Crossroads

Satan was gone, vanished seemingly for good, when she emerged from the scene of the crime, a few blocks from Lerner Motors. It was late in the afternoon of December 24. The leading edge of a storm system had crept across the city sky, scalloping it with cloud. The last Seconal she’d swallowed, in the morning, was wearing off. She was light-headed, and the pain in her belly, though not severe yet, felt evil in its novelty. In place of her specific dread, now put to rest, a more general dread was creeping across her sky-wide mind. She still had six dollars and change in her purse, but she couldn’t bring herself to board a streetcar. Weaving a little, pausing to rest against the sides of buildings, she made her way toward her apartment.

It wasn’t more than twenty blocks away, but traversing that distance finished her off, because she couldn’t get away from him. His elfin face loomed up in window after window. Twinkling-eyed. White-bearded. Dressed in a bright red suit with ermine trim. Posters and greeting cards and cookie tins and life-size manikins all advertised his pawing, wine-breathed malice. She needed more Seconals to get away from him. He was watching her from every direction. His penis was short and fat and tan, like a miniature him. He stood potbellied on a corner, in a red suit, and rang a bell beside a red can into which passersby dropped money. Everywhere, red. She couldn’t get away from red. It was the color of his house. It was how he signaled that wherever she turned he was already there. Red bows, red ribbons. Red-striped candy canes. Shiny stars and crescent moons of metallic red cardboard. The red house. The red car. The red in the sink at her old rooming house. The red wagon. The red wagon. The red wagon. The red wagon. Evil had pursued her all her life, and now the world was exploding with the color of it, and nowhere was there refuge. It found her in her bathroom, the bathroom of her apartment. Red was inside her, too, and it was coming out. She was nothing but a thin-skinned bladder bursting-full of red. Her hands were red, her things were red, there was red on the floor, red on the walls she wiped her hands on. Red annihilated her mind. Merry Christmas.

“So here’s a memory,” she said. “It’s the best memory I have of Christmas. Do you want to hear it?”

“I would,” Sophie Serafimides said. “If you’re sure you’re done punishing me.”

Marion opened her eyes. Out on the rail tracks, snow was falling heavily. The tracks already had a thick coconut frosting.

“You needed punishing,” she said.

Sophie didn’t smile. “Tell me your memory.”

“It was 1946, in Arizona. Russ and I had been together for the better part of a year—we were already a couple in every way except marriage. He still had his alternative service to finish, even though the war was over, but things had gotten very lax at the camp. He could get some days off almost whenever he wanted, and that was nice for me. I’d invited him to Christmas at my uncle Jimmy’s, but he said he had a better idea. There was an old Willys truck that the camp director was willing to let him borrow, and Russ wanted to see more of the Southwest. Jimmy gave us some money as a Christmas present, and off we went. It was a huge deal for Russ, because his parents didn’t know about me, and everywhere we went we had to pretend that we were married. It was a huge act of defiance for him, and I was in love with him. It was heaven to have him all to myself, driving wherever we felt like going. We spent a day in Santa Fe, and then we were in Las Vegas—Las Vegas, New Mexico—when the snow came. Do you know Las Vegas?”

“I don’t.”

“It’s an old, old Spanish colonial town up by the Sangre de Cristos. The Willys had bad tires and we got stuck there by the snow. There was only one hotel where people like us could have stayed, and that’s where we had our Christmas. Our room was probably terrible, but we had each other, so I thought it was wonderful. The hotel was on the old town square, with a dining room on the ground floor, and that’s where we ate on Christmas Eve. To be there with Russ felt like a reward beyond anything I deserved. There was frost around the edges of the windows, and actual cowboys—real cowboys in long coats were coming in to have their dinner. There was also a little family, maybe stuck by the snow like us, an Anglo family with two little girls. And it was like those little girls were the family we were going to have. Like we were looking at ourselves in the future, and then the most amazing thing happened. Outside on the square, there was a big truck that somebody had rigged up to look like Santa’s sleigh. There were two reindeer sticking out in front of it, above the hood, and they’d rigged up lights to make it look like they were flying. They’d also lit up the sleigh on the roof of the cab. From a distance, you couldn’t see the truck. All you could see was the reindeer and the sleigh and a cowboy in a Santa suit waving his hand while the truck went around and around in the snow. And—I, uh.”