I Heart Christmas

by Lindsey Kelk

  ‘And I told you if she messes up, I’ll fix it,’ she promised.

  ‘Just make sure there’s a body for my mother to bury,’ I replied. ‘That’s all I ask.’

  ‘So you’re not going to freak out when I tell you she just walked in?’ Delia winced and nodded to the door behind me. I didn’t want to turn around. I wanted to close my eyes and wake up in a double glazing sales office in Croydon with a paper crown on my head, singing ‘Mary’s Boy Child’ with Tony from marketing. Anywhere but here, I whispered in my head, anywhere but here.

  ‘Deedee! Angela!’

  Steeling myself, I pasted a smile on my face and for the first time since I’d walked into the party was glad I hadn’t worn anything nice or expensive or dry clean only.

  ‘Look at you!’ She glowed from head to toe. It made me sick.

  ‘Look at me,’ I said, my voice completely and utterly dead. Her diamonds made my sequin shorts look like a reject from the Saturday Night Fever costume department, although the red on her skin-tight satin mini-dress did bring out the red in my bloodshot eyes.

  ‘You look awesome,’ she said with complete sincerity. ‘One thing I always loved about you, Angela, is you’re an individual. You have your own look. I wish I was secure enough to make your brave style choices.’

  ‘Do you need a drink?’ Delia interrupted and pointed across the room before the ground could completely swallow me up. ‘Because the bar is over there.’

  ‘Oh, that would be fantastic, thank you,’ Cici nodded at her sister. ‘Anything really. Champagne would be great. Or a vodka soda. Anything but those awful mixed drinks they’re trying to force on people, they’re all sugar. It’s disgusting.’

  I prayed for Delia to punch her sister right in the face while finishing up my sugary, mixed drink in silence. Delia stood between the two of us in silence for a moment, looking at me, then at Cici, before necking the rest of her own drink and stalking off to the bar.

  ‘So, boss,’ Cici said, nudging me in the ribs and winking. ‘Don’t you think this week went so well? I think we’re going to make quite the team.’

  ‘You do?’ I asked. My mind was playing a highlights reel of some of mine and Cici’s greatest hits. If you put the Benny Hill theme over it, the whole thing was quite funny. If you didn’t, it looked like a horror movie.

  ‘Of course, I mean, we’ve been through so much, I feel as though I really get you,’ she replied. ‘And I have so many great ideas for the magazine. Spending this week getting to know the team really gave me so much insight. I believe this is going to be a fantastic collaboration for both of us.’

  ‘A collaboration,’ I repeated. This was entirely my own fault. If I hadn’t been hungover when I was interviewing assistants, I could have just hired Rag, Tag, Cottontail, or whatever that lovely gay boy was called, and had nothing more to worry about than whether or not he was judging me for wanting three sugars in my coffee. ‘You have ideas?’

  ‘Oh, so many,’ she confirmed, her eyes flashing with what I hoped was enthusiasm. It was that or she was off her meds. ‘I’ve been a huge fan of Gloss since you started. I genuinely respect how you speak to every woman because, you know, I’m a woman.’

  ‘Glad to have that cleared up,’ I said, looking for Delia. I needed her. And more importantly, I needed a drink and I didn’t care what that said about me. ‘I did wonder.’

  ‘You’re so funny.’ Cici gave me another blast of her practised, real-life LOL again and pressed her perfectly painted paws to her chest. Her nails were spike sharp and blood red, her fingers covered in platinum and gemstones. She might be a woman but she wasn’t really everywoman. ‘I’m genuinely happy that I’m going to have a voice in the media. At last.’

  ‘Well, you know there isn’t that much editorial work in your role?’ I didn’t want to upset her if I could help it but if it had to be done, I’d rather do it in a room full of witnesses. ‘I think it’s going to be very admin-oriented. As in totally. Forever.’

  ‘Is that right?’ her voice cooled by about fifty degrees and the enthusiasm in her eyes paled down to a general sense of amusement.

  ‘Pretty much,’ I said. ‘So if that’s not something you’re really interested in, I would totally understand if you wanted to wait for a more active editorial role. At another magazine. Somewhere else. Far away.’

  ‘Oh no.’ Cici reached out one of her claws to brush my hair back from my shoulder and grasp me in her Vulcan death grip. It hurt. Dr Spock must have taught special classes at her Upper East Side prep school. ‘I’m staying at Gloss. It’s the right place for me.’

  ‘It is?’ I wondered if her nails were painted red so they wouldn’t show the blood.

  ‘It is,’ she confirmed. ‘And I don’t think it’s going to be so long before I have an active editorial role.’

  I didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything to say. Instead I smiled brightly and thanked my lucky stars that she wasn’t planning to douse me in pig’s blood at the party.

  ‘So I’ll see you Monday,’ she said, releasing my shoulder with an expensive smile and a wink. ‘I have plans. I’m excited.’

  ‘Fan-fucking-tastic.’ I smiled back as she melted into the party, people seemingly instinctively stepping aside for a Spencer. That or their internal psycho alarm was going off and they didn’t quite know why. Luckily for me, I was fully aware.

  ‘Where did she go?’ Delia reappeared, two tall glasses in her hands, one clear, the others brightly coloured and full of elaborate umbrellas and neon-coloured straws. ‘I had to stand at the bar and wait for her goddamn vodka soda.’

  ‘She’s just gone,’ I said, taking one of the cocktails and the vodka soda. I’d earned them. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad you two are playing nice.’ She gave me a weak smile and the nice-twin version of Cici’s nudge. ‘Who knows, you might end up being friends, God forbid.’

  I downed the clear drink with a shudder, ignoring Delia’s wide eyes and setting the ice-filled glass on the tray of a passing waiter.

  ‘I think God would forbid it actually,’ I said, resting my elbows behind me and leaning on the table. ‘But it is Christmas and we are due a miracle.’

  ‘Don’t count it out,’ Delia said, leaning beside me. ‘Stranger things have happened.’

  After a smash and grab at the only tray of canapés that had come our way and fifteen minutes of intense debate over which of the Spencer Media girls looked sad because they hadn’t eaten in the last month and which were just sad in general, I was forced to leave Delia to a gaggle of not-nearly-good-enough-for-her suits and hunt down the toilets. Obviously, because I was wearing the highest heels I owned, a pair of ankle-shattering Guiseppe Zanottis (purchased because they were on super sale and because Jenny said they made me look skinny – double standards, thy name is Angela), the toilets were up a set of extremely steep stairs. And because everyone was drinking, no one was eating and lots of people needed somewhere to do their drugs, there was a queue a mile long. I crossed my legs for as long as I could before resolving to find another loo – this was a big restaurant, it was part of a hotel, there had to be more than one ladies’ room. Two seconds away from committing to book a room for the night just to have a wee, I finally found the wheelchair- and high-heel-accessible lav on the ground floor. And it was unlocked. Praise be to baby Jesus in the manger.

  ‘Hey.’

  I never would learn my lesson about knocking on individual toilet cubicles.

  Thankfully, on this occasion, I had not walked in on a secret gay tryst, just my managing editor washing his hands. I silently thanked sweet baby Jesus in the manger that I hadn’t been two minutes earlier. It was one thing to accidentally kiss him mid-hug, it was another to accidentally wander in while he was having a slash.

  ‘Is this my secret Santa?’ Jesse asked, half laughing and half trying to get out of the toilet. Since I was all desperate to pee, I backed up against the wall and let him past. ‘Because you set a ten-doll
ar limit on gifts and I gotta tell you, you’re selling yourself short.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I replied, trying very hard not to wee on my shoes. My bladder had seen the toilet. My bladder was not going to wait much longer. ‘Ten dollars gets you a slap on the arse and if you’re not out of here very quickly, quite the show.’

  ‘I might be into the ass thing but I figure you can keep the show.’ He closed the door as he left, leaving me just enough time to bolt it shut. Seriously, what was wrong with American men? Why couldn’t they lock a toilet door behind them?

  Unless he was waiting for someone. Unless Jesse had a secret party hook-up arranged that I had just completely ruined. Which I would feel bad about just as soon as I’d had the world’s longest wee.

  ‘Killer party, huh?’

  Jesse was stood outside the loo, ducked underneath the metal staircase, when I eventually emerged in considerably less pain and miserable in the knowledge that now the seal had been broken, I would have to go again at least twice in the next hour. Stupid girl parts.

  ‘You are taking the piss, aren’t you?’ I asked, accepting one of the two drinks he held out. Aha! Two drinks! So he was waiting for someone … I glanced around, looking for a likely suspect. I hoped to God it wasn’t Cici because I couldn’t accurately report that level of potential crash and burn to Megan in the office without having some sort of aneurysm. ‘This is a disaster.’

  ‘I know, right?’ he agreed, resplendent in a dark green shirt and black jumper that looked very soft. His hair was halfway between its messy Brooklyn best and the tidy sweep he kept up for work. ‘Just such a bunch of phoneys. I know they all work in our building but altogether? Just the amount of cologne in the air is affecting my allergies.’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ I hastily agreed when, really, I didn’t give a toss about the ‘phoneys’. If they were dancing round with their ties around their foreheads, singing along to ‘All I Want for Christmas’, I would have forgiven them anything. He was right, though, someone had gone a bit heavy on the old Lynx. It made me nostalgic for Year Ten. ‘Yeah, loads of phoneys.’

  ‘I bet they flipped their shit when you came in wearing that.’ He pointed towards my sweater, sitting back on the radiator. ‘No one here has a sense of humour.’

  I knew he didn’t mean to be offensive and I couldn’t work out the best way to explain that there wasn’t anything even slightly ironic about my outfit. What was more Christmassy than red sequins and a sweatshirt covered in ice skating penguins? But I didn’t see a lot of point in alienating one of the two allies I had in the entire room so I just nodded, sat down next to him, drank my drink and waited for a better song.

  ‘You know what?’ Jesse, it seemed, was not prepared to wait for a good tune. I had a feeling our DJ didn’t have anything with him that Jesse would consider a good tune. ‘There’s only one way to get through a party like this?’

  ‘We leave?’ I asked.

  ‘No.’ He took my glass from me and placed it on the floor beside his own before holding out his hand. ‘We dance.’

  ‘Do we have to?’ It was fair to say I was a little bit hesitant. ‘Because I did some dancing the other night and it did not end well for me.’

  With a sigh and a shake of the head, Jesse bent down to pick up our glasses and waited for me to chug my cocktail before repeating his less-dramatic-the-second-time-around gesture.

  ‘No one else is dancing,’ I said under my breath as he led me right into the middle of the bar and in front of the DJ booth. ‘You do know that?’

  ‘No one else is going home to Brooklyn either,’ he said. ‘No one else came on the subway, no one else is gonna get dropped off at the twenty-four-hour bagel place on Bedford. These are not our people, Angela, this is not our party. All we can do is claim a small piece of it. Dance with me.’

  It was a bold and pretty accurate declaration and there and then, in the land of the free and the home of the brave, what else was a girl supposed to do? And he was right – I was absolutely going to Bagelsmith on the way home, even if I’d actually taken a taxi to the party, but there was no need for him to know that.

  Whether it was happy coincidence or the DJ felt our commitment to making this party happen, but the music shifted from unfamiliar chart ‘hits’ that I barely recognised to classic eighties goodness. Nothing you’d want to listen to walking down the street but a catalogue of office party classics, and when someone was playing ‘Billie Jean’, it didn’t matter whether you were in a super-fancy Meatpacking District holiday party or at your cousin Sharon’s wedding reception, you just danced. The weak, brightly coloured cocktails might have gone straight through me but they’d had the decency to leave a bit of a buzz on their way out. As soon as I started moving my feet, I felt that wonderful sense of coordination that only comes with one too many beverages. Jesse was a genuinely good dancer, I was not, but I didn’t care anymore. Everyone already had me pegged as a twat so I figured I might as well enjoy myself. After five minutes on the floor, I was convinced I could have won Strictly. Jesse spun and dipped me, completely ignoring whatever was playing as well as every other single person at the party and, for the first time since I’d walked through the door, I was happy. I was having fun. And it felt like Christmas.

  Rick Astley was halfway through promising he was never going to let me down, run around or desert me when Jesse grabbed both of my hands and dragged me off the dance floor. Something magical had happened while I’d been concentrating on my moves and the entire bar had started dancing. The miserable girls were smiling, the short men were waving fists in the air and barely a single tie remained knotted. Jesse put his arm around my shoulders and nodded silently, smiling at the crowd.

  ‘Our work here is done,’ he said, waving his hand at the mass of uncoordinated bodies jumping up and down to Stock, Aitken and Waterman’s finest. ‘Man, I’m so proud.’

  ‘As you should be,’ I said, patting his back. ‘This is going in your appraisal.’

  ‘It’s going on my résumé,’ he replied before looking at his watch. ‘You’re taking the L too, right? Wanna jet?’

  ‘These shoes are killing me.’ Hardly a new sensation. ‘Do you want to split a cab? I mean, it is Christmas.’

  ‘I guess.’ He gave me the same disappointed look Alex always wore whenever I demanded a taxi instead of the train and I made a mental note to pitch a feature based on men having to wear heels for a week and then seeing how many blocks they fancied walking to get on a bloody subway at one in the morning in December.

  The night was freezing, but after our sweaty dancefest it felt refreshing. I hugged my arms tightly around myself, wishing I hadn’t been such a stubborn Brit and had brought a coat with me, even if it meant standing in a queue at the coat check, while Jesse ran out into the middle of the road to flag down a taxi. Why had everyone decided the neighbourhoods with the worst paving would have the coolest bars? I considered it one of New York’s great mysteries. The Meatpacking District was all cobblestones aka stiletto kryptonite and Soho and Tribeca were just as bad. How did Beyoncé manage? I could only assume Jay-Z picked her up and carried her to their car, as opposed to standing holding the door open, rolling his eyes as she picked her way carefully across the street, one stone at a time.

  ‘It’s not my fault, it’s the street,’ I said, crawling across the back seat and immediately turning off the in-taxi television.

  ‘Nothing to do with your choice of shoes at all?’ Jesse asked, slamming the door behind himself and giving the driver his directions. ‘Dude.’

  ‘I will not be told what shoes I can and cannot wear just because New York can’t be bothered to pave its streets safely,’ I maintained, immediately kicking the instruments of tootsie torture off my feet. Really, though, they were so pretty. ‘I should sue. Someone’s going to break their neck.’

  ‘I hope it’s someone from that party,’ he replied without hesitating.

  ‘Oh, ouch,’ I laughed, pretending to be scandalised when I was actually
delighted. I had not spent an evening in a room full of my favourite people by any stretch of the imagination. ‘You’re not a massive fan of the Spencer Media crowd, then?’

  ‘It’s not that I don’t love my job, I do,’ said the man who was insulting his company to his sort of boss in the back of a taxi on the way home from a corporately funded free bar. ‘I’ve always been a word nerd. Once an English major, always an English major. But I just can’t stand those kinds of people.’

  Closing my eyes and cuddling up into the corner of the cab, I slipped my hands up inside my sweatshirt sleeves. ‘And what kind of people are those?’

  ‘Eh, I’m allergic to Manhattan, is all,’ he yawned. ‘I don’t meet my people there very often.’

  The lights of the city rushed past, dark then bright, dark then bright. Even half asleep, without looking I knew we were cutting through Soho, headed for the Williamsburg Bridge. New York got under your skin, the sounds and the stoplights acting as an internal GPS.

  ‘Your people?’

  ‘People with a sense of humour.’ Jesse’s voice seemed so far away. I was so tired. ‘People with passion. Creativity. Honesty. A genuine drive to do something good that they enjoy and not just something cool.’

  I had to laugh.

  ‘Yeah, you do know you live in Williamsburg and play bass in a band, don’t you?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’ He seemed genuinely confused.

  ‘You’re a total hipster. Seriously, you’re like the king of them. Do you actually need those glasses at all or did you just buy them from Urban Outfitters like everyone else?’ I opened one eye and nicked his specs, pushing them up my nose, just like Mary. He was clearly as blind as a bat. ‘Oh. OK, fair enough.’

  ‘I’m not a hipster,’ he replied, from somewhere in the taxi, I assumed. I really couldn’t see anything. ‘I’m an artist.’