Don't Call Me Christina Kringle (3 page)

“Where is he?” The man actually stomped his feet on the floor. He looked to be thirty-something but was acting like he was two and had a dirty diaper.

“Who?” Christina said, even though it sort of sounded like “moo?” because her mouth was still full of mashed food.

“The old imbecile who runs this so-called shoe repair shop!”

“May I help you?” Grandpa came out from behind the curtains, rubbing at his weary eyes. Christina guessed Mr. Trench Coat's temper tantrum had woken him up from that nap. “Is there some problem?”

“Problem?” The man pretended to laugh. “Ha!” He clunked a pair of shoes down on the counter. Christina could see the problem immediately: the soles were attached to the wrong feet. The one curving in from the left was on the right shoe pointing out and the one on the left shoe was curving out to the right.

Christina tried not to giggle: the shoes looked totally ridiculous. Like clown shoes.

“My cleaning woman picked these up on Wednesday,” the man said. “I opened the bundle this morning. Look what you did!”

“I did this?” Grandpa asked sadly staring at the weirdly warped shoes.

“You ruined them! Do you know how much these shoes cost?”

Guiseppe shook his head.

“More than you make all year!” the man sputtered.

Christina was impressed. “Really?”

The furious man fumed. He was probably exaggerating and didn't like ten-year-old girls pointing it out.

“Well,” said Grandpa, “if you don't mind me asking, sir—why would you spend so much money on a pair of shoes?”

“Because I can. Because I can.”

“I will fix,” said Guiseppe. “Come in tomorrow. I fix good.”

“Tomorrow? Tomorrow? I am supposed to attend a very important function this evening. A Christmas party!”

Yet another reason for Christina to hate Christmas: it brought out the jerks who yelled at Grandpa.

“Several very important people will be at this party and it is very important that I wear my most important shoes! So hurry up and fix them!”

“Oh, no,” said Grandpa. “I cannot rush this job. …”

“Why not?”

Christina knew the answer: Grandpa was slowing down. His hands were seventy-three years old and couldn't move as nimbly as they once did. He wasn't a motorized window display elf you could just plug in and watch him hammer away.

“The party is tonight!” As the angry customer screamed, his face turned redder than Rudolph's nose.

Thinking fast, Christina came up with an idea.

“What size shoe do you wear?” she asked.

“What?”

“What size shoe?”

“Nine and a half. Why?”

Christina went to the cluttered shelf behind the counter, studied all the bundles stacked there.

“Here you go,” she said, pulling a pair out of the pile. “Nine and a half.”

The man was mortified. “Those aren't my shoes.”

“Pretend you're at a bowling alley,” Christina suggested.

“A bowling alley?” The man sounded horrified by the thought.

“Fine.” said Christina, putting the bundled shoes back on the shelf. “But these shoes are way more important than your shoes.”

“Impossible.”

She shrugged. “They belong to Prince Oblongata.”

“Who?”

“Prince Medulla Oblongata. From Nimbusia.”

“Where?”

“It's in Africa. The royal family always sends Grandpa their shoes. …”

Christina, of course, knew that the medulla oblongata was a region of the
brain
that controls organ functions like respiration and heart rate. And Nimbus was a type of cloud. She was betting that Trench Coat man wouldn't know either of these things because he'd long-since forgotten everything he ever learned in fifth grade. She was right.

“Prince Oboevonglotto?” he said, sounding impressed.

“Yep.”

The man adjusted his tie. Composed himself.

“Will his highness mind if I borrow his shoes?”

“Not at all. He's a prince. Very generous.”

The man rubbed his greedy fingers together. Christina could tell: the guy wanted to grab the shoe bundle from Christina—he wanted tear off the brown wrapping paper and slip the royal leather over his quivering, shivering toes!

“I'll take them!”

When Christina handed the man the bundle, he hugged it like a baby.

“Come back tomorrow,” said Christina. “Your shoes will be ready.”

“Tomorrow? You're open on Saturdays?”

“ 'Tis the season.”

“Give my regards to Prince Obie Won Ganata!” The man said as he bolted out the front door clutching his treasure.

It slammed shut. When the strap of jingle bells stopped tinkling, Grandpa sighed.

“Tomorrow? Oh, my. How will I ever fix all these shoes by tomorrow?”

He pulled a big cardboard box out from under the counter. It was crammed full. Pairs and pairs of shiny, expensive shoes. Black and brown, wing tips and loafers, saddle shoes and mukluks.

Every single pair had its soles nailed to the wrong feet.

Over on the other side of town, Mister Fred sashayed out of his Fine Footwearerie lugging a small leopard-print pet carrier, the kind you'd use for a very fancy cat with bows in its fur, to the long stretch limousine waiting at the curb.

“Good evening, sir,” said the driver, clicking his heels smartly.

“Yes,” tittered Mister Fred. “It is a good evening, isn't it? The cash register has been ringing and jingling all day long!”

“Did you sell many shoes, sir?”

“Scads! Oodles! Dozens!”

“Well done, sir.”

“I'll say. Average price per pair? Four hundred and forty-four dollars.”

The driver did some quick math in his head.

“Bravo, sir.”

“And this was only the first shopping day of the season!” Mister Fred giggled merrily. “I'm ready to celebrate! Take me to the party!”

“Yes, sir. Of course, sir. The very important holiday party, sir.”

“Do you know the address?”

The driver, who wore a black uniform and chauffeur's cap, clicked his heels again. “Yes, sir. I know the address, sir.”

“Is there gas in the gas tank?”

“Indeed there is, sir. I personally filled it up myself just this afternoon, sir. I went to the filling station, sir.”

“Then we're all set to go?”

“Indeed we are, sir.”

“Good. Then I have only one more question. …”

“Of course, sir.” The chauffeur stiffened his already steel-girder-straight back. “Fire away, sir.”

“Why are we standing out here on the sidewalk in the freezing cold?”

“Excellent question, sir. Very excellent, indeed.”

“Well?”

“Sorry, sir. Haven't a clue. It is, as I stated, a very excellent question. One of your best. Quite a brain teaser. Why are we standing here? Why, indeed.”

“Jenkins?”

“Sir?”

“Open the dang-dong door!”

“Of course, sir. Excellent suggestion, sir.”

Jenkins opened the door.

“Shall I place your cat carrier in the trunk, sir?”

Mister Fred gasped. “The trunk, Jenkins? Are you completely insane?”

“Interesting question, sir. I have never been diagnosed as such. However I am certainly willing to undergo further testing if—”

“Oh shut up and open my door!”

“Right away, sir.”

Jenkins clicked his heels yet again.

“Now!”

“Excellent suggestion, sir.”

Finally, the driver opened the limousine's heavy rear door. Mister Fred slid into the plush backseat, cradling his pet carrier on his lap.

“Shall I close the door, sir?”

“Yes! Close it!”

“Right away, sir,” said the driver. Only he had to click his heels before he actually shut the door so, technically, he didn't do it right away.

“Shut the dang-dong door, you doofus!”

The driver saluted with one hand, shut the door with the other. This time, he clicked the toes of his shoes together.

Mister Fred exhaled loudly. He sometimes wondered why he kept his thick-skulled driver on the payroll. Then he remembered: he liked Jenkins calling him “sir” all the time. Made him feel like a Duke. Duke Fred. Lord Fred. Fred the Mighty and Magnificent.

With the door finally shut and the tinted divider window scrolled up to shield him from his slow-witted but satisfactorily slavish driver, Mister Fred peeked through the mesh opening at the front of his fancy pet carrier.

“Put you in the trunk? Jenkins is such a silly nilly. You'd freeze. Yes, you would. Yes, you would. Oh, yeshy-yesh. Oh, yesh-indeedy-do.”

Mister Fred was babbling baby talk. Gobbledygook. Gookle-dee-gobble.

“You two are simply too precious to stow in the trunk. Oh yesh you are. Yesh-indeedy-doody. You're my precious iddy-biddy babies!”

He reached into the pocket of his coat and pulled out two little hand-knit sweaters. One red. The other green. Both decorated with snowflake patterns stitched across the back.

“Look what I bought for you! Aren't they pretty? Wittle, iddy-biddy doggie-woggie poodle-woodle sweaters!”

Mister Fred unzipped the front flap of the carrier and reached inside the bag to put the sweaters on his two pets.

That was his big mistake.

Back on the other side of the city, back where things weren't so bright and cheery, Christina sat behind the counter in Giuseppe's shoe shop, doing her homework.

The store was mostly dark. The only light came from a small gooseneck lamp aimed at her textbook and notepad, and whatever spilled in from the front window where blinking twinkle lights and Rudolph's tomato-red nose still blazed in all their glory.

“Math,” she mumbled, flipping forward a few pages in her textbook. “Something I hate almost as much as Christmas. …”

The store bells jingled. A whoosh of cold air swept into the room.

Christina looked up and saw a Hispanic-looking woman and a very small, timid boy standing in the open doorway. The two looked to be mother and son. Their clothes were kind of shabby and sort of mismatched but their dark eyes twinkled with joy.

“¡Feliz Navidad!”
said the woman.

“Sorry,” said Christina. “It's after six. We're closed.”

The woman kept smiling. The cold air kept whooshing through the open door.

“Letters to Santa?
¿Sí?
”

Christina looked at the little boy. He was about five or six and clutched a bright red envelope in his hands, which were also kind of red because it was cold out and he didn't have any gloves or mittens on.

“Oh,” said Christina. “We're not doing that this year. No letters to Santa.”

The woman looked confused.

“
Santa no está aquí
anymore,” said Christina.

“No Santa?” asked the woman.

The boy's eyes went wide—almost wild with fear.

“Well,” said Christina, “there might be a Santa. No one's really sure. I just meant to say he's not here. Not in this store anymore.
No más
.” She didn't want to crush the poor kid's misplaced trust in the fat scam artist. Santa would do that himself soon enough. That was the one thing you could count on from jolly old Saint Nick—sooner or later you learned the truth and Christmas was ruined forever. “You see, Santa used to pick up letters here but …”

Christina could see that neither the mother nor her son understood a word of what she was trying to say. She also noticed that half the store's heat had already escaped out the open door.

“Fine,” she said. “I'll take your letter. Whatever.”

Christina held out her hand.

The boy practically dashed across the store to deliver his envelope to the girl he just
knew
would make certain his letter made it all the way to the North Pole.

Christina faked a smile, took the boy's letter, and plopped it on top of a pile of papers stacked in a wire basket up on the counter. Some of the other letters were yellowing with age. All of them were dusty. Christina suspected the mortgage bills Grandpa kept forgetting to pay were buried somewhere in the pile. Probably a few electric bills and gas bills, too.

Christina hoped her visitors would leave. Now. She wanted to close the door and do her homework.

The boy smiled up at her. “
Gracias
,” he said. His eyes were moist. The kid looked ready to cry.

“
Feliz Navidad
,” Christina said so maybe he wouldn't.

“¡Sí! Feliz Navidad! ¡Feliz Navidad!”

Now Christina was afraid her two visitors would never leave. She feared they'd start singing that Jose Feliciano song. “Feliz Navidad.” She didn't want to sing with these two. She had forgotten what words came after you sang “Feliz Navidad” over and over about a billion times. She wasn't in any kind of mood to learn those words, either.

Man, she hated Christmas. Christmas carols, too. Spanish and Chipmunks versions included.

After her visitors finally left, after the street and sidewalk out front were quiet, after about seven p.m., Christina locked the shoe shop's front door and turned off her gooseneck lamp.

Grandpa had already gone home to their apartment across the street. Christina felt her way through the darkness until she reached the thick curtains behind the counter. She pushed the drapes aside and stepped into the cramped workroom.

Grandpa kept a small refrigerator back here—one of those two-foot cubes—because he liked to keep his Italian pastries, his cannolis, cold. Christina opened the fridge and found a quart carton of milk. She pressed open the spout and sniffed. The milk was still good. She found a small paper cup, filled it, and then carried the cup out the back door into the alley.

Her friend, the alley cat, was already there—hungry and purring in anticipation of his creamy feast.