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“All right. If you say so.” He removed his hand from her shoulder, and she felt the absence of his touch as strongly as she’d felt its presence. He smiled at her, and for an instant she forgot about omens and hair-raising decorations, lost in the captivating curve of his lips and the way it crinkled the corner of one eye but not the other.
Then he snapped his fingers, and it was like breaking a trance. “I know! What you need is a cup of hot cocoa. It will settle you right down.”
Her heart skittered at an intrusive memory. A vat of steaming hot liquid tipping toward her. Blistering splotches of first- and second-degree burns. An endless Christmas Eve wait in a packed emergency room.
“No. No cocoa.” She instinctively rubbed her left forearm where, beneath the layers of material, her skin still hinted at her scars.
She didn’t need hot cocoa. She needed out.
“I’m looking for—” Finally, she spotted a sign with an arrow pointing toward the open warehouse, where there would be nothing but gloriously bland rows of beige plywood and docile plumbing supplies.
“Santa’s workshop?” He appeared delighted by the terrifying notion. “I’d be happy to give you a tour. Not just for kids, you know.”
“No. I’m looking for O-rings.” Devra sidestepped a precarious arrangement of twinkling wreaths and did her best to make a beeline for the main entrance.
“Did you say ornaments?” he asked, keeping pace. “We’ve got a collection of cute fuzzy animals that are sure to put a smile on your face.”
“No. O-rings.”
“Ah, well, O-kay. This way.” He swept a gentlemanly hand in the direction she was already heading. “Care to peruse the Christmas DVDs on your way? Nothing brings a smile to your face quite like a wayward dad showing up for his kid in the third act.”
Devra glanced over at this surprisingly persistent employee rushing along beside her and finally noticed his attire: the red-and-white ensemble underneath his orange apron, his buckled black boots. That, combined with his rosy cheeks and jolly expression, generated new pangs of terror within her.
She was being followed by a younger, leaner, slightly less bearded St. Nick.
She’d had a nightmare similar to this once when she was eleven years old, the year after her mother walked out never to return. The year a neighbour’s rooftop display had come unfastened during a storm and crashed into the Harrisons’ kitchen window, a morbidly disfigured Santa slung halfway inside her home and staring at Devra like she was to blame.
“Happy to help however I can. It is the season of giving, after all.”
His smile stretched wide, and suddenly all his kind and attractive features became quite obviously those of a serial killer. She hastened into a jog.
Again, he matched her stride. “Or if you’re not one for hot cocoa, I could make you a cup of tea in the staff room? It really looks like you could use a cup of—”
“No, thank you!”
“My bad. I didn’t mean to press. My sisters are always telling me I come on a little too strong. It just really looks like you could use some cheering up. And it’s Christmastime!”
The long corridors of red and green and white and red and green and white stretched out before her in a dizzying pattern. She needed to escape this holiday-obsessed man. To do something to end this pandemonium she couldn’t begin to rationally compute as sweat prickled her scalp and chilling memories rose with each passing scent. Cookies burning in the oven. A pine tree sliding off the roof of the vehicle in front of her and smashing through her windshield.
Do something. Anything!
Devra dashed toward a towering spiral display of teddy bears with tiny red hats and satin ribbons around their necks and lunged, the way Tabs might lunge for a bird, ripping at least three bears out from the bottom row.
“What the—?” the salesperson said. “Watch out!”
Devra could hear him leaping toward the display, desperate to keep the bear tower upright.
Too late.
The bears came tumbling down. She knew this without breaking her stride because every time one of the stuffies landed on the ground it started to sing “We wish you a merry…” “We wish you a merry…” until it was a cutesy chorus of “We, we, we, we, we, we.”
Devra bolted through the sliding doors into the hardware part of the store, took a sharp turn, and placed her back against the wall, trying to catch her breath.
After a few moments, she risked a glance back into the Christmas hellscape she’d narrowly escaped. The worker was busy picking up bears and calling for backup on his walkie-talkie like a soldier shouting “Man down!”
Devra darted away, down aisle 22, and grabbed a fistful of O-rings so she wouldn’t have to come back. She hurried through the self-checkout, ensuring there wasn’t a single employee in her line of sight when she sprinted out the exit.
The next morning, her kitchen sink restored to its prior glory, Devra poured herself a cup of coffee. Still in her pajamas, she took her mug to the giant L-shaped desk in the middle of her open-concept home turned office. It extended from her living room into the spot where a kitchen table might go—she ate her meals alone at the island, if not at her desk. She took a seat in her ergonomic chair with auto-adjusting lumbar support, a splurge that had cost more than the smattering of other furniture haphazardly arranged in what remained of her living room. She pushed aside a few dozen notebooks to make room for her cup, turned on her computers, plural, and prepared for a typical lazy Saturday.
