“Oh, hello,” Hall tells the cashier. “Thank you so much for this experience. It’s a magical wonderland here. You must love working at a place like this.” He fills my hands with treasures: a bottle of cologne (Pitbull Man, by Pitbull), a train whistle, a miniature rhyming dictionary, a flashlight, a Pez dispenser, a hermit crab. The cashier monitors us with growing incredulity.
The sparklers finally burn to nothing. I cast around, not knowing what to do with the charred sticks.
“Do you sell Cracker Barrel postcards?” Hall asks, at last retrieving a wad of green bills. “I want to remember this.”
The cashier rips her attention from my burnt-up sparklers, blinking. “Uh, yeah! We do, actually.”
I offer to pay for his postcards, since he covered the meal, but Hall holds up a staying hand. “Keep your money, Bettie. You’ve got to start saving.”
I snort. “Why on earth would I need to do that?”
He accepts his change and his bag of postcards, twisting to regard me with a serious expression that freezes my mocking smilein place. “You won’t have my...” He almost saysmagic, but there are people around so he says, “help, forever. I’m going away as soon as you’re sufficiently holiday-cheered.”
“What? Didn’t you say you might be here forever?”
“I can see now that I was wrong.”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “Do youwantto go away?”
“Doesn’t matter what I want. I thought maybe this would be a permanent thing; it’s never happened to me before, so I didn’t know exactly what to expect. But I can feel it.” His brow furrows, sliding me an unsettled glance. The corners of his mouth are turned down, and for once he isn’t cheerful at all. He looks older somehow, more like an entity that’s lived for thousands of years. “My days are numbered. It’s like a countdown clock in here.” He taps his skull. “When everything is quiet, I hear the ticks.”
I stare, heart beating fast. It’s lucky that I’m ambivalent about holiday cheer, or else I might have reason to be worried. Very quickly, I’ve grown reliant on his magic, snapping his fingers to get me anything I want (or a skewed version of it, anyway). But I’ll never be sufficiently holiday-cheered, which means that he’s wrong, and isn’t going anywhere. I have the vicious, cold, impenetrable heart of a withered old hag. It’s half of my appeal.
“But I’m a one point five.”
“Actually, you’re a seven. You were at six point eight when we walked into this restaurant, then it shot up over dinner. My magic trick with the coin really did something for you.”
My jaw drops. “There’s no way. I’m a pitiful one point five. Look at how joyless and awful I am!”
He takes my measure, lips pressing into a smile that makes his eyes go soft, almost sad. “Our time will run out even faster if you continue caring like that.”
I scoff. I can’t think of anyone who’s less in danger of evolving into a happy-go-lucky gingerbread-loving schmuck than myself.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t care about anything.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“It’s true. I’m all about number one.”
“Sure, sure.”
As we pass the empty hostess station on our way out the door, Hall’s gaze snags on the array of menus, and, on impulse, he snatches one and stuffs it up his shirt.
“Hall!”I whisper-gasp.
His face is pleading. “I know. I don’t know what came over me. Should I put it back?”
The hostess has returned—it’s too late now. I clamp my hands on his shoulders and maneuver him out the door before he can steal anything else.
Night has fallen, but,oh, thank goodness, it isn’t raining or sleeting anymore. The clouds are in retreat, the sky a black inkwell glimmering with stars. He strolls over to the truck, half-terrified, half-gleeful, those strange irises burning bright. “I couldn’t help it, Bettie. I need this keepsake. And I need to know what else the menu has to offer. I wasn’t able to finish reading before she made me give it back.”
“We’ve all stolen something,” I reassure him. “Sometimes it’s a Cracker Barrel menu... sometimes it’s Williams-Sonoma bathroom accessories...”
Hall becomes more hysterical. “Bathroom accessories? Is that what I’ll be moving on to next?” He leans all of his body weight against the passenger door, and I notice how the cold metal instantly fogs up in reaction to his warmth. There’s a mild but steadyblaze around him at all times, and if I listen close, I can hear the pop and crackle of embers. The shimmer of sleigh bells. “I’m a criminal.”
“You’re only human,” I joke.
Hall delicately places his to-go boxes in the truck, then fishes out his menu to admire. He looks so melodramatic about it, I almost expect him to break into song.
