“The cloak, please,” Hobart says. He holds his outstretched arms to me. I feel around for a zipper or a drawstring. “Just snap.”
With the flick of my fingers, the Santa mirage dematerializes into a cloud of dust and forms the enchanted cloak again. It liespooled around my feet. I pick it up shakily and hand it to Hobart. Are we in trouble with a legion of magical beings right now?
“Welcome, Patrick and Quinn,” says the man closest to the center. He’s Black with tight-clipped gray hair and round eyes. “My name is Chris. The North Pole and the world at large thank you for your service this evening.”
I don’t know what else to do so I bow. Awkwardly.
“You’re welcome?” Quinn says. He sounds as wobbly as I feel. “Sorry, but, um, no offense. Who are you?”
My eyes scan down the line as Quinn speaks. There’s a Black woman with her hair in a dark green bonnet to Chris’s right. Beside them is a younger white couple. She has blond hair and he has a shaved head. I slowly recognize each of these couples from the quick glimpses I got of their paintings in the hallway.
“We are the Council of Priors,” Buzzed Head says. “We have all served as Santa and Mrs. Claus at one point or another and have decided to retire here to act as a governing body. We preside over the village and ensure the seamless passing down of the Santa position.”
A brown-skinned woman whose feet don’t quite reach the floor with wavy hair wearing a flowing green robe says, “We have brought you here to call on you, once more, to make a decision about the fate of Christmases to come.”
Quinn’s eyebrows shoot up as he looks at me. Totally stricken. “Christmases to come? I thought this was a one-night thing.”
I find Hobart in the assembled crowd. He is emphatically not meeting my eyes. Clearly, he left out a key component earlier. I can’t tell if I should be worried or excited. “I’m not following, either.”
The woman that appears to be the youngest—the pale blonde—pipes up next. “Basically, the Santa role must be filled by the stroke of midnight on Christmas Day or the following year’s Christmas is in jeopardy. Are you in or out?”
Chris speaks again. He’s calmer than his blond counterpart.“What Ashley is trying to say is that we are in a bit of a bind. We’ve never had a Santa quit mid-run before. Most Santas, when they’re ready to move on, do their final Christmas and have a predecessor already in place. Kyle, the gentleman youmetearlier this evening…” It’s all too clear what he means bymet. Knocked out. Angered. Forced to quit. Damn, we’re in so much shit. I’m a chaos magnet. “Well, he and his wife never quite gelled with their roles here and didn’t notify the council that they’d be departing after only one Christmas, which means we had no forewarning or time to find suitable replacements.”
“We wouldn’t ask you if it weren’t absolutely necessary,” says the woman in the bonnet. She wears an almost pleading smile to match.
My fingers vibrate with purpose once more. I realize that this is the same fizzy feeling I got back when I started at Carver & Associates, when I began architecture classes in college, and when I created all those dream-house drawings for my classmates back in elementary school. I always laughed it off when someone referred to their job as theircalling. But what if this is what they meant? A physical impulse to act. Could I—Patrick Hargrave of sound mind and queer heart from suburban New Jersey—be Santa Claus?
Yes,chimes a little voice inside my head. It’s a voice I recognize but haven’t heard in some time.
“And what would I be doing?” Quinn asks. He sounds nearly annoyed. I know that tone well. It’s come out more than a dozen times over the several months since we bought the house. Every time something new has broken or gone bust.
“Well, you’d be Mrs. Cla—” Ashley peers around to the others (there are eight of them total) in puzzlement.
“Darling,” says the oldest white woman in the bunch. She has wispy white hair and age spots on her hands. She reminds me of my Nan Hargrave. She’s got gumption, I can tell by her assured posture. She sits next to a man who looks like the closest to Santa without needing the cloak. “If you’ll excuse us, in the uncountable years thisoperation has been going on, we’ve never had a same-sex couple in these roles before. Emmanuella, you were in politics in your past life, any ideas on what we could call Quinn?”
Emmanuella, who has been anxiously braiding her long wavy hair, doesn’t even glance up as she says, “How about the Merriest Mister? Like the First Mister, but merrier!”
“Oh, that’s wonderful!” White Hair says. She claps her hands together in delight.
Chris speaks again. “Rest assured, should you assume the roles, everything will be provided for you, from housing to clothing to anything your heart desires. Your lives in the normal world will be put on pause.”
“Put on pause? Paused, how?” I ask. The fizzing inside me has moved from my fingertips into my elbows. It edges gradually toward my shoulders.
“Careers, payments, et cetera. We take care of everything while you’re away,” he says.
Ashley adds, “It’s a bit like when you have student loans and work for a nonprofit.”
“Think of it as forbearance,” Emmanuella says.
“For your whole life,” Buzzed Head says.
An albatross of bills lifts off my shoulders. No applying for unemployment. No paying our mortgage with that ridiculous, variable interest rate. No worrying about repairs or pipes or shoddy wiring.
What’s less settled and bored than a major move to a magic village?
“At least for one year,” says White Hair’s presumed husband. “There’s a trial period. Some Santas stay on for the long haul like me and Colleen or Yvonne and Chris. Others work for a year or two and then retire like Ashley and Samson. Others return to their regular lives like Emmanuella and Jorge almost did. It’s what suits you, the community, and the needs of Christmas the best.”
This austere room, their thrones and stares. It all should feelso stiflingly formal. And yet this feels more like a golden ticket to wide-open freedom. An adventure for Quinn and me to go on. Together. To leave the constraints of our life behind for a little while and play new roles. Fun, jolly, completely unexpected roles.
