It Had To Be You

    They say global warming is the reason there’s less snow than there has been in the past hundred years. Sound the alarm. Man is to blame. Some evil man you don’t like. It is why Christmas in New York is often more like Christmas in Tampa. 50 something and raining. It’s unnatural. The sky is falling. We’re all going to die. The teenage autistic girl all over TV says so. Every time it rains in winter, Claire thinks that it should be snow. Sometimes she says as much and doesn’t even realize it. Other times she just thinks it. She wishes that it were snow as she looks out her Simon and Schuster office window onto the wet sheen of a bustling 6th Avenue. The cold rain ineffectually cascades down the glass. She pines for snow the way some people pine for love or a townhouse in a better zipcode. She doesn’t recall the last time it snowed on Christmas. There is something unnatural about holding an umbrella in December, wearing a rain jacket and galoshes. But it was only Christmas Eve. Perhaps, time was still on her side. Maybe the weather man was wrong and temperatures will dip and it will snow like it snows in the snow globe on her desk when she turns it over and shakes it. And perhaps, he will come. The indelible man that she wasn’t sure to exist.

    “Claire!” her boss yelled, waking her from her wet reverie. She rubbed her weary face, distorting it for a moment. She didn’t wear makeup. She was slumped over her desk, counting the hours until the holiday party where she could get free champagne and perhaps win a wreath or a basket of scented soaps and oils. A new loofah, perhaps. It was only 9:30. “Get in here, Claire!”

    She exhaled and schlepped to the old man’s office. Bob Bennett was a morbid prick as unimaginative as his name. A literary stalwart but a hemorrhoid on the ass of everyone he ever met and worked with. A man with seemingly no imagination at all. A curmudgeon of the worst sort, rich with power over people. Since she joined the agency three years ago, he had treated her like a coffee girl, diminishing her education and brightness, and if ever he paid any attention to her at all other than to be professionally brutal, it was to be caustic. To hurt her. Snide comments and subtle insults of her clothes or manner of speech. The upstate New York accent he said he loathed pretentiously. Her dull lackluster eyes. And rather than to grow closer to her over the years as one might expect, he became increasingly hostile towards her, settling to become a complete asshole.

    He was no Harvey Weinstein. Perhaps, long ago he was when sex interested him, but he was not vile in that respect anymore. He was just old and crusty. A Scrooge of words and books rather than money and numbers. He had been doing what he does for far too long and the better parts of him were corroded and deteriorated within with no real hope of any restoration. It was all over but for the dirt nap. He was thin, pale and misshapen. A crooked back. Yellow teeth. Acrid breath. Pink beady eyes which were always watery. He maintained a few human characteristics which kept him from being a complete monster. He bicycled in the summer. Had a passion for dogs. She often doodled caricatures of him in her office. Him being humped by a dog. Him being eaten by a bear. Him wrecking his bike. Him being sodomized by a transgender prostitute. She dreamed of him retiring, or dying, and her taking his position – a desire motivated by money she would be ashamed to admit – but also of her desire to be rid of him. She thought of murdering him. Pushing him out in front of a train. Poisoning his coffee. She couldn’t help it. But as miserable as she was, she knew she must do as she ought and grin and bear it until he was gone. Naturally.

    “Yes. Mr. Bennett.”

    “Claire, you’re going for a drive. I need you to go to Vermont and retrieve a manuscript. We need it today.”

    “But – it’s Christmas Eve, Mr. Bennett.”

    “We need it, Claire. It’s your fucking job! Do you want to work here or don’t you?”

    “Can’t the author email or fax it? I mean – what is this 1920?”

    “It’s Charles Mars, dear!” he snapped sardonically. “It is perpetually 1920 to Charles Mars. So put your time travel suit on and blast the fuck off. Okay?”

    Charles Mars. The name twisted and rolled in her head like a fat crocodile. Known misogynist and right-wing conspiracy theorist nut who wrote Norman Rockwell paintings come to life, brutally sad Hemingway-esque love stories set with the backdrop of wars – novels full of grit, death and a heaping spoonfuls of romantic woe. He was a sentimentalist. A man who doesn’t own a cellphone and had never sent an email in all his life and, according to some, who shot and killed someone in a duel. A duel! A Revolutionary War and Civil War reenactor. A botanist. A notorious drunk. He had been married three times and each of them failed. He had six or seven kids who didn’t talk to him. It was simple – Simon and Schuster published his books because he sold. They didn’t do so under their label, but rather under one of their subsidiaries marketed to the literary underbelly who the pretentious pricks only serve to keep revenue flowing.
 
    “Charles Mars? You got to be joking me.”

    “No joke, Claire. Now quit stalling and get you ass to Vermont. I will text you the address. This book has to be back here by this evening. But no later than tomorrow morning! But if it is tomorrow morning, you’ll have to bring it to my house in Chelsea. Editing has to be complete by New Years. It needs to be in print by Valentine’s Day. Do you understand me? It’s a much-anticipated love story.”

    “A much-anticipated love story?”

    “Are you a fucking parrot now? Yes! Look, I don’t like his politics or him anymore than you do. He is repulsive. But he sells. He sells very well. And we’re here to make money.”

    “But I don’t have a car.”

    “No shit, Claire. There’s a car in the garage. Here are the keys. It’s some kind of Volvo- SUV-thing. Blue, I think. I’ll be here until 10. The holiday party is tonight. It’s 5 hours up 91, so you should be able to go up and grab it and get it to me by the time I leave here tonight. I want to read it over Christmas for content before it goes to editing. Do you understand me, Claire?”

    “Yes, sir.”

    “Well, go! Go! Go!”

    Begrudgingly she left. It always feels it takes longer to get out of the city than it does to get where you’re going, especially in the rain. Especially in New York. The windshield wipers streaked across the window as she hit the highway. She was checking her phone when she nearly rear-ended someone in a Mercedes. She slammed on the breaks and her coffee spilled all over her lap. Rather than being grateful for the fortune of stopping before she hit the car in front of her, she was angry that she had spilled the coffee and stained her pants. And rather than enjoying the beauty of upstate New York, a site she so rarely gets to appreciate being so bogged down in the city, she was upset about missing the office holiday party for the minuscule chance that she might have won a basket full of things she doesn’t like or need or a gift certificate to somewhere she never goes. To have the chance to make dull conversation with some guy from the mailroom or who knows, maybe a girl. That cute publicist they just hired – Brianna something German. She needed a roommate one way or another. She could be gay for financial considerations. It came with its benefits. Doubling one’s wardrobe. Men had been a disappointment, after all. She needed to be more pragmatic, more shrewd, and far more social, and office parties are places where people naturally become practical couples. They are au fond breeding grounds. She was desperately in need of color. In need of life. Teetering on suicide.

    I thought about haunting her as the spirits did Scrooge in “A Christmas Carol.” I, her benevolent creator. I thought about appearing suddenly on the passenger seat and explaining to her in so many words the beauty and very meaning of life itself and be done with it. Filing it under: “I did all that I could do for you, Claire Perry. Here it all is. It’s up to you now.” To stop sending her clandestine messages that she never observes or adheres to, and to be more direct. Blunt. Like a punch in the nose. She was an astute young woman. She’d get it, after all. She wouldn’t think I was a mere hallucination or a product of her own insanity, as others have wrongly surmised. After the initial shock of my appearance, she would be receptive to my message I’m quite certain – having been shown the error of her ways. I could have come through the radio. Made my voice sound like Orson Wells. But I did not. That is not the way. I remained simply a nearly imperceptible and lackluster presence. A single snowflake on the windshield she saw near the exit to Schenectady. She stared right at me for a brief second but she didn’t even realize who I was.

    Charles Mars’ cabin is in rural Vermont near Stowe. But as all was going so well, about thirty minutes away, Claire’s GPS failed. She had no signal. I could have intervened and given it coordinates to make sure she was back at that office party to make the appropriate acquisitions. But it was fate and even I do not contest fate. So I let her be. I let her figure it out for herself.

    “You gotta be shitting me!”

    I thought of saying through the GPS – “No, Claire. I’m not shitting you.” Or maybe, humorously, “In 3000 miles, turn left.” But I abstained. My sniggering muffled by the radio she turned down to help herself think. I was a simple pinecone observing from a tree. She knew she needed to stay on Minuteman Road – which was the road she was on and the road he lived on. She had the address and was checking for mailboxes staked at the end of the very few lanes which opened like indiscriminate mouths in the woods as she passed. She was fiddling with her phone, trying to coax it back to life, but as she thought she was getting close, she hit a rut along the side of the road and her car veered off and struck a pine tree. A Norway Spruce, to be more concise. I, the aforementioned pinecone, her benevolent creator, fell from the struck tree and bounced off her windshield. The windshield cracked and I tumbled to the ground to become something else. A bird in a tree with a better view. A decomposing leaf not to be expected. A simple squirrel gathering acorns. Surreptitious am I.

    “Oh, hell!” she groaned. The car was immobilized, stuck in a ditch and wedged against the tree. It was otherwise undamaged, save for the cracked windshield and a minor dent in the fender that a few hundred dollars would fix. Or one of those “As Seen on TV” products sold by that silver-tongued pitchman, Phil Swift. But upon her own investigation, there was no hope of her getting the car out of the ditch on her own. And having no cell service, there was no hope of calling a tow truck to assist her. So as the weather turned cold, she hoofed it. Cursing old Mr. Bennett all the way. Cursing Charles Mars for being such a “fucking primitive weirdo.” Cursing fate and God and her cellphone company, too. Vowing to switch cell service when she got home. She might have vowed to change religions as well, but she had no religion left to give up. She gave that up long ago when some cad, some Romeo in wingtips broke her heart, at least psychologically speaking, which she was sure still bled despite it being four long and dreadful years of happy hour drinks, friends with benefits. and terrible romantic movies.

    Claire was the fragile kind. The glass kind. Like an ornament on a tree. A girl wrapped in bubble-wrap all her life and suddenly let free when it could no longer be helped. When she outgrew her packaging. When her curiosity of living outweighed her fear of dying. When she traded a bunker in Buffalo for an fifth floor walk-up in the city. But it hadn’t gone so well, she decided when she took an audit of her life. It wasn’t that easy, after all. Life drops bombs on heads every day. It makes minced-meat out of the toughest of men. It napalms women and children indiscriminately. It firebombs Dresden, baking Hansels and Gretels in their brick houses. Life is sometimes the Enola Gay.   

    She was not grateful that she had been late that morning and forgot her flats and wore her snow boots. But it was quite beneficial to her now as she walked up the gravel road. She was also not grateful that it began to snow. Giant and beautiful snowflakes which she long since had pined for from rain-slicked city windows as she turned that snow globe over and shook it. She chose rather to be peeved that the temperature dropped substantially from there to here, at least twenty degrees. It was also fortunate for her that she looked down the black mouth of the first lane she came to and there on the mailbox post were the right numbers she was seeking. Charles Mars’ address  – 3300 Minuteman Road. But before she had the chance to be relieved that she had made it, a loud explosion frightened her. It was followed by a ominous demonic whistling and a zip of something loud and sinister which blazed through the canopy of the trees, ripping branches from limbs and limbs from trees and striking the road no more than twenty yards from her and skipping across with such force that it broke several trees in half on the other side. Whatever it was, left a trail of smoke and was followed by another. Then another. Balls, she could see. Cannon balls! She ran down the lane towards Charles’ cabin, which she saw only a glimmer of in the break of clustered trees and through the dull gray of a winter mid-afternoon. She soon realized the source of the destruction was his cabin. And as she neared, she saw the exact cause – the guilty cannon which sat on his front lawn, smoke billowing from its throat. Charles, she presumed, stood at the helm preparing to fire a fourth ball which he had in his hands.

    “Are you crazy?” she screamed.

    The snow fell heavier. Charles was wearing a Civil War uniform. A dark blue Union uniform. “Johnny Rebs spotted up on that there ridge, ma’am. Be obliged if you’d pardon me and kindly get the hell out of the way so I can continue my assault on our mutual enemy!”

    “Our mutual enemy? That is a road, you lunatic! There is no one up there other than me and my car! You could have killed someone! You could have killed me! Do not fire that thing again!”

    “What is a car, ma’am? And who in the Sam Hill are you anyhow?”

    “I am Claire Perry – from Simon and Schuster. And what is a car? Are you out of your mind?! Are you drunk?! It’s like – four o’clock, dude.”

    Lost in their argument was Claire’s surprise over the cabin in which Mr. Mars inhabited. Whereas she expected some little rustic “shit-shack,” the exact and unflattering word that was contrived in her mind on the way when the natural consideration of such occurred, something with mud between the logs and an outhouse that stunk like ten years of shit and chopped up fish heads laying about, to the contrary, it was rather nice. Beautiful, in fact. It was larger than she assumed it would be with gorgeous windows and stonework and a nice porch with yards of neatly stacked wood up along the cabin and one of those outdoor/indoor fireplaces she had seen on one of those rustic real estate TV shows one night when she was in bed with a pint of butter pecan ice cream and dreams of moving to Alaska someday. There was a nice clearing for a yard and beautiful log pillars which supported the porch roof that was topped with stained-green wood shingles.

    “I have not yet begun to drink, Ms. Perry!” he fired back. “Wait a minute. Are you kin to Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, the hero of Lake Erie – of the famed Perry naval dynasty?”

    “No. I don’t think so.”

    “I didn’t think so, either. You look a bit scraggly to be one of them Perry’s.”

    “Would you please just get me the manuscript so I can be on my way back to New York, sir?”

    “York City, you say? You come all this way? On Christmas Eve?”

    Claire sighed in exasperation. The snow fell heavier and heavier. “Mr. Mars –”
    
    “Mr. Mars?” he chuckled. “I’m Captain Lightfoot, ma’am. I don’t know no Mr. Mars.”

    Another sigh. “Captain Lightfoot. I really don’t have time for these games. I’m due back in the city and my car is struck in a rut and will need pulled out. So if you would kindly get me the manuscript and allow me to use your phone I would be – ”

    “Oh. Can’t do, I’m afraid. There’s no phone, Ms. Perry. I shot out the line on accident a week or so ago and the fellows have yet to come to repair it. I, however, do have a tank that can pull your transportation device out of the rut and back onto the road – if I can get it started. Same Sherman tank that shot the asses off some kraut panzers in dubya dubya two. Have you ever rode in a tank before, Ms. Perry?”

    “Call me Claire. And no, sir,” she answered sarcastically. “I have not had the pleasure to ride in a tank, Mr. Mars, I mean – Captain Lightfoot.”

    “You can call me Charles.” He took off his Civil War kepi and wiped his forehead as though he had a terrible headache. “Oh, boy. Did it again. I get in character from time to time and sometimes, well – I get stuck. Like your car, I s’pose. But I’m out now and at your service, I assure you. Fit as a fiddle. Right as rain. You’re from the agency, you say?”

    “Yes. I am,” she answered somewhat relieved to be speaking to someone in the proper century. She hadn’t heard that he suffered any sort of personality disorder, but early indications favored the diagnosis greatly. “I’m here to get the manuscript because you have no email – or you didn’t mail it in – or, God forbid, bring it in yourself.”

    Charles ignored her for a moment. He looked up at the snow and opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue to catch snowflakes. “Nothing as sweet as Christmas snow, is there, Claire? Well, come in, please. I’m being a terrible host for such a weary traveler. No sense in standing out here catching our death of cold. Come on! Come in!”

    Reluctantly, she went inside, and much like the outside, she was pleasantly surprised with the difference in her expectation and the reality of what she saw – much like his pleasing visage. Her body appreciated the warmth and a sensation of relief swept over her. I, her benevolent creator, was the melting snow from her hair that ran down her cheek which she indifferently wiped off with a towel Charles provided her posthaste. The cabin was well designed and clean. It smelled nice. It was a man’s cabin, no doubt about it with framed pictures of bears and Indians and guns hanging neatly on the walls, but it had a charm anyone would find appealing. High-vaulted ceilings, soft amber lights, and interesting works of art throughout. A good mixture of antiques and eclectic oddities which reminded her of her grandfather. In fact, she almost forgot, her grandfather had a small cabin in Pennsylvania that she had been to a time or two in her youth. Only she never stayed because it would mean staying apart from her mother. And they never visited but once or twice for the fear of mosquitoes that carried encephalitis, West Nile virus, malaria, or yellow fever.

    It was by coincidence that Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry died of yellow fever aboard USS Nonsuch on his 34th birthday in August of 1819 en route to Trinidad.  It was also a coincidence that today was Claire’s 34th birthday, a secret she kept to herself as though by keeping the secret she would somehow not age. Of course it was silly, but people are all made up of such silly idiosyncracies and peculiar habits and us benevolent and omnipotent creators are the guardians of such secrets. Some as absurd as smelling their own farts, or picking their noses for pleasure, or doing little strange dances when they’re excited or scared, or brushing their teeth in a particularly peculiar way. Some believe in jujus and lucky rabbit’s feet. Or that fate can be thwarted by avoidance or prayer. Those sorts of strange things that define humans as animals. So by the grand scheme of things, suppressing one’s birthday in hopes not to age is not all that bizarre.

    “Could I get you a drink, Claire?”

    “Oh, no! No. No. Thank you, though,” she declined. “Just the manuscript. I got a long drive home and, well...”

    He made her a drink anyway and she accepted it with the rationale that it would take the nip out of the air. There always has to be a rationale for Claire to drink, even a pretend headache or imagined stress. As he excused himself to change his clothes, she looked about the room. There was something comforting about his cabin, not him in particular at first, but the cabin. It was homey. It was peaceful the way an empty library is peaceful. And very soon, one drink became three. She had asked him over the course of those drinks about the manuscript several times, but he changed the subject. She relayed to him that Mr. Bennett, who she with a buzz daringly called Ebenezer Scrooge, was an asshole, but he was an asshole nonetheless that expected the next Charles Mars manuscript in his hands by 9pm this evening. The drinks were starting to make her feel very free and drunk.

    “You didn’t just Bill Cosby me did you?”

    He snickered. “By no means, Claire. No. I’ve never dreamt of doing something so dastardly, not even in the fantasy of my books. You may check, but I assure you that I have no puddin’ pops in my freezer.” She laughed, easily, the way she always wanted to laugh in someone else’s company. She so often faked it to be polite. The light of the room was warm and soft and the dwindling light outside made travel all the more a formidable prospect. Wind howled through some imperfection in the windows or doors. The snow had also fallen steadily and accumulated rapidly, whiting out the landscape and piling on the cannon that faded with the blackening day.

    “Bowling balls,” he said.

    “What?” she grinned.

    “That is what I fire from the cannon. Bowling balls. It’s not a real Civil War cannon. It was made specifically to fire bowling balls. So I go to yard sales and sporting good’s stores and bowling alleys and buy all the balls they will sell me and I play war. Like a kid. Then I go and find them like a kid looking for Easter eggs. In many ways I never gave up being a kid. But that is how I write the period pieces. I live them.”

    “You’re not quite what I imagined. Why aren’t you married? What happened?”

    “I love writing. I loved being married. But the two cannot coexist. I could never write anything worth reading while I was married or with someone. They kept me in such reality I was never able to float away and be myself. So I chose to be a writer and to live alone. And I was sadly much more of a Lothario than I ever wished to be.”

    “Wow. So you gave up love to write.”

    “You make it sound noble, when in truth it was selfish.”

    “Not at all. To give up love? There’s no greater sacrifice, if you ask me.”

    “I don’t know that it was ever really love. You haven’t met my exes. And I wasn’t so good at it, Claire.”

    “It takes practice,” she replied softly taking another drink. “And the right person, to boot.”

    “Well, there’s another reason as well. I have something wrong with me where I forget things.”

    “Like birthdays? Anniversaries?”

    “Like – um – years. Their names. My name. Sometimes for days or months. Once for nearly a year. The doctor has a name for it. Some fancy medical term. Says its like anything, bound to get worse with age. So when you came today and I was firing my cannon, I really was Captain Lightfoot fighting Johnny Reb, you see. I had been that way for near a week. Living the character I wrote in the manuscript you’re here to get. It comes and it goes. The doctor said there is nothing they can do for it. It’s like a dementia and is bound to get worse as time goes on. Eventually I might not remember anyone or myself. I might just be a character I invent. I know when it is coming on. And when it does, I say ‘The British are coming,’ so, I suppose, you can call my forgetfulness – the British.”

    “So that is why you’re not married? You don’t want anyone to live that way. With your coming and going. That is being selfless.”

    He didn’t answer her, but she could tell she guessed correctly. She gazed out the window and smiled at the snow which reminded her of her snow globe on her office desk. The snow had made significant progress in what little time they had been having drinks by the fire. It was difficult to see outside and soon there was the Appomattox of day, when the gray of the late afternoon surrendered to the darkness of evening as Charles stoked the hearty fire in the center room fireplace. It was Yorktown.

    “Well, I must be going. If you have the manuscript – and can fire up that – tank.”

    “Yes.” He finally retrieved it from his writing desk. A standard typing paper box full of what she presumed was the next successful Charles Mars novel. One she would never in a million years read, but one she was to be the courier of, transporting it from another time and place into the homes of a few million readers in Kentucky and Arizona and the sort. Perhaps, she might read this one, she thought. One she had such a personal hand in delivering. It surely would be a relief from the usual company fare. The tale of a gender-fluid bohemian finding her way in whatever pursuit or industry she found herself in. Having reckless sex, regret, revival and a validation of some sort by story’s end. She never thought of it before, but other than being a heterosexual female, she was in fact living a Simon and Schuster novel, only she was stuck perpetually in the quagmire of chapter 3.

    “Of course in order to get to the tank we got to get past – Tim McClain.”

    “Tim McClain? Who’s he?”

    “Tim McClain is a bear who lives nearby on the property who hunts by night. He’s a very hungry and ferocious bear when he hasn’t eaten. And if he were to catch you, he might find you to be quite delectable in the least pleasing way one can be delectable. Mind you, this here is the hungry time of year for a bear not in hibernation and Tim, well, he resists hibernation. He’s a bit of an insomniac, I hear tell. There are no natural berries to eat. Nothing to scavenge. He does find it rather pleasing that I am a pescatarian and I dispose of my trash routinely in a very convenient receptacle that he has easy access to. Sometimes I even throw a whole fish in there, well, minus a few bites. He does not take charity so if I don’t at least nibble a bit he won’t eat it. He will put it on the porch by the front door. He eats what’s left of my meals. It’s a very mutually beneficial relationship.”

    “And what does he provide you?”

    “Security. He keeps the burglars at bay.”

    “Burglars?” Claire giggled. “Out here?”

    “Methamphetamine does strange things to an animal.”

    “Are you joking?” Claire was curled up in a chair near the fire. She found it all so amusing. Her boots were off and her feet and socks were warm. It sure the hell beat the company holiday party with carefully selected “holiday” music, people she didn’t really like, and uncomfortable shoes. The glow of the fire upon her face made her look mesmeric and Charles had never seen anything look quite so beautiful in any time or place. Truthfully, for all its amenities, its peace, the cabin life was a lonely existence. It was almost as though he had forgotten what it was to feel this way – what it is to be a human and to have desire and longing. While he was more than 10 years older than her, he was not intimidated because he was too occupied in being enamored. And she could not stop smiling as the evening waned and her deadline came and went. Drinks, an impromptu dinner, and good music on the phonograph.

    To Claire’s surprise, Charles Mars was quite a gentleman contrary to everything she had ever heard or read of him. Funny, polite, and interesting to say the least. Curious when so few people are curious. Attractive when so few people are attractive. People were the same to her. Men, especially. All the same, just a different address. And even then, their apartments were the same sorts of dreary places. Stinking the same. Same terrible art on the walls. IKEA furniture. Same beer in the refrigerator. Same hair cream in the medicine cabinet, cologne on the shelf, disposable razor, deodorant. Same TV blaring loudly sports or some shitty Avenger film. Even the man she thought she loved, who she suddenly didn’t miss so much, who she knew she never loved at all. There was something she greatly admired about Charles which she didn’t expect and couldn’t explain and he redefined everything anyone ever was to her.

    The night passed and their conversation waned and was overtaken by the crackle of the fire and the songs on the phonograph. It was a Frank Sinatra album. Men do not listen to good music anymore, she had long-since resolved. Perhaps, she said so much to her cat who was like her counselor. Who always agreed because he never said otherwise. They listen to garbage mumble hip-hop or that inbred folk bluegrass sniveling over twangy banjos and murdered greasy mandolins shit with simple stupid lyrics about getting high, drinking moonshine, or being dejected yet in love with a cheating barefoot cousin on a dirt country road. The kind of music that sounds like it needs to read a book and bathe. Deliver me from deliverance, she said on bluegrass night in whatever hipster bar she found herself in in Soho or Brooklyn. When the same guy would approach and ask her if she liked John Prine as though that were some password to her pussy. No. I do not, she rejected them flatly. I like Sinatra.  

    “I really love this song,” Charles trespassed on her thought. But it was a very welcomed intrusion. She was being a nihilist again. “Would you dance with me, Claire? One dance.”
    
    “Sure,” Claire grinned, eagerly setting her glass on a table by the chair. It took him by surprise. He didn’t think a yes would come so easy. He took her in his arms and they moved over the floor in unison to the soothing music as the outside world raged, somewhere out there, cabbies racing all over New York, company parties raging in all their inevitable chaotic drama, commercials blaring, lights flashing, people laughing absurdly being way too loud because they were narcissists and they were way too drunk. But that was hundreds of miles away. Hours away. Hours that were like a lifetime. They were insulated by the acres of woods and snow that fell, Christmas snow, like white felt drapes. And they were watched over by Tim the hungry insomniac bear who would eat anything should it ever come too close. Who probably watched in through the window. As they danced, she couldn’t remember when she last did. It was at someone’s wedding to some song, probably some godawful Cher or Celine Dion song. But this was Frank Sinatra and Charles quickly reset the needle to the very beginning of the song to get the full value of his requested dance.

    Why do I do just as you say? Why must I just give you your way? Why do I sigh? Why don’t I try to forget? It must have been that something lovers call fate. Kept me saying I had to wait. I saw them all. Just couldn’t fall til we met. It had to be you. It had to be you...

    The danced in perfect unison. Both feeling as close to the other as they had felt to anyone. The liquor aiding, not obstructing. Enhancing, not coercing. Infusing, not depleting. And as the song ended, she invited him with her eyes, but he declined with a smile.

    “I may be a lot of people, Claire, and I may forget who I am from time to time, but I am no longer Lothario, and I’m not Bill Cosby, either,” he whispered in her ear. She laughed drunkenly. Then he swept her up in his arms and carried her to his room and lied her gently on his bed. She hoped he had changed his mind. Still, she invited him, softly biting her lip and looking deeper into his eyes, but he smiled and whistled the song to her as he gradually left the room. And she lied there in his bed that smelled of his cologne or his soap or his shampoo as the snow continued to fall and she forgot all about her birthday and Christmas Eve and the holiday office party with free champagne and baskets of soaps and lotions and gift certificates. She looked up at a skylight and it was as though the snow fell directly down upon her, as though it were being gifted to her, mesmerizing her, enchanting her to a place in time and space she had never been before. She understood quite clearly in the moment that this was her wish and he was her man. The indelible man of her dreams. I was a dead fly in a nearly imperceptible spider web, who suddenly came to life in the corner of that skylight, looking down upon her just to appreciate the view and the sight of her contentment. Of course, by morning she would sober.

    Charles pulled the manuscript out of the box and tossed it in the fire. The fire approved, made no edits, and devoured it in one reading. Then he reset the needle of the record player and the song began again, their song, which pleased Claire who was drifting, drifting, peacefully content in that tranquil place between wake and sleep, between infatuation and love and happiness and bliss. He poured himself another drink and sat at the dining table and put a piece of paper in his old reliable Smith-Corona and began doing what it is that he does. What he has chosen over love, or so he has always told himself. She fell asleep to the antiquated tit-tatting of his keystrokes that would persist throughout the night and not disturb her at all. Rather, it was a melody to her. A beautiful and blissful lullaby.

    He woke her with breakfast in bed. She smiled and stretched. He gave her a change of clothes, pretty clothes, and she accepted them, though she looked skeptically at them for a moment until he assured her they belonged to his daughter, not an ex-wife. She hasn’t been around for some time, he imparted softly. She will not miss them. There was a sadness in him she could tell, but he quickly replaced any trace of it with a joke and a peppy optimistic word or two that distracted her from looking inside of him for too long. He hid what he could hide. She ate and dressed and looked out the window to the blanket of pure snow. It wasn’t snowing anymore. It was Christmas morning, the Eve had delivered.

    “You don’t have a tree?” she noted coming from the room.

    “I have plenty of trees,” he grinned. “Look out the window.”

    “No. I mean, you – don’t have a Christmas tree.”

    He nodded. “Maybe next year.” With that, he handed her the manuscript, boxed and ready to go. “I suppose you ought to be heading back and getting this to the dreaded Mr. Bennett.”

    “I suppose I should. He’s teeming with excitement to read it.”

    “He likes to read the quarterly sales report.”

    “Yes,” she grinned honestly. “I suppose that is more like it.” 

    They walked outside. It was bright, though there was no sun. A bright gray hue as though the sun wore a thin gray robe.

    “Good morning, Tim,” Charles called as they walked to the barn. Claire looked over and there was a bear standing on its hind legs by the cannon watching them.

    “You weren’t lying!”

    “Of course not. You thought I was?” Charles asked slowly opening the barn door. “He probably slept in the barn last night. Kind of smells like him. He does that sometimes. He can be a real pussy when it comes to snow.”

    “Well, shouldn’t we hurry and get into the tank? He’s standing right there.”

    “No. He’s had his breakfast by now or else he would have charged us. He’s just curious. Probably wanted to say hi to you. He so rarely sees anyone but me. And he doesn’t like the tank. I’m going to hear about it later.”

    The tank was enormous and Claire stood there in awe, pressing her hand to the cold metal side. She didn’t think much about the historical significance of it. No fault of her own. Her brain wasn’t wired that way and history was not her forte. At one point in conversation the previous night, Charles described it as “the tank that won World War II.” That may or may not have been a slight exaggeration. He helped her up and inside the hatch. It was cold and sterile. He put on a helmet and some goggles. After a few cranks it turned over and they made their way to the road where Charles attached chains to the Volvo and pulled it successfully from the ditch. There was a metaphor to be had in it, he knew standing there in the gravel road as she started it up and smiled back at him. He just couldn’t think of it. It would come, sometime later, after she was gone. Sure, it would come. It always does.

    “Does anyone ever call you, Chuck?”

    “A few ex-wives, probably. Or something that reasonably sounds like Chuck. Tim does – when he’s mad at me, anyway. When I go back and park the tank it will be Chuck this and Chuck that.”

    She laughed. “Well, um, thank you. And thank Tim for not eating me. I’m sorry that I interrupted your – cannonballing and your Christmas Eve.”

    “There’s no need to thank me. But I’ll thank him for you. And thank you for coming. I enjoyed your company – very much. It had to be you. Merry Christmas, Ms. Perry! Have a safe trip back.”

    She smiled at him awkwardly as he raised his hand to waive and she carefully pulled away. She didn’t know what he meant by the “it had to be you” part. She was drunk last night by the time the song played so it was hazy. I could intervene. I could remind her. I could cue the song on the radio and have her remember, but that I wouldn’t do. So over and over as she drove home she kept repeating, contemplating those words – “It had to be you. It had to be you. It had to be you.”

    The alcohol took much from her. Their entire conversation about the flag above his fireplace that read, “Don’t give up the ship.” How it is his philosophy in life. Prior to last night, she knew nothing of the War of 1812 or Captain James Lawrence or The Battle of Lake Erie, much less that those were Lawrence’s dying words as the British boarded his ship and took his life. She didn’t know Lawrence’s friend and avenger, Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, had those very words sewn on a flag which he used as a battle cry to rouse his men to a decisive victory. And she didn’t know she smiled in anticipation and interest as Charles told her the story, the handsome history teacher she never had. 

    Yet, the five words – It had to be you – stayed with her all the way back to the city, the manuscript on the passenger seat, headed to her boss’s townhouse in Chelsea on Christmas Day to drop it off, wishing that she could have stayed, thinking all the while of turning around. When she got a few miles away, she had cell service and her phone was flooded with messages from “civilization.” Routine birthday and Christmas well-wishes. Mr. Bennett checking in on her. Forgetting to tell her that Charles Mars is a complete psychopath and to not get too close to him. Several “where are you?” messages – sometimes with one question mark – other times with three or four. That dolt Nick from marketing at midnight or so asking if she was free – meaning free for sex. He must have struck out at the office party and was going down his list. She cringed to be on his list. “How could you ever have been so drunk and stupid, Claire?” her conscience asked her. Then Mr. Bennett again saying he was thinking about calling the police, but resigning himself to a much simpler and angry “just call me when you get this damnit” resolution. It was much more like him. A text from dad. “Hapy b-day, kiddo.” Spelled just so. Must be drunk on highballs in an Aspen lodge with his obscene wife with the big fat collagen lips. A long voicemail from mom which amounted to her usual holiday gripe, “Christmas isn’t the same with you kids scattered all over the globe,” and a desperate plea to come home – there are good jobs in Buffalo – always somewhere in there. She didn’t even have to listen. It never changed. Maybe she should have gone home. Buffalo may never change, but grandparents and parents don’t live forever. Next year, she thought.  She was still young enough to rely on the reasonable promise of next year.

     Her mind was so overwhelmed and conflicted that she didn’t even notice when the snow on the ground dwindled the further away she got from Vermont. When plowed drifts along the highway faded away and became nothing more than broken down cars, dead deer carcasses and wet grass. Traffic was light by usual standards which allowed her to make good time. She decided if Mr. Bennett invited her in to scold her and make her feel uncomfortable she would decline with the excuse of family obligations she didn’t have, and if he insisted, she would kick him in the dick. She often felt like a cat around him. Like his abused cat. And he was some crotchety old bastard who took his misery with life out on her. Then she thought to stop and read the manuscript. In some coffee shop or Chinese restaurant where she spent Christmas last year eating crab rangoon. Or at home with a bottle of NyQuil for a feast to pass the day. She looked over at it, the plain paper box, but she did not invade. Not even to peek at the title. It felt like some violation of trust. Snooping. And if there is one thing she was not – that was a snoop. And what if she didn’t like it? A perfectly good, albeit hazy, memory would be spoiled by a bad read. It might change her view of him. 

    She dropped the manuscript off at Mr. Bennett’s and made for home. He didn’t harass her which was almost like a Christmas gift – his indifference. There were all the usual suspects of over-the-counter sleep aids in the nativity of her medicine cabinet. She went directly for the baby Jesus – the extra strength bottle of NyQuil. She didn’t bother to shower, changed into her pajamas, drank six or seven good swills from the plastic shot cup, and was in bed by five thirty. When she woke up, Christmas would be over and she couldn’t care less if it didn’t snow anymore the rest of the year. She smiled thinking of Charles and the cabin. Of Tim McClain, the bear, wondering how he got a first and last name. Of riding in a tank and almost being shot by a cannonball. And of their dance, she remembered drifting to sleep, smiling a little more. It had to be you. It had to be you. She could hear the orchestra playing the song, slow and deliberately, as she fell asleep, but she was not conscious enough to remember any of the words other than the title. If he had been such a psychopath, she thought woozily, why hadn’t he raped and killed me? Maybe he did and this is the tranquility of a slit throat and a warm grave. It was the bizarre and brief Northern Lights of thought that cascades through the mind before the quell of darkness.

    The usual morning horns of traffic and the opening and shutting of apartment doors by neighbors she didn’t know who worked the late or early morning shift coming or going and early-bird babies crying for bottles woke her up around six. She barely opened her eyes as she got dressed and sleepwalked to the subway which she took to work, galoshes on foot and umbrella in hand, nodding off with her head leaned back on the window glass until it shook her awake as it always did. She sat at her desk with her coffee and reviewed query letters from agents who were peddling things they didn’t care about and unsolicited authors who begged for their wonderful manuscript to be read as though their life depended on some New York publishing house putting them in print. Such pathetic and uniformed desperation. There was a backlog from June and come June there will be a backlog from December. The six months they warn authors that it takes to reply, which for most is a stay of execution of all their hopes and dreams. The manuscript is their baby and, of course, their baby is the cutest and brightest and most clever child in the entire fucking world.

    What does it matter if a publisher publishes your goddamn story if it isn’t about the money, she thought scathingly. She wanted to berate them. Paddle them with canes. Self-publish, you twit! What sort of insecure imbecile needs such affirmation? She forwarded about one in twenty on to Bob (as she decided to now call him) to read, those that she thought represented publishable work fitting of the agency’s desired publications that work to further the company’s all-inclusive, multicultural, kumbaya, gender-fluid mission statement. Those coming-of-age yarns of transgender tweens and suburban dads who realize twenty years into a marriage that their penis is an impediment to their happiness as a woman. I am not my chromosomes. I am my gender dysphoria. Science is okay to reject when it conflicts with liberal utopianism. When the chum is in the water, they all write the same fucking story. Only from Chicago or Tucson or Wheatville, Nebraska. They all write what the publisher wants and so they give up their freedom and art to become like all those gray and boring foreboding men she ever knew. Those not selected for Bob’s desk get the dreaded Dear John. The “After careful consideration, we are sorry to inform you that your manuscript is not right for us at this time. We are grateful you considered us and we wish you the best in all your future endeavors.”

    It came like a Western Union telegraph to some writers, their baby died in a literary rice paddy in Vietnam. That was part of her job. She was the unknown and unseen Grim Reaper of the world of fiction. The enemy that killed their beautiful baby girl or boy, not to presume gender, of course.

    Claire put the query letters aside and scrolled through Facebook on her phone. One of the inspirational sites she subscribed to posted one of those feel good quotes which read, “Little by little, day by day, what is meant for you will find its way.” Usually such a sentiment would make her cringe, but today she smiled. A modest change, but a change no less. Evidence of the icicle melting. The freezing of droplets of moisture that stick together in clouds to become snowflakes. That is precisely what was occurring within her, unbeknownst to her or anyone besides me. But she said to herself, half-jokingly, “Sounds beautiful. But I guess what’s meant for me is being manufactured, packaged, shipped and delivered by sloths, turtles and snails as inefficiently as to be expected.” As her holy ghost, I chuckled. I could have reassured her, but I simply watched her. Maybe that makes me an asshole, but it is part of my job as is hers to quash the dreams of all those would-be Jodi Picoults.

    She was shaking her snow globe when Mr. Bennett – Bob – burst in and went straight to his office rudely without acknowledging her presence. He usually had the decency to say good morning, and even if he didn’t mean it, it was some kind of acknowledgment of her as being alive. But it wasn’t long before he called her to his office and told her to sit. She assumed that it was about the Volvo. The cracked windshield and the dent on the fender. “I give you simple instructions. Very simple instructions. Drive to Vermont. Pick up a manuscript. Bring it to me.”

    “I did!”
    
    He held up his hand and closed his pink, squinty eyes. “Nowhere in my instructions – was there any directive to stay the night in his cabin, or sleep in Mr. Mars’ bed, or drink his whiskey and dance by the fire. Was there?! Are you a call-girl, Ms. Perry? If so, this is certainly not the kind of agency who needs to be your employer. Explain yourself!”

    “Whoa! Wait a minute, Bob! What are you talking about?! How did you know I – did you just call me a hooker?!”

    “Bob?! Explain what happened, Ms. Perry. You have 30 seconds before you’re out on your ass.”

    “First off, it wasn’t my fault – the car got stuck in a ditch. There was no cell service and Mr. Mars had no landline phone because he shot the wires out with his bowling-ball-cannon-thing so – I couldn’t call anyone. It got dark and there was a bear. We couldn’t use his tank to pull the car from the ditch until morning because this bear – Tim McClain – doesn’t sleep well and would probably have eaten us. And yeah. I had a few drinks. It was Christmas Eve and I was in some strange man’s cabin while everyone in the fucking office was here at the goddamn Christmas party. Yeah, we might have danced. But Mr. Mars was a gentleman, which is more than I can say for you. And I was his guest and treated accordingly.”

    Mr. Bennett shook his head in despair. He plopped the manuscript on the desk. “I know all about it! I know! I read all about it right here in these tell-tale pages. This is what he sent me. It’s all right here and reads like you just described – a sappy Christmas Eve love story. But in truth, it’s little more than an obituary.”

    “An obituary?”

    “Yes. An obituary, Ms. Perry! One of those sorrowful shitty things people write when someone dies. He died a literary death because Charles Mars doesn’t write for shit when he is in love. He has been married three times, has had six or seven kids, and in those marriages and while he was playing daddy dearest he wrote exactly zero novels, zero stories, not even a goddamn essay about squirrels or a poem that was worth a shit. He is a great writer when he is divorced and heartbroken and playing General with his cannons and tanks and drinking beer and whiskey with bears. But when he is in love, he is not publishable. And the way he writes of you, in here, there is no doubt how he feels. ‘The British are Coming.’ That is what he titled this piece of sappy dog shit. Said he burned the other manuscript. The one I sent you to get.”

    “You’re saying he wrote about me?” Claire asked confused. She squinted her eyes and puckered her lips as she always does when she is giving anything significant consideration. “He wrote about me?” she snickered in disbelief. “Well, what did he write?”

    “Exactly what you told me, only in third-person. That of your ‘benevolent omnipotent creator.’ Exactly what I told you. This entire story. What I am saying now. What I am about to say and what you’re about to do. Everything. From start to finish.”

    “How is that even possible?”

    “The complexities of the universe cannot be figured out by mere mortals such as us, Claire. We are cogs in the machine you will learn. As a boy in Catholic school, I used to think how God created the universe and all the things in it. And why. Why he spaced them out like so, the planets, the moon. Why he gave the world so much ocean and so many fish. That sort of thing. Why he made us meet certain people and kept us from others. I came to no conclusion. And how is it that God himself came to be from nothing before him. I asked my father when I was a child and he said to go ask your mother, and when I asked my mother she said how was she supposed to know she was busy doing the dishes. Go back to Vermont, Ms. Perry. Tell Mr. Mars that you don’t love him and that you are engaged to be married, or that you’re a lesbian, or something. Anything! Dissuade and discourage him from ever thinking of you as anything other than a courier meant to fetch a goddamn manuscript. Then ask him to rewrite the previous manuscript and inform us when it is complete. I will go get that one myself.”

    “You got to be kidding me?”

    “Let me be perfectly clear, Claire. I’m retiring in August of the coming year. For three years you’ve eaten shit to get this point. I know that. You know that. But if you don’t end this silly love story you comically find yourself in and convince him to rewrite that goddamn novel, you won’t be here come New Year’s. All that shit you took, this infernal abuse, it will be all for not. You will have to start over somewhere else. Got it?”

    She nodded.

    “And you may call me Bob. For the first time I have some respect for you. Get him to change his opinion of you. Be all the liberal feminist you can be. Tell him about your abortions, your gender reassignment surgery, your lesbian lover, your Ruth Baiter Ginsberg cross-stitch, your love of NPR and the ACLU, your desire to move to Portland, and your fondness for kale. Whatever you have to do or make up, do it. But do not come back here without doing your job. Think of all those readers who love Mr. Mars’ books who will no longer have the pleasure of his words all because you selfishly sucked them up. Books matter, Ms. Perry. That’s why we do what we do. And they are forever. Long after we are dust. ”

    Her career was everything in the moment. To be successful. More so, not to be a failure. To make more than her brothers and her dad. It would mean a better apartment. A townhouse even. A company car. At least one nice beach vacation every year wherever she wanted to go. Europe in five years. Japan for sushi. Business trips. Access to her favorite writers. Manicures and pedicures. A husband and child. Trips to the zoo. Little league baseball. Halloweens. It was everything that was inside that snow globe on her desk. The gorgeous townhouse she imagined to be on a street in Central Park West. All in the palm of her hand. Respect. A seat at the table. A voice in the conference room. She had no voice at present, she thought many times over. She had a desire to scream, but no voice. She was a pet. Bob’s pet cat declawed and watching life through a window. Telling people they were shitty writers. Snuffing out their dreams. She didn’t want to be Bob’s cat anymore. She wanted to get out of chapter 3.

    In the same Volvo she drove up in, she drove back with authority. As though she owned the road. She didn’t fiddle with her cellphone. She didn’t rely on GPS. She was confident in where she was going and what she was to do. She changed ever still. Not so dramatically that anyone who saw her would notice at first, but significantly nonetheless. She was Bob’s heir apparent. The next executive editor at the third most prestigious publishing house in New York City. No longer a lowly associate editor. She smiled less. Talked to herself less. Focused more. She was determined. Fiji. Maybe she would go to Fiji. Bob goes to Fiji.

    She hadn’t planned anything specifically. She found that thinking of Charles made her uneasy, so if she focused on what she didn’t like about him and not what she knew about him and liked, it would be much simpler. She pulled into his lane, was relieved he wasn’t shooting the cannon, and knocked upon his door. He answered, dressed in a Revolutionary War uniform.

    “The British are coming,” she joked.

    “General Arnold, I presume?”

    “Afraid not. Claire Perry, Simon and Schuster.” 
 
    The hint of recognition sparked in his eyes but quickly faded. She was a stranger to him. Her job was suddenly made easier, but it wasn’t without a certain sorrow that she could not suppress in all her glory and wet dreams of that townhouse in Central Park West and snorkeling in the Caribbean. She was unraveling there on his doorstep. He held on to his musket surveying the scene behind her, the British were wily bastards, after all. This was just like them.

    “You can come in, Ms. Perry. Have some brandy and explain your business.”

    “My business appears to be done for me,” she answered plainly.

    “How so?” He poured them both a drink from a decanter.

    “You don’t recall me. But we have met before. We fell in love. It was Christmas Eve. It was night before last. But you don’t recall. You’re in 1776 playing soldier and I am here in this world playing a miserable associate editor hoping to be a miserable executive editor. So, sadly, I have nothing to ask of you other than if you will rewrite your last novel. When you were Captain Lightfoot of the US Army. In the Civil War. The one you burnt in a fire. I don’t suppose you saved it on a – flash drive,” she said hopelessly looking at his antique typewriter. “Oh, hell. Do you mind if I play a song before I go? ”

    “A song?”
       
    “Yes. Just one, General. Then I’ll go.” She inferred consent and stepped to the phonograph and put the record on. It was the very first song, which made it easy. She looked up at the flag above the fireplace. Don’t give up the ship. “Words to live by,” she said to herself. “Dance with me, please. The British can wait.”
            
    Charles smiled and obliged. He was however skeptical that she might be a British spy, sent to beguile him with her feminine charms. Had it been so, and had the war depended upon him and his ability to resist her, it would have been lost. Such as it goes in the next novel by Charles Mars, entitled “The British are Coming.” She took him on the battlefield of bed. And after their battle was fought, Claire relaxed, realizing she wasn’t helping her cause to get to Fiji or to make more money than her father. “The British may not be coming, but oh, dear, did I ever. I lost count at Bunker Hill.”

    They laughed and lied in bed until it got dark, then they lit candles and sat around the fire wrapped in blankets, drinking more brandy and trading stories of life. “I was only in character for the fun of it,” I must admit to you. “I recognized you from the start.”

    “You devil!” she smiled.

    “I can’t make you stay, Claire, or make you want to live here with me, nor would your boss approve if you did. But I would like it if you chose to, but if not, I’d like it if you came back and considered this to be your home or retreat or vacation. I will always welcome you.”

    “You’ve already written this for us, haven’t you?”

    “No,” he smiled. “This chapter, you must write. The book, you must finish.”

    She sighed a sigh she wanted to let go of for a very long time. So much was relieved in that sigh. “Well, I was thinking of starting my own editorial and publishing business. Maybe if I had one good writer to start with and a nice, quiet place to work – something like this...” she grinned looking around the room. She couldn’t get drunk fast enough, fall in love hard enough, or say yes completely enough. She went back to New York one last time – to pick up her cat and a suitcase of clothes. The rest she left to her neighbors. She typed her resignation in an email. Left the snow globe on her desk. She didn’t need it anymore. The British never came at all and I, her benevolent and omnipotent creator, happily and obscurely faded from view.