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The man looked up at her over the rim of the cup, his disarming blue eyes taking her in. She averted her eyes and concentrated on getting the socks out of the plastic bag. She eyed his dirty feet which, oddly enough, looked fairly well-manicured for a homeless dude. Tearing the tag loose, she contemplated if she needed to put the socks on the man or if she should just hand the socks to him. “Do you need help getting these on?”
The old man watched as she pulled at a sticker clinging to the tinsel tree on the socks. Finally, he cleared his throat. “Have you ever readA Christmas Carol?”
“What?”
“You know …ol’ Ebenezer Scrooge?”
“Yeah, sure. My mom likes to watch that movie every year.” She pushed the blunt ends of her bob behind her frozen ears. “The socks. Let’s get them on you, okay?”
“Yes, the socks,” he said, staring at the gaudy, fuzzy pair in her hand. “What I meant was the Spirit of Christmas.”
Mary Paige scrunched the socks up and looked at his blue feet. She really wished he would take them and do the honor himself. But he was stuck on Dickens. “Yeah, the ghost. Past, Present, and Future.”
“They were all the spirits of Christmas.” His voice was intense …and also somehow refined.
Odd for someone on the streets to speak so distinctly but all kinds of people fall on hard times. She jabbed the first sock on his right foot. She shifted her weight so she wouldn’t fall on her butt on the frigid concrete. She wasn’t the most graceful of people. “Mmm-hmm.”
“Well, that’s you. You’re the spirit of Christmas.”
“Maybe so,” she said, hoping to not rile him up. She wanted him to go to a shelter as soon as she got the socks on him. Lord, she hoped she had some hand sanitizer in her purse. No telling where his feet had been, no matter how clean they looked.
As soon as she got the other sock on his left foot, she said, “There we go. All done. Now those feet will be nice and toasty. Let’s get you out of here.” She started to rise, but the older man grabbed her wrist.
“I’m sorry I was rude earlier,” he said.
She tried to pull her arm away, uncomfortable with his familiarity. “That’s okay. You’re obviously going through a hard time. Living on the streets makes you defensive.”
He stared at her.
She tugged her hand away. “Now let me see if my cab driver will pull around and we’ll go to a shelter. I know one-”
“What’s your name, child?” the man interrupted.
“Mary Paige, but-”
“Well, Mary Paige, can I offer you a gift in return for the gift you have given me?”
She shook her head. No telling what the homeless man might give her. Visions of bottle caps or dead birds danced in her head. She’d worked with the homeless before and it was shocking what they prized. And quite touching when they cared enough to part with a treasure. “No. You owe me nothing. These were just some silly socks. Now let’s get-”
Her words trailed off when the man stuck his hand into his worn flannel shirt and fished around.Oh please, don’t let it be a pair of his old socks. Or something dead. Please, let it be nothing dead.
Oh, wait. Crap on a cracker. He could have a gun. Or a knife. The man could be an absolute loon, strung out on crack or something. She had to stop doing these things.Putting herself at risk was stupid. She would end up on the local news – an unidentified woman in a back alley who was stupid enough to wait for her own death.
The man pulled out a piece of paper.
Whew. No weapon.
The man held up the folded paper and smiled at her. A gold crown in the back of his mouth winked at her. “Perfect. I needed to know what name to put on the payee line.”
Unfolding the paper, he held it out to her.
“What’s this?” she asked, taking it.
It was a check.
She glanced down and blinked.
It was a check for two million dollars.
