Unwrap these Presents

by Astrid Ohletz

  A blush rose up Kellie’s slender neck. “Sentimental reasons, probably. But you’re right, of course. I think the mode of transportation around here is a little different.”

  Meghan chuckled. “I just bet it is. Which reminds me… You still haven’t told me what brought you here.”

  Kellie slid to the edge of the seat, looking as if she wanted to jump up and escape. “Uh, it’s not that interesting a story.”

  “Let me be the judge of that. Come on. I’ll tell you mine and you tell me yours.” Meghan winked at her.

  Still, Kellie kept hesitating.

  “Come on. This may be our only chance before they assign us God knows where and we never see each other again.”

  “All right.” Kellie took a deep breath. “But if you laugh at me, I swear I’ll—”

  “Would I do something like that?”

  “Oh, yeah. You look like someone who’d have a good laugh about my story.”

  Meghan regarded her with a steady gaze. “And that would be so bad after a day like this?”

  Kellie sighed. “Guess not. It’s just embarrassing.”

  Too cute. Meghan suppressed a smile, not wanting her to think she was laughing at her already. “Okay, I promise to do my best not to laugh. Now, will you tell me? Please?”

  Kellie inhaled deeply. “I went on a bike ride earlier…”

  “On Christmas Eve?”

  “Why not? I’m single, so it’s not like there’s someone wanting to gaze at the Christmas tree lights with me.”

  The mention of Christmas tree lights made Meghan wince. Quickly, she shoved all thoughts of Christmas tree decorations away and focused on Kellie’s story. So she doesn’t have a boyfriend. Or girlfriend. Not that it matters. “Yeah, but it’s the middle of winter. When I woke up this morning, it was barely twenty degrees in New York. Not exactly balmy weather for a bike ride.”

  “It’s much warmer in Florida, so I ride like this all year. By the way, it’s not like you’re dressed for winter weather either.” Kellie gestured at Meghan’s favorite pair of pajamas.

  Meghan slid her hands over the geckos on her pajama pants. “What can I say? I left in a hurry. So, what happened then? On your bike ride?”

  Kellie stared at the tips of her cycling shoes. “I was riding down the street, rounding a corner, when—”

  A murmur went through the crowd of waiting men and women.

  Meghan turned her head.

  Peter strode back into the room and took up position at the head of the half-open chair circle. He waved at them to gather and listen.

  Meghan leaned over and whispered, “Don’t think you’re safe now. I want to hear the rest of your story.”

  “Later,” Kellie whispered back.

  They both leaned forward and focused their attention on Peter.

  “Welcome again,” he said and regarded each member of their group with a friendly smile. “I know most of you are not too happy about being here.”

  “Damn right,” a man two chairs to Meghan’s right said what she was only thinking.

  “And some probably thought they’d end up somewhere else.” Peter gave the man who’d spoken up a pointed glance, making him snap his mouth shut. “Some of you might even think they don’t deserve to be here. But rest assured, you do. It’s been a long-held tradition that whoever gets here on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day automatically becomes part of our special unit.”

  “Yeah, and probably gets a nice little uniform to go with that,” Meghan whispered.

  Kellie shushed her.

  Peter paused in his speech and looked at Meghan. “Oh, you’re right, dear. I forgot the uniforms. Be right back.” Again, he marched out and left the group behind.

  “Oh, boy.” Meghan sank against the back of her seat. “I thought they’d be better organized here, but they’re worse than my girls. At least one of them always forgets her uniform when she shows up for an important game.”

  Kellie chuckled. “I don’t think our uniforms will look anything like the ones you’re used to.”

  Meghan didn’t think so either, but she didn’t want to even imagine what Peter would bring back. “You were telling me about your bike ride.”

  “Meghan…”

  “You were riding down the street, turning a corner, when…?” Meghan prompted.

  Kellie ran both hands through her matted, blonde hair. “When a woman crossed the street in front of me.”

  “And you plowed right into her.”

  “No. I… Well, she had a…” Kellie paused and rubbed her flushed cheeks.

  Meghan put one elbow on her knee and leaned toward her. “A dog? A herd of children trailing behind her? A machine gun? What? Come on, tell me before Peter gets back!”

  Kellie looked down, making her hair fall around her face like a curtain. She peeked out from beneath her bangs and whispered, “A very nice rack.”

  Meghan sat up straight and grinned. So Kellie definitely played for her team—if there even were teams here. “And?”

  “And I might have been a bit distracted…”

  “You ogled her, admit it!”

  Kellie blew out a breath. “Okay, yes, I ogled her. I also had my MP3 player on, so I didn’t see or hear the garbage truck backing up right in front of me—and here I am.” She indicated the circle of chairs.

  Despite her promise not to, Meghan had to laugh. “We have that in common.”

  “What? Being dead?”

  “Yeah, that too. But I meant ogling women. That’s why I’m here too.”

  Kellie sat up straight. “Really? My neighbors left out that part of the story. What happened?”

  “I was at home, watching a recruitment tape in the living room, when the lights on my Christmas tree began to flicker. I got up to fix them, craning my head to keep watching because one of the players I had my eye on…well, she had a really nice rack too.”

  They exchanged commiserating looks.

  “What happened then?” Kellie asked.

  “I put my hand on the string of lights and—zzzzzz! Electrocuted. On Christmas Eve. In my gecko pajamas.”

  Kellie reached over and patted her leg. “Ouch.”

  “Yeah. Not the most pleasant way to go; that’s for sure. Not that I have a personal standard of comparison, mind you.” By now, she could smile about it. “My friends always said women would be my death one day, but I never thought it would be literal.”

  Kellie laughed. “Well, at least we were both wearing clothes.” She pointed at a naked guy with only a towel wrapped around his hips. Apparently, he had died in his birthday suit.

  Peter returned with a stack of uniforms. He unfolded one of them and proudly held it up.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Meghan groaned.

  Their new uniform consisted of a belt cord, a pair of gladiator sandals, and a billowing, white dress that hid any hint of the wearer’s curves.

  “Well, at least we won’t be ogling each other in that thing,” Kellie whispered.

  Speak for yourself.

  “Where are the wings?” one of the women to their left asked.

  Peter shook his head. “We don’t give them to people who died in accidents. Too risky.” He held up a list. “I’m going to assign you each a partner now, and then we’ll head over to our guardian angel training center.”

  “Where the hell were our guardian angels when we needed them?” Meghan grumbled.

  “Ssssh!” Eyes wide, Kellie pressed her finger to her lips. “You really have to stop saying the H word. I don’t think they’re too fond of that here. It’s like you were playing for Western New York Flash but kept talking about the Portland Thorns.”

  Meghan grinned. “You’re a soccer fan?” Be still my heart. Of course, it was no longer beating anyway.

  “Sssssh!” Several people shushed her as Peter began to call out names.

  Meghan held her breath. Please, please, please, don’t let me get partnered with died-in-the-shower guy over there. He had more hair o
n his back than a gorilla. Even once he was covered by that ugly angel uniform, she didn’t want to stare at his unshaven face for all eternity.

  “Meghan Webster,” Peter called.

  Meghan slowly raised her hand and braced herself. “Here.”

  Every gaze zeroed in on her.

  “Nice win in the last world cup,” Peter said.

  Meghan blinked. “You watch TV up here?”

  Peter gave her a mysterious smile. “We don’t have to. But you’ll find out how all of that works soon enough. And to answer your earlier question about where your guardian angels were when you needed them…”

  Oh, shit. He heard that? Or was he reading her mind? If people up here could do that, she was in trouble.

  “We’re a little understaffed at the moment. That’s why we need to start your training right away. So, let’s see who we’ve partnered you with.” He trailed his index finger over the list. “There we are. Kellie Gibson.”

  Thank you, thank you, thank you, God. Maybe she could later tell him in person.

  Meghan and Kellie beamed at each other.

  Once everyone had changed into the new uniform, Peter led them downstairs.

  Now in a much better mood, Meghan followed Kellie and the rest of the group over to the training center. Even though Meghan had liked her better in the tight bicycle pants and the revealing shirt, Kellie managed to look good even in the angel uniform. She caught a peek at muscular calves as she followed her down the stairs. I wonder if guardian angels date.

  Well, she had eternity to find out.

  Holiday Spirit

  Fletcher DeLancey

  Robin peered through the fat raindrops spattering her windshield and smiled. “Right on time. Thank you, National Weather Service.”

  She’d obsessively checked the NWS website for updates on the storm before leaving her house, and the last check had indicated that she would arrive in the coastal town of Florence, Oregon, about four hours before the storm did. This rain was the warm-up, the tap on the shoulder letting everyone know that the real show was coming soon. She couldn’t wait.

  Growing up in the high desert on the east side of the Cascade Mountains meant that she was well acquainted with thunderstorms and snowstorms. But the coastal winter storms were something altogether different: vast oceanic systems of howling winds and sideways rain that could cover the entire state if they made it all the way on land at full strength, which they never did. They expended their fury on the coast, occasionally coming inland as far as the Willamette Valley and toppling trees in the state’s population centers. The Oregonian would print excited headlines about fifty-mile-per-hour gusts in Portland, but Robin knew that was small stuff. The little coastal towns regularly racked up gusts in the eighties and nineties, yet somehow those never made it into the state’s biggest newspaper. If it didn’t happen in the big cities, it didn’t happen.

  And it never happened on Robin’s side of the Cascades. All her life she’d heard tales of those storms from Aunt Jackie, who made them seem like something from another planet.

  “In the southeast, they’d call ’em hurricanes,” Aunt Jackie would say. “On the upper East Coast they’d call ’em nor’easters. But we just call ’em winter storms.” Then she’d tell the story about the year the local pizza parlor’s roof peeled off and landed on her front lawn, or the one where flooding turned half the county into a virtual island for ten days. She’d talk about carrying a chainsaw in the back of her pickup so that she could cut trees out of the road when they fell and blocked her way, and how everyone still remembered the winter when the power only went out once.

  Robin had grown up on Aunt Jackie’s tales of life at the Oregon coast, and while she’d been there more times than she could count, she’d never seen a winter storm for herself. It was always something that she and Aunt Jackie were going to do together. Somehow they never got around to it.

  The raindrops fell faster, and Robin flipped her wipers from intermittent to normal speed. The forested hills lining the Siuslaw River valley were now almost invisible behind the gray mists, lending an otherworldly look to a landscape that was already as different from the high desert as one could get.

  “It doesn’t smell right,” Aunt Jackie had often said. “Too dry, too full of sage. Even when it rains here, it smells dry.” She’d lived in the high desert for twenty years and still hadn’t gotten used to it, always pining for the lush scent of her beloved coastal rain forest.

  Robin rolled down her window a couple of inches, ignoring the rain that drove in, and took deep breaths. It was lush, bursting with the scent of rampant growth and equally rapid decay, of leaf mold and rotting logs and thick hemlocks and firs. She imagined Aunt Jackie in her passenger seat, sticking her nose out the other window and gulping in the air, and her eyes watered.

  God, she missed her. It had already been a year, yet it felt like a week. If Aunt Jackie had never gotten over missing the coast in twenty years, how was Robin going to get over missing her in anything less?

  “I wish you were here,” she said as she rolled up her window. The sudden cessation of wind noise and rain was jarring and much too quiet. She could almost hear Aunt Jackie’s voice, making her typical acerbic response. If wishes were horses, you could saddle up and ride.

  “And if wishes were fishes, we’d all cast nets,” she murmured.

  Another curve in the road and the bridge came into view. She was crossing the North Fork Siuslaw, and Florence was just ahead. Already she could see the decorations attached to the power poles and street lamps. But it wasn’t until she reached the big intersection and turned north on Highway 101 that the Christmas lights started in earnest. Shops and homes twinkled with lights in their windows and under their eaves, and an occasional inflatable reindeer was tied to a rooftop. It wasn’t yet dark, but this was Christmas Eve after all. People tended to turn on their lights early.

  Her hotel was another mile down the road, its large sign proclaiming NO VACANCY, and Robin congratulated herself on being smart enough to reserve ahead. Winters at the coast were quiet, except during Christmas and storms. Storm watching had become a tourist activity, and having one on the holiday practically guaranteed packed hotels.

  She pulled in under the overhang, turning off her wipers when they began screeching on the now-dry windshield, and killed the engine. With the particular joy that came from being cooped up in a car too long, she stepped out, stretched, and inhaled deeply.

  Ah, there it was, the sea smell. Under the scent of rain and wet pavement was the unmistakable tang of salt, seaweed, and beach. She breathed it in for several minutes, listening to the swish of cars going by on the highway and watching the rain dripping off the overhang. Then she headed into the lobby to check in.

  * * *

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Marsten. Are you sure you didn’t make a reservation at our Newport property by mistake?”

  “I’m sure,” Robin managed through gritted teeth. It just figured that they’d lose her reservation on Christmas fucking Eve. “I do know the difference between Florence and Newport.”

  The desk manager at least had the grace to look embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise. But I’m afraid we don’t have any rooms tonight. I could check our Newport property—”

  “Are you kidding? I do not want to drive for another hour. Can’t you find me a room in Florence?”

  “I’m sorry, but that’s not…I’m not authorized to do that.”

  “So you’ve lost my reservation, and you won’t help me find a different place to stay.”

  “I don’t believe we’ve lost your reservation, Ms. Marsten. If you had a confirmation number…”

  “Oh, for God’s sake. Just tell me where I can start looking for another room.”

  He wrote down the names and numbers of two hotels on a business card, which she snatched out of his hand with little grace and no thanks. In a fine fury, she stomped out the door but stopped short when she sa
w her car.

  A silver tabby cat was on her hood, resting contentedly with its front paws tucked under. It looked at her with big dark eyes, apparently quite happy with the engine heat and disinclined to move.

  “You’re going to have to get off,” she told the cat. “I have to find a new hotel, because yours is full and your staff is incompetent.”

  The cat blinked at her and turned its head, the tag on its red collar flashing in the hotel lights.

  Robin went back to the lobby door and pushed it open. “Hey,” she called. “You need to come get your cat off my car.”

  The manager looked up from his computer. “We don’t have a cat.”

  “Well, there’s one on my car.”

  He shrugged. “It’s not ours.” With that he turned back to his computer screen, clearly dismissing the cat as somebody else’s problem.

  Robin let the door shut and faced the tabby. “I am never staying at this hotel again. What a jackass.”

  The cat’s ears flicked back, then forward again. Its fur was wet, Robin realized. It must have been out in the rain for some time before finding this shelter.

  She walked to her car and laid a hand on the hood. “Look, I know you’re comfy, and it’s shitty weather out there, but you belong to someone and that someone isn’t me. You already have a place to stay, and I have to go find one. So…shoo.” She patted the hood, hoping the sound and movement would scare the cat off.

  It stretched out its neck to sniff at her.

  “Shoo.” She slapped the hood harder.

  The cat got up, stretched, and walked over to sniff her hand.

  “Really?” Robin couldn’t help smiling at the sheer chutzpah. Her smile broadened when the cat nudged her hand with its head, and before she knew it, she was scratching its cheeks. The cat moved its head this way and that, giving her full access and purring so loudly that she could hear it over the sound of the rain.

  “Okay, fine. Let’s see what your tag says. If I’m going to be calling hotels, I guess I can call your owner first.” She reached down, chuckling when the cat bumped her hand in an effort to get scratched. “Tag first. Petting later.” Finally getting her fingers on the tag, she angled it toward the overhead light and saw a phone number. “Wait a minute. That’s not a Florence prefix. How far are you from home?”