“Yes.”
“The play starts at seven, so I’ll pick you up around six-thirty?”
“Okay,” I said.
“Then, if you’re not too tired, we’ll get some dinner after.”
“Sounds nice.”
“Anything in particular?”
“No. Surprise me.” Just going out to dinner was surprise enough.
It was snowing when I got home from work. As usual, my apartment was a mess, so I picked up the place or, at least, organized the chaos—throwing my clothes in a hamper and loading the dishwasher. I was about to freshen up for the play when the doorbell rang. He better not be early, I thought. He wasn’t. It was the florist. “I’ve got your flowers,” the man said.
I looked around my tiny apartment. “Bring them in.”
“Where do you want them?”
“Wherever they’ll fit,” I replied.
My apartment was on the second floor of the building, and it took the man fifteen minutes to bring all the roses in from his truck. By the time he finished, it was twenty-five after. I quickly changed into some more comfortable jeans and a sweater, brushed back my hair, then went to put on some perfume but couldn’t find any. Girl, you’ve got to get back with it.
I remembered that I had an unopened bottle of perfume in the bottom of my closet—a gift from the girls at the office for my birthday last spring. I tore open the package and was spraying it on when the doorbell rang. I looked at myself one more time in the mirror, then hurried out past the garden of flowers, grabbing my coat on the way.
I opened the door. Nicholas was standing there holding a bouquet of yellow gerbera daisies. I almost laughed when I saw them. “You’re kidding, right?”
“I wasn’t sure what else to bring you,” he said.
“Let me find something to put these in. Come on in.”
He laughed when he saw the flowers splayed out over my front room. “You almost need a machete to get through here.”
“Almost,” I said.
I couldn’t find a vase (other than the ones in my front room), so I filled a pitcher with water and arranged the flowers in it. When I came back out Nicholas was examining a picture on my wall of me with my sister.
“Is this your sister?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“What’s her name?”
“Cosette.”
“As in Les Misérables?”
“Yes. My father liked the book. Shall we go?”
“Sure,” he said. Then added, “You look nice.”
“Thank you. So do you.” He was dressed casually in a dark green knit sweater that was a little wet on the shoulders from falling snow. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you out of a suit.”
“It’s rare, but I do dress down on occasion.”
I took his hand as we walked down the stairs. His car was parked out front, a white BMW sedan. He held the door open for me as I got in. The interior was immaculate and smelled like cinnamon. The seats and doors were two-toned leather, embossed like a football. He shut the door, then went around and climbed in.
“You have a nice car.”
“Thank you. I just got it a few months ago. The dealer said it’s good in snow. I hope he’s right. I turned your seat warmer on. If it’s too hot you can adjust it.”
“Thanks.”
He started the car. The heater and the windshield wipers came on simultaneously, along with a Michael Bublé Christmas album. “Is this music okay?”
“I love Bublé,” I said.
“Then Bublé you will have.”
“It smells good in here,” I said.
“You smell good. What is it? Lovely?”
“How in the world did you know that?”
“My paralegal wears it.” He pulled a U-turn, then drove out of my complex. “Thanks again for going to this with me. I’ve wanted to do this for a while.”
“It’s my pleasure,” I said. “I told Cathy where we were going, and she said she loves it. Her family goes every year.”
“Who’s Cathy?”
“Sorry, she’s our bookkeeper.”
“Are all of your friends from work?”
I frowned, embarrassed by the question. “Yes.”
He glanced over. “It happens. All my friends are lawyers. Except you.”
Something about how he had said that made me glad. “Tell me about this play,” I said.
“Hale Centre Theatre. They’ve been doing this for a long time. I’m kind of a sap when it comes to Christmas. I watch A Christmas Carol on TV at least twice every holiday season. My favorite television version is the one with George C. Scott.”
“Me too,” I said. “I mean, that’s my favorite version too.”
The Hale Centre Theatre was located on the west side of the valley, about fifteen minutes from my apartment. The place was crowded. We picked up our tickets at Will Call, then Nicholas asked, “Would you like a drink or a snack?”
I glanced over at the concession stand. “Maybe some popcorn.”
“Okay. Wait, it’s not popcorn, it’s kettle corn.”
“What’s the difference?”
“You’ll like it,” he said. “It has sugar.”
“How do you know I like sugar?”
“You eat it on your salad,” he said.
We got a small box of kettle corn and climbed the stairs to the theater’s entrance. The theater was in the round, and, not surprisingly, we had good seats, though in a theater that small I’m not sure there were any bad ones.
After we had sat down I ate some kettle corn and said, “Picking up our tickets at Will Call reminded me of something dumb I did.”
“Tell me.”
“When I first started at ICE, Mark, he’s the owner, sent me over to Modern Display to pick up some plastic display holders for a convention we were doing. He said to get them from Will Call. When I got there I went up to the sales counter and asked for Mr. Call. There were two men there, and they both looked at me with funny expressions. One asked the other, ‘Do you know a Call here?’ He said, ‘No.’ Then he said to me, ‘I’m sorry, there’s no Mr. Call here. Do you know his first name?’ I said, ‘I think it’s William or Will. My boss just said to pick it up from Will Call.’ They laughed for about five minutes before someone told me why.”
Nicholas laughed. “I did that exact same thing once.”
“Really?”
“No, I’m not that dumb.”
I threw a piece of kettle corn at him.
“So here’s some trivia for you,” he said. “Did you know that the original name that Dickens gave his book was much longer? Its real title is A Christmas Carol in Prose: Being a Ghost Story of Christmas. A carol is a song or a hymn, so the abbreviated title doesn’t really make sense.”
“I’ve never thought of that,” I said.
“It’s a much more influential book than most people realize. In a way, Dickens invented Christmas.”
“I’m pretty sure Christmas existed before Dickens was born.”
“True, but before A Christmas Carol, Easter was the biggest Christian celebration. December twenty-fifth was no more consequential than Memorial Day. In fact, the colony of Massachusetts had a law on the books prohibiting the celebration of the holiday. Christmas was considered a pagan celebration, and observing Christmas might cost you a night in the stocks.”
“Why is that?”
“Mostly the timing, I suspect. The reason we celebrate Christmas on the twenty-fifth has nothing to do with Christ’s birth. In fact, we have no idea when Christ was born. The twenty-fifth was designated as Jesus’s birthday by Pope Julius I, in order to attract new Roman members to the church because they were already celebrating the day in honor of the pagan god of agriculture. Which is why Christmas not so coincidentally takes place near the wint
er solstice.”
“I had no idea,” I said.
“Also interesting is that historically, Dickens and Friedrich Engels were contemporaries. They were both in Manchester, England, at the same time and they were equally repulsed by the workers’ living conditions.”
“Who is Friedrich Engels?”
“He was Karl Marx’s inspiration for the Communist Manifesto. The early nineteenth century was a dark time for the workingman. The majority of the children born to working-class parents died before the age of five. So while Engels wrote about a political revolution, Dickens was writing about a different kind of revolution—a revolution of the heart. He was writing about the things he wrote about in his other books, the welfare of children and the need for social charity.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I’m a lawyer,” he said, which again made no sense to me.
“What does that have to do with—”
“Shh,” he said, laying his finger across his lips. “The play is starting.”
As the lights came up at the end of the first half, just before Scrooge meets the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, I excused myself to go to the ladies’ room. When I returned Nicholas was standing near our seats, talking to a beautiful young woman. She looked to be in her late twenties, with big brown eyes and coffee brown hair that fell past her shoulders.
“Elise, this is Ashley,” Nicholas said. “We used to work together.”
She smiled at me. “I was Nick’s legal secretary. It’s nice to meet you.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” I echoed. I took Nicholas’s hand, which she noticed.
“Where’s Hazel tonight?” Nicholas asked.
“With Grandma,” she said. “Kory and I needed a night out. Looks like you did too.” She turned to me. “Nick’s the best boss I’ve ever had, but an insatiable workaholic. I’m glad to see someone got him out of the office for a change.”
“This is the first time I’ve seen him without a tie,” I said.
“I can believe that. I’m pretty sure that he sleeps with one on.” She turned back to Nicholas. “It’s good to see you. You take care.” She leaned forward, and they hugged. Then she walked around to a section directly across the theater from ours.
“How long did she work for you?” I asked.
“Three, almost four years. A year ago she quit to have a baby.”
“She likes you.”
“We worked well together,” he said simply.
We sat back in our seats as the lights dimmed and the second half began. Near the end of the performance I heard a sniffle. I furtively glanced over at Nicholas as he wiped his eyes with a crumpled Kleenex.
After the show the cast came out to the lobby to shake hands with the audience. We thanked them for the performance before walking out into the cold night air.
“That was really good,” I said.
“I’m glad I finally got to see it.”
“It affected you.”
He nodded. “It’s about redemption and hope.” He looked me in the eyes. “Hope that we can be better than our mistakes.”
His words struck me to the core. It was as if he knew me intimately. It took me a moment to respond. “Thank you for taking me.”
“You’re welcome,” he said. When we got back to his car he asked, “Are you hungry?”
“Famished.”
“Do you like Thai food?”
“I’ve never had it. But I’d like to try it.”
“Good. I know a place.”
The restaurant was less than ten minutes from the theater. A young Thai woman seated us in a vacant corner of the restaurant and handed us menus. I looked mine over. “I have no idea what to order.”
“How about I order a few dishes and we’ll share?”
I set down my menu. “Perfect.”
When our waitress came, Nicholas ordered a bunch of things I couldn’t even pronounce, then said, “You’ll love it.” Then added, “Maybe.”
A few minutes later the waitress set two bowls of white soup on the table in front of us. “What’s this?” I asked.
“Coconut milk soup.”
Our waitress returned with a large bowl of noodles, two platters of curry dishes, and a large bowl of sticky rice.
I dished up my plate with a little of everything. I liked it all, which wasn’t too surprising, since everything was sweet.
In the middle of our dinner Nicholas asked, “Have you lived in Salt Lake your whole life?”
“No. I was born in Arizona. I lived there until I was fourteen.”
“Where in Arizona?”
“Chino Valley. Near Prescott. Do you know Arizona?”
“A little,” he replied. “I’ve spent some time there. What brought you to Utah?”
“My father.”
“Work?”
“No. It’s more complicated than that.”
“How so?”
I hesitated. “My father was an interesting man.”
“By interesting do you mean, a ‘fascinating individual’ or a ‘living hell’?”
I laughed. “More of the latter,” I said. Nicholas continued looking at me in anticipation. “Are you sure you really want to hear this?”
“I love to hear people’s histories,” he said. “Especially the interesting ones.”
“All right,” I said. “My father was fanatical. Actually, that’s putting it mildly. He thought the world was going to hell, and since the ‘lunatic’ Californians were buying up all the land around us, he sold our farm and moved us to a little town in Utah of ninety-six people. We made it an even hundred.”
“What town?”
“You’ve never heard of it.”
“Try me.”
“Montezuma Creek.”
“You’re right,” he said. “Why there?”
“Because it was about as far from civilization as you could get. And, don’t laugh, because there was only one road into town and he could blow it up when the Russians invaded.”
“Really?”
“It’s true,” I said. “He had a whole shed of dynamite and black powder.” I shook my head. “The biggest thing that ever happened in Montezuma Creek was when the Harlem Globetrotters came through town. I don’t know what brought them to such a small town. I guess they weren’t that big anymore, but the whole town showed up. I think the whole county showed up.”
“What did your father do in Montezuma Creek? To provide?”
“We had greenhouses. Big ones. We mostly grew tomatoes. We sold them to Safeway.”
“How did you end up in Salt Lake?”
“I just got out as fast as I could.”
“Didn’t like the small-town life?”
“I didn’t like my father,” I said softly. “He talked constantly about the end of days and the world being evil and corrupt, but the truth is, he was evil and corrupt. And violent and cruel. I lived in constant fear of him. I remember I was at our town’s little grocery store when a man I’d never met said to me, ‘I feel sorry for you.’ When I asked why, he said, ‘That you have that father. He is one awful man.’
“My father was always trying to prove that he was in control. Once I told him I was excited because we were going to have a dance lesson at school, so he made me stay home that day for no reason. Some days he would keep us home from school just to prove that the government couldn’t tell him what to do.
“He would rant that the police were just the henchmen of an Orwellian government conspiracy, and anytime one tried to pull him over, he’d try to outrun them. It was a perverse game with him. Sometimes he’d get away, sometimes they’d catch him, and they’d drag him out of the car and handcuff him, which only proved his point that the police were brutal. He lost his license, but that was irrelevant to him. He didn’t see that the
government had any right to tell a person whether they could drive or not.
“I remember watching him being handcuffed and arrested, and I was afraid they were going to take me to jail too. I grew up terrified of police. Police and snakes.”
“Snakes?” Nicholas said.
I nodded. “My father used to think it was funny to chase me around the house with live rattlesnakes. I remember him holding one on a stick and it trying to strike at me.” I looked down. “I have a terrible phobia of snakes. I can’t even see a picture of one without being paralyzed with fear.”
“That’s abuse,” Nicholas said.
I nodded. “He was all about abuse. Only he didn’t see it that way. He saw us as property, and, if something is yours, you can do what you want to it. Property doesn’t have needs. Property only exists to suit to your needs.
“One time we had a problem with our truck. He said it was the carburetor, so he made my sister lie on the engine under the hood and pour gasoline into the carburetor while we drove. What kind of father puts his kid under the hood of a moving vehicle?”
“A deranged one,” Nicholas said. “What were his parents like?”
“That’s the strange part. My grandparents were sweet people. They used to apologize to me about him. Once my grandmother said, ‘We don’t know what happened to him, dear.’
“He considered reading for entertainment a waste of time. Once he found me in my room reading a Mary Higgins Clark book and he was furious. He called me lazy and said that if I had time to waste, he’d find something for me to do. He made me go out and move the entire woodpile from one side of the house to the other. It took me four hours. And I was terrified the whole time, because snakes hid in the woodpile. Twice I found rattlesnakes when bringing in firewood.”
Nicholas looked sad. “I’m so sorry.”
“Thanks,” I said. “More than anything, I just wanted to be loved. In a small town like that, there aren’t a lot of romantic options. Once I told my father that a boy walked me home from school, and my father beat me and sent me to my room for the night. He called me a tramp. I believed him. I felt so guilty about it.”
“You couldn’t see that you’d done nothing wrong?”
I shook my head. “The thing is, when you grow up with crazy, you don’t know what sane is. You might suspect that there’s something better, but until you see reality, it’s impossible to comprehend.