“Yup!” Michael answered the phone in a flat and uninviting manner that sounded disturbingly familiar to Ana. She had heard him answer that way when he was expecting a call from his fiancée. Only Karen was already there, so Ana deduced, with a sense of disappointment attenuated only by the viscosity of denial, that this time he was expecting her call.

“It’s me,” she said.

“Hey, you! What’s up?” he attempted to sound chipper.

But Ana noticed traces of anxiety in his tone. She suspected that Karen must have been working on him again. “What’s the matter? Did I catch you at a bad time? Were you in the middle of another one of those ‘us conversation’ with her?”

“We had a tough day,” Michael confirmed. “We went through our photo albums and split up the pictures. She’s letting me have most of them. She doesn’t want to be reminded of our past. It’s too painful for her.”

“Is she trying to persuade you to stay with her?” Ana asked, threatened by Karen’s unshakable attachment to her lover.

“Nope. She’s just upset. She’s been crying so much that the whole area around her nose is red, like she has the flu or something.”

Ana detected a note of pride, but no sadness whatsoever, in Michael’s voice. “She must really love you,” Ana articulated the logical conclusion to his statements.

“Yup. She keeps on telling me that she wishes she could fall out of love with me or love me less.”

Once again, Ana was struck by Michael’s smugness. She reminded herself that his emotionless reaction to Karen’s pain was the result of his having fallen out of love with his fiancée long ago. Yet part of her refused to believe that her lover could experience such utter indifference towards a woman that he used to love. Perhaps he was hiding something… “Did you try to comfort her?”

That morning, as Rob was about to leave for work, Ana glanced at his wrist. She noticed that his watch looked dingy and old. The dial was slightly cracked and the watchband appeared worn. By reflex, she made a mental note to buy him a new watch that day, as she’d have done if they were still a couple. She made sure that the new watch had a small round dial and a smooth black leather band, as her husband preferred. When Rob arrived home that afternoon, she offered him the gift. “It looked like you needed it.”

Rob looked down at the watch, then up at Ana. He could hardly believe the normalcy of her gesture. A rush of emotion overcame him. The gift reminded him of their ordinary life together. He turned away, not wishing to betray his feelings.

Michelle silently observed the exchange between her parents. She had become very attuned to their interaction lately. As her father moved away, the girl approached Ana. “This is the first time I’ve seen Daddy cry. How could you do this to him, Mama?” she hissed under her breath. She was unwilling to accept that her mother would ever want to hurt her father for some stupid man she despised that she’d never in a million years accept as her stepfather. She already had a father. She wouldn’t even speak to that dude, the girl resolved from the moment she heard of Michael.

Ana’s heart sank upon witnessing her husband’s reaction. A few days earlier, they had met with a lawyer to draft the divorce settlement. As Rob had promised, it stipulated joint custody and a fair division of their marital assets. They didn’t quibble over any of the details. All of their tension centered on the decision to divorce in the first place, not on the terms of the settlement itself. Rob’s fairness, his reliability and all of his other good qualities, which he manifested even during this period of great tension, only emphasized in Ana’s eyes the sharp contrast between her husband’s good character and her lover’s increasingly transparent selfishness.

They reconciled by making love. If you could call their constant tension fighting since, in point of fact, Ana and Michael rarely fought. Yet there was a negative energy vibrating in the air from her side and from Michael’s, increasingly, Ana began to sense detachment. They washed each other’s bodies, using the flat of their palms covered in foamy soap, with slow, circular motions, somewhere between functionality and caress. The lightness of their touch, along with the warm flowing water, seemed to wash away the tension, allowing it to flow into the drain and evaporate elsewhere, liberating them.

“I love you so much, Baby,” Michael wrapped his arms around Ana’s naked waist, his voice raspy and sweet, filled with nectar.

This is the man I know and love, Ana reminded herself, beginning to feel safe again. “Should we go out for lunch to the Joyful House?” she suggested the ambiguously named Chinese restaurant they used to frequent, located only a few blocks away from his house.

Michael’s well-disposed smile was replaced by a scowl: “I hate that place!” he said with a vehemence that startled her. “It’s so freaking expensive and the food’s too greasy. Plus it’s dim as hell in there. I can hardly see you when you’re sitting across the table.”

Ana didn’t recall her lover ever complaining about that restaurant before, the scores of times they had eaten there together. “Why didn’t you tell me that you didn’t like it?”

“I went there just to please you.”

Karen recalled that she had left one of her favorite sweaters in Michael’s drawers. She especially missed the one he had given her on her last birthday, a tiny white angora sweater that went down to her navel. He said it reminded him of something Audrey Hepburn might have worn. She opened the second shelf on the left. When she spotted it, she experienced a sense of delight, like someone reuniting with an old friend. There it was, bright white and speckled with touches of silver. It lay neatly folded into four, just as she left it almost a year earlier. Karen lifted it gently and placed it next to her cheek. She breathed in, allowing its softness to embrace her face. Its scent haunted her with the aroma of days gone by, when she and Michael were happy and in love, or so she thought, because she was. She recalled that Michael had handed her a golden bag with a silver bow. “Put it on for me,” he had told her. When she reemerged from the bathroom wearing her black skirt with the white angora sweater, his glance radiated admiration. He approached her slowly and removed it with one swift motion, pulling it with both hands over her head, effortlessly. The memory of the last time she wore that sweater became almost too painful to bear. She placed it back into the drawer, to bury it in their past, where it belonged.

Karen noticed a sliver of white lace. She peered more closely and spotted a pair of white lacy thigh highs that were still attached to a matching garter belt. She pulled out a red bustier with a shoelace design in the front, whose hook was accidentally caught on the fabric of a black dress made of stretchy fabric. Underneath them lay a red and black plaid miniskirt, completing the picture of the kind of gifts her fiancé must have purchased for his girlfriend while he refused to spend any money on her. Karen crammed the lingerie back into the drawer and slammed it shut. The flash of anger took her by surprise. Before this moment, Ana had been more or less an abstraction to her. Now, however, the other woman became tangible and real, embodied by these fetish objects. The air in the room stifled her, redolent with the perfume that another woman wore, with memories that weren’t hers. Enough is enough! Karen decided. She walked resolutely towards the door.

That morning, Michael woke up early. He peeked into the guest room to see if Karen was awake yet. He had gallantly offered her their bed the night before, but she had refused. “I’m only a guest here now,” she said, turning away from him. The blinds were closed. Her curved shape formed a hilly relief underneath the white sheet.

Michael slipped into the room and kneeled in front of Karen. He traced with the tip of his index finger the trail of wetness upon her cheek. “Baby, don’t cry,” he whispered in her ear. His tenderness provoked an almost imperceptible convulsion underneath the sheet, as Karen released a guttural cry. Her heartfelt suffering flattered and aroused him. He began caressing the curve of her body with the flatness of his palm.

“Please don’t!” she protested. “You’re torturing me.”

“Come on. You know you want it as much as I do,” he said under his breath. With one swift motion, Michael whisked the sheet away, covering her with his voracious gaze. Karen’s body lay helplessly exposed in a fetal position, like an overgrown child in need of comfort and protection. Sensing her vulnerability, he mounted her. She wriggled underneath, struggling to budge him away.

“Stop it. You’re depraved,” Karen managed to say. “Why are you doing this to me? Why now?” Nothing about Michael’s behavior made any sense to her anymore. He hadn’t manifested such desire for her in years. Now that he had broken up with her and replaced her with another woman, here he was, bent over her, devouring her neck, like a vampire.

His arms fought against hers, while his knees pulled her legs apart like a pair of muscular forceps. He wasn’t about to be rejected by his woman. “I want you now,” he hissed.

“You must have me confused with your other girlfriend,” she replied. This statement, right out of a melodrama, burst the tension between them. Michael laughed out loud and Karen smiled the first genuine smile since he had delivered the bad news. “Honestly. What’s come over you?”

“I don’t know,” he gazed fixedly into her questioning eyes, stimulated by the novelty of this chiasmic reversal. In the span of one day, his fiancée turned into his girlfriend while his girlfriend became his legitimate fiancée.

Karen got out of the airplane, having mentally prepared herself for the worst. She had repeated to herself over and over again that Michael would now be cold to her. He’d treat her like an acquaintance or, at best, an old friend. I have to be strong, she emboldened herself. I had nothing to do with his horrible decision and now it’s entirely out of my hands. But in her heart of hearts, she didn’t really believe this. After the initial shock, Karen reverted to her usual pragmatic mode. She planned to do whatever it took to save their relationship. It worked before and it could work again, she reminded herself, to boost her own moral. Less than half an hour after Michael delivered the bad news, Karen jumped on the computer and did some Internet research on Ana, to dig up some dirt on her rival. Although she found nothing particularly incriminating, Karen retained the hope that, upon further skillful questioning, Michael himself might deliver some helpful clues against his girlfriend.

She spotted her fiancée in the crowd, as radiant and disarmingly handsome as always. He waved to her and flashed a bright white smile. He’s still so friendly to me, Karen noted, surprised by this unexpectedly positive reaction. What should I do? she wondered. Shake hands with him? Do nothing? Michael quickly resolved the matter by giving her a peck on the cheek and hugging her, as if nothing happened. Although Karen had mentally prepared herself a cold reception, his warmth threw her off. “I’m… why are we hugging?” she managed to stutter.

“Why not?” he smiled unctuously at her. “We’re not enemies, are we?”

The next day, after Ana called him to confirm that she and Rob had told the kids about the divorce, Michael took a few moments to gather himself. He wanted to make sure that he was in an appropriately contrite mood to tell Karen the bad news. He sat down on the couch and attempted to think of something depressing, but nothing occurred to him. What the hell, I’ll just wing it, he decided and picked up the phone. “Hey, you!” he greeted Karen.

“Hey…”

“What’s wrong, Baby?”

Hearing him call her “Baby” in such a tender manner, Karen instantly let down her guard. “I don’t know what to do anymore,” she complained. “I’ve tried everything. I exercise four hours a day, like a maniac. I follow our strict program. I walk in the morning, then go swimming after lunch, do cardio and weight lifting at the gym in the evening. I eat fresh fruit, lean meat and vegetables. I cut out sugar and carbs,” she became increasingly upset as she recounted the Spartan nature of her diet regimen. “But in spite of all this, I’ve gained three pounds this week,” she sourly concluded her report.

“Did you check to see if the scale was set on zero?”

“Yes, it’s set where it’s supposed to be. I weigh myself about once a week, like you suggested.”

“No more than that!” Michael counseled. “You don’t want to become too obsessed with your weight. It could backfire.”

“Yeah, well, it’s a little too late for that.”

“You’re doing everything right, Babe,” he reassured Karen, usually sympathetic when her distress wasn’t demonstrably his fault. “Don’t beat yourself up over nothing. You’ve lost so much weight already. It’s normal to gain a few pounds just from the exercise itself. Remember what I said earlier?” he quizzed her.

“What?”

“Muscle weights more than fat. Since you’ve been weightlifting almost every day, it’s likely all that weight gain’s pure muscle. In fact, you’ve probably lost some more fat weight. So, actually, congratulations are in order!”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Karen replied, not ready to uncork the champagne bottle just yet. “My clothes don’t fit any looser than they did last week. In fact, they seem a little tighter.”

“You might be bloated from p.m.s.,” Michael offered another charitable explanation.

“Maybe,” Karen hesitantly conceded. “My period’s so irregular since you made me get off the birth control that I don’t have a clue anymore when it’s supposed to come.”

“That’s alright. The pill screws up your hormones and makes you retain water. And you know I didn’t propose this for selfish reasons this time!” he laughed out loud.

The storm had passed, yet the calm state in which Ana and Rob found themselves seemed more like the eye of a tornado. The room vibrated with the stillness of tension. They had told the children as diplomatically as possible the bad news. They tried to explain that they both loved them very much, but didn’t get along as well they should, which is why they were getting a divorce. At least Ana had framed the issue in such a conveniently neutral manner. Feeling like a hostage in the whole situation, Rob had added that he was completely against the divorce, but that Mama fell in love with someone named Michael and was leaving him for that man. Michelle was the first to respond, with a shrill scream, “Mama, how could you do this to Daddy? I hate Michael!” She stormed out of the room and locked herself into her bedroom, to release in solitude the pain of her newly shattered world.

Allen didn’t react at first. He stood still, trying to comprehend what was happening between his parents. He looked in silence at his father, then at his mother. After a few moments, he decided that he loved them both equally. In his mind, they were the greatest parents in the world. “I love you,” he said to them. Then, seeing that his sister had defended his father and that his mother was in tears, he gave Ana a hug. “Don’t worry, Mom. No matter what happens with you and Daddy, I’ll still love you,” he said to her.

Rob resented the fact that his wife would be selfish enough to hurt her own children. Enough was enough. “When are you moving out?” he asked her.

“I don’t know,” she replied, dazed by her children’s opposite reactions, both of which tugged at her heartstrings. “I wish I could take this pill, like in that science fiction movie, and just forget about him. I wish we had never met,” she said in all honesty.

Lenny called out one last time before Santa left, “Thank Mz Clawz for me again!”

Right after their return from the rescue, on his desk back at the precinct, Lenny found a box delivered from the North Pole. It was a beautifully woven Whip from Mz Clawz. His name was burned into the handle. He took it out and let it fly and cracked off an awful fake fish in a frame above the door, *whhiip-CRACK* as if he had been doing it all his life.

On her way to Michael’s house, Ana prayed silently to discover some major flaw in him: anything that would give her the strength to back down, resist his magnetic pull and do what was right for the sake of her family. As soon as he heard her car pull into his driveway, Michael ran to greet her.

“I told Rob about our affair,” Ana announced right away.

“You what?” Michael’s eyes opened wide. A rush of emotion rose to his head and his ears turned crimson with heat. He had finally defeated his rival and won over his girlfriend, as he always knew he would. He just didn’t think it would happen so soon...

“I had to,” she said almost apologetically. Michael led her into the house, one hand placed upon the small of her back, the other opening the door for her. “It’s been weighing on me for months. I couldn’t hold it in anymore. Are you mad at me?” she asked him, unsettled by his silence.

Michael stopped in the middle of the living room. “Are you kidding? You’re finally mine!” He picked Ana up and began twirling her, spinning around faster and faster, holding her high above his head, like a trophy.

The walls mixed in with the brown of the furniture and the white of the ceiling as the whole room became a dizzying whirl.

“Michael, stop it!” she exclaimed, feeling like she was no longer in control of her senses.

After a couple of more revolutions, Michael put her down, in front of him. As he admired her bright eyes and flushed cheeks, he couldn’t help but smile.

Ana looked at her lover indulgently, as she did whenever he acted so young. Michael beamed with delight, like a child receiving a much-awaited Christmas gift. His pleasure made her smile too, only with traces of sadness. “It was pretty tough on Rob. And we haven’t even told the kids yet.”

“We’ll deal with all that later. Now it’s time to celebrate!” Michael rushed into the kitchen to uncork the bottle of champagne he had saved for a special occasion.

Ana followed him there. She accepted the drink, sipping it gingerly while examining his expression. “I’m happy that you’re happy.”

“Aren’t you happy for yourself?” Michael asked her, his own bubble of elation punctured by her somber mood.

She hesitated a moment before replying, “Yes, I am.”

Michael grabbed her free hand and pulled her to him. “What’s wrong, Baby? You don’t seem that happy,” he commented, becoming attuned to her guarded reaction.

Ana looked to the side, focusing on the diamond pattern of the linoleum floor, to distract herself from her own mixed emotions. “I dread telling the kids about this,” she said quietly.

The Sea of Grass

What of the Piper?

Rob stared up at the ceiling, which even in the darkness of the night seemed ghostly pale. He placed one hand upon his heart, as if to monitor its slow, irregular beats. To Ana, who looked at him out of the corner of her eye, her husband appeared still as a corpse.

“Why are you doing this to us?” he asked her, feeling nauseous. His mind struggled to absorb the information that his body viscerally rejected.

“We weren’t much of a couple anymore…” she started to explain.

But, in Rob’s mind, that familiar refrain didn’t justify anything. “If you thought our marriage was that bad, then why couldn’t you talk to me about it before throwing yourself into the arms of another man?”

“I tried to, several times. But you just thought I was nagging you.”

Rob looked at his wife. Even with her disheveled hair and tired eyes, he still wanted her. In that instant, he felt ready to do anything to save their marriage. “Oh, God. I never thought it was that bad…” he responded, trying to recall if he had ever taken seriously any of Ana’s warning signals. A sinking feeling seemed to turn his body to mush. He couldn’t believe that his wife of ten years would pick up and leave him one day in such a backhanded and cowardly fashion, for another man. It occurred to him that he didn’t know anything about this stranger yet, presumably, Ana would expect him to trust him with their children. “How long have you known this guy?”

“For almost a year.”

“And you’ve been cheating on me with him this whole time?”

“Yes.”

Rob felt the heat of anger rise to the surface. “Why didn’t you tell me about it earlier? I can understand falling in love with someone else. I can understand being unhappy with our marriage. But I can’t understand all the lies. Why did you have to deceive me for so long?”

Ana looked away, to avoid seeing the pain in his eyes. “I didn’t want to lose you or to hurt anybody,” she tried to convey her initial ostrich policy towards her affair. “Michael pressured me to do this.”

“What do you mean?”

“He kept telling me how hard it was to keep up the intensity of our relationship in these difficult circumstances. He complained that we’re hiding like prisoners. Basically, he made me feel like our relationship might not last unless we moved in together.”

“And you didn’t find his behavior in the least bit manipulative?” Rob prompted her, already starting to cultivate a negative impression of his rival.

Watchers of the sky

No hint of the fiery roar was heard in the quiet night of the wharf on the sea. The tearful parents stared hard into the blackness willing each starry point of light to be the sled in the distance. The Chief of Police was calling out the time. The five hours Santa had in the best of conditions had come, and gone.

The Chief counted off the minutes past, then the seconds, out loud with tears in his eyes. His tired worried mind was wondering when he should stop, because when he stopped he knew he would have to face the horror of the loss of the children, and Santa, and the dwarves, and the reindeer, and yes his old crony Lenny. It would be a tragedy from which they would never recover. People’s heads were bowed, some had begun to cry. The Mayor sadly walked toward the front of the crowd to begin an address he did not want to give…

When Ana stepped in the door, everything seemed normal at home. Rob was sitting at the dining room table, helping Allen with his math homework. The boy was complaining about it while demonstratively hitting his forehead with the palm of his hand, to protest the level of difficulty of the multiplication problems.

“Oh, come on. It’s not that hard,” Michelle chimed in, more to irritate her little brother than to assist him with his homework. “Look, six times seven means six plus six seven times. Get it?”

“I don’t want her to help me!” Allen objected, now feeling provoked by his sister in addition to being distracted from a very important game of Nintendo by the homework in question.

“Michelle, would you mind working on your own homework?” Rob suggested in a tired voice.

“I already finished it. All I had was reading.” Michelle said, scooting her chair closer to her brother’s, to be able to peer over his shoulder.

“Daddy, tell her to go away!” Allen screeched.

At this point, Rob noticed that his wife had returned. “Where were you?”

“I went shopping,” she replied, then thought her answer must sound implausible.

“I could have used a little help with the kids,” Rob responded, resenting the fact that after a full day’s work, he had to spend the rest of the evening tending to the children on his own. “Sometimes I feel like a single dad around here.”

“Usually, I pick up the kids from school, make them dinner and help them with their homework,” Ana pointed out in her own defense.

“Yeah but while I’m at work, you get to relax in your studio all day long,” Rob commented irately.

Ana felt her cup overflow. Enough was enough. Without saying a word, she ran up the stairs to her bedroom, taking two steps at a time.

The final run

Ruedov was not red nosed- he was a fierce red-eyed reindeer. But misspelling his name and saying it was a shiny red nose made him less scary to children in a song written somewhat about him. He in fact never had any trouble fitting in. When he grew to full size he became the reindeer team leader. He was in fact smarter and scarier and stronger than any reindeer who had come along to join Santa for decades. With his skill and the team’s speed they were suddenly right behind Huk’s escaping boat.