He faltered for just a second. “It’s a good story,” he said. “I’ll tell you some other time.”
Then he called out for the next child.
* * *
Santa broke for lunch at just past noon. Lunch was a couple of sandwiches in the store’s commissary, and soda pop.
“So what do you do?” Santa asked. “For money, I mean? I gather you don’t hold down a job or you wouldn’t have been able to spend the day here.”
“Day’s not over yet,” I said, eyeing my sandwich with some suspicion. The food was provided for the staff by the store, and was just exactly edible enough to keep me from leaving the premises for a burger, yet inedible enough to guarantee I would never willingly take a job that involved deliberately consuming such a thing in the future.
“I’m between jobs,” I said. “I was a bartender for a while, though. Good, steady gig, twenty years back.”
“Are you rich?”
“I don’t know. I might be. I’m not sure what the definition of rich is.”
I wasn’t really kidding. I had money sitting in a Swiss account. At the time of this conversation the account was nearly a hundred years old, yet the bank was still taking my calls. Or they did the last time I contacted them, which was in 1952. That year, I had them wire funds to the nearest financial institution in the name I was using at the time, and then I took out the funds as cash. It was evidently a lot of cash, because the bank took a while to get all of it to me and because I’d been living off of it ever since.
I had no idea what the overall balance in the Swiss account was. I only knew every sum I had asked for up to that point had been sent, no questions asked. One day I would have to get a full accounting, but I find it very difficult to do math and also to drink a lot. Plus, again, monetary figures don’t mean all that much to me. If you’ve ever gone to a foreign country that uses a base cash value that isn’t 1:1 with the currency of your own country, you’ve experienced something like this. With me, that’s all currencies all the time.
“The definition of rich,” Santa said, “is never having to worry about where your next meal is coming from or where you’re going to sleep.”
“That’s a pretty low standard.”
“And being happy.”
“Now you’ve gone off in the opposite direction.”
“One can measure wealth in friendships, no?”
“I believe it’s possible to measure wealth in terms of influence and power, but I’m reasonably sure that isn’t what you’re talking about.”
“It isn’t, but it’s close. A calculation that isn’t based on money is what I’m aiming for. Right here is where my riches are, in the smiles I get from these children, and the joy I feel when I hear their stories.”
“Well, you’re an imp. You live for stories, don’t you?”
“I do indeed. I do indeed.”
“And the roof over your head?”
“The roof is in an uptown penthouse. My riches are also very monetarily real.”
Things picked up in the afternoon. The line got longer and the time between each child a little shorter, possibly because Santa was thinking about the same beer I was. Mercifully, at six PM someone closed the back of the line. That should have compelled him to perhaps hurry things along, but of course it didn’t. He didn’t get to that final child until nearly seven.
“And what’s your name, young man?” Santa asked of the aforementioned final child, lifting the kid onto his knees. He’d done this a hundred times already, and was perhaps not as frail from age as I’d taken him to be. If I had to do that all day I’d probably have dropped two or three children by now.
“Davey,” the boy said. He looked about ten. He was dressed in old clothing that was a little too big for him. I had always taken ill-fitting clothing as a sign of poverty, but having occupied a seat next to Santa for a full day I could now say that a large portion of the mother-child population of New York City wore clothes that didn’t really fit. If it was an indicator of poverty, the new affluence I’d been hearing about hadn’t reached clothing yet. Or perhaps all the tailors in New York had died due to some kind of tailor-plague.
“And what can Santa do for you Davey? Do you have a special thing in mind for Christmas this year?”
The boy nodded, and looked around. “Yeah but not for me. For my ma… I want you to get something for her.”
There was nobody else in line. All day long kids had been coming up with one or both parents beside them, or standing within line-of-sight.
“That’s very nice of you, Davey. Is she not here?” Santa asked, conspiratorially.
“Nu-unh,” Davey said. Implied was that she was shopping in another part of the store, only because the notion that he had come all the way downtown alone was far-fetched. It was not unusual to see unattended children playing in public—far less common today—but this was in the middle of the city, after dark, in a place without a swing set.
“Ah, it’s a secret, then!” Santa said. He was also looking around for her. “Well you must tell Santa before she comes back.”
Davey smiled. “Yeah… a secret.”
“So what can we get your mother for Christmas, Davey?”
“A flower vase,” the boy said.
“A vase? What an interesting idea!”
“Not just a vase, right? Not none of the stuff they have here. A special vase.”
Santa looked at me. There was a sparkle in his eyes that I understood to mean he could tell he was approaching a good story.
“And what makes this particular vase special, Davey?”
Davey’s eyes fell. He looked embarrassed. “I got sick.”
“You were sick?”
“Uh-huh, last Christmas. And ma, she didn’t have the money to pay for doctors so she hocked it. And it was her favorite thing. She used to tell me, Mr. Santa, about how when she came here from the old country, how she kept this vase wrapped up in all her clothes so it wouldn’t get broke. It’s been in the family a real long time. She called it a… airy something.”
“Heirloom?”
“Yeah, that’s it. We don’t got a lot of those, not like other families. You know, not like the ones with money. We had just that one. And she had to sell it because of me, so… that’s what I want for Christmas.”
“Well! That’s a very special wish, Davey! Santa is going to have to put a special elf on this one.” He was looking at me, and I can’t even tell you how much I wished, in this moment, that I was already down the street at the bar. “Can you describe the vase for Santa?”
“Yeah it’s kinda like, blue with white flowers.”
“That’s good! But that describes a lot of vases, Davey. Can you tell me something very special about it?”
“Like what pawn shop she brought it to,” I said. “That would be helpful.”
“Oh, yeah, mister, I know that!”
If there was any justice in the world, the pawn shop he named next would have been the same one owned by my friend and passport counterfeiter. It wasn’t. This one was in a different part of town.
“So,” Santa said, “a blue vase with white flowers in the Bowery pawn shop. Now, I am sure a clever child such as yourself knows the address where you and your mother live?”
“Sure, but… don’t you already know where I live, Santa?”
“We-ell, of course I do, but you know how difficult special elf helpers can be!”
* * *
Dinner was steak at a restaurant down the street. Santa talked me into a proper meal, which was probably a good idea as I have attempted to subsist on beer and pretzels a number of times and it always ends badly, and after a day spent in a department store I was just about ready to have that kind of evening. He only suggested this as a way to keep me sober long enough to convince me to help out this kid, but it was still a good idea.
Santa, in case you ever wondered, likes his steak rare.
“I know just where the shop is,” he was saying between bites.
He laughed. “Of course you are! Why wouldn’t you? Aren’t you curious?”
“Not really. You go. Tell me about it when it’s over. Better yet, write me a letter, I don’t even know why I’m still in this town.”
“We’ll go together. And you haven’t left because you have no place else to go.”
“That’s… actually, that’s true. But only because I never have any place to go. It doesn’t mean I won’t go. I’ll find someplace I like better, which is everywhere. Europe, maybe. New York is already proving more annoying than it’s worth.”
Santa laughed again, although I really wasn’t kidding. “It’s going to snow for Christmas this year, I can feel it! Have you ever seen this city in the snow?”
“I’m sure it’s lovely,” I said. He was surprisingly enthusiastic about seasonal events for someone his age. I’ve seen more snow than any man alive. I’ve seen glaciers. Snow isn’t much of a thing, and he was more qualified to recognize this than most people.
“It is! How can you not be excited by snow?”
“I know it’s easier to track a mammoth when there’s snow, that’s about all.”
He grumbled. I may have been wearing him down. “At least stay in the city until after the holidays, Stanley.”
“And help you find this kid’s mom’s family heirloom, I know. It’s been a year, what makes you think the vase is still there?”
“Of course it is.”
I drunk deeply from the beer I’d ordered to go with the steak. It was the cheap, domestically bottled species of beer, marginally worse than the stuff on tap at the bar down the street. America makes lousy beer, but at a time when we weren’t on great terms with Germany it wasn’t a shock that there was nothing better to be had. This was another good reason to consider returning to Europe. Either that or switch to aged scotch, which is harder to screw up.
I needed something, because Santa’s relentless positivity was just brutal.
“I know I’m going to regret asking this,” I said, “but why are you so sure the vase is still there?”
“It makes for a better story.”
“Ah, of course.”
“In my experience, the better stories always end up coming true.”
From the perspective of an imp this was undoubtedly the case, but only because imps are notorious for ignoring inconvenient facts and inventing better ones in the service of a good story.
“You also realize you aren’t actually Santa, right?”
He looked wounded. “Of course I am!”
“All right, you sort of are, in the sense that nobody else has as good a claim on it, outside of your family. That’s not what I mean. You can’t slide down a chimney, no matter what the stories say. Not that there’s going to be a chimney involved, because that kid gave us an address in an apartment building. With no supernatural assistance, how are you going to get the vase under the tree?”
“I can give it to little Davey,” Santa said with a shrug. “Or rather, you can. This is your redemption, not mine. I’m perfectly happy this time of year, you’re the grumpy Methuselah in need of Christmas spirit.”
“Methuselah only lived to about seventy-five,” I said. “And I seriously doubt this will have any impact on my mood. It may worsen it.”
* * *
We started looking the next day.
Pawnshops, it should be noted, were much more common in the fifties than they are today, so it wasn’t a surprise that although we were notified as to which shop the vase had been pawned, we still went to the wrong one.
“It’s not here,” I said quietly. We were in an uncomfortably small storefront surrounded by the detritus of modern consumerism, which is just the sort of place to make one feel worse about Christmas at a time when one is supposed to feel better about it. That Santa was standing in the middle of it as well made the whole tableau not a little bit ironic. If I’d thought about it at the time, I’d have taken his picture. I didn’t own a camera, but the place had four to choose from.
“Then we must be in the wrong place,” he said, with unwarranted conviction. “We’ll try the next block.”
“We’re going to check every pawner in the city, aren’t we?”
“That would only improve the story!”
I sighed. “Don’t you have to be somewhere?”
He didn’t, though. Theoretically, this should have been the only busy time of the year for him, and yet he clearly considered helping me achieve some manner of temporary positivity more important than talking to kids all day. Sour as I was, I felt a certain obligation to tag along. Plus, it was a little too early to start drinking.
The second shop was considerably seedier. You had to already know it was a pawnshop beforehand, because there was no signage identifying it as such, only a window display of sun-damaged clothing and trinkets that would have looked more impressive were it not for the layer of dust.
It wasn’t the sort of place I would have expected to find a valuable family heirloom. Maybe off-market heroin, or a kidney. But there it was.
“I wonder, sir, if I could have a look at that blue flower vase up there,” Santa asked.
The proprietor was an enormous man of northern Italian descent. He appeared disinterested in courting our business.
“This?” he said. He didn’t touch it; he pointed. “Very valuable. You want?”
“I was hoping to examine it first. My comrade and I, we are looking for a particular vase, and that appears to be the exact one. Subject to examination, of course.”
I put my hand on Santa’s shoulder. “You’re going to impoverish both of us if you go at it like that,” I whispered.
“As I say, very valuable. Very rare.” The shop man’s broken English was not so broken he couldn’t smell a markup.
“Money isn’t a concern, Stanley,” Santa said, thankfully not loudly enough for the guy behind the counter to hear.
“Just… let me handle this.” To the large Italian I said, “That vase is shit. My friend is nearly blind and cannot see this for himself.”
He was somewhat surprised insofar as I had said this in his native tongue. But not too surprised.
“It is a work of art! The most valuable thing here. I can barely stand to even part with it. You have eyes, make an offer.”
“It’s a ceramic pile of dung, but my friend thinks otherwise. If you don’t let him examine it for himself we will take our money elsewhere.”
“Fine.” He pulled the vase off the shelf and put it on the counter. “It is one-of-a-kind, try not to breathe on it.”
Santa, not fluent in Italian, immediately touched it, picking it up and rolling it around in his hands. “This is what Davey described,” he said to me, his back to the proprietor.
“Yeah, I think you’re right.”
“How much does he want for it?”
“I’ll let you know.”
I took the vase and put it back on the counter.
“A wretched piece of junk,” I said. “I’d sooner cut off my hand and shove flowers in the stump than use this miserable excuse for pottery, but my friend is deranged enough to think otherwise. It’s not worth the spit from my mouth, but I’ll offer two pennies for it because I am feeling generous.”
* * *
An hour later I’d acquired the vase for what I considered an acceptable price, and made another friend in the pawnshop business. He threatened to murder me with his bare hands three times, and invited me for dinner twice.
“I told you, price wasn’t a real concern,” Santa insisted as we left. “I don’t know why you had to go through with all of that.”
“It’s difficult to explain.”
“But such a hassle!”
It was more fun than I’d had in weeks, actually. I was tempted to go find another shop so I could haggle with someone else over a random object for a few more hours. But that wasn’t going to happen. Instead, we were headed across town to
a skid row apartment near Chatham Square. While the pawnshop was only a few blocks from the Broadway of Gimbel’s, the economic distance was appreciable. The economic disparity between the pawnshop neighborhood and the apartment of Mrs. Davey’s-Mom was even more extreme.
That said, I rather liked the bowery. I enjoyed the bars there, certainly, and I didn’t have as big a problem with vagrants that the more well-to-do New Yorkers did. A lot of times I was one of those vagrants. (Not this time, though. I was currently living in moderate extravagance, having found a hotel off Bleecker that offered private bathrooms. If that sounds to you like a standard amenity for a long-term hotel, you’re mistaken.)
With the vase wrapped up in a rag and stuffed into a satchel, we pushed our way into what appeared to be the correct row house, then counted flights until we’d reached what should have been the proper door. Davey never gave us a last name or an apartment number, so all we had was “third floor, fifth door to the right of the stairs” to go on. This might have been because it never occurred to Santa to ask for it—or he didn’t want to, given he should have already known it, being Santa—but it also didn’t look like the apartments had numbers.
“Why don’t we just leave it here?” I asked, once we reached the door. The hallway smelled like boiled cabbage and feet, the lighting was mainly of the bare electrical bulb variety, and it was narrow enough to make it difficult for us to walk down the hall beside one another. I was feeling a touch claustrophobic, and I don’t feel that way often.
Santa shook his head. “No, that’s no good at all, Stanley. Then it wouldn’t be much of a gift. There’s no magic in it.”
“There’s no magic, period, and it’s time little Davey figured that out,” I said.
Santa just shook his head, and knocked on the door.
A large, squat woman in an apron answered. I was guessing Polish descent.
“Yeh,” she said. “What do you want?”
Santa pulled off the hunter’s cap he’d been wearing, as a gesture to her womanhood. I had no hat to doff. “Yes, ma’am! I’m sorry to bother you, and I am sure this is going to sound like an odd question, but if there is a young man here who goes by the name of Davey, I have something I’d like to give him. If it will not be too much trouble.”
Yuletide Immortal (The Immortal Chronicles Book 4) Page 3