just have more grace than you,” she said.

  “That’s not a hard thing to accomplish.”

  “You’re saying you don’t have grace?”

  “I don’t have much of anything. Except dance skills.”

  “Aren’t you cute.”

  “Sometimes,” he said. The opening created itself. “I’m Ryan.”

  “Cate,” she said, shaking his hand.

  The elevator arrived at the bottom floor of the store and they left into the cool summer night together. Just a quick back-and-forth dialogue about the end of their shifts. When they reached the parking lot, she moved to the left and he went right, off to find their own individual cars.

  Every day after that they met up at work. Something seemed to draw them together, as though the heavens carried a fishing net and bait to make sure they found each other in life’s romantic pond. Sometimes Cate would stop in his department and talk about the best-looking shoes, the funniest customers. Other times Ryan would hurry over to the jewelry department and marvel at the diamond rings sitting under the glass cases. Back and forth they’d find each other and talk. Just talk and chat and joke and laugh. So much fun the two had together.

  They remained that way even after Ryan went back to school. She always kept in touch. His cellphone would ring with her phone calls or buzz with her texts. When he didn’t answer right away, she’d send a flurry of messages begging for his attention. She’d ask him questions late in the night. They’d talk into the phone from dusk to dawn. She’d visit him at his dorm, only thirty minutes from their home town, where they’d talk with his friends. They’d walk together through the campus, out into the night air, soaking up their time together. Neither could get away. They mattered to each other.

  He couldn’t figure out the truth about Cate for the longest time. He couldn’t decide how he felt. On one hand, she mattered the world to him. She was kind and sweet and beautiful. Intelligent, strong, confident. Anything and everything you’d want in a partner. And yet there was a separation. Call it distance, call it difference of opinions. No matter how much his stomach buzzed with excitement by seeing her name pop up on his cell phone, something separated them. Almost as though the heavens dropped a dam wall to separate them.

  Wednesday night before Thanksgiving, his prayers were answered. He sat alone in his dorm room, looking at his phone, trying his best to ignore the buzzing roar of partying students out in the hallway. His roommate Adam Stanley belligerently wrestled with Chris Langlois across the hall. All in good fun. Their dorm floor was known for throwing excellent parties and extravaganzas, so it wasn’t surprising that it happened again on the night before a vacation.

  His phone buzzed and it woke him from a near slumber. He ripped the phone off the desk to his eyes and saw it was Cate.

  “Cate, hey!”

  “Hey, Ryan. I wanted to talk to you tonight. I know you’ve probably got a lot going on, but I thought it was important we talk.”

  “Okay. About what?”

  “Well, I’ve been thinking. And I,” she pauses, as though she herself is discovering her words. “I want to get into a relationship with you, if you’d like to be in a relationship with me.”

  “Wait, are you serious?”

  “Completely.”

  “I would love to,” Ryan said, his mouth quivering with the thoughts of finally having her and being with her in complete fullness. That was the problem between them, wasn’t it? That’s what the separation was. No matter how much time they spent together, they never fully dove into a relationship.

  “Good. Maybe we can wait until after Christmas? After the busy time of the year ends?”

  The excitement dwindled. The glowing buzz dimmed, like a sunny day into sunset. Why did she want to wait? It made sense, in a way. Christmas was extraordinarily busy for their store, so they’d like face a hectic schedule that would keep them apart. Might as well start a relationship on the right foot.

/>   “Sounds great to me.”

  And so it was set. The two would be together once the holiday break ended. That’s not a common way to establish a relationship, but it was one that Ryan felt comfortable with. Few women found him attractive in his pimple-faced, overweight years. Rarely did they find his dorky and snarky attitude, filled with his brimming knowledge of engineering, code and Japanese pro wrestling to be anything substantial.

  But Cate — she accepted him for who he was. She’d nudge his shoulder and joke with him about his hobbies. She would praise him for having full confidence for who he was.

  Ryan smiled the entire ride home from his college campus. Driving home with his car stuffed with boxes didn’t matter. All that mattered was that the next day he would see her again at work for Black Friday. Sure it’d be a busy day when they’d be stuffed with customers from wall-to-wall. But they’d see each other. And they’d speak to each other. And they’d both know, deep down, that they were together.

  Black Friday was abuzz before he woke up. And when he did, he quickly got dressed and showered in his home, the one where he was raised, the one where he grew up. Few women came his way or excited him as much as Cate did. It was an oddity to think of her as he was getting dressed on that day.

  Before he left for the day, his mom approached him in their kitchen. She held a yellow sheet of paper with a litany of items written down.

  “What do you want for Christmas, Ryan? I’m struggling to find something for you.”

  His answer was clear.

  “Cate.”

  And he was out the door. The cool air of Black Friday wouldn’t bother him today.

  Waiting in line to find a parking spot killed his momentum. The line from the mall stretched like a rigid snake. His foot gently pressed the gas, keeping up the pace of the other drivers. He hoped he would reach a spot before she left for the day. Her shift probably ended before his. The jewelry department had an additional early morning sale. The shoe department was a nighttime highlight. Two ships might pass without seeing the other.

  The parking spot he eventually settled on was so far from the mall that only a light jog brought him to the his shift on time. The shoe department was stuffed from end to end like the turkey he just finished eating the previous day. Customers both small and large, male and female, grouchy and kind, begged him for shoes and boots and sneakers and sandals. A mad rush of people floated through the department’s maze. The rush washed over the shoe displays like a tidal wave, crashing down and leaving a shattered mess of materials behind in its wake.

  The seas calmed about an hour into his shift. Little by little the ships descended back into open waters, disappearing into the fog of the rest of the mall. He soon had nothing left to do but make sure his departments, which had been reduced to nothing but a demolished port city, remained clean and structured again.

  The claps of heels snagged his attention away from the cleanup. He knew that walk. He remembered it from the first night he met her. Cate’s walk. Of all walks to hear at this point of the day, this was the one that warmed his mind the most. His energy surged and mind raced with thoughts about what his first quip would be. Or would she approach him first? Who was going to make the first move?

  As the footsteps neared, he spun around on his heel to see her. And see her he did. Her eyes focused forward, her eyebrows turned inwards. She wore a flimsy red shirt and tight black sacks. And she focused her attention ahead of her Dead-set ahead of her. Not behind her, not to the side of her, not even to Ryan. Just dead ahead.

  “Cate!” he called.

  The only reply he received was the clapping of her heels. Two claps, three claps, four claps, five. The door at the end of the hall squeaked as she ripped it open. She disappeared behind it, leaving him alone on the ocean waters.

  “Don’t let it bother you,” his coworker Terra said from his right. She’s one of those single moms who needs the job so she can keep the lights on for her and her daughter. Ryan and Terra were mildly close, as close as you can get with a coworker who you only spend time with for a few months out of the year.

  “Sorry?”

  “Cate. She’s going through a lot,” Terra said, bending down and collecting the toilet paper that somehow flew from shoe boxes to the floor in the mad rush.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Everything with Ross.”

  “Ross?”

  “Oh, that’s right you’ve been at school.”

  Ryan still doesn’t have a clue what she’s talking about. Will no one explain to him what’s going on?

  Terra waved for him to follow her through the department to the back closet, where the tall stacks of shoes spied on them. They meander through those stacks until they reached a back door. Terra presses her pin code into the buttons on the door and it opens with a hiss. They slide into the break room — bright florescent lights shone over a room packed with three vending machines, a TV playing daytime television’s finest hour of programming, and a mini-kitchen — and walked to the far end.

  She pointed her index finger to the far wall covered in blue, red and black paper.

  “Ross. Cate’s boyfriend. He just left the area for his next mission in Iraq. She’s divested without him. She probably won’t be talking to anyone for awhile.”

  Somehow he moved his feet closer to the wall, dragging them like dead weights until he reached the photo hanging on the wall. Tall, tan-skinned and dressed in a military uniform.

  All this time.

  The one thing he wanted for Christmas.

  Gone like a holiday.

  Gone like a new pair of shoes.

  Gone like a sale.

  Just gone.

  Gone.

  18.

  Silence stuffs up the room. Nothing but the thin ticks of the surrounding clocks. Ryan’s eyes are staring off into empty space, his eyes floating toward the TV and the far wall. He’s lost in the past. I follow his gaze but can’t find the past with him. I’m here in the prison.

  What happened to him sucks. It just does. We’ve all been there at one point or another. Not the exact same circumstances, but close enough to it. Being with someone who cheated on you. Being with someone who really pined for someone else. Desiring to finally find love when in reality you couldn’t be farther apart.

  His story stings me like a scorpion, leaving an irking venom in my veins. So much of me wants to travel back in time and find this girl. Seek out this Cate girl and scream at her for what she did to him. Just get up in her face, stare her deep in the eyes and shout for all the problems her denial created.

  A part of me doesn’t hate her for what she did though. People have the right to do whatever they want. If she was truly in love with this Ross character, then that’s her decision. Her choice. She shouldn’t have to live her life based on what’s going to make other people happy. Securing her own happiness is what matters most.

  Ryan sighs and leans back on the leather couch, rubbing his hands against his pants, almost as though he’s prepping a fire. But that’s not the point of it. He’s rubbing his legs to calm his anxiety and find calm waters again. It’s clear he hasn’t had to share that story in years.

  “I think I’m going to go to bed,” he says.

  And he doesn’t give me a chance to protest or say something to convince him to stay awake. He stands up straight, scratching his arms and rubbing his own shoulders. The nervous twitch has regained its dominance on his body.

  “Oh, are you sure?”

  “Yeah. That story always bugs me.”

  “Well, for the record, I’m sorry for what she did to you.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “No, no it’s not. I mean, you just tried to put everything into your relationship with her, and that’s what happens to you? She just ignores you when you’re supposed to start talking to each other and fall in love? How could she do that?”

  “You would have to have met her. She was a pretty aggressive girl. Scorpio and all of that. Passionate
and loving, but completely filled with a stinger.”

  “Well, I wish it had worked out.”

  “Me too.”

  “So that was your worst Christmas?”

  “It was.”

  “So what didn’t you get?”

  “Sorry?”

  “You said we had to tell stories about gifts we never got. That was the whole point — talk about the gifts we always wanted but never got.”

  “Oh, you didn’t get it?”

  “No.”

  “Oh.”

  “So what was your gift?”

  He smirks, almost as though he recognizes how goofy his words are going to be.

  “I wanted love,” he said.

  “Love?”

  “Yes, love. I know that seems weird since I’m a rich tech executive, but even we have feelings. Silicon Valley and the Silicon Slopes are not void of it. I wanted her love, and she was one of the few people who made me feel like I could fall in love with her. I was willing to sacrifice everything I worked for just for her. And yet, as you can see, it didn’t work out. I’ve spent my entire life trying to find that level of love again. All I want is to be in love the way I loved her, you know?”

  I do know what he means. When he told me what happened, he seemed to be speaking directly from the heart. You can hear it in the way people’s lips quiver. The way they smile and gleefully laugh about the happy moments. It’s also readable in the sadness. The way their eyes find the empty space and make it seem like there’s actually something there. Or the way their throat starts to choke up just enough where it seems like they’ll shed tears.

  If you’re around love enough, you sense its power. And when someone tells you their own story of love and lost romance, those little signs pop up like moles in the dirt. The storyteller wants to smash them back down the hole and into oblivion. But the problems keep announcing themselves, hoping up and down.