Jingle All the Way Read online

  “I knocked a little paint off, but that’s it,” he says.

  “Guys?” I say. Vince stands, and his and Gerry’s gazes look in the direction where I’m pointing. There is a trail of oily-looking liquid all down the street.

  Vince pops open the hood of the van as Gerry loudly curses him for ramming into the curb. “This is all your fault!”

  “It’s transmission fluid that we leaked,” Vince says. “The transmission is hosed. It had nothing to do with me crashing into the curb. It’s just a beat-up old van of an underfunded charity. Get a grip.”

  “We need a tow truck. Who’s got a cell phone?” I ask.

  Gerry and Vince look at me blankly.

  “Ryan, do you have a cell phone?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Who doesn’t have a cell phone in this day and age? What do you think this is, nineteen-fifty?”

  “What about you? Why don’t you have a cell phone?” Gerry says.

  “I do have a cell phone!” I pronounce triumphantly. Then, in more humble tones, I admit, “I just forgot to charge it and it died.”

  “We’ll just go back to one of those houses,” Vince says.

  “It’s after eleven. You can’t go knocking on somebody’s house in the middle of the night; you’ll get shot,” I say.

  “We’ll just wait here. A car will come along soon,” Gerry says.

  “It’s freezing out here,” I grumble.

  We stand outside for a minute, and I take a look around. “Look, there are lights coming from over there. It could be a gas station.”

  “I think you’re right. It is a gas station,” Gerry says. “Vince and I will go jog over there and call a tow truck.”

  “Way, way out there?” Vince whines. “It’s going to take us forever to get there.”

  “Well, what other choice do we have?” Gerry says.

  Vince shrugs. “I guess.”

  “Are you just going to leave Ryan and me here to freeze to death?”

  Quietly, Gerry leans in and whispers, “What do you want us to do, try to get a wheelchair through fields and snow?”

  I’m about to suggest that I could go with Vince or Gerry and one of them could stay with Ryan when I realize that if I’m going to be stranded with a strange man, I’d much rather be stranded with Ryan than with either of them. “Okay,” I say.

  “Dude,” Vince calls to Ryan. “We’ll be back in fifteen minutes. Twenty at the most.”

  I climb in the van beside Ryan and swing the door shut.

  “I hope they get back as quickly as they say they will,” I say. “I have guests coming tomorrow, and I’ll feel like a terrible hostess if I’m in the hospital recovering from frostbite.”

  He smiles. “Are you French by any chance?”

  “French Canadian. You can hear my accent?”

  “It’s very faint. I can only hear it on some words. Your English is great. Where in Canada are you from?”

  “Montreal.”

  “I’ve heard that’s a great city.”

  “It is. It’s kind of like a cross between Paris and San Francisco. It’s got great Parisian-style food with San Francisco-style houses and zillions of ethnic restaurants and cool shops all over the place.”

  “Then, I think I’d like it. I like both those cities a lot.”

  “You’ve been to Paris? I was there for a week. I fell in love with it.”

  “I was there for about a week, too. I traveled through Europe one summer when I was in college. I think Paris was my favorite city. The food was to die for.”

  “I like to cook a lot, and French food is my specialty.” As I say it, I realize I’m flirting with him. The words “Would you like to come over for a home-cooked meal sometime” are on the tip of my tongue, but I chicken out of actually asking him on a date.

  “Oh, a woman who can cook. You’re bright, you’re pretty, and you can cook. You are the perfect woman. I can’t even cook toast.”

  While my heart is doing a happy dance (did you hear what he said? “Bright”? “Pretty”? “Perfect”?) I try to exude a calm exterior. “Toast is all you need in life; you don’t need to know how to make anything else. There’s cinnamon toast, French toast, melba toast . . .” I say.

  “Don’t forget English toast, rye toast, white toast . . .”

  “You see, the variety is endless. And needing only to have a toaster would cut down considerably on cookware expenses.”

  “It could put Bed, Bath, and Beyond right out of business.”

  “We could form a whole toast-only movement,” I say.

  “I seriously think I might be able to live on bread alone if it was as good as all the bread I ate in Europe. Those Europeans know how to do bread right.”

  “Yes, they do.”

  We start talking about our European adventures and food and college, and we don’t stop talking until a tow truck with Vince and Gerry in the passenger seat pulls up. I don’t notice them until Vince knocks on the van door, nearly scaring my elf pants right off me. I slide open the door.

  “Sorry we took so long,” Gerry says, getting out of the tow truck. I take a glance at my watch. It’s nearly one in the morning, which means Ryan and I have been talking for an hour and a half! It seemed like just a few minutes. “We weren’t sure what cross streets were closest to the van, so we figured it was easier to wait for the tow truck at the gas station.”

  The tow truck driver gets out of his truck and comes around to where Gerry and Vince are standing. He’s shaking his head, which I’m not taking as a good sign.

  “The dispatcher didn’t tell me you were in a van.”

  “We told her we were in a van,” Vince says.

  “Well, she didn’t tell me. I’m going to have to go back and get a flatbed truck.”

  “Oh, man,” Vince says.

  I suddenly realize that I am absolutely freezing cold. My nose and fingers feel as if they could drop off my body like an icicle breaking off from a gutter. And I’m tired. This means we won’t get home until two or three in the morning. And I have so much to do tomorrow before my parents and sister get here, so I won’t be able to sleep in.

  “Could you please take us someplace warm while we wait?” I say.

  “All four of you can’t fit in the cab of my truck, unless a couple of you sit on the other’s laps.”

  “We’ll be fine right here,” all three of the guys say in unison.

  “You guys are such men. You can’t sit in a guy’s lap for the five minutes it’ll take to get somewhere warm? Somewhere warm with beer?” I say.

  The allure of beer is strong, that’s obvious. I can see them all perk up a little at the prospect.

  “Could you fit his wheelchair into your cab?” Vince asks.

  “How about this: how about I take the three of you someplace and then come back for him and his chair.”

  “That is so nice of you. Thank you,” I say. The guys all agree to this plan, and after closing the van door with Ryan inside, the three of us pile into the tow truck.

  “Sit in my lap,” Vince says.

  “We’ll be fine. We’ll just be a little snug,” I say.

  “There’s not going to be enough room,” he insists.

  And he’s right. We’re practically—but not technically—sitting on each other’s laps. We’re uncomfortable as hell, but I’d rather be uncomfortable than sit in Vince’s lap.

  We drive down a couple streets, and within minutes we can see a strip mall ahead and the gas station where the guys called for the tow truck.

  “There’s a Hooters up ahead,” Vince says.

  “We are not stopping at a Hooters!” I say. “There’s a bar. We’ll go in there.”

  “That place looks like a dump. Come on, what’s wrong with Hooters? They have good wings,” Gerry says.

  “Do not give me that ‘they have good wings’ crap. You guys can go there if you want, but I have a little something called self-respect.”

  “What do you have against Hooters
?” Vince asks.

  “Oooh, where do I begin? The logo itself is enough to make me send the place up in flames. The owl with the lascivious eyes saying it’s perfectly okay to ogle women, to treat them like sex objects, it burns my butt.”

  Vince tells me I’m reading too much into it and I need to relax, which may be true, but the driver drops us off at the rinky-dink, no-name bar anyway.

  The bar is, in fact, an absolute dive. It feels like we’ve somehow wandered into some small rural town instead of a bustling suburb outside of a major city. Their beer selection is feeble, and the bartender has hair that looks like it hasn’t been washed in a very long time and teeth that demonstrate why dental insurance should be mandatory for all.

  We each order a beer and retreat to a table. Vince and I both reach to pull away the wooden chair at the same time to clear a space for Ryan to roll up to the table.

  A few minutes later, the tow truck driver pulls up again, and I slip my coat on and go to hold open the door for Ryan. I watch the tow truck driver pull out the wheelchair and basically carry Ryan out of the truck. Ryan sees me, and a look of humiliation crosses his face. I feel like my presence has made him feel ashamed when he has nothing to be ashamed of.

  When he gets to the door, I smile my warmest smile. Then I realize that there is just the slightest incline from the outside to the inside, and when you’re in a wheelchair, the smallest bump may as well be a mountain.

  “Here, let me see if I can help,” I say.

  I go outside and lean on the back of his chair to get the front wheels elevated, and with only minor trouble, we get him inside.

  “Good to see you, man,” Vince says.

  “Good to be here out of that damn cold.” Ryan inspects the beer list. “Is this it? They’ve only got four beers and they’re all crap.”

  “I still don’t know why you wouldn’t go to Hooters. They have a much better selection of beers,” Vince says.

  “Could we just drop the subject?” I say.

  But they don’t drop the subject. Instead Gerry and Vince keep talking about it, and then the subject morphs into a discussion of strippers, and I get more and more pissed off. I will never, never volunteer again. I’ll send checks off to charity, but I’ll never volunteer again, so help me.

  “It was so wicked when, what was her name—” Gerry says.

  “Cinnamon,” Vince cackles.

  “Cinnamon,” Gerry laughs. “We hired this prostitute for Ryan—”

  I feel abruptly nauseated. Ryan had seemed like such a nice guy, not the kind of guy who would pay for sex.

  “You paid for sex?” I ask him.

  “No! Don’t be ridiculous! I would never do anything like that,” he says.

  “We tried, though. It’s been three years since he’s gotten any. Not a single date since the accident,” Vince says.

  “So you can still—” I begin to say; then I realize I can’t ask a complete stranger whether he can still get it up. My face flushes with embarrassment.

  “He can get it up, all right. He couldn’t resist Cinnamon’s charms,” Gerry says, snickering like a little kid.

  “She did this . . . striptease,” Ryan says. “But I’m telling you, nothing more happened. It was one of the most mortifying experiences of my life.”

  Phew. So he’s not a total scumbag.

  I immediately wonder what it would be like to have sex with him. He’s hot as hell, for one thing. And nice. And smart.

  Mon Dieu! What am I doing thinking about having sex with him? Is it simple curiosity? Is it that I think he’s a great guy and I want to be the one to usher him back to enjoying the pleasures of life? Is it just simple attraction and I’m blowing it out of proportion because I’m uncomfortable with the stupid wheelchair?

  But the image of making love with him is strong. I’d probably always have to be on top, but that’d be okay—it’s much easier to come that way.

  Ahh! Aimee, it’s wrong to think dirty thoughts about a guy who’s sitting right across from you. You’re as bad as Vince and Gerry.

  “Is it okay if I ask you . . . I mean you don’t have to tell me . . .” I begin.

  “A car accident,” Ryan says. “Three years ago. Vince and I were driving back from skiing in the mountains. I was in the passenger seat—”

  “And I asked him to get something out of the back,” Vince says. All his previous jocularity has drained from his face, and he looks serious, almost distraught. “He took off his seat belt, just for a moment—”

  “And an oncoming car didn’t make a tight enough turn on the mountain road.”

  “We ran straight into them, and Ryan went flying through the window. It was so awful. I really thought he was dead.”

  “I thought I was dead, too.”

  “I’ll never forgive myself,” Vince says.

  “It wasn’t your fault. It was the other guy’s fault.”

  “But I was the one who asked you to get the CD case from the back.”

  “He really can’t stop beating himself up over it. He started volunteering like crazy after the accident.”

  “Guilt charity, huh?” I say.

  “Is there any other kind?” Vince says.

  “There’s also the intrinsic reward you get because it feels good to help other people,” I say, and I realize that it’s true. Even though giving up my night was kind of a drag, and even though seeing the sick kids was sort of depressing, bringing a little happiness to those kids felt really good. And it made me appreciate just how good I really have it, and how lucky I am to have my health. Maybe I’m happy I volunteered after all.

  “You seem like you’ve adjusted well to the change,” I say to Ryan.

  “I was bitter for a while. I think the hardest thing for me was coming to accept that I wouldn’t be able to play sports anymore. That was a huge part of my life.”

  “You seem like you’re in really good shape, though.”

  “I lift weights. And I have to rely on my upper body a lot more now, so that helps keep my arms and chest in shape, but my legs have really atrophied.”

  “So you lift weights and volunteer, is that enough to keep you busy? Do you ever get bored?” I ask.

  “Sometimes. Definitely.”

  “Do you think you’ll go back to work anytime soon?”

  “Well, from the money I got from the insurance settlement, I don’t really need to work again for a few years.”

  “I have to close up the bar,” the bartender says. “You kids need to get going.”

  “You’re not really going to throw us out into that cold, are you?” I say.

  “I’m sorry. You need to get going.”

  The tow truck driver—this time with a flatbed truck—gets back just in time before we’re sent out into the cold. The flatbed truck has an extended cab, so all four of us are able to squeeze in. The driver drops us off at my office so I can get my car. The plan is that I will then take the three guys to the For the Children office where Vince’s car is.

  When the tow truck driver parks behind my car and we all get out, I watch how deftly Vince and Ryan work together—Vince unfolds Ryan’s chair and lifts him into it; then Ryan rolls the few feet to my car and is able to use his muscles to pull himself from the chair to the backseat. Vince folds up the chair and puts it in my trunk.

  After a short drive, I pull into the For the Children parking lot and follow Vince’s directions to where his car is. I pull up behind it, pop the trunk, and get out of my car to say goodbye.

  Once again I watch Vince and Ryan work together like dancers with a carefully choreographed routine. Vince unfolds the chair, and because the chair is even with the car seat, Ryan is able to slide from one to the other with relative ease, using his arms to support himself like a gymnast on a pommel horse.

  “You know, even though the night didn’t turn out like I expected, and even though I’m going to be exhausted all day, I actually had a lot of fun tonight,” I say.

  “I did, too,” Ryan say
s.

  “Me, too,” Vince says.

  “You should come with us next time we do volunteer work,” Gerry says.

  “I’d like that a lot. Vince has my cell phone number, so you guys should give me a call next time you’re going to do something. Well, have a Merry Christmas!”

  “Merry Christmas!”

  “Have fun with your family!”

  As I drive off, I smile. My bad mood is completely gone, and I’m feeling surprisingly cheery.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I get home at four in the morning and collapse on the couch because it’s the first soft surface I come to. I sleep in until almost ten, and since I have to pick my family up at the airport at four this afternoon, there’s no way I’m going to make it to the mall today, so that means no more presents. I have to streamline. I go to the grocery store to buy food and stocking stuffers—gum, batteries, and Planter’s Nuts for everyone! Then I come home and sprint through my house armed with Windex, paper towels, a duster, and a vacuum, trying to make it look as presentable as possible in a limited period of time.

  Even though my day goes by in a mad rush of activity, I can’t stop thinking about Ryan. I haven’t had so much fun talking with a guy in years. Literally years because Sean and I never really joked around together. We never connected like Ryan and I did in just a few hours. I’m mad at myself for not having the courage to ask Ryan for his phone number last night. I’m just going to have to hope they call me to volunteer again soon.

  By 2:50 I’ve hidden all my cleaning supplies, and I’m tearing through the house peeling off my clothes to take a shower. And by 3:15 I’m out the door, heading for the airport.

  Using our cell phones, I tell Mom how to find me outside at the passenger pickup area. When I pull up and see them all standing there, I smile broadly. I pop the trunk and get out of the car to greet them properly.

  “Bonsoir, Maman,” I say, hugging her. It feels so good to have her in my arms. My mother is a classic French beauty. Very thin, always immaculately dressed, with sleek black hair that’s always cut in a new, trendy way. My sister Bridgette looks just like her. I didn’t get their slim builds. I have a much more athletic, sporty frame. Even so, the similarities are enough that anyone can tell the three of us are related.