Santa Series: Three Stories of Magical Holiday Romance Page 13

  Nissa wouldn’t have called him nice-looking, which she saw as a step down from good-looking, nor would she have called him young. She would have called him perfect. But she didn’t tell her mother that. Instead, she had said, in the most noncommittal voice she could manage, He’s a professor of public health at some university.

  Too bad, her mother had said. I thought maybe he was someone interesting.

  Oh, how Nissa wanted to correct her mother. Oh, how she wanted to talk to her mother. But Nissa had no idea what would happen with Ryan down the road, and she didn’t want to get her mother’s hopes up. Her mother had wanted Nissa to get involved with someone for years now, and so far, that hadn’t happened.

  Not since her second year in New York. Year One had been all about dating a bunch of good-looking (nice-looking?) but somewhat creepy men. Year Two had been about Adam, who had been fascinating at first, mostly because he wasn’t creepy, was totally brilliant, and didn’t believe in any of that “fantasy crap,” as he called anything to do with magic.

  Ultimately, though, his dismissive attitude—which was probably what had attracted her—repelled her. His brilliant mind remained closed to most everything he didn’t understand. If he couldn’t prove it, it didn’t exist. And after a while, that had grown truly wearing.

  Not that her mother had met him either. As far as Nissa’s mother was concerned, Nissa had never had a serious relationship and really needed to lay off work for a while.

  Nissa always felt like she needed to lay off work after the holidays. She felt that way now, as she approached the debrief.

  Because she knew it would be ugly.

  For one week after she had seen Ryan, he had continued to talk about Santa and Santa’s bad habits. No one from Image Headquarters had called her, which seemed even more ominous than a what-the-hell? phone call.

  By New Year’s, she wondered if she would be relegated to the land of last-minute toys forever.

  And now, she would find out. January 2. D-Day. The day that would live in infamy.

  The day that could, she feared, change her life forever.

  12

  SCHOOL DIDN’T START for one more week, but Ryan was in his office already. He had retreated here after returning from the Trip From Hell, which was the only way he referred to the book tour now.

  Yes, he had made some extra money, and he had gotten in the virtual Rolodexes (if people even called it that anymore) of more than twenty major talk show producers. Some had already called him for “public health’s take” on gluten-free foods or the latest flu epidemic.

  He’d begged off, in one case pleading flu himself, even though he was remarkably healthy, considering what a pounding his body had taken in the height of cold-and-flu season.

  At the end of the final week, Wendy’d had to leave the tour because she had contracted flu, and he’d actually sent her flowers, along with a large delivery of the best chicken soup in New York City. He tried not to see the delivery of the soup as a kind of middle-finger toward her; he wanted to feel compassion, but he really didn’t. Wendy had made his life miserable for six weeks, and while he knew she was only doing her job, he still felt rather angry about it.

  And gun-shy. He didn’t want to talk to anyone. End of the semester classes, which he had been looking forward to, felt like running some kind of gauntlet, and Christmas shopping, with its tinny Muzak and cheerful salesclerks, gave him talk-show flashbacks.

  At least the family Christmas dinner had been nice. Until his nephew showed a composite of all of Ryan’s interviews, proving his suspicion correct. Ryan had restated his position—if, indeed, anyone could have a real position on Santa Claus—so many times that he actually had used the same phrases over and over again. It looked like one of those joke videos, and to his family it was.

  To Ryan, it was just another aspect of his nightmare.

  The only thing that had gotten him through the nightmare had been that lunch/dinner/meal with Nissa Kealoha. He fell asleep those last seven nights with her business card clutched in his hand. The card should have fallen apart, but whenever he looked at it—and he still looked at it daily—it seemed brand new. Sometimes he thought maybe it replenished itself in his wallet.

  But he knew that wasn’t possible. She had just had it made out of the sturdiest paper known to mankind. Or something. If he were a business card kinda guy, he would have asked her where she got the cards printed. But he hoped he would never need a business card again.

  He was holding that card now. He was sitting at his desk, piled with paperwork that had stacked up while he was away, and he was turning a little green-and-gold business card over and over in his hand. Then he would look at the solid black phone that had been on this desk since the Reagan Administration, and he would wonder if he should pick up the receiver and dial Nissa’s number.

  He wanted to use the ancient landline, connected to the university’s system, because—for some reason he couldn’t quite name—he was embarrassed to use his own cell phone. Maybe because he knew that Nissa wanted to keep their relationship professional, and to him, the relationship wasn’t professional at all.

  He’d even watched their interview. His responses were cringe-worthy (although he always found his interviews cringe-worthy) but her defense of him was spirited. She had looked surprised at herself, as if he had convinced her of the importance of his argument, even though he couldn’t seem to convince anyone else about it.

  He set the card back in his wallet and tried to concentrate. That little blip in his life was over.

  Ryan got up and walked to the mullioned window that overlooked one of the most beautiful sections of campus. Evergreen trees, ancient buildings, lots of walking paths—all covered with snow right now, since it was deepest, darkest winter in Upstate New York. But he loved it. He loved the time of year; he loved the quiet.

  Or he usually did. Right now, he was restless. He hadn’t been able to concentrate since he returned.

  And he blamed that business card.

  He wanted to call Nissa, but he wasn’t exactly sure how to approach her. If he should approach her at all.

  13

  SHE SHOULD HAVE brought a gas mask. Nissa had forgotten about the cigarette smoke, and she shouldn’t have. It hit her every time. But this winter had been particularly cold and snowy at the North Pole, and the internal heating system at Image Headquarters was very 1950s. It had probably clogged up due to all the tobacco being consumed, and no one had had time in the last few months to do any maintenance.

  The pipe and cigar smokers huddled in the back of the conference room, as if they knew they could pollute more air from that location. The cigarette smokers actually tapped their unlit cigarettes on the table, thinking, talking, waiting to light up maybe? They couldn’t be grossed out by the cigar smokers, could they?

  Everyone around the table was male, again. The older Image Specialists, the men who created the media Santa, were the only ones here. The women who had been working on the tech last time Nissa had come to this conference room were gone.

  They were Image Specialists too, but not senior ones. And Nissa had had their jobs before escaping to the Greater World. They were called “hon,” and “sweetie,” and were asked to bring coffee, which they did. Nissa had actually talked with personnel more than once, complaining about the atmosphere in Image Headquarters—anonymously, of course—and had been told that Image Headquarters would remain an Old Boys Club until the Old Boys decided to retire.

  She had no idea how long that would be, because everyone’s lives here were magically lengthened. Even the non-magical humans who came to work here as adults managed to get an extra hundred or so years out of it. Those who had some magic sometimes had two hundred or more years.

  And these guys—well, most of them were part elf (some would say part S-Elf, but she didn’t really want to look at the genealogies to check)—and she was truly unclear as to how long they lived. Her mother’s grandparents still lived, but wouldn’t say how o
ld they were. Elves didn’t talk about personal things, like longevity or family matters, which was why it took so long for the Image Specialists to come up with an image for Mrs. Claus. She wanted to remain anonymous—and technically she was, since her name was not (in the North Pole, anyway) Mrs. Claus.

  In fact, she looked nothing like the rotund, cheerful woman of the Image Specialist’s imagination. Nissa always thought of her more as Cruella de Vil—with a mean streak.

  But of course Nissa didn’t say that. She didn’t say much when she was at the Pole. It was safer not to.

  And now, she had the meeting she’d been dreading for weeks. In which she would probably have to speak. And, she worried, if she said something wrong, she could lose her job and her beloved New York apartment.

  She had worn black pants and a loose red tunic to this meeting, clothes that were easily washed. She actually had started a closet in her mother’s house for clothes to wear to Image Headquarters so that she wouldn’t have to destroy her other clothing.

  There were no rules to make the Pole more health-conscious, and she had hated that from the beginning. She hated it more now, after indoctrinating herself by watching Ryan’s videos.

  Maybe he did have a point.

  “Ah, Miss Kealoha,” said Ludwig, standing and stubbing out his cigar at the same time. “So good of you to join us.”

  She looked around for Oskar. He leaned against the table in the back, arms crossed. She’d seen that before. He was mad at her, and so he was going to let someone else do the talking.

  That the someone else was Ludwig was a bad sign.

  “Close the door, please,” said Casper, the kindest of the Old Boys. His beard had yellowed from the tobacco he’d smoked over the years, and he actually had a few cigarette burns in it. He’d been such a presence in New York in the 1930s that he had become the inspiration for Seymour Reit and Joe Oriolo, who created Casper the Friendly Ghost. Casper’s method of working had always been to pop in, cause some trouble, and pop out, and they recorded that in their original comic.

  Nissa leaned out the door, took a deep breath of somewhat-fresh air, and then pulled the door closed, trapping her inside the room with these men—her superiors. Who did not look happy.

  She remained standing since they hadn’t invited her to sit, both hands on the back of the only available chair.

  “Nissa, sweetie,” said Sven, one of the Old Boys she never liked to sit near. He had roving hands, although at the moment, they clung to a rather odd-shaped pipe. He was trying to ignite the damn thing—or light it, or whatever anyone called it. He was puffing it, sending out blue smoke to mix with the crud already in the air. “Didn’t we tell you to shut down this Professor Palmer?”

  She knew it. She knew the Old Boys hadn’t liked what happened. She’d played this meeting over and over in her mind. Usually it ended with her being fired. Sometimes, with her in tears. Sometimes with her pounding on the blond wood table and screaming at the Old Boys, telling them what she really thought.

  “You did,” she said. She felt like she was in a court of law.

  “But you didn’t do that, did you?” Sven said.

  “My understanding,” she said slowly, “was that you wanted me to handle him, the way I had handled the previous crisis. In that case, I got reporters to cover the story—”

  “And in this case, you agreed with that horrible young man,” Ludwig said, his eyes glinting green. Ah, so that was why Oskar wasn’t saying anything. They had found her performance awful.

  Well, she supposed from their perspective, it was.

  She sighed, then wished she hadn’t. She had to swallow twice to prevent herself from coughing. “May I tell you what happened from my perspective? Because so much happened behind the scenes.”

  She sounded formal and proper, the kind of subservient employee they probably wanted to hear from. Or maybe not. Image Specialists were the most unpredictable people in the corporate part of Claus & Company.

  They were all staring at her. The pipe smokers had stopped puffing. The cigar smokers had taken their stogies down and were holding them in their hands. The cigarette smokers had never lit up in the first place.

  “I’m not sure what you could say,” Casper said, his tone kind. “Because we all saw that interview, the one you gave the moment after you returned—”

  “Right after we told you to shut him down,” Ludwig said.

  Her heart was pounding. “You don’t know what I could say because you don’t know what happened,” she said. “So give me my chance to speak up or fire me now.”

  She hadn’t expected to say that last. She wasn’t even sure when the last time someone got fired from the North Pole was. She knew the firing had happened in corporate, but decades ago. Or maybe even a century ago. Before they learned the art of transferring the bad employee to another department, another sector.

  Oskar’s eyes narrowed. Smoke swirled around him like an aura. He no longer looked like the kindly grandfather type who had spent all his time nurturing her. Now he looked a little like Bad Santa from a thousand bad movies.

  No one spoke. No one defended her, and no one mentioned that firing was not an option. That was a bit unnerving.

  Since no one spoke, she decided to.

  “I spoke with Ryan Palmer,” she said, deliberately leaving out the fact that the conversation had happened after the interview, not before. “He hates the celebrity. He was roped into all that press. He’s not going to be around next Christmas. He just wants to teach.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Ludwig said. “He started a conversation. It’s continuing. It continued all the way up to the holiday. Some of our staff reported that children at malls were asking Santa to lose weight.”

  Nissa frowned, not expecting that. She had no idea how the media had handled the Santa story after Palmer left the picture. She’d been working in Last Minute Toys by then.

  “You’re seeing the children’s questions as a bad thing?” she asked, and then knew her response was the wrong one.

  Oskar had bent his head down, so that his eyes seemed like slits. He was glaring at her so hard she could feel it from across the room. Maybe he was even using his image magic on her, only in a negative way.

  She didn’t try to block. She wasn’t sure what he was doing, so she couldn’t accurately counteract it. So she decided to ignore him, and speak to the others. They had to understand. Because she might be sacrificing her entire career over this.

  “Professor Palmer started a dialogue we should be having about revamping Santa’s image for the 21st century,” she said, her stomach twisting. “After all, you changed his appearance from the 19th to the 20th. The Santa of the post-Civil War newspapers isn’t the jolly-faced man of the Coca-Cola ads between the wars.”

  “Times were bleaker after the war.” Sven muttered.

  “After which war?” she asked, deciding to stop playing the naïve, subservient employee. “Because times were bleak in the 1930s. Very bleak, in fact, and that’s when America’s love affair with Santa grew to epic proportions—not in the least because of you, Oskar, and the way you moved with the times.”

  “You’re not going to smooth this over with flattery, missy,” Ludwig said, and it looked like he said it before Oskar could get the words out.

  Flattery? She hadn’t meant that as flattery. She was forming an argument, and they weren’t listening.

  “I’m not saying this for flattery’s sake,” she said. “I’m mentioning it because it’s been almost a century since we’ve revamped—”

  “We loosened everything in the 1960s,” Sven said, tamping on his pipe. “Everything. We let others use the brand. We let them make disrespectful films about Santa. Those postcards—”

  “Were very creative,” she said, trying to get the discussion back on track. She wasn’t sure which postcards he was referring to, and she didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to go into the details. She needed to talk about the overall situation. “But that loos
ening was more than fifty years ago. Everything we’ve seen since then was because of the loosening in the 1960s. Nothing new has happened on the Santa Image front since then, and personally, I think that’s too long. Change isn’t always bad—”

  “We know, missy,” Ludwig said. “We’re the ones who brought change to the Pole in the first place. We’re the ones who took our brand out of myth and legend, which varied from country to country, mind you, and decided to homogenize it. We’re the ones who saw worldwide potential in a unified message. We’re the ones who opened the gates to all of those jobs that exist all over the world because we’re the ones who put the name ‘Santa Claus’ on every lip. We’re the ones—”

  “But we’ve skated,” Nissa said. They were living so far in the past that she wasn’t sure she could bring them out of it. They seemed to hear everything she said as an attack on them and not as suggestions for improving Santa’s image. They seemed to have no idea at all about the way things were now.

  She didn’t want them on the defensive. She wanted them to listen to her.

  “We’re letting others define our brand,” she said. “We’ve let others define Santa since those beer ads from the 1990s. Frankly, I think that a relaxed Santa, sitting on a beach somewhere drinking a beer and staring at the ocean is the wrong direction for our brand. I’ve always believed that. Why didn’t we protest that when it happened? Why isn’t anyone mentioning it? Not even Professor Palmer said anything about it.”

  “Then maybe it’s not important,” Sven said, fiddling with his pipe.

  “Maybe it is. Maybe it’s a symptom, and maybe you know it. That’s why Professor Ryan bothers you. Because what he’s saying is true.”

  The Old Boys stared at her. She stared back. She was glad they hadn’t told her to sit. She actually towered over them, and could look down on them. For a group that specialized in symbolism, they apparently hadn’t thought the whole posture thing through. If they had invited her to sit down, she would have had a lot less of their attention.