‘Erin isn’t picking up,’ I said, checking my emails and finding a message from the woman herself. The missing points for the presentation and a note to say she was taking the kids to meet Santa and would call in a couple of hours. Balls. She was totally offline. ‘But we’ll figure it out. Let’s get the fire going before the sun goes down. That’ll help.’
My suggestion wasn’t exactly met with enthusiasm, but as I shrugged my giant coat back on and stepped into my hiking boots, I noticed Sadie’s frown soften into a pout. Maybe she’d decided she was going to try.
‘Did you see any piles of wood when we came in?’ I asked. ‘I wonder where she keeps them.’
‘I’m not going back out there,’ she declared, plopping herself down on the couch. ‘I don’t want to wake up frozen to death on Christmas morning.’
‘If you froze to death, you wouldn’t wake up,’ I said to a completely blank face. ‘Don’t worry about it, I’ll be back in one minute.’
The cold was bracing, especially if you were wearing nothing but a red velour minidress under your down jacket, but happily the logs were piled high right by the front door. Stacking as many as I could carry in my arms, I pushed the door open again with my ass, ignored Sadie’s dramatic chattering teeth and dropped them on the hearth.
‘So we’ll get this going, and then I need to do some work for an hour or so, and by then the food will have arrived, the tree will have been delivered and Erin will have called to let us know how to fix the fuse box,’ I said, placing three logs in the fireplace on top of a couple of firelighters. I glanced back at Sadie, who was still curled up on the couch, a dubious look on her pretty face. Hardly the person I wanted to be looking at while a romantic log fire crackled into life in front of me, but still, I had to take what I could get, and since I hadn’t had a reply from Joe, that was Sadie.
‘What am I supposed to do until then?’ she asked, mournfully tossing the impotent cable remote from hand to hand. ‘There’s, like, no TV or anything.’
‘What do you do at a show when you’re waiting to walk?’ I asked.
‘Read?’ she said. ‘Talk to the other girls.’
‘Then read,’ I said, tossing her a battered John Grisham paperback. ‘It’s not often you can say there is literally a whole library back there.’
‘Oh yeah, not books.’ She made the word sound foreign or dangerous. ‘I have to read magazines. For research, you know?’
‘Oh, I know,’ I said. ‘For research.’
Not because she couldn’t make it all the way through an average paperback without her brain spilling out of her ears or anything.
Once I saw little orange flames begin to flicker up around the freezing-cold logs, I settled back on the other couch opposite my roommate and pulled my laptop out of my bag. It was barely three thirty, the food was being delivered at four, and the tree would be here between four and five. I could get the presentation finished, send it over to Stephen and still have time to sink a glass of wine before I had to start Christmassing the shit out of this place. By the time Angie arrived with the boys it would look like Santa’s grotto, only with more cocktails and fewer elves.
Having been silent for less than a minute, Sadie cleared her throat. ‘Do you really think I can’t keep a boyfriend because I’m attracted to emotionally absent men?’ she asked in a small voice.
Can open. Worms everywhere.
‘I don’t know, honey,’ I replied, my eyes flickering up at her as my computer chimed into life. ‘It was just a thought. I shouldn’t have said anything.’
‘But you know me,’ she said, drawing her impossibly long legs up underneath her with a grace and ease that came from daily private yoga classes no normal human had time for. ‘You live with me. You know about all my exes and I do keep dating older guys and they do all break up with me.’
I looked up, not really knowing what to say.
‘And you’re smart about stuff like this.’
I smiled. She thought I was smart?
‘Unless it’s your stuff. Then you suck at it.’
For the sake of appearances I maintained the smile.
‘You heard from that guy yet?’
‘Weren’t we talking about you?’ I asked, turning my attention to my laptop. ‘Let me get this presentation out of the way and then I’ll give you my best Oprah impression, the full psych 101. Won’t take me long.’
Famous last words.
There was no electricity. So the internet didn’t work. So I couldn’t send the proposal. So I was screwed, and so not in the way that I wanted.
*
‘What do you mean you can’t make the delivery?’ I screamed into my phone. ‘It’s Christmas Eve, you’re supposed to be delivering my food for Christmas Day. You can’t decide you’re not making a delivery fifteen minutes before it’s due.’
‘Our driver was involved in an incident?’ the woman on the other end of the phone said, ‘And we don’t have anyone else on the road? Or any more food?’
Right up until the moment I’d realized I couldn’t email the Bennett presentation to Stephen I’d retained my usual calm and collected demeanour, but now, not only was my career being effed in the ass, so was my Christmas. I couldn’t quite believe this was happening.
‘Is the driver dead?’ I asked.
‘Uh, no?’ she replied.
‘Is he hurt?’ I asked.
‘Like, not really?’ she replied.
‘Then he needs to get his ass over to my house and bring me a goddamn turkey,’ I shouted. ‘Do not make me come over there.’
‘You could come over here,’ the woman said, drawling out the word ‘could’ for what felt like forever. ‘The truck that was supposed to dispatch your order is being brought in on a tow truck right now. We’re not that far from the delivery address.’
‘Then why can’t the tow truck deliver my order on its way?’ I asked. This could not possibly be happening. They could take away my electricity and they could take away my Wi-Fi, but they would never take my dinner. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Yeah, they’re not insured to deliver,’ she said, delivering the least interested explanation in the history of mankind. ‘And we need to close the office in the next hour. It’s the holidays.’
‘Oh, it is?’ I was so close to completely losing my temper, but somehow I managed to keep a grip on myself. Losing my shit with this woman would not get me my turkey, and that beast needed to be in the oven pretty soon or we wouldn’t be eating until New Year’s day. ‘Okay, so what if I drive down and collect the food? Would that work?’
‘Totally,’ she replied, breathing out a sight of relief. Of course she’d be happy with a solution that required her to do absolutely freaking nothing. ‘Although you’d need to get her in the next forty-five minutes.’
‘Done and done,’ I said, shoving my feet back into my hiking boots again. ‘Don’t close up, I’ll be there so soon.’
‘Happy holidays,’ she said, hanging up. I closed my eyes, breathed in, counted to five before breathing out and opened them again.
‘We have to go and collect the food,’ I said to Sadie, breaking her attention from Candy Crush Saga for all of five seconds. ‘We have to go now.’
‘What about the Wi-Fi?’ she asked, nodding at my laptop. ‘And the electricity? Did Erin call you back yet? I’m cold.’
‘Did you hear Erin call me back?’ I asked, waving my phone at her. ‘I’ve been sitting across from you for the last hour. Come on, let’s go before it gets dark.’
‘I should stay here,’ Sadie said, pointing at the fire. ‘Someone needs to watch the fire. Erin would be super pissed if she got here on Friday and the house had burned down.’
Narrowing my eyes, I breathed out hard through my nose. No counting to five.
‘Fine,’ I relented. It wasn’t like I could really argue with her, but I had a feeling she was way more invested in keeping her little butt warm than making sure Erin’s real estate investment was protected. ‘But
you have to start the decorating. The tree is going to be here in the next hour or so − have the delivery guys bring it in. I want it over by the fireplace, okay? Not too close, though, since you’re so concerned about fires.’
‘I’m not dumb, Jenny,’ she said, rolling her eyes. She was right, she was smart enough to have worked out a way to avoid going back outside in the snow. ‘Are you gonna go like that?’
I looked down at myself. Hiking boots, knee-high woollen socks, floor-length down jacket, hidden sexy Santa outfit.
‘I’m only going to be gone for a heartbeat,’ I said. There wasn’t enough time to change anyway. ‘I won’t die of exposure in the car.’
‘Yeah, I was thinking more about the fact that someone is going to mistake you for a stripper,’ she replied. ‘But sure, you’ll be fine.’
‘If I don’t get that email out to Stephen by the end of the day, I may well be looking for alternative career paths,’ I said, slipping out of the door. ‘So thanks for the advice.’
*
No one would have mistaken me for ecstatically happy when I arrived at Healthy & Hearty Food Stores half an hour later, but I thought I did a pretty great job of not blowing up like a total psycho, as was my right. It turned out the ‘incident’ was the delivery truck running out of gas. What kind of asshole ran out of gas when he was making food deliveries on Christmas Eve? With a bright, beatific smile that would have given the Virgin Mary a run for her money, I allowed the dumbest dude in all of Christendom to load my boxes into the rental car, wincing as they tested the suspension and praying that the tyres would hold up on the drive back. Well, I thought to myself as he loaded up box after box of food, at least we wouldn’t starve. As long as we could get the electricity up and running and actually cook this shit.
Thanking the delivery guy for his help but blatantly declining to tip, I checked my phone one more time before I set off home. Angie seemed to have found her Christmas spirit and my inbox was full of texts, assorted selfies and frozen landscapes to show she was on her way. Sadie had sent me three shocked face emojis and a question mark, which I took to mean she was either worried about me or being murdered, but there was nothing from Erin, Stephen Hall or Joe C. Davies and right at that moment I couldn’t decide who I wanted to hear from the most. What was I more worried about − my job, my vajayjay or my life?
I shot Sadie a quick text to let her know I was on my way and powered off down the road. The sun had almost set and I couldn’t think of anywhere else that was quite so beautiful on Christmas Eve. The lakes were beautiful in the twilight, everything sparkled, and when I looked up at the sky, sure enough the stars were brightly shining. Overcome with a sudden shot of Christmas spirit, I turned on the radio and cranked it up all the way. Maybe I didn’t wish it could be Christmas every day, but once every other month or so might be okay. Just through the winter. We had the food now, and Erin would call, I’d send off the presentation, we’d figure out the lights and the heating and then we’d trim the tree and make some cocoa and then Angie and James would arrive and maybe we could even open a present at midnight. Fuck it, maybe I’d open two. It was Christmas, after all.
So of course, just as I turned into a sharp bend, that was the exact moment I noticed a blinking light that had been hiding behind the centre of the steering wheel.
‘How long have you been flashing?’ I asked out loud.
And in response the car slowed down to a steady, sad stop.
A while, the light said without saying a word. I’ve been flashing for a while.
Chapter Seven
‘What kind of asshole runs out of gas on Christmas eve?’ I yelled, slamming my forearms against the steering wheel again and again. ‘What kind of asshole runs out of the house without checking her gas when she’s just driven for six goddamn hours?’
This was the problem with being a New Yorker. The obvious things, the things we would laugh at other people for fucking up, just didn’t occur to us. Oh, your washing machine broke down? Adorable! We don’t have those. And please do tell me more about the raccoons that go through your trash; I only worry about crack whores and drunks going through mine. With a complete and utter sense of defeat, I opened my Uber app. What a surprise, no cars around. And only five per cent battery left. Sadie had been right − we were definitely going to die out here. At least she would enjoy the dignity of dying in a five-million-dollar luxury home. I was going out in a rented saloon full of overpriced organic food and dressed as a cross between a cheap stripper and a sasquatch.
Looking at the blinking fuel gauge again, I resisted the urge to literally kick myself. I never drove a car in the city and so I never thought to check it before I set out. I ignored the idea that this was some sort of karmic retribution for snarking to myself about the delivery driver and instead tried to commit to a can-do attitude. Tried so hard. I was Jenny Lopez, damn it − a little snow couldn’t stop me. It was Christmas Eve and I was damned if I was going to fall at the last hurdle or what I hoped to sweet baby Jesus was the last hurdle − I was freaking exhausted. I figured I couldn’t be that far from home − I was certain I’d taken the sharp bend super close to the house on the way out. Maybe I could walk. It really didn’t seem all that cold, and according to the tag when I bought it, my coat was approved for camping out in the arctic. Even if my under-ensemble was not.
‘I don’t want to leave the food in the car,’ I muttered to myself, watching my words appear as vapour in front of me. Okay, maybe it was a little chilly. For the first time in my life, I was worried about those raccoons. Squinting into the distance, I could definitely see a house. It wasn’t for sure our house, but it was big enough and it was on the edge of the lake and there were no lights to be seen so I felt pretty hopeful.
‘Maybe I could just take the turkey,’ I bartered with the boxes, staring at the feast in the trunk. ‘It won’t defrost on the way. And all we really need is the turkey.’
Manhandling a frozen bird out of its box and into my arms was not the most graceful manoeuvre I’d ever performed, but once I had a hold of it it wasn’t so bad. ‘Ten minutes’ walk, tops,’ I told myself, turning towards the house on the horizon. ‘And then Sadie can come and help me with the rest of it.’
The thought of Sadie trekking through the snow lugging groceries was enough to keep me going for the first five minutes alone.
*
Driving out into the sticks, as Angie would call it, was teaching me all kinds of stuff about myself. One, that I needed to check the gas gauge before I left the house, and two, that my sense of distance was not great. It turned out the house wasn’t ten minutes away, and the reason I knew that was because fifteen minutes after I had left the car it seemed farther away than ever. It also turned out that the little hand weights we used at Soulcycle were not enough to build the muscle it took to carry a turkey through three feet of snow. It had only taken five minutes before I was dragging it through the snow on the end of a makeshift lead fashioned out of the elasticated belt of my sexy Santa costume. Glancing behind me, I saw the saddest sight of my life. Haphazard footprints run over by a nonsensical turkey trail. It was like an alternative version of Frozen where they all died in the end.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket again to check for messages but there was nothing. This was just great. Here I was, dragging my dinner through the snow up the side of a deserted country road, dressed like a whore and freezing to death, and I was still more worried about a boy not texting me back. Maybe something bad really had happened to him, I mused. Or maybe, just maybe, he was a smooth Manhattan asshole like all the rest of them and he never had any intention of calling me again. I stared up at the bright, twinkling stars and pondered the options. Unannounced earthquake in Florida or regular asshat? I couldn’t decide which was more likely, given my romantic luck – either I’d been lured into bed by your average douche nozzle or I’d found the only good guy in all of Manhattan and he had died in an incredibly rare natural disaster.
I was still co
nsidering potential fates of Joseph C. Davies while trying to work out whether to keep going or head back to the car and wait for the sweet release of death when a set of headlights turned round a bend and flashed me. I held a hand over my eyes, blinking into the bright golden light as they dimmed and the car slowed down. Either these were my friends, here to save me, or it was a serial killer and I was about to die ever so slightly sooner than anticipated. Still, better to be murdered by a serial killer than die of exposure holding a twenty-five-pound turkey. Actually, was it?
The car rolled to a stop, snow chains wrapped around the tyres, and the window whirred down slowly.
‘Hi, are you okay?’
It wasn’t my friends, it was just a dude. In the shadows of the car, all I saw was a nice, normal-looking dude. So definitely a serial killer. Glancing down at my frozen bird buddy, I wondered how good a weapon a frozen turkey could actually be.
‘I’m fine,’ I said, my chattering teeth saying otherwise. ‘Thank you.’
‘You sure?’ he asked, leaning out of his window to take a look at my situation. ‘Just taking the turkey for a walk?’
‘My car broke down,’ I replied, edging away from the road. A serial killer with a sense of humour, lucky me. ‘I’m okay.’
‘The Chevy?’ He nodded, smiling at my inventive turkey transporter. ‘I passed it around the bend. You broke down?’
‘Yes,’ I said with complete certainty. There was no need for my murderer to know how dumb I was. ‘But I’m fine. My house is right there and my friends are already on their way to meet me.’
‘You sure?’ The guy shrugged. ‘Really, let me give you a ride, it’ll be quicker.’
‘I’m totally okay,’ I said again. ‘I’m not going far.’