Don't Call Me Christina Kringle (7 page)

The professor frowned solemnly and took off his top hat.

“Well then,” he said, “perhaps you will be so kind as to grant us our wish.”

Christina looked up.

“Truth be told,” he continued nervously, “we are currently on the run and in need of a safe haven, a place of refuge. We would be much obliged if you would allow us to tarry here beneath your roof for a spell.” Now he gestured at the big box of badly soled shoes. “We could finish the work your yeoman cobbler has begun.”

“Yeah,” chimed in Nails. “Sure beats workin' for that nutjob Mister Fred. The guy packs a pistol. A sequin-crusted pistol! Plus, he made us sweaters! Holly-jolly holiday sweaters. I have wool issues.”

“You know what?” said Christina, staring at the two little men standing amidst the nail jars and tools scattered across her grandfather's workbench. “I really cannot wait for this dream to be over.”

“If I may reiterate,” said the professor, “this is not a dream. We are quite real. I am Professor Pencilneck. This is my comrade Mister Nails. We are delighted to make your acquaintance Miss … I'm sorry, I do not believe we know your name.”

Christina looked stunned. “Professor Pencilneck?”

The little man blinked. “Correct. That is my name.”

Christina tried not to giggle. “Pencilneck?”

The little man blushed, blinked some more, and then tugged at his collar, which was quite loose around his extremely narrow neck.

“Yes. Pencilneck.” He tried his best to remain dignified.

Christina could see she had embarrassed the little man so she held out her finger to shake his hand (trying not to notice how pencilesque his fingers were, too).

“I am very pleased to make your acquaintance, Professor. I'm Christina Lucci.”

The professor bowed and beamed. “Ah! What a magnificent name. Christina. As festive and joyous as the Christmas season itself. Lucci. Italian for light, if I'm not mistaken.”

“That's right.”

“Hey, Christina,” said Nails, “not for nothing, but you got anything to eat around this joint?”

“You mean like cream or a slice of cake?”

“Those are our traditional foods,” said Professor Pencilneck.

“Yeah,” said Nails, “but I prefer Oreo cookies. Hydrox will do, too. Any kind of cookies-and-cream combo.”

Christina smiled. She liked the little tough guy. He was feisty. She liked the professor, too. Sure, he sounded sort of snooty, but he was extremely sweet.

“Sorry. No Oreo cookies.”

“Look,” said Nails, rubbing his belly bump, “I'm starving here.”

“Um, I'll run back to the store. Grab some cookies. And some cream.”

“Better make it half-and-half,” suggested Nails. “I'm getting a little bit of a cream gut. Always happens every year near the holidays.”

Christina stood up from the stool. “I'll be right back.”

“If it's not too much of an imposition,” said the professor, “we prefer the Mini Oreo cookies.”

“Right. Mini. Because you're—”

“What?” Nails balled up his fists. “Small? Tiny? Diminutive? Midgets?”

Christina shook her head. “Because you're … hungry.”

The alley cat hopped up to the tabletop.

Professor Pencilneck smiled anxiously. “Indeed. We are famished. Let us hope, however, your cat is not.”

Sunday came and went.

Christina had stocked the back room of the shoe shop with Mini Oreo cookies and mini-muffins and plastic cartons of single-bite brownies, even though those dainty baked goods sounded semi-cannibalistic to her visitors.

She had also filled the small refrigerator in the workshop with half-and-half, heavy cream, whole milk, Cool Whip, whipped cream spray cans and frozen Creamsicle cream pops. She even bought a jar of powdered Cremora, just in case her uninvited visitors lapped up everything else and got desperate.

The shoe store was so well stocked with brownie favorites, Christina knew the two little men wouldn't starve if she stayed away for a day.

Unless, of course they weren't real.

Then she'd just eat all the cookies and cakes herself and give the cream to the alley cat.

She and Grandpa spent Sunday in their apartment. Grandpa watched Christmas movies and holiday specials. Christina tugged on her headphones so she wouldn't have to listen to the syrupy dreck blaring out of the television. She stayed in her room and played video games on her computer: Santa-shooting games.

Because, as you know, Christina Lucci hated Christmas.

And Rudolph's glowing red nose made him a very easy target.

First thing Monday morning, over on the swanky side of town, early morning shoppers were already lined up outside Chef Pierre's bakery.

As Mr. McCracken predicted, the crowd of eager customers stretched out the door, up the block, and around the corner because word had already spread from the Sunday brunch crowd to the Monday morning rush hour mob: the brand new French bakery had the most magically marvelous Christmas cookies anyone had ever tasted anywhere.

Chef Pierre charged fifty dollars a pound on Sunday. Monday morning, the price had been doubled: One hundred dollars per pound for the world's most exquisite blend of eggs, butter, flour, sugar, and extraordinary deliciousness. And people were paying it. Gladly.

While Chef Pierre raked in the cash and listened to his cash register ring, one man waiting in the line, a man wearing a trench coat, was showing everyone his shimmering, sparkling shoes.

“Giuseppe did them!” he proclaimed, hopping up and clicking his heels. “Over on the other side of town. Giuseppe's Shoe Shop. The old man is a genius! An old-world craftsman!”

“Do you think he could make my shoes look like that?” asked the woman behind him in line.

“Of course! Because Giuseppe Lucci takes shoe leather and spins it into gold.”

Now people were staring at him.

“Really?” asked a man in very dowdy loafers.

“If you don't believe me, go see for yourself! Here's his address!” The man in the trench coat passed out the little cards he had printed up on his home computer.

And so, word spread about Giuseppe Lucci, the world-class cobbler nobody had ever heard of before.

On Monday morning, Giuseppe was inside his shop with Mr. Bailey, the banker.

The
CLOSED
sign still hung in the window. He had not switched on the electric Christmas extravaganza in the window. His weary eyes were riveted on the stuffed angel doll Mr. Bailey had just handed him.

“Why is this angel wearing a fireman's hat?” he asked.

“He's a fireman angel,” said the banker, trying to remember the spiel Ms. Dingler had spun about the angels dangling off her memory tree. “So your loved ones who are dead can still come home for the holidays.”

“This fireman angel,” said Giuseppe, turning the lacy doll around in his weathered hands, “… where is his halo? Underneath his fireman's hat? I no see no halo. …”

“Maybe he lost it in a fire! Maybe it melted. I don't know. Frankly, I don't care.” The banker snapped his briefcase shut. “Just give it to your granddaughter.”

“Christina?”

“Yes. It's a Christmas gift. From the shopkeeper next door.”

“Oh. Perhaps you should take it back. Christina no like Christmas no more.”

“Then just stick in on that tree.”

“Oh, no. That is the shoe tree.”

“So? Put the angel up top.”

Giuseppe shook his head. “No. The shoes, they are special.”

“Why? Because you run a shoe shop?”

“Those bronzed booties, on the bottom?”

“Yeah?”

“They were my son's. When he was a baby.”

“Fascinating. Now then …”

“My son love Christmas. All his life. So do I.”

“Fine. Great. Whatever.” He tossed the angel on the counter so he could get down to business. “Now then, Mr. Giuseppe Lucci, you are hereby notified that you are delinquent and in default on your loan. If we do not receive payment in full by Wednesday of this week, that is in forty-eight hours, we will be forced to forthwith ask you to vacate these aforementioned premises.”

“You want I should go on vacation?”

“No!” said Mr. Bailey who wanted to pull out his hair. “I want you out of here!”

He slapped the foreclosure papers down on top of the angel.

The store bells jingled.

“Excuse me,” said the lady entering the shop. “Can you do anything with these?” She held up a pair of high heels.

A stockbroker burst through the door and shoved his way past the lady. He had his loafers off. A crowd of about a dozen others trailed him through the door. They were all holding up their shoes. Some carried pastry boxes.

“Wait a minute,” said the pushy broker. “I was here first.”

“No you were not,” protested the lady who had come into the store before him. “I was here before you.”

“Doesn't matter. I had the idea first!”

“No you did not! I did!”

“Can it, sister,” said the broker. “Old man, I will pay you one thousand dollars to fix my shoes like you fixed that other guy's!”

“I'll pay you eleven hundred!” countered the lady.

“I've got twelve hundred,” shouted someone else.

Now there were about twenty people jammed into the snug little shop. They all had their shoes off so the air inside the tiny shop was starting to smell. Sort of cheesy. Like a laundry hamper filled with old socks. The crowd pushed and shoved and backed Mr. Bailey, the banker, into a corner where he clutched his briefcase tightly to his chest and tried not to breathe through his nose.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” said Giuseppe. “What is wrong with your shoes?”

“Nothing,” said the lady holding up her strappy high heels. “They're fine. But, we saw what you did to that other man's shoes.”

“What other man?”

“Me!” shouted Mr. Trench Coat as he strode triumphantly into the store carrying a pillar of a dozen shoeboxes stacked one on top of another. He also had a box of fresh-baked French pastries that smelled like they had just come out of a warm oven. The crowd parted as everyone gasped and gawked down in awe at his twinkling, wondrous shoes.

“I want you to fix all my shoes the way you fixed the first pair!” He proclaimed. “And, to show my gratitude, I brought you fresh-baked Christmas cookies!”

Giuseppe's eyes lit up like a little boy. “I like Christmas cookies.”

The woman quickly plopped her strappy shoes on the counter and stuck out a fistful of one-hundred-dollar bills.

“Consider this my deposit.”

Giuseppe didn't know what to do. So, he took her money. His hands trembled when he tried to remember where the one-thousand-dollar key might be on his cash register.

When the money door slid open and the tinny bell pinged, the stockbroker stepped forward with another wad of bills.

“Take as many as you like!” he said. “But make my shoes look better than hers!”

When Giuseppe took the dozen one-hundred-dollar bills the stockbroker offered, the man insisted he take another.

“And,” he said, “I'll be sending over two pounds of those fancy French cookies this afternoon to sweeten the deal!”

Then the woman, who didn't want to be outdone, tossed five more fifties on the counter. She promised to bake Giuseppe oatmeal-raisin chocolate-chip cookies from scratch.

Soon everybody in the shop was tossing money at Giuseppe. One-hundred-dollar bills. Fifties. One man even tossed in a thousand-dollar bill (it had President Grover Cleveland's face on the front).

So much money was being tossed toward the counter, the bills fluttered around Giuseppe like autumn leaves, except these leaves were green instead of brown.

Happier than he had been in years, Giuseppe rang up the deposits on his rickety register, nibbled on cookies in between
ding
s, and handed out claim checks.

“Mr. Bailey,” he shouted merrily to the banker, “you come back Wednesday morning. Maybe I have your money for you. Maybe I have it all!”

Christina slipped out the back door of the crowded shoe shop, headed up the alley to the street, then strolled down the sidewalk and headed for school.

Her backpack was slightly heavier than usual.

Not much. Just a couple pounds. Just the weight of the two nine-and-a-half-inch brownies who had still been in the workroom nibbling on cookies and sipping cream when she peeked behind the curtains to see if she had been dreaming on Saturday night. Fortunately, none of the customers mobbing Grandpa's store had seen what Christina had seen.

“Okay,” she whispered over her shoulder, “I guess you guys are real. You'll keep helping Grandpa, right? Because he just got a ton of new customers!”

“Not to worry,” came the muffled reply from Professor Pencilneck.

“You keep bringin' us cookies,” said Nails, “we'll keep knocking out the clodhoppers, wing tips, and wedges.”

“So,” Christina said to the backpack, “this Mister Fred you used to work for. I'll bet he's looking everywhere for you two. I mean you guys are good. Real good.”

“Too bad!” said Nails. “Mister Fred insulted us!”

“I know. You told me. He gave you sweaters.”

“Never give a brownie clothes,” said Professor Pencilneck. “If you do, we leave. Such has been our people's way since time immemorial!”

“Right,” said Christina. “No clothes. Got it.”

She felt the two brownies squirming around in the backpack.

“Now what're you guys doing?”

“Just popping up to take a quick peek,” said the professor.

“Don't let anybody see you!”

“I shan't. I'm merely peering through a tiny crack in the zipper.”

“I poked a nail hole through the nylon.”