“What?”
She’s holding up a picture of Declan in all his broad-chested, thick-pec glory, adjusting one red suspender and looking good enough to ride.
Like Santa’s sleigh.
“But, but—” he protests. “That was five minutes ago!” He’s rattled, and Declan doesn’t do rattled.
“Five minutes is like a day on Twitter. You could end up with a flashmob,” Amy says.
“Hot Santa, huh?” I smack his ass and send him on his way. “Time to go make some good little girls and boys very happy.”
“I think he’s got mostly naughty girls out there,” Mom says.
“Humph,” is all I can reply. I see the photographer out there, working the longer line, more cash changing hands. Greg trusted me to get this right, and I will. I march out there, ignoring my mom and sister, wondering if the day can get any weirder. By the time I get to the guy, he’s worked his way to the front of the line.
The new photographer ignores my outstretched hand as I try to introduce myself and says something in a clipped, accented voice to the mom standing with her little boy. She smiles nervously at him, clearly not understanding a word he says. He sounds like a mix of a Russian hit man and the Swedish chef from the Muppets.
Which means he’ll probably shoot me dead with a silenced gun and have my body made into something they serve at the shady burger joint in the mall food court before he finishes a cigarette.
“Come here! Look here!” he says in that severe accent, his eyes dead. The guy could be anywhere from twenty to fifty, with a face so angular you could use it to dig a hole under the Berlin Wall (circa 1988).
The little boy who is about to perch himself on Declan’s lap begins to cry as the photographer sighs, throws his hands up, and spews a stream of foreign-language invective that might well be the words to Goodnight Moon but sounds like a laundry list of all the ways he’s going to cook this boy’s pancreas for dinner.
“We have our own photographer, actually,” the mother says nervously as she comforts the sweet boy, whose eyes are teary. He has bright blonde hair and a giant cowlick on his forehead hairline. The green eyes make me think of Declan.
The photographer starts screaming in what I now realize really is Russian, making a handful of kids in line start crying, parents on smartphones texting and calling and trying to look like they’re doing something.
And then: Santa starts shouting back at the photographer. In Russian. Declan speaks Russian?
The Russian man spits on the ground. Santa hands the kid off to his mom and stands, grabbing the photographer’s arm and pulling him behind the wall on the other side of Santa’s chair.
A massive wave of anxiety and fear spills through me as Amy and Mom hide behind a planter and my nipples decide to try to run away, too. I can’t catch my breath and everything happens so fast I feel the room spin.
There is this 1980s movie that Mom and Dad loved to watch over and over when we were teens. It’s A Fish Called Wanda, and there’s this scene where John Cleese speaks Russian to Jamie Lee Curtis and it makes her so hot and horny she turns into a sex machine. I always giggled with embarrassment, and later lots of eye rolls, at the idea when we watched the film.
But finding myself horny, wet, and suddenly turned on from zero to humpgirl by the sound of Declan speaking Russian makes me see that Jamie Lee Curtis and I are soul sisters.
Getting that aroused while wearing a too-tight elf costume that turns into a g-string when I stand up straight is all kinds of wrong.
Declan’s hissing in his deep, clipped voice, so angry and cold looking that I wonder if he’s really a Russian hit man and the American stuff is just an act. Maybe he’s not actually the VP of marketing for his father’s mega-billion corporation. Maybe he’s a secret double agent working for some shadow government and I’m just his cover.
I take a careful inventory of my elf costume.
Green satin. A skin volcano up top. Sequins unthreading. High heels with candy cane striped stiletto points. If I’m a double agent’s cover, then the Illuminati are in really big trouble.
The photographer tosses his camera onto a chair and barrels down on Declan, snatching Declan’s Santa hat off his head and throwing it down, stomping and spitting on it. His face is inches from my boyfriend’s, red rage all over as the Russian words are flying back and forth in a volley that is making my little red nub try to break away and drown itself in a fifth of vodka.
The Russian dude wrenches Declan’s arm, then rips his red jacket off Declan, who is now shirtless and bearded, fighting this guy.
“Beat his ass, Santa,” one of the dads in the crowd shouts. A bunch of the fathers have let go of their kids’ hands and are craning to catch a view of the fight. I grab the first thing I can use as a weapon, just sitting there on the counter, and run after, whacking the Russian dude over and over.
With the belly pillow from the Santa costume.
And then the photographer reaches for something on his hip, and everything goes into slow motion. Declan grabs his arm and twists it, hard. The guy headbutts Declan, a sickening crack breaking through the pan-flute version of “The Little Drummer Boy” that fills the mall’s sound system. Every parent is still, eyes wide and mouths shaped by shock.
Blood trickles into Santa’s beard and down his bare chest. I scream.
Declan ignores the blood and reaches for the guy’s hip just as a swarm of overstuffed mall cops (any of which could easily play Santa) arrive on their Segways. He lifts up the guy’s jacket and exposes the hip where he was about to reach and—