Season of Wonder

by Paula Guran

  The wallet, a soft camel-brown calfskin, was feeling distress. —He’s lost without me,— it cried, —he needs me; he could be dead by now. Without me in his back pocket he’s only half himself.—

  Matt patted it and yawned. She had been planning to walk the frozen streets later that night while people were falling asleep, getting her fill of Christmas Eve dreams for another year, feeding the hunger in her that only quieted when she was so exhausted she fell asleep herself. But her feet were wet and she was tired enough to sleep now. She was going to try an experiment: this year, hole up, drink cocoa, and remember all her favorite dreams from Christmas Eves past. If that worked, maybe she could change her life style, stay someplace long enough to . . . to . . . she wasn’t sure. She hadn’t stayed in any one place for more than a month in years.

  “We’ll go find him tomorrow morning,” she said to the wallet. Although tomorrow was Christmas. Maybe he would have things to do, and be hard to find.

  —Now!— cried the wallet.

  Matt sighed and leaned against the water heater. Her present home was the basement of somebody’s house; the people were gone for the Christmas holidays and the house, lonely, had invited her in when she was looking through its garbage cans a day after its inhabitants had driven off in an overloaded station wagon.

  —He’ll starve,— moaned the wallet, —he’ll run out of gas and be stranded. The police will stop him and arrest him because he doesn’t have identification. We have to rescue him now.—

  Matt had cruised town all day, listening to canned Christmas music piped to the freezing outdoors by stores, watching street-corner Santas ringing bells, cars fighting for parking spaces, shoppers whisking in and out of stores, their faces tense; occasionally she saw bright dreams, a parent imagining a child’s joy at the unwrapping of the asked-for toy, a man thinking about what his wife’s face would look like when she saw the diamond he had bought for her, a girl finding the perfect book for her best friend. There were the dreams of despair, too: grief because five dollars would not stretch far enough, grief because the one request was impossible to fill, grief because weariness made it too hard to go on.

  She had wandered, wrapped in her big olive-drab army coat, never standing still long enough for anyone to wonder or object, occasionally ducking into stores and soaking up warmth before heading out into the cold again, sometimes stalling at store windows to stare at things she had never imagined needing until she saw them, then laughing that feeling away. She didn’t need anything she didn’t have.

  She had stumbled over the wallet on her way home. She wouldn’t have found it—it had slipped down a grate—except that it was broadcasting distress. The grate gapped its bars and let her reach down to get the wallet; the grate was tired of listening to the wallet’s whining.

  —Now,— the wallet said again.

  She loaded all the things back into the wallet, getting the gas cards in the wrong place at first, until the wallet scolded her and told her where they belonged. “So,” Matt said, slipping the wallet into her army jacket pocket, “if he’s lost, stranded, and starving, how are we going to find him?”

  —He’s probably at the Time-Out. The bartender lets him run a tab sometimes. He might not have noticed I’m gone yet.—

  She knew the Time-Out, a neighborhood bar not far from the corner where James Plainfield’s apartment building stood. Two miles from the suburb where her temporary basement home was. She sighed, pulled still-damp socks from their perch on a heating duct, and stuffed her freezing feet into them, then laced up the combat boots. She could always put the wallet outside for the night so she could get some sleep; but what if someone else found it? It would suffer agonies; few people understood nonhuman things the way she did, and fewer still went along with the wishes of inanimate objects.

  Anyway, there was a church on the way to downtown, and she always liked to see a piece of the midnight service, when a whole bunch of people got all excited about a baby being born, believing for a little while that a thing like that could actually change the world. If she spent enough time searching this guy out, maybe she’d get to church this year.

  She slipped out through the kitchen, suggesting that the back door lock itself behind her. Then she headed downtown, trying to avoid the dirty slush piles on the sidewalk.

  “Hey,” said the bartender as she slipped into the Time-Out. “You got ID, kid?”

  Matt shrugged. “I didn’t come in to order anything.” She wasn’t sure how old she was, but she knew it was more than twenty-one. Her close-cut hair, mid-range voice, and slight, sexless figure led people to mistake her for a teenage boy, a notion she usually encouraged. No one had formally identified her since her senior year of high school, years and years ago. “I just came to find a James Plainfield. He here?”

  A man seated at the bar looked up. He was dressed in a dark suit, but his tie was emerald green, and his brown hair was a little longer than business-length. He didn’t look like his driver’s license picture, but then, who did? “Whatcha want?” he said.

  “Wanted to give you your wallet. I found it in the street.”

  “Wha?” He leaned forward, squinting at her.

  She walked to the bar and set his wallet in front of him, then turned to go.

  “Hey!” he said, grabbing her arm. She decided maybe architecture built up muscles more than she had suspected. “You pick my pocket, you little thief?”

  “Sure, that’s why I searched you out to return your wallet. Put it in your pocket, Bud. The other pocket. I think you got a hole in your regular wallet pocket. The wallet doesn’t like being out in the open.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Just a second,” he said, keeping his grip on her arm. With his free hand he opened the wallet and checked the bulging currency compartment, then looked at the credit cards. His eyebrows rose. He released her. “Thanks, kid. Sorry. I’d really be in trouble without this.”

  “Yeah, that’s what it said.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She shrugged, giving him a narrow grin and stuffing her hands deep into her pockets. He studied her, looking at the soaked shoulders of her jacket, glancing down at her battered boots, their laces knotted in places other than the ends.

  “Hey,” he said softly. “Hey. How long since you ate?”

  “Lunch,” she said. With all the people shopping, the trash cans in back of downtown restaurants had been full of leftovers after the lunch rush.

  He frowned at his watch. “It’s after nine. Does your family know where you are?”

  “Not lately,” she said. She yawned, covering it with her hand. Then she glanced at the wallet. “This the guy?”

  —Yes, oh yes, oh yes, oh joy.—

  “Good. ’Bye, Bud. Got to be getting home.”

  “Wait. There’s a reward.” He pulled out two fifties and handed them to her. “And you let me take you to dinner? And drive you home afterwards? Unless you have your own car.”

  She folded the fifties, slipped them into the battered leather card case she used as a wallet, and thought about this odd proposition. She squinted at the empty glass on the bar. “Which number are you?” she muttered to it, “and what were you?”

  —I cradled an old-fashioned,— said the glass, —and from the taste of his lips, it was not his first.—

  “You talking to my drink?” Amusement quirked the corner of his mouth.

  Matt smiled, and took a peek at his dreamscape. She couldn’t read thoughts, but she could usually see what people were imagining. Not with Plainfield, though. Instead of images, she saw lists and blueprints, the writing on them too small and stylized for her to read.

  He said, “Look, there’s a restaurant right around the corner. We can walk to it, if you’re worried about my driving.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  He left some cash on the bar, waved at the bartender, and walked out, leaving Matt to follow.

  The restaurant was a greasy spoon; the tables in the booths were topped with red
linoleum and the menus bore traces of previous meals. At nine on Christmas Eve, there weren’t many people there, but the waitress seemed cheery when she came by with coffee mugs and silverware. Plainfield drank a whole mugful of coffee while Matt was still warming her hands. His eyes were slightly bloodshot.

  “So,” he said as he set his coffee mug down.

  Matt added cream and sugar, lots of it, stirred, then sipped.

  “So,” said Plainfield again.

  “So,” Matt said.

  “So did you learn all my deep dark secrets from my wallet? You did look through it, right?”

  “Had to find out who owned it.”

  “What else did you find out?”

  “You carry a lot of cash. Your credit’s good. You’re real worried about your car, and you’re an architect. There’s two women in your life.”

  “So do we have anything in common?”

  “No. I got no cash—’cept what you gave me—no credit, no car, no relationships, and I don’t build anything.” She studied the menu. She wondered if he liked young boys. This could be a pickup, she supposed, if he was the sort of man who took advantage of chance opportunities.

  The waitress came by and Matt ordered a big breakfast, two of everything, eggs, bacon, sausages, pancakes, ham slices, and biscuits in gravy. Christmas Eve dinner. What the hell. She glanced at Plainfield, saw him grimacing. She grinned, and ordered a large orange juice. Plainfield ordered a side of dry wheat toast.

  “What do you want with me, anyway?” Matt asked.

  He blinked. “I . . . I thought you must be an amazing person, returning a wallet like mine intact, and I wanted to find out more about you.”

  “Why?”

  “You are a kid, aren’t you?”

  She stared at him, keeping her face blank.

  “Sorry,” he said. He looked out the window at the night street for a moment, then turned back. “My wife has my daughter this Christmas, and I . . . ” He frowned. “You know how when you lose a tooth, your tongue keeps feeling the hollow space?”

  “You really don’t know anything about me.”

  “Except that you’re down on your luck but still honest. That says a lot to me.”

  “I’m not your daughter.”

  He lowered his eyes to stare at his coffee mug. “I know. I know. It’s just that Christmas used to be such a big deal. Corey and I, when we first got together, we decided we’d give each other the Christmases we never had as kids, and we built it all up, tree, stockings, turkey, music, cookies, toasting the year behind and the year ahead and each other. Then when we had Linda it was even better; we could plan and buy and wrap and have secrets just for her, and she loved it. Now the apartment’s empty and I don’t want to go home.”

  Matt had spent last Christmas in a shelter. She had enjoyed it. Toy drives had supplied presents for all the kids, and food drives had given everybody real food. They had been without so much for so long that they could taste how good everything was. Dreams came true, even if only for one day.

  This year . . . She sat for a moment and remembered one of the dreams she’d seen a couple of years ago. A ten-year-old girl thinking about the loving she’d give a baby doll, just the perfect baby doll, if she found it under the tree tomorrow. Matt could almost feel the hugs. Mm. Still as strong a dream as when she had first collected it. Yes! She had them inside her, and they still felt fresh.

  Food arrived and Matt ate, dipping her bacon in the egg yolks and the syrup, loving the citrus bite of the orange juice after the sopping, pillowy texture and maple sweetness of the pancakes. It was nice having first choice of something on a restaurant plate.

  “Good appetite,” said Plainfield. He picked out a grape jelly from an assortment the waitress had brought with Matt’s breakfast and slathered some on his dry toast, took a bite, frowned. “Guess I’m not really hungry.”

  Matt smiled around a mouthful of biscuits and gravy.

  “So,” Plainfield said when Matt had eaten everything and was back to sipping coffee.

  “So,” said Matt.

  “So would you come home with me?”

  She peeked at his dreamscape, found herself frustrated again by graphs instead of pictures. “Exactly what did you have in mind, Bud?”

  He blinked, then set his coffee cup down. His pupils flicked wide, staining his gray eyes black. “Oh. That sounds bad. What I really want, I guess, is not to be alone on Christmas, but I don’t mean that in a sexual way. Didn’t occur to me a kid would hear it like that.”

  “Hey,” said Matt. Could anybody be this naive?

  “You could go straight to sleep if that’s what you want. What I miss most is just the sense that someone else is in the apartment while I’m falling asleep. I come from a big family, and living alone just doesn’t feel right, especially on Christmas.”

  “Do you know how stupid this is? I could have a disease, I could be the thief of the century, I could smoke in bed and burn your playhouse down. I could just be really annoying.”

  “I don’t care,” he said.

  She said, “Bud, you’re asking to get taken.” Desperation like his was something she usually stayed away from.

  “Jim. The name’s Jim.”

  “And how am I supposed to know whether you’re one of these Dahmer dudes, keep kids’ heads in your fridge?” She didn’t seriously consider him a risk, but she would have felt better if she could have gotten a fix on his dreams. She had met some real psychos—their dreams gave them away—and when she closed dream-eyes, they looked almost more like everybody else than everybody else did.

  He stared down at his coffee mug, his shoulders slumped. “I guess there is no way to know anymore, is there?”

  “Oh, what the hell,” she said.

  He looked at her, a slow smile surfacing. “You mean it?”

  “I’ve done some stupid things in my time. I tell you, though . . . ” she began, then touched her lips. She had been about to threaten him. She never threatened people. Relax. Give the guy a Christmas present of the appearance of trust. “Never mind. This was one great dinner. Let’s go.”

  He dropped a big tip on the table, then headed for the cash register. She followed. “You have any . . . luggage or anything?”

  “Not with me.” She thought of her belongings, stowed safely in the basement two miles away.

  “There’s a drugstore right next to my building. We could pick up a toothbrush and whatever else you need there.”

  Smiling, she shook her head in disbelief. “Okay.”

  The drugstore was only three blocks from the restaurant; they walked. Plainfield bought Matt an expensive boar-bristle toothbrush, asking her what color she wanted. When she told him purple, he found a purple one, then said, “You want a magazine? Go take a look.” Shaking her head again, she headed over to the magazine rack and watched him in the shoplifting mirror. He was sneaking around the aisles of the store looking at things. Incredible. He was going to play Santa, and buy her a present. Kee-rist. Maybe she should get him something.

  She looked at school supplies, found a pen and pencil set (the best thing she could think of for someone who thought in graphs), wondered how to get them to the cash register without him seeing them. Then she realized there was a cash register at both doors, so she went to the other one.

  By the time he finished skulking around she was back studying the magazines. It had been years since she had looked at magazines. There were magazines about wrestlers, about boys on skateboards, about muscle cars, about pumping iron, about house blueprints, men’s fashions, skinny women. In the middle of one of the thick women’s fashion magazines she found an article about a murder in a small town, and found herself sucked down into the story, another thing she hadn’t experienced in a long time. She didn’t read often; too many other things to look at.

  “You want that one?”

  “What? No.” She put the magazine back, glanced at the shopping bag he was carrying. It was bulging and bigger than a breadbox.
“You must of needed a lot of bathroom stuff,” she said.

  He nodded. “Ready?”

  “Sure.”

  On the way into his fifth-floor apartment, she leaned against the front door and thought, —Are you friendly?—

  —I do my job. I keep Our Things safe inside and keep other harmful things out.—

  —I’m not really one of Our Things,— Matt thought. —I have an invitation, though.—

  —I understand that.—

  —If I need to leave right away, will you let me out, even if Jim doesn’t want me to leave?—

  The door mulled this over, then said, —All right.—

  —Thanks.— She stroked the wood, then turned to look at the apartment.

  She had known he had money—those gold cards, that cash. She liked the way it manifested. The air was tinted with faint scents of lemon furniture polish and evergreen. The couch was long but looked comfortable, upholstered in a geometric pattern of soft, intense lavenders, indigos, grays. The round carpet on the hardwood floor was deep and slate blue; the coffee table was old wood, scarred here and there. A black metal spiral plant-stand supported green, healthy philodendrons and rabbit-track marantas. Everything looked lived-in or lived-with.

  To the left was a dining nook. A little Christmas tree decorated with white lights, tinsel, and paper angels stood on the dining table.

  “I thought Linda was going to come,” Plainfield said, looking at the tree. There were presents under it. “Corey didn’t tell me until last night that they were going out of state. You like cocoa?”