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  To Kristen Barrows and Edie Swensen

  Even hundreds of miles cannot carve distance between true friends—I really am lucky

  Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too.

  They live inside us, and sometimes they win.

  Stephen King

  “Listen,” Adrienne said. “I have to tell you, I stole it.”

  We laughed.

  “No. Really.”

  Keith tilted his head to consider the blossom of red tissue paper in his lap, as if it might have teeth, before lifting the final sheet and, with a grin, raising the coffee mug for us to see its logo, “Dell’s Diner,” and we laughed again.

  “I love it.”

  “Look inside.”

  He peered into the mug and pulled out a five-dollar bill.

  “’Cause I didn’t spend it on your gift.”

  “Perfect. It’s just what I need.”

  I didn’t doubt him. Though the five of us had only met weeks earlier, it was easy enough to assess that at least three of our party were not unaccustomed to being short of cash.

  The way Keith set the mug down like it was made of rare glass instead of sturdy dinerware conveyed how serious his appreciation was, as did the way he flattened the five-dollar bill then folded it in half and in half again to form a neat square he tucked into the inside pocket of his overcoat, thrown across the back of the couch as though to keep close in case of need for a hasty escape.

  Lena began to pick up the discarded wrapping paper, but I told her to stop; I liked the festive atmosphere it brought to my dismal space. My tree had two boards nailed at a cross to the trunk to help it stay upright because, O. Henry–like, I could afford either a tree or a stand, but not both. No lights on the drying branches, but a string bravely hung between tacks on the wall.

  “I like what you did with that,” Grayson said earlier when he arrived with a package wrapped in silver paper, topped with an elaborate bow and sprig of holly, all of which I suspected must have cost close to the allotted five-dollar limit we had agreed on. What could be inside? I wondered. A stick of gum?

  No, as you might already have guessed, not gum but a necklace: a gold chain from which hung the name in script, Adrienne.

  She said she loved it, and might actually have meant it, though I was dubious about the validity of her claim of “fat fingers” (clearly they weren’t) preventing her from working the clasp. I moved to help, but Grayson beat me to it, lingering longer than necessary over the curve of her thieving neck.

  Ridiculous, I thought, to be jealous of a gift like that, or the man who would give it but, to be fair, I was also jealous of Keith’s mug and, perhaps most of all, the five-dollar bill. It is not an easy thing to maintain a generous spirit within a season of abundance when one has so little. It wasn’t for me, at least.

  Grayson thanked Lena with great exuberance for the cap she’d knit in red and white stripes, the colors of our alma mater, but it couldn’t have been lost on her that he returned it to its box without even bothering to go through the charade of modeling it. I might have felt a little sympathy had she not so quickly abandoned the book I’d given her, a nearly perfect edition of Danse Macabre I’d found in Avol’s bookstore on State Street.

  Keith’s gift to me was as humble as his demeanor, a simple ornament, a deer carved in wood that I immediately hung on my poor tree nearly devoid of decoration. “It’s fucking great,” I said.

  His fair complexion, lightly sprinkled with freckles, brightened with a faint blush beneath my gaze before he nodded curtly, and looked away. Up to that point I’d felt a frisson of attraction between us. I wondered what I had done to make him so uncomfortable. When I realized it was probably the swearing it was all I could do not to laugh.

  It was a strange Christmas menu and yet remains one of my favorites. How delicious it all tasted: the cheap wine, the salty crunch of potato chips atop a creamy bed of noodles, romaine lettuce coated with blue cheese dressing, and sweet potato casserole. The rickety table—left behind by previous tenants—barely tilted, with a Christmas card tucked under one leg. How cheerful the world looked in a kitchen filled with laughter and gift wrap and ribbons and, as darkness crept in—when we returned to my cramped living room—how lovely the light strung across the wall, as though the cracks there had potential for illumination.

  “It’s just so weird to think of Dell’s closing,” Lena said, eyeing Keith’s mug as she paused before him perched on the sagging couch, to offer her homemade cookies on a decorative plate.

  I had been a frequent patron of the small diner wedged between hairdresser and boutique, so snugly nestled it could have been the original source for the term “a hole in the wall.” Once a beloved college hangout, it had changed owners several times during my four years at UW. The food and service just kept getting worse, but I liked that I could sit at a table for hours, simply ordering coffee and toast, while writing the stories my classmates enthusiastically excoriated as “twisted fairy tales” and “morally corrupt.” In January of my senior year, a new place with a funky atmosphere opened across the street and by that November, Dell’s announced it would close at the end of the month.

  We met there, eyeing each other across the narrow space from our separate tables, hunched over various stages of the Thanksgiving special, a glop of mashed potatoes, slabs of turkey that looked cut from a loaf, wet bread stuffing, and limp green beans, all coated with oily gravy. What someone like Adrienne (sitting alone at the small table beneath the window, wearing dark glasses and a scarf around her neck as if a spy) was doing in Dell’s, I couldn’t guess, though, after Keith introduced himself and suggested we all sit together to make a holiday out of it, she confessed to be recovering from a bad breakup. The conversation was awkward, as might be expected amongst strangers, loosened eventually by the wine Grayson graciously ordered. He was quite gregarious. Charming in a way I found off-putting. He said he’d been a frequent patron of Dell’s and had come to “pay his last respects,” which I thought was an odd way of phrasing it, though I suppose that’s what we were all doing. I didn’t recognize him, but thought Keith looked familiar. He, however, said he’d never been there. I mentally scolded myself to work on my powers of observation. A writer has to be aware. Lena shared that her plans to spend the day with a co-worker and her husband had fallen through when they both came down with the flu. I wasn’t sure I had much in common with any of them, but all of us had remained in Madison after graduation while our classmates moved elsewhere, and I harbored a secret hope we would form the sort of intense, almost familial union I’d seen in friendships depicted in movies.

  As a struggling writer I was used to crossing things out, making adjustments, reconsidering where the story was going. That Christmas, after the delicate bubble of conviviality we created over dinner seemed to have been burst by relocating to the living room, when even the relentlessly chirpy Lena had gone quiet, I gave up expectations for our future. All I wanted was to get through the night.

  “I wonder where we’ll be next year,” Lena sighed.

  “I know!”
Adrienne said, loudly, like a contestant certain of a prize. “Let’s do this again.”

  “I’m not sure what my circumstances will be,” Grayson said.

  “Well, me either,” Adrienne snapped, her eyes narrowed like someone doing computation.

  I shrugged as if it didn’t really matter before biting into a cookie, a delicious little spice bomb of clove, ginger, and cardamom.

  “Who knows where any of us will be?” Adrienne said. “But let’s make a game of it. Let’s exchange names again. We can do it tonight.”

  “I don’t know about that.” Keith sipped from his wineglass like a professor considering an overly enthusiastic student’s proposal. “I’m not sure I will remember.”

  “You can remember.” There was a tone in Adrienne’s voice that made me decide not to argue. I guess others heard the same thing because we all agreed, and the pact was set before we even understood its parameters.

  “The thing is,” she said, “the fun part is, whatever we give, it has to be stolen.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I mean I can’t . . .” Lena stammered.

  “Don’t be a baby,” Adrienne scolded. “I’m not talking grand theft auto. It doesn’t have to be anything extreme. It’s just a game.”

  And so it was agreed. It was left to me to write down each name on narrow strips of paper I folded and dropped into the red bowl I’d bought at a summer garage sale, thinking it looked cheerful. When I looked up from my work I realized that, while I had been preoccupied, something had changed in the atmosphere. It took me a minute to figure it out, the way Grayson leaned toward Adrienne, the way Keith paused with the glass at his lips to smile at something Lena said, the way she blushed.

  “Here, let me get this out of your way.” I tugged at Keith’s overcoat. Much of it was hanging off the back of the couch by that point, but he sat against the rest.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean—”

  “No, it’s not a problem. I’ll just put it in the closet. So nothing gets spilled on it.” I tugged harder and he leaned forward.

  “Really, I can take it.” He extended his hand. I gave him the bowl, instead.

  After I’d hung up his coat, we picked the names, which each of us carefully secreted in purse or pocket and then, because it was too soon to declare Christmas over, I suggested we tell ghost stories, surprised to learn that none of them had ever done so as part of their family celebration.

  Lena, who was a kindergarten teacher, told an unremarkable tale involving the ghost of a calico cat. Keith told a surprisingly gruesome story about an abusive couple whose son soothed himself to sleep every night by imagining terrible ways for them to die, only to answer the door, one Christmas Eve, to a priest and a policeman who reported that the parents—who had gone shopping—had been T-boned by a drunk driver and were dead. The story ended with a chilling conclusion. “He tried to hide his happiness because he knew how he was expected to respond to the tragedy, but that night, even though he slept in a different town, in a different house, in a different bed, his parents found him, reaching through the dark with bloody fingers, poking until his tears were real.”

  I wondered if I had misread Keith when I thought he was too fussy to be taken seriously. I didn’t realize I was staring at him until his eyes locked with mine. Something flashed beneath his placid gaze before his attention was drawn by Lena who patted his arm in a consoling manner. Adrienne, apparently as comfortable with breaking rules as making them, refused to tell a story and insisted I go next. “After all, you’re the writer,” she said. But writing is different than raconteuring, or at least it always has been for me. Besides, I realized that I had taken us too close to wounds I did not want to open. Rather than share my Christmas ghosts, I made up a rambling account of spirits that spill sugar, tip over teacups, and blow on candles causing flames to flicker in still rooms—all sorts of nonsense. There was no protagonist or antagonist. It wasn’t even a story, and when I finished I felt the weight of disappointment, relieved when the collective gaze turned to Grayson.

  I’d come to some conclusions about Grayson. Watching him as he crossed his legs and leaned back into the creaking chair to swirl the cheap wine I’d served in the Goodwill glass, as though it were expensive brandy, I doubted he had ever experienced discomfort. He was quite charming, with his dimples and grace, and the box of expensive chocolates he’d presented as a hostess gift that I immediately hid in the cupboard. What was the cost of such ease in the world, I wondered. I bet it cost a lot.

  “It’s not really a ghost story,” he began. “Do you know about the Krampus? The monsters that terrorize households in the midst of their Christmas cheer?” he asked, surveying the room with a regal turn of his head.

  “Yes,” Lena said in a happy - to - be - a - good - student tone of voice. “Last year, when I was in Chicago with my parents, we went into some store. What was the name again? Well, it doesn’t matter. They were selling cards like that. St. Nicholas with horrible creatures . . .”

  “Krampus,” Adrienne corrected.

  “Why anyone would want that on their Christmas cards, I don’t know.”

  “It’s quite common in some parts of the world,” Grayson said. “My father, for instance, maintained many of the old traditions. I was raised with the threat of Krampus at every St. Nicholas Day’s approach. I was frightened of them well before I ever understood their true horror. The story I’d like to tell is about that, if it’s all right?”

  He looked at me, one eyebrow raised, as if I would ever have any power over a person like him.

  “Yes, of course,” I said. “Does anyone need a refill before we start?”

  After glasses were replenished, and Lena’s cookies passed around once more, I asked if everyone was comfortable. They all said they were, but when I went into the bedroom and returned with a pillow and quilt for myself, the others admitted a slight chill. I stripped my meager bed to furnish blankets for all but Grayson, who waited out the lengthy interruption as though accustomed to a world where those who listened to him sought preparation.

  Yet when we were finally cocooned and ready, he leisurely sipped his wine, allowing the silence to fill with expectation.

  “The family home, many years before my grandfather bought it, had been a chocolate factory. He got it for a steal, or at least that’s what I have been told, though he sank so much money into the remodel it ruined his marriage. As an act of contrition, he built a small church on the property, but it didn’t work and she left him. No one ever saw her again. The only evidence of her existence, beyond her progeny, is the garden which flourishes in her absence. Some say she sneaks into the yard to pull weeds and prune dead leaves. Either her or her ghost. That’s what people say.

  “By the time I made my appearance in the manse, Jovy—he was our man for the yard—maintained the estate as well as any mortal could. What fond memories I have of summers scented with rosemary, basil, and mint! But this is a winter story. For me, the perfume of winter will always be woodsmoke, pine, and the cherry vanilla tobacco of Jovy’s pipe as he walked about, attending to the ravages of snow and ice. I used to trail him while he worked. I was an only child, and even then, in some peripheral fashion aware of the privileges of my life, I did long for companionship. Perhaps that is why I formed a friendship with Mrs. Shellern, the cook who kindly pretended to take my advice about seasoning the stuffing and sugaring the fruit pies.

  “She told me how things used to be, how my mother always ordered swags of evergreen draped around the large church doors, and over the stained glass windows, careful to get the ones with holly leaves and berries so the cedar waxwings would join in the celebration. Once she began to tell me how my mother didn’t believe the things that had been said about my father before they married, but stopped in midsentence, and made the sign of the cross. Later, I attempted to mimic the gesture in the presence of my father, who whipped me soundly for it then made me promise I would have nothing to do with the church, or Mrs. Shellern.
>
  “‘You should not have bothered her,’ he said. She was not family or friend. ‘You must be polite,’ he admonished, ‘but never mistake a servant for a companion.’

  “I didn’t have a chance to correct the relationship, however, because the next morning there was a new woman in the kitchen who turned her back on me whenever I approached. I was not completely surprised by Mrs. Shellern’s absence. It happened frequently that help disappeared, often leaving what little they owned behind.

  “Later, when I found Jovy taking a pipe break beside the little church, I asked if he knew where Mrs. Shellern had gone, but he only shook his head as if I had said something solemn. I asked if he knew why they left the way they did.

  “Jovy looked over his shoulder at the snow untrammeled by any footprints other than our own. All that could be seen of my father’s house was the tip of chimney over the hill. We were in no danger of being heard, yet, in the end, he told me to go play and not worry about ghosts.

  “Oh, yes, did I forget to mention? They say the house is haunted.

  “That Christmas Eve, I awoke with the light of a full moon fallen across my pillow and, summoned to my window by a strange noise, observed a figure walking across our yard. I thought I’d been bewitched. I probably wasn’t supposed to know about such matters, but Mrs. Shellern had told me about witches and their bedevilment. At any rate, I endeavored to open the heavy window, finally achieving a slight lift through which poured the icy air and a metallic sound that arose from the figure I assumed was Santa Claus, walking over the hill.

  “I hurried into my socks, slippers, and sweater. I left the warm fire of my room for the cold dark hallway, making careful passage down the stairs, past all our Christmas trees, unlit at that hour, pausing to slip into my boots, put on coat, mittens, and hat.

  “The snow was not yet deep, nor was it fresh. It was easy enough to run across it, like an animal freed from its trap. There was a blue quality to the light, I remember that, and how the air stung. I remember, so clearly, the sense of wonder I felt, trekking across the yard, following footprints which led me down the hill to the side of the church, and a small service door I had never noticed from which keys dangled in the lock. It was a surprisingly heavy door, and took some effort, but I did not question what I was doing until I found myself in a narrow darkness so different from the vast one I’d left behind. Years later, when I read the Edgar Allan Poe story, I was reminded of my own beating heart and the way it seemed to echo in the chamber, betraying my presence.