“Yes,” she said.
He kissed her. “Julka, you’re brilliant.”
He let go of her and bounded over to that countertop where the red button still glowed. He slapped his hand on the button and nothing happened. Then he kept pounding.
“I don’t know how to make you hear me,” he shouted at the screens, “but give me a job. Surely you have use for a mathematician who understands business and statistics and real money management. I can streamline your business. I can make it more efficient. I know how to save money without changing personnel or making you lose any of your goodwill. I can—”
His voice cut out first. And then he shimmered. And finally, he disappeared.
Julka ran to the countertop. The button was gone. Delbert was gone.
Marshall
was gone.
Something had happened, and she didn’t entirely understand it.
Correction: she didn’t understand it at all.
14
ONE MINUTE HE WAS STANDING in that weird 1950s RV sleigh, the next he was inside a badly decorated 1950s office, complete with single-pane windows frosting up against the cold outside, a humidifier trying to keep moisture in the dry air, a blond desk and matching chair, and a square console television set in the corner, its bulging screen showing the inside of that 1950s RV sleigh, with Julka frantically pressing the countertop he had just been touching.
The room smelled of coffee and cookies. The walls were covered in flocked candy cane wallpaper, and someone had wrapped a green ribbon around the back of the couch. A poinsettia sat on the blond wood end table, and the happy faces of cartoon carolers decorated the window above the door.
The transition made Marshall feel dizzy, but he felt weirdly comfortable too, for the first time in years. It took only a moment for him to understand why: this was a corporate environment—a corporate environment decorated for Christmas (on the day before Halloween), but a corporate environment all the same.
He turned toward the desk. A woman of indeterminate age sat behind it. She had a beehive hairdo dyed so black that it looked like the color would smear on her fingers if she touched it. She wore a lot of make-up, also making it impossible to determine her age, including bright red lipstick that matched her bright red fingernails. A cigarette that he couldn’t smell smoldered in a red and green ashtray that said, “Keep the Happy in Christmas!”
The combination of the words “happy” and “Christmas” collided in his head, and therefore, he wasn’t surprised when the woman spoke to him in a working class English accent.
“So,” she said, “you think you have something to offer Claus & Company.”
Apparently, she wasn’t at all surprised by his appearance. Apparently, she had something to do with it.
He bowed his head just a little. It had been a decade or more since he had had a job interview. There were no chairs on this side of the desk. He felt like he should have a hat in his hands—a supplicant.
“I’ve got more than a decade in finance,” he said. “I know how to make companies more efficient—”
“We’re familiar with you American efficiency types,” she said. “You cut staff to the bone, get rid of markets that are underperforming, and while the business makes a profit, the customers are deeply dissatisfied. We are in the customer satisfaction business, not the profit business.”
He nodded. He wasn’t dressed for this. He didn’t have his resume or any papers with him. All he had were his wits, which, he had to admit, were getting a bit tired on this day.
“I-I know,” he said. “It’s something I’ve decried for my entire career. I got let go from my finance job when I tried to convince the company that they were hurting the very people they were trying to help. I used statistics and math to show that a long-term view would make them more profitable down the road, and it would bring in more customers, and everyone would be happy, but that didn’t—”
“Honestly, Mr. Collier, we at Claus & Company don’t care about your Greater World concerns,” the woman said. “What we care about is what you can bring to us.”
Marshall opened his hands a little. “Normally, ma’am, I research a company before I talk to anyone involved with it. But I’ve been a bit blindsided here. I didn’t know you existed until today—”
“You knew,” she said in a chiding tone. “Everyone knows about us. Then they ‘grow up’ and ‘lose sight of childish things.’ You were one of those, I suppose.”
His cheeks flushed. “The real world—what you call the Greater World…?”
She nodded. That hair moved with her head like it weighed a ton.
“…it can be a harsh and disillusioning place.” He shrugged. “I let it disillusion me.”
“And still, you’re here,” she said, picking up that cigarette and tapping an inch of ash off the end. The cigarette got no shorter. “You can’t be entirely disillusioned.”
“Julka convinced me,” he said, wondering if he should speak her name, wondering if he would get her in trouble. “Only a fool denies what’s in front of him, and she placed it all in front of me.”
“She’s quite attractive, eh?” the woman asked.
They knew. They knew everything, and he was dancing around it all like a fool.
“I like her a lot,” he said. “More than I’ve ever liked anyone. I won’t lie to you, ma’am. The idea of losing the memory of this day, even if I never see her again, is more than I can bear.”
“So you’re just here to get the girl,” the woman said.
He shook his head. “You people give others hope. Even if they don’t want it, they brighten up for just one day. They smile for a moment. I’ve learned these last few years that those smiles are important.”
The woman stared at him and tapped more ash off her cigarette.
“Yes,” he said. “I’m here because of Julka, because she brought something bright and magical and wonderful into my life. I expect I won’t see her again. I expect you to send me on my way. But please, don’t make me forget her. Those moments—even if they’re fleeting—are the most important thing in life.”
The woman still stared at him. Didn’t she have any emotions?
“I have been trying to make up for all I did at my previous work,” he said. “I’ve been doing my best, but I’m flailing around. Being here would give me focus. It would make me remember that there are people behind the numbers. Even when the numbers are impossible.”
The woman put the cigarette in her mouth and took a drag. He still couldn’t smell the dang thing, which was a good thing; he didn’t like the smell of cigarette smoke. But it was a bit freaky.
“If you came to work for us,” she said, “you would get benefits. Your life would be extended by perhaps a century or more. You would be given small magic via spell that would have to be renewed annually. You would get housing and clothing and all of your needs provided for.”
He swallowed. He’d been through these kinds of interviews before. He knew there was a “but” coming.
“But,” she said rather loudly, “you won’t be able to tell your family what you do, and when it becomes obvious that you’re not aging at the same rate they are, you will have to forgo seeing them altogether. You won’t be able to talk to your friends about this either. You will get two weeks annual vacation which you can take in the Greater World, but you cannot do so in the fall or over Christmas. The sacrifice is often greater than the average mortal can make.”
He couldn’t say anything about his friends. His friends had pretty much disowned him when he retired. The new friends that he could have had after that were mostly after his money. So he just said, “My family is gone.”
“Well then.” The woman stood, set down that weird cigarette, and extended her hand. “You’re hired.”
That surprised him too. What a surprising day. But the surprise wasn’t enough to make him lose focus.
He shook the woman’s hand.
“Thank you,” he said, and he meant it. Who knew when he got up that morning that by the middle of the day he would be giving up everything, and realizing that by doing so, he was giving up nothing at all.
“You will go back to Julka and await your instructions,” the woman said. “Congratulations. We at Claus & Company hope that our relationship with you is long and merry.”
“Me, too,” Marshall said. “Me too.”
15
JULKA KEPT HITTING the countertop.
“C’mon,” she said. “I know someone can see me. What did you do with him? Take me to him. He has no idea what home is like.
Please
.”
She had no idea where he was. Had Marshall hit the red button that was still pulsing there and had it sent him where Delbert was? Or did someone actually hear him make his offer, and take him to the North Pole somehow. She had no idea how that would work for a non-elf. Even elves had to use sleigh magic. Had Marshall somehow triggered something?
“Please,” she said, not quite sure any more what she was begging for. “Please.”
Her hand hurt from hitting the console. She was going to have to come up with something else. They had told her about an emergency way to contact the North Pole if something happened to Delbert, but she hadn’t really paid attention. Nothing ever happened to elves. Particularly elves that stank of peppermint and elf sweat.
Then she realized she was
smelling
peppermint and elf sweat. She turned around. Delbert was watching her, his head tilted, looking amused.
“At first,” he said, “I thought maybe you were one of those people who fell in crap and came out looking like gold. But the longer my conversation with HR went on, the more I realized you were sent to recruit someone. And damn, if you didn’t manage it. You know, you could’ve told me.”
She didn’t know what he was referring to. Crap? Conversation? Recruit? “Told you what?”
“That you weren’t here to inspect chimneys. I should’ve figured it out. You weren’t the chimney inspecting type. And you got frustrated when there were too many pipes and not enough bricks. The usual chimney worker doesn’t really care.” He tugged on his shirt, pulling it down over his massive belly.
“I was too here to inspect chimneys,” she said. “I didn’t lie to you.”
His eyebrows went up. “You mean that, don’t you?”
“Yes, I mean that,” she said.
He bit his lower lip, then rolled his eyes and sighed. “Ah. They sent you here on a test, and left it up to me to tell you.”
“What?” she asked. She had been frustrated before he showed up. Now she was ready to grab him and shove his hand against the console (repeatedly) so she could find Marshall.
“That guy,” Delbert said, “you know, the one you were kissing? Which I don’t think they planned on, to tell the truth.”
Her cheeks flushed, but she didn’t care. “What about Marshall? Is he all right?”
“He’s in Human Resources right now,” Delbert said, “getting interviewed for his new job. They think you did great. He was a better catch than they expected, but they had to grill him. They didn’t want him to show up just because he wanted to be in your pants.”
“
What
?” she asked.
Delbert shrugged. “You were the one who wanted a real job, not some workshop management position. A chance to get out into the Greater World, you said. Well, the job choices are limited, but the best ones are the recruiters, because they can go anywhere. Only I’d never met one before, had you?”
It was taking Julka a few minutes to catch up. “You’re saying they tested me. As a
recruiter
?”
“Yeah,” Delbert said and grinned. “Although I’m really not sure they’re going to want you to kiss each recruit to get him to come to the North Pole.”
“I didn’t kiss him because I was recruiting him,” Julka said. “I like him. I have never kissed anyone like that before.”
“Well,” said a voice from beside her. “That’s good to hear.”
Marshall was standing there. He was wearing just a bit of glitter—the kind that rubbed off flocked candy cane wallpaper. It got on
everything
.
She threw herself in his arms. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know.”
“I gathered that,” Marshall said.
“They manipulated us into recruiting you. I didn’t mean it,” she said.
He pulled back just a little. “You don’t want me to work at the North Pole?” he asked.
She didn’t, not if it meant she was working here. But that wasn’t what he meant, and she knew it. “I didn’t know about the recruitment or the test.”
“I know,” he said.
“I really
like
you,” she said.
“I know that too,” he said.
“I….”
want to spend the rest of my life with you. Never want to leave your side
. All of that was too forward this soon, although it didn’t feel soon.
“It’s okay,” he said, pulling her close again. “I like you too. I more than like you. It looks like I’m changing my entire life for you.”
“No,” she said. “You can’t. You can’t base a relationship on that.”