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“Do you listen to it exclusively on Pandora throughout the year?”
“No.”
“Does getting into an elevator and hearing elevator music give you a thrill?”
He frowns at me. “Well, no.”
“Did you buy a saxophone at a flea market and spend six terrible months trying to learn it with the delusional idea you could quit your job to be the next Lester Young? That is, until you collected so many complaints your landlord threatened eviction?”
“Did you?”
I throw up my hands just as our server returns with our waters. “I just don’t think we are in the same league here. I think it’s fair to say you like jazz, but let’s leave the category of love to the heavy hitters. But tell me, who’s the band?”
He takes a sip of his water. Studies me with a slightly bemused smile. “The Bill Charlap Trio,” he says at last.
I clutch my heart. “Lucky,” I pronounce, like a kid who just got told by another kid he was getting a glossy Specialized Turbo Levo SL e-bike for Christmas.
James shakes his head. “Who knows? I may not get anything on the list.”
“Right,” I say. “Because a man who spends four hundred dollars on a broken mannequin can’t afford to get his own ticket. Anyway, I’ll stick to my Pandora station. It’ll be almost like the real thing. That’s pretty cute of your mom, though.”
“She’s always been eager to play fair for everyone. Same number of presents. Same value. Same size if she can make it happen. It seems a bit maddening to me, but”—he shrugs—“I don’t make up her rules.”
“Have you picked out anything for her yet?”
“I was hoping to today while I’m out. My parents will be coming on the twenty-third. I have a little time.”
And so begins the conversation of working through each of our family members, brainstorming the best and most creative—and, in my case, penny-wise—gifts we can think of through a late lunch. The soups are delicious. The bread warm. And with bellies full (and my heart full of gratitude, as James insists on covering our tabs), we rise and continue on our mission.
By this time the snow is picking up again, but so, too, somewhat unbelievably (I mean, are we shipping in shoppers now?) are the crowds. A Salvation Army Santa is ringing a bell as we step back onto the sidewalk, and in the distance, I hear a small choir practicing, cutting off at the choir director’s direction, then singing again beside the big Christmas tree in the center of town.
It’s been another lovely day.
“What about the one over there?” James says, pointing to a store with a window display of clothes. “Looks promising.”
I can’t help but feel my body warm at the brush of his coat against me as we walk along the tight sidewalks full of other bustling couples and their heavy bags. I like the way we talk together. I like how each hour that passes makes our conversation ease up more and more. Part of me, it seems, had this angst that here, on a new day together, it’d become obvious we weren’t exactly a logical pairing. Day one and we had a reason to be together, right? I gave him a lift home from the airport (no matter how bizarre that ended up being). But this morning, I held a quiet unease about seeing him out in the open, when there’d be no logical reason to hide behind. And I guess I have to admit I like him—enough to have feared that today would be a mistake. That we’d get ten minutes into this outing and realize we had nothing in common, the silences between us stretching too awkwardly and causing us both (or worse, just him) to become anxious to get out.
But that’s not how it’s gone so far at all.
If anything . . . it’s the opposite.
“Jackson, you get on the wall. Now look what you’ve done! Gone off and given Mrs. Reinhart and me a heart attack.”
I recognize the voice from a mile away. Genie is directing her troop of small people out of the theater.
More precisely, Genie is clutching her heart as she clings to a mailbox in great theatrics to the laughter of children while she stands on the sidewalk between them and the street. The woman I assume is Mrs. Reinhart stands off at a distance with her own stick-straight line of children, clutching a whistle in her hand, looking unamused.
Two school buses purring with exhaust wait farther down the busy street, and lines of children follow their teachers, who have donned Santa hats and jingling bell necklaces as they direct them to follow. Genie and her class of schoolchildren stand beneath the glowing Paramount Theatre, the aureate bulbs declaring: “Irving Berlin’s Musical WHITE CHRISTMAS.”
I take James by the coat, only halfway horrified at my bold move and choking down my gall, and with a gentle tug walk over. He easily follows beside me, and I spend the rest of the walk flittering between childish thoughts of Look how he walks! He likes me! and You’re dragging a grown man down the street. Leave the poor man alone.
But given the warm feel of my hand over the wool of his coat, which makes my stomach fly like a car over a speed bump, and the fact that he smells of warm cinnamon sticks and a refined charred bark, I ignore my negative thoughts to savor the moment.
Genie sees us coming and halts the line. Dramatically. Like she does everything.
The approximately thirty-five bells of her heavily jingling bracelet ring loudly. “Hold up, class! Important pedestrian sighting! Everyone sing your favorite Christmas song as loud as you can while I attend to this.”
The group of eight-year-olds begins a chaotic rendering of everybody sing their own carol as loudly and crowd-disruptingly as possible, to the thrill of the children and horror of pretty much all other bystanders.
