Santa Steps Out: A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups (16 page)

When Anya's eyes opened, she lay in bed, the hushed light of magic time gilding the lace curtains. A gentle rapping sounded at the front door. A calm lay upon her, and a sadness. Her dream had evaporated—something about God and fir trees and copulation, something about how life had been for them in earlier times.

No matter.

Dreams were that way: elusive, tantalizing. Anya rose, a spring in her step, and wrapped her bright green robe about her.

She opened the door. "Yes, Fritz?"

He stood on the porch, bent slightly at the waist, hands behind his back, one toe sweeping an arc of shyness across the porch snow. "Um . . . I was wondering . . . that is I was hoping . . . ." Looking up from beneath a mop of red hair, he blushed.

"Come in," she said, opening the door for him, then closing it firmly behind, feeling a whoosh of cold air at her ankles.

Fritz crushed his cap to his breast. "The others, they all drifted away, they don't remember what happened in the woods, they can't understand why everything's in magic time. They look at me standing there in the snow with this bulge in my pants and call me crazy."

Anya shook her head and smiled. "My faithful Fritz," she said, "always so eager to please. It makes me wonder what you were in the other life."

"Other life?"

"No matter. Something I dreamed."

"Oh. Anyway I was wondering if you'd like to go back to the hut and—"

"It's over, Fritz."

"—and you and me, we could . . . what did you say?"

"Things are returning to normal. I'm Santa's wife again and only Santa's."

"Oh, no, don't say that. Please."

"You were there at the beginning, with the others. You saw God resanctify our marriage."

"But doesn't this count for anything?" Fritz took out his penis and held it as though it were a priceless treasure he'd found in his pockets.

Anya contemplated the ruddy column of flesh, its squinty eye, its wrinkled wrap of veins. Men were such children when it came to sex. All of their passion rushed to this hidden finger, the creature they kept in their pants whose primary function seemed to be to turn love into plumbing.

Now here was Fritz in her vestibule, surrounded by wreaths, spare overshoes, a pipe rack, and a dozen other reminders of his beloved master, and all he could think about was his elfin erection. She went to her knees and cupped him in her hands. Moaning, he caressed her face.

"This counts for much," she said tenderly. "These past many days, I've handled lots of these, Fritz, but none so beautiful as yours."

"Yes, yes, ooooooh that's nice."

"But this is what you gave up to be one of Santa's helpers. Surely the sacrifice was worth it."

"Never. Oh, Anya, please?"

Anya looked at the stiff rod she kneaded. Its tip glistened to Fritz's plea, like a lowly petitioner, naked and disarming. "You'll tell no one?"

"Not a soul." His head blurred with shaking.

"I'll drain you so dry, not a memory of any of this will be left in you."

"Fine, fine, just do it. Please." The way he said it, she knew he didn't believe her. The poor dear thought his newfound bliss would go on forever, that he would unseat Santa in her heart.

Anya bent then to the task of obliterating Fritz's memory, giving free license to her mouth to bob and weave as it would. But her thoughts were elsewhere. She scarcely gave ear to the increased volume and urgency of his groans, barely tasted the mucoid surge of his seed. She gave but passing notice to the confused look on Fritz's face as she buttoned him up, showed him the door, and waved the entire North Pole back into normal time.

Steadying herself at the porch railing, she watched Fritz stroll across the commons while elves here and there began to wink in and out. She wondered what her husband was doing at this very moment—and what would happen between them when he returned.

*****

"Well."

"Well?"

"Well, it's over."

"Oh, fuck you, Santa. And fuck your precious Anya too. You're telling me you're never going to want to kiss these nipples, never feel the tickle of my breath on your balls, never again sail your longboat into the saline port of my sex?"

Santa gulped hard. Moonlight accentuated her lithe, lean, perfectly proportioned body. Spent as he was, the demon of desire raced about Santa's heart whenever his senses drank her in. He began once more to doubt his resolve.

"No reflection on you. It's just that I've got to get my life in order, and lust pure and simple is one emotion I've resolved never to act on again."

She seized him. "You see this meat? It's mine. I own it. In twenty years my tongue has given more life to this thing than Anya's whole body in the centuries you've known her. Admit it. See? It's stiffening up again. It knows what's best for it better than you do."

Santa removed her hand. "No more. We're finished." There, it was out, and it felt good. "You have to leave now. There's work to do."

At that, she swirled into a rage, hovering above the bed. "You dare deny me, fat boy? You'll pay for that. Next time you want me—and fuck the Christ child in the manger if it won't be before the year is out—I'm going to make you squirm and beg on your chubby little knees. I'm going to roll back the lips of my cunt like a baboon's mouth and turn my womb inside out right in your jolly old face, and all you'll be allowed to do with my glistening pink flesh is watch it, itching with all your heart and soul to touch it and stroke it and lick it and fuck it. You hear me, fat boy?"

Santa, softly: "If you want your panties back, look in my left pants pocket."

The Tooth Fairy's renewed display of fury took Santa's breath away. She spun in the air like a cat chasing its tail, giving a banshee wail. The enraged fairy whipped up storms of immortal anger, earsplitting peals of thunder, and clouds dark beyond ominous, from which forked lightning split apart Santa's skin and fried his innards. Then she was gone. Abrupt calm fell and Santa healed at once, though his body still tingled and thrilled at her outpouring of rage.

He pictured Anya, knitting and rocking by the sewing room window, and prayed to God it wasn't too late to save his marriage.

Santa looked down at Wendy, tiny fists poking out of the nightgown to either side of her body. "God keep you and all children from such furies," he said, bending to kiss her cheek. The sleeping child made him think of Rachel lying in this same bed twenty years before. And now Rachel had a darling girl of her own. Now she played at being mommy, asleep upstairs in her parents' bedroom.

On a whim, Santa gathered his clothes, tucked them under his arm, and headed upstairs. Rachel would provide closure. His affair would end with one loving glimpse at the girl who had been there beside them at the beginning.

From the door the sight of her, alone in the double bed, made her seem smaller than she was.

Santa entered her bedroom, taking in the nightstands of dark laminate, a matching dresser, a blond wood desk used as a catch-all for bills and stationery. Then he gazed again at Rachel asleep in the bed.

She was stunning in her loveliness.

Santa sat beside her, staring down in awe at the simple summation of humanity in her face.

"Dear, dear Rachel," said Santa. "How lovely you've grown since your first Christmas in this house."

And, God help him, Rachel's large hazel eyes opened just wide enough for Santa to fall into them.

9. Rachel All Grown Up

Santa was so astonished at seeing a mortal—let alone this mortal—open her eyes, that he quite forgot to snatch back the stray bit of magic time that had seeped out to claim her. Whether that straying occurred because Santa grew careless or because the events of Christmas twenty years before had opened Rachel to magic time, as the seconds ticked by and Santa ignored God's injunction to maintain the barrier that hid him from mortal eyes, any justification for vanishing from her sight grew less and less compelling.

It was the look she gave him.

A look that silenced his intruder, laid him in a box, and buried him deeper than profundity itself. New love, God help him, flowered among the blossoms of his love for Anya—a flora that complemented that love, not the choking riot of weeds his lust for the Tooth Fairy had given rise to.

The air in Rachel's bedroom seemed as heady as pure oxygen. He breathed it, and so did she. She looked radiant against the pastel columbines of her pillow. In the midst of panic at these new freshets of feeling, Santa's heart basked in a glow of peace.

*****

"Santa Claus?" said Rachel. Part of her wanted to scream in terror, but the rest of her was remembering the details of Christmas Eve twenty years before as she took in the roly-poly phantasm sitting there naked, beaming down at her.

He gave a perfect nod and opened his perfect mouth. "Yes, Rachel," came his words, and their purity speared through her like sunlight.

"Jesus!" she gasped. "Turn down the gain!" She tried to sit up but it was difficult. Her skin tingled beneath her nightgown as though she had become one great heatlamp filament. Her womanflesh swelled and fretted, and a series of soothing orgasms giggled inside her like champagne bubbles.

"What's wrong?" said Santa. His caring voice set off a new round of climaxes, continuous as wavelets lapping at a shore.

"Not a thing," Rachel laughed, holding out her hands to deflect him. "It's just that you're a bit . . . overwhelming."

Santa touched his chest. He looked down at himself. "Oh dear, I'd better put something on."

"Don't," she said, touching his thigh with one hand, then snatching it back as though stung. His words she had begun to adjust to. But touching him had slipped her at once into a cauldron of climaxes. Had it not been so shudderingly delicious, the rush of them would have been painful. "You look fine the way you are."

"Are you sure you're all right?"

"Oh yes," she said, the sweat of delirium at every pore. She laughed. "Now I know how Leda felt."

Santa Claus looked away and repeated the name, trying to place it.

"Yes, Zeus came to earth as a swan and . . . and he slept with Leda, who gave birth to Helen of Troy."

"Oh, please don't think—"

"Of course not, I—"

"You're a beautiful woman, but—"

"It's just that you make me feel . . ."

"I make you feel how?"

"Well, very physical. You take some getting used to. Everything you do feels like a caress." God, was she out of line? She lowered her eyes, though not looking at him was a torture. "An intimate caress."

"Really?" Santa seemed at a loss. "It's not too unpleasant, I hope?"

"Oh, no. Not at all."

"You see there's a reason, not one I'm very proud of, for my state of undress."

"You don't have to explain."

"I'd like to anyway. I need to tell someone." A moment's hesitation. "I want to tell
you
, Rachel."

*****

And he did.

Reluctantly at first, fearing she would fault him for his adultery. Then, once he had gotten over the hump of telling her about his wife (her smile dimmed at that), he plowed straight ahead, relating more than he intended to about his sins these past twenty years, about the not-Santa that had plagued him and the lust that had tainted his giving.

Rachel was the perfect listener, condemning him for nothing, accepting him completely and returning unconditional love—in her encouraging nods, in the softness of her questions, in every gesture of head and hand. The impact of her presence amazed him. He wondered if an encounter with any mortal woman might tend the same way. Then he understood that Rachel was indeed special: free of guile, open, caring, lovely in her bones.

"Did Wendy see you with the Tooth Fairy?" Rachel's face registered alarm.

"Of course not," Santa assured her. "We kept the magic time strictly to ourselves, just as we did with you twenty years ago."

Rachel smirked. "I saw everything then."

"You didn't!"

She nodded. "Of course I had a child's understanding of what went on. And no recollection of it afterward, none. But now, I see it again as clear as can be." And she proved it, giving an exhaustive blow-by-blow of what she had witnessed as a child.

Santa felt odd listening to her. It was as if her account sanctified the lustful acts he had performed with the Tooth Fairy, honeyed over their vileness, and recreated them as acts of love. Beneath the clothing bunched upon his lap, there burgeoned an erection, and it felt good and pure and brimming with righteousness. When she was done, he said, "You were awake all right, though I don't understand how that could have happened. All I can say is that I think Wendy remained in normal time. You could always ask her in the morning."

Rachel chuckled and shook her head. "Unless she brings it up, I'll just let it slide. Didn't do
me
any harm."

"You're sure about that?"

Rachel shrugged. The way she did it made Santa break into laughter.

"Ooh, I like the way you laugh," said Rachel.

"It's my stock-in-trade," he replied, chuckling again at his own joke.

She had propped her pillows up and was leaning against the headboard, knees bent before her. Now she smiled at him and a sigh escaped her lips. A hand picked absently at the buttons that held her nightgown closed. Santa's flesh stirred again in his lap. Hackles rose at the back of his neck.

"Well, I suppose I ought to be going."

Her smile never faltered. She continued to toy with her buttons as if she hadn't heard him. When the top one popped open, her hand drifted lazily to the next.

God in heaven, thought Santa, this will never do. He had enough explaining ahead of him as it was. "Maybe next Christmas we can talk again."

Another button gave way.

"I want you, Santa," she said, "and I don't. Stop me if you like. I'll understand. But I feel so much love for you. And from you. This seems right as can be. I know I should be thinking about Anya, but the rules seem so pointless with you here. And me here."

Santa saw the smoky gleam in Rachel's eye, her moist tongue moving in her mouth, a moonlit V of skin at her sternum, her breasts straining at cloth, a tantalizing hint of nipple beneath.