“How’s it been for you?”Tom asked.“It seems like Santa’s Workshop has been blowing up.”
“My boss said it’s never been this crowded.My arms and legs are sore from holding kids on my lap.”
“And adults,” Tom added, thinking of the fans he saw surrounding Hot Mall Santa.“Adults love you.”
“Yeah.They do,” he said, scuffing up Tom’s confidence.“It’s kind of weird, though.”
“You have Santa groupies.”
“Lucky me,” he said sarcastically.Tom swooned at his raised eyebrows.“All they do is stare at me and ask about Santa shit.”
“Well, you are…” Tom gestured at his Santa suit.“If the hat with the white puffball at the end of it fits…”
“It’s like I’m just an exhibit.It gets tiring.That’s why I like you.We talk about other stuff.”
Did he just say he liked me?Like me in a general, friendly sense, probably.Tom felt his cheeks redden.He was glad that their relationship, whatever it was, wasn’t one-sided.He was able to provide something of value to him.
Tom exited the highway and drove into the heart of Beacon Strip.Beacon Strip was a relic of Oakville’s industrial past.This manufacturing company Beacon had a pair of mills employing thousands of people, and stores and restaurants had sprung up around it.Once the company went under in the seventies, and residents moved into nicer subdivisions on the mall’s side of town, the neighborhood atrophied.Now it was a step above a ghost town, empty storefronts and parking lots with weeds growing in the cracks of the pavement.The only thriving business was a bar, and apparently a motel.
“People actually stay here?”Tom asked when he pulled into the motel’s parking lot.All the times he’d seen it from the highway, he thought it was empty and only used for people to cheat on their spouses.
“It’s not too bad.Cheap,” Randall said.
Tom felt bad that he didn’t ask Randall about his living situation the first time they hung out.He assumed he lived in a neighboring suburb, and frankly, he had, um, other things on the brain that night.
The Beacon Strip Motel was a row of rooms, similar to the Bates Motel in Tom’s mind.
“It works.I got a warm bed and clean water.”Randall shrugged, as if there were nothing else he needed.“I’m only here for a few weeks, and it’s just a place to sleep.”
Even though he was right, it still felt sad to Tom, the thought of anyone spending the holidays alone in a decrepit motel.
“It’s a nice room,” he said.
“It is?”Tom and everyone else in town imagined the worst of the Beacon Strip Motel.“How did you find this place?”
“Priceline.”
Good for Beacon Strip Motel keeping up with the digital revolution.
“Want to see?”
They got out of the car.A light dusting of snow began to fall from the sky.It was nothing a Midwesterner couldn’t handle.Tom doubted it would even stick to the roads.Randall treated it as the most beautiful precipitation he’d ever seen.It was probably his first white Christmas.He held his hands out to touch it, lifted his head, laughed as it dotted his cheeks.Who knew that beneath the raging sex appeal, there would be a layer of dorkiness, and that it could be nothing short of adorable?
* * *
“Nice,”Tom said.Yes, the comforter was about twenty years out of style, but the room had all the furnishings of any other hotel room.It even had a small flat-screen TV sitting on the dresser.
What caught Tom’s eye wasn’t the décor but the string of Christmas lights taped around the perimeter, where the wall met the ceiling.Randall kept the overhead light off and just turned on his Christmas lights, giving the room a glint of magic.
“Wow,” Tom said.“Did you put those up?”
He nodded yes, proud of his design.“It makes the room a lot more festive.”
The only decoration in Tom’s apartment was a fake Christmas tree that his mom had decorated with plastic ornaments and lights.“You have to havesomething.It’s the holidays,” she’d told him.Being surrounded by the holidays during the day was enough for him.
Tom clocked the gift box ornament hanging from one of the light strings.The sight made his cheeks get warm.
“I didn’t think you’d be so into Christmas,” Tom said.“You have to listen to people ask you for gifts all day long when the holidays should really be about giving.I’ve had customers scream at me because we were out of holiday stemware and how were they going to throw Christmas dinner now?”
