Destiny in an Ugly Sweater

Folks, this is a weird one. Lots of different things with a Christmas theme to boot.

It was not the clatter of reindeer hooves on the roof that woke Dawn. It was her roommate's drunken entrance to their flat in the wee hours of the morning. Nathalie had brought home a conquest from some bar or nightclub. Rather than staggering into her room, they commenced to make sloppy moaning noises on the threadbare couch in the living room, where Dawn could clearly hear their amorous activities.

When the alarm went off in the morning, Dawn dragged herself out of bed and stumbled into the communal part of the apartment to make coffee. Somewhere in the nighttime Nathalie had made a retreat to her bedroom. She'd left ample evidence of a night of debauchery, though. A Christmas scarf in the middle of the floor, soiled pink panties shoved slightly into the couch's cushion crack, and, obnoxiously, two used condoms (tied off, so they wouldn't spill) were visible underneath their cheap plastic tree, the colored lights blinking on-and-off over the unwanted presents.

Dawn finished making the coffee, shaking her head the whole while. Maybe she should let the dumb bitch oversleep? Instead, she knocked on Nathalie's door.

"Time to get up! You'll be late to work," she called.

"Cover for me!" came the reply, haggard and regretting the excesses of the night before.

"I can't. I've got to study," Dawn replied.

"I'll take your night shift. Please!!" came the whining reply.

Dawn hated the morning shift. She hated the crappy little bodega where they both worked, with its parade of careerist zombies. She especially just now hated her roommate with her wild ways. Nathalie put on this "wholesome" act--or maybe she just thought she was entitled? People ate that shit up, when they would never extend the same consideration to "ugly old Dawn from Iowa". Dawn, whom they treated as stupid or slow, when, after all, she was on the dean's list in mathematics. Every day was a blatant reminder of the need to do more than everyone around her.

And today would start in the worst way: back working as the lowly cashier in some seedy office park store, filling in for her stupid slut of a roommate.

Not ten blocks away, Mitch woke to the sound of the alarm to find himself alone in the apartment. Everything was, as usual, in its place. There were no dishes in the sink. There were no discarded socks on the floor. There was no mound of unfolded laundry. Nor was there a damp used towel on the bathroom floor. In short, Hailey, his longtime college sweetheart, was still gone. They'd leased the place for a year, and she hadn't lasted two months before taking off with some biscuit-sniffer named Rob.

He'd grown used to waking up beside her, so the cold emptiness of the bed depressed him.

"Get back on the horse," his friend Daniel had chided him last night, after letting him know that Hailey and Rob had left off from trekking the Himalayas to follow the Phish tour in South America. "You must have your eye on some honeys who can help you forget...?"

"Well," Mitch told him slowly, "there's this cute red head at the bodega I've been flirting with..."

"And you haven't asked her out yet? Where the famous Bynam family charm?"

"I've been too busy using it at work to..."

"Knock it off, man. Ask her out. Get laid. That's what I need to see!" Daniel interrupted.

"Why not?" thought Mitch. "I'll ask her tomorrow."

He knew her name was Nathalie, but only from her name tag. She struck him as sweet in a naïve kind of way. He was never sure if she knew she was flirting with him, or if that was just her personality.

"Why not?" he asked himself again this morning. "I only hope won't be too embarrassed."

He imagined her blushing when he asked her out. He imagined the moment, standing at the head of the line, asking her to meet up with him. How he would say it. He rehearsed it through his morning's ablutions. He played it over in his head as he strolled down the block. He readied himself as he pulled open the front door of the bodega and slipped into the jammed aisles. The freezing rain had made the usual morning crowd around him surly, people overdressed in woolen scarves, soggy trench coats, and office paraphernalia jostling one another for position in line and elbowing their way towards caffeine. But he saw and felt none of it, aware only of his fateful intent.

Nervously, he grabbed an oversized Styrofoam cup and filled it from the drum of industrial coffee. To make it slightly palatable, he paused to pump in a bolus of tan sludge that claimed to be a "vanilla flavored creme" that he was certain had never seen the inside of a cow. He didn't care about the coffee. It just gave him an excuse to stand in the line. When the last of the line in front of him finally stepped away, he was ready. The words were poised on his lips.

He finally looked up from his shoes, starting to say "Would you like to..."

Only Nathalie wasn't operating the register today for some reason. She was always here on Thursdays. How could she not be here? At first, his eyes wouldn't quite focus on the woman tending the register. But, when they did, instead of a svelte perky red head, there stood this horrific bulbous shape, quite probably the ugliest girl he'd ever seen.

"That it for you?" she asked, her voice husky, an octave lower than Nathalie's. Mitch stared, his voice stuck suddenly in his throat. The nametag on the Kelly-green smock said her name was "Dawn". Mitch nodded mutely, aware that he was staring somewhat rudely at her.

"That'll be eight fifty-nine," the cashier said. Mitch managed to avert his gaze while sliding her a crisp sawbuck. She handed back his change. He stumbled out, headed for the building entrance and the staff elevators, his attempt to secure a date dashed for the moment.

He was fairly sure that Dante's descent into hell hadn't featured elevators, but he wouldn't have been surprised to see the legend "Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here" above the doors of the one waiting, almost eagerly, to carry him to the next circle of his now doomed morning. The elevators in this building seemed almost hilariously slow. Having failed to secure a date, now he was aware of being late.

"Last in," Moth Girl greeted Mitch, as he stumbled over the threshold. He felt foolish, fumbling between his horrible coffee, backpack, phone, and bedraggled raincoat so that we could get at the badge that would admit him to the inner parts of the offices.

Moth Girl offered up a vulpine smile, "She's waiting for you. I think you just earned the winning ticket in the Mr. Cretaceous Sweepstakes."

"Mr. Cretaceous" was a nickname Mitch had coined for Mr. Carter, a client who the Old Lady said had "been with the firm since the dinosaurs walked the Earth." He was a ninety-something fossil who lived in the snowy depths of Vermont. Mitch stuck his head into the Old Lady's office and the trap snapped shut on him.

"Ma'am?" he said, trepidatiously. He'd rarely interacted with the big boss. He felt faintly ridiculous with his giant Styrofoam cup of noxious coffee and damp raincoat.

"Mitch. Come in. I hope your plans for the holiday remain light. Mr. Cre--er, Mr. Carter," she corrected herself, "is so looking forward to his annual review. As you probably know by now, he likes to ensure that everything is tidy in the grim recesses of his portfolio. You might have a tendency to think that this is a mere formality, but you should be prepared--very prepared--for him to give you a thorough workout. Think of it as a 'final exam' before the next step in your career?"

"Yes, ma'am," was all Mitch could say. He'd still been wet behind the ears two years ago, and the guy chosen had left the company shortly afterwards. Last year's sweepstakes winner hadn't said two words about the experience, but hadn't seemed delighted either. However, when he returned he had been promoted and moved to the London office--all expenses paid.

"One more thing," the Old Lady continued, "There are two First Class train tickets in the portfolio--one for you and one for your female companion--waiting at the reception desk. I do emphasize female. Mr. Carter is quite old-fashioned. And I do emphasize that you need to find one to bring. I know you've been moping about since Hadley..."

"Hailey, ma'am..."

"... showed such poor, uh, long term planning. Mr. Carter insists on things being done in a certain way and we do try to indulge him."

"Gotcha," Mitch replied.

"Alrighty then," the Old Lady said, and he stumbled back into reception, clearly having been dismissed. The Moth Girl was waiting for him, the wattage of her smile fractionally brighter at Mitch's discomfort.

"Moth Girl's" real name was Romaine. Mitch thought she was about as close to feminine perfection as mere mortals were likely to encounter. Any time he looked at her, his breath went away, his stomach curled into a slipknot, and his tongue turned thick. Looking her, tan, buxom, shapely, with perfect hair that naturally varied between a honey blonde and a delicious brown sugar, was like having a mini stroke. It didn't help that she was wickedly smart. Like "working on her second PhD dissertation" smart. She was, in short, the complete package.

She wasn't, of course, "just a receptionist". Nobody here was exactly what they appeared to be. She was more like the Old Lady's chief of staff.

She was also, generally, unavailable, which made it slightly possible for Mitch to catch his breath around her--little sips of oxygen to keep him from passing out. The trouble was: she was unavailable because she was always dating someone new. Since Mitch had joined the company, she had methodically and thoroughly worked through any number of boyfriends, mostly from the Firm. At first, she would show her new guy undivided attention, those piercing green eyes being more-and-more fascinated by her target's every utterance. Then came social engagements. Then dating. From there, the stunned, stupefied recipient of her attentions would find her given over to exploring every nook, cranny, and crevice of his life. She took up his hobbies, his friends, his social circle--and consumed them like a forest fire.

So, with Dave the CPA, she had taken up hang gliding, learned to make pasta by hand, and eclipsed his Elo rating in chess. Or with Freddy, it had been his vintage BMW motorbike and mixology. Or, with her most recent conquest, Martin, kayaking and German philosophers. And just when each was convinced--convinced--that they were the one and prepared to pop the question... Bam!, she had broken up with them. Each of them claimed it was done in the gentlest, kindest, simplest, perfect manner. But also so perfectly that each one remained resolutely (but firmly) in the Friendzone. And so perfectly that, somehow, each one ended up blaming themselves. In fact, even their friends and relatives would, if asked, have assigned them the blame.

Sometimes this would take longer. Gerald from the technical services department across the hall from Mitch, had lasted six months.

Sometimes it was heartbreakingly fast. Freddy (who, admittedly, was socially awkward and dumb as a stump) didn't last three weeks.

The circle of her former lovers formed a hard core of the free-form Friday evening rendezvous at O'Flaherty's bar. If Moth Girl and her current inamorata weren't present, there would be a collective mooning by her former lovers. None of them could let go enough to start dating again, just in case she reconsidered re-orbiting one of her long-ago flames.

"Oh! Such a woman!" Martin would sniffle, "Such a keen grip on Heidegger and such a tight, hot..." and the ranks of the disposed exes would groan emphatically to cut him off, wistfully thinking their own thoughts, and another round would be necessary.

And, eventually, Romaine would move on to the next shiny object, like a moth drawn to the next brightest candle, and their number would increase by one. Last week, the group had graduated to rounds that required two pitchers of beer.

This meant that the Moth Girl was currently available. Mitch was deeply concerned that he might be next on the list, a concern redoubled when he stopped by her desk to get the train tickets.

"Any thought to whom you'll take? You know I'm..."

"That's alright, Romaine. It's so kind of you to offer up such a sacrifice. But I'll figure it out," he replied, cutting her off. He thought wistfully of Nathalie, but she hadn't been at work that day. Should he go back to the bodega and ask?

"Aww... Mitch. I know your breakup with Hailey has left you sad and alone. You should let someone cheer you up. And I have just the thing! Tomorrow is O'Flaherty's Ugly Christmas Sweater night," she said, flashing dimples that raised the room temperature at least two degrees. Mitch was looking at his shoes again, trying to steel himself to resist her charms.

"I'll make you a deal," came her seductive voice. "If I win the contest, you'll take me to Vermont. But if you win, you get to set me up with my next date--assuming you don't volunteer."

"What if neither of us win?"

"If it's a girl, you'll ask her to go. If it's a guy, I'll ask him out."

Romaine was nothing if not competitive, but Mitch felt sure he had an ace in the hole. They shook on the bet and Mitch beat a hasty retreat.

As ugly Christmas sweaters went, Mitch felt sure his was truly the worst. Its primary color was a nasty electric blue, rather than a cheery red or jolly green. It featured a pattern of glaring snowmen with red 'X' vampire eyes. On the chest was a misshapen Santa shape holding a bottle of hooch. His knitted sled was pulled by three tan shapes, crocheted as three-dimensional blobs that were probably supposed to be reindeer but looked every bit like dead rats.

The sweater had been a gift from his sainted Aunt Emily. Well, "sainted" as in passed-from-the-Earth: she had smoked like a coal-fired power plant and drank like an Irish rugby team on holiday in Ibiza. Offsetting her lack of design talent, her stitchery was phenomenal, so the sweater was indestructible and gloriously detailed. It was, in short, the height of ugly Christmas sweater haute couture.

Mitch hadn't worn the sweater to work: it was too toxic. Instead, he slunk into the men's room to pull it on under his raincoat before the group departed. Only the combined effects of convivial holiday drinking and the prospect of winning the contest--and beating Hailey--would force him to reveal the Stygian horror of it. Well, and they had a $500 prize, so the prospect of fresh Benjamins lining his pocket didn't hurt. Drunken Rat Sled Santa with Zombie Snowmen lived for that moment alone. Mitch smiled at Romaine as he held the pub's front door for her, feeling the itchy woolen thing warming chest and potentially his pocketbook. Her smile made his heart freeze and his gonads ache.

The place was jam-packed, but there weren't that many competitors in the sweater contest. The majority of these were store-bought sweaters. Pedestrian "ugly". Tame, desultory ugly. Mitch's confidence grew as they hoisted pints of beer. Romaine stood close to him while her coterie of jilted exes eyed him nervously. Would he soon be leaving their company for a few months of smothering by the Moth Girl? It seemed inevitable.

Romaine's sweater was a form-fitting, tight-knit white number with twin Rudolph-the-Red-Nosed-Reindeer emblazoned across the front. Each Rudolph nose was a sparkly, bespangled red spot. The wearer was assisting each stag's prominent guiding light in quite strategic ways. There was nothing ugly about the sweater. Instead, no one in the audience, mainly drunken men, could take their eyes off her.

One other competitor was more conventionally challenging: it was the gal from the bodega. Mitch was used to seeing her workmates as regulars at the pub, but he didn't think he'd seen her here before. Mitch still didn't see the hot little number he usually flirted with. He still secretly hoped to invite Nathalie to Vermont with him. Maybe the ugly gal was her replacement?

Bodega Gal was spectacularly ugly. She had massive thighs and arms like tree trunks. Her belly was a rumbling, shuddering barrel of pudding that held up a lack-luster pair of boobs, a geography perfect for displaying a reasonably mundane sweater, her bulk transforming it into a dizzying array of winter themed shapes in a variety of poorly chosen colors. It looked like a reindeer had vomited Christmas on her.

The voting was based on the cheers (or jeers) of the audience. Brenda, the bartender running the show, was milking it for all it was worth: a round of voting, then shots! The place was howling as the sweaters were winnowed down to Romaine, Mitch, and Bodega Girl. Then came the final round. Romaine threw her shoulders back and waggled suggestively and the room cheered lustily.

Then it was Mitch's turn. The sweater's blinding awfulness elicited a chorus of groans. But it was a short-lived triumph. Bodega Girl's "complete package" went on display, her mousy hair whipped into a frenzy as her not-quite-baritone voice belted out "feast your eyes on this puppy, boys!"

Rat Santa and His Zombie Snowman Army marched the coldest retreat since Napoleon had knocked on the gates of Moscow. Romaine bowed gracefully to the winner and whispered to Mitch: "Your move, sir."

Mitch looked at the her, surrounded by laughing co-workers as the bartender counted out the prize. He edged closer, thinking about his bet with Romaine, and it occurred to him that she might be a fun date simply because it seemed like so unlikely a match.

"Congratulations! I'm, uh, Mitch. I bought coffee from you the other morning" Dawn heard the guy in the ugly blue sweater say.

"Dawn," she replied, shaking his offered hand. "I thought sure you had me with that... thing...?" She surveyed the awfulness of Mitch's sweater.

"It truly is awful, isn't it?"

"I don't see how you lost!" Dawn knew her victory had not depended on her sweater.

"I, uh... guess I'm not the showman it needs," he said. It was funny. He seemed honestly nervous talking to her. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the stunning gal in the reindeer sweater keeping an eye on them. She must have put him up to this.

"I was wondering if you were doing..." As he said it, his eyes seemed to lock in for a moment on her roommate, as if seeing her for the first time, and he sputtered, then finished "... doing anything this coming week?"

"Well," she thought, "at least this conversation would be over quickly. Best to shoot him down fast."

"Working. Studying. No rest for the wicked," she told him.

"I have tickets to this place in Vermont. I was wondering if you'd like to go?" he asked. He seemed very interested in his shoes. She looked at him appraisingly, sure it was a put on. Mocking the ugly gal, not exactly a new sport for her.

"Don't fuck with me," she said.

"No, I'm serious. First class train tickets, and, well, it's complicated, but I need to bring a gal with me. I don't have a girlfriend currently. And, well... I'm serious. You want to go or not?"

"You lose a bet or something?" she asked.

"Uh... I'm serious. It's... I don't have... I didn't... And, well... I'm serious. You want to go or not?"

She peered quizzically at him, in his bespoke suit pants and awful sweater, having stepped out of a crowd of power ties and stuffed shirts. What possible interest could he have in the ugly cashier from the minimart? What an asshat! Her co-worker, Shelby, stepped in, though, to egg her on.

"Go for it, Dawn!... Give him the business... we'll cover your shifts..." she urged. Nathalie had a funny look on her face and said nothing. Dawn could see the woman across the room, keeping one eye on them. Maybe she didn't think he'd go through with it? Maybe she was waiting for another shot at him after he bombed with her. He wouldn't pick Dawn over her radiant charms, would he?

"Alright, alright, I'll go!" she told her co-workers, before leaning over to whisper to him, "Do you have two rooms as well? Or do you have designs to get under this sweater?"

"To be honest, I'm not sure about the sleeping arrangements," he gulped.

"Really now?" she replied, thinking "he's never even thought about getting naked with me. This is such a setup. He'll beg off any second now."

"We leave in the morning," he told her, handing her a train ticket and a business card with his cell number. She was surprised to think this might actually be a real vacation, even if he had been somehow dared or cajoled into it. He didn't look at her while putting her digits into his own phone.

Mitch was at the train station early, as he was always nervous about travel. He especially didn't want to miss this train, as the week ahead already promised to be professionally challenging. Thus, he was able to observe as Nathalie's dented dark blue Corolla disgorged Dawn from the passenger seat. She was bundled against the cold in several layers of shapeless winter gear.

"If you squint at this distance, she isn't quite as earthshakingly unattractive," he thought. He moved to help her, and perhaps get a chance to say something to her cute roommate. Dawn had the back seat door open and was struggling to remove two enormous rollaboard suitcases. Each of these was bursting at the seams, one in torn black and the other a maroon color.

"Not planning on coming back?" Mitch asked, taking the first from her and trying to put it upright on the ground beside them.

"No doubt you noticed, but I'm a big girl. I need big things. Plus, it's cold in Vermont," she said, just this side of frostily. The maroon suitcase was wedged in behind Nathalie's seat, and she was having a bit of difficulty shifting it.

"Good morning, Nathalie!" he said to the driver, who looked unhappy to be anywhere away from her bed. She didn't simper or flirt this time, just nodding vaguely in response. Maybe that was appropriate? After all, he was taking Dawn away for a week in the woods.

"It's okay, let me help with those," he said, turning to Dawn. He sensed that she still didn't trust him and was still waiting for the other shoe to drop. The suitcases were massive and maneuvering both was difficult. Each behemoth wanted to trip over even the slightest bit of gravel or inconsistency in the surface. Dawn grabbed the handle of one as they made their way slowly to the platform.

The porter helped Mitch lift her cases on board and they followed him to their little sleeper cabin. She was still quiet, not really saying a word to him. Mitch grew more and more nervous, concerned that inviting her was going to transform what promised to be a difficult week into a disaster. What had he been thinking?

"Look," he said, after they sat down facing one another in the little room, "I seem to have gotten off to a bad start here. I keep sticking my foot in my mouth without intending to. I really did need a date for this week, and I really didn't want it to be Moth Girl--the, uh, girl in the reindeer sweater. And you seem..."

"If you say 'nice', I might bite your ear off. Or is the word you're searching for 'ugly-and-thus-available'?" she snapped. She felt instantly bad, seeing him cringe. He hadn't actually done or said anything offensive or judgmental, even if his face recoiled every time he looked her in the eye.

"I was going to say 'fun'. I... I liked that you were having fun at the party, in spite of wearing the, uh, ugliest sweater."

"It's quite clear that you had the ugliest sweater," she said. "My victory... well..."

"I'm going to hit the head," he remarked, "while you get comfortable."

Outside the very first snowflakes had begun to fall. Winter was unseasonably late but seemed ready to make up for lost time. As the train pulled from the station, the swirling snow enveloped it, so all one could see from the windows as the train passed through increasingly rural suburbs was a tunnel of streaking white with the vague shapes of trees flickering past. Train travel through the snow to Vermont in a private compartment seemed kind of romantic.

When he'd returned from the lavatory, she'd hung up her winter coat and was wearing a big black hoodie over big girl jeans. She was twisting and turning in the narrow Amtrak seat, trying to get comfortable. Mitch swallowed as he beheld her again.

"The sweater might actually have depressed her score in the contest," he thought.

"You barely know me, but you're taking me to Vermont?" she asked, seeing his expression.

"Every year, the Firm sends someone to see Mr. Cretaceous, a living fossil, who lives in the dim recesses of Vermont, to do a yearly review of his finances. It's somewhere between a hazing and a punishment," he began. Mitch explained about Mr. Cretaceous and the yearly financial planning session. He explained about the Old Lady. He explained who Moth Girl was.

"I would have taken my longtime girlfriend, Hailey, but she got happy feet with this biscuit-sniffer, Rob," he said, nearing the end.

"Biscuit-sniffer?"

"Yeah. Biscuit-sniffer! It's... well, sometimes you meet people who are cookie-lickers. A cookie-licker will pick up a cookie from the tray, lick it, and put it back. It's rude, anti-social, and unhygienic. But you know where they stand with that cookie, right?"

"Okay," she nodded, feeling herself starting to smile... again.

"A biscuit-sniffer will just sniff the cookie. They'll hang around the cookie. They'll be vaguely interested in everything the cookie does. But they don't actually touch the cookie. Then, when no one is looking, they steal the cookie."

"So, that's me. Tell me about yourself? I can't introduce you to the living fossil as 'the girl I buy coffee from at the bodega'!"

"It's a sad story, not one you'll probably appreciate."

"Aw, c'mon..."

So, she told him.

"I am ugly," she started. Mitch worked hard not to nod in agreement.

"I can see you trying to be polite, but this isn't an opinion. I've always been ugly, from a long line of ugly. And it is not something I am going to grow out of. I've read all about the ugly duckling, the one who grows up to be a swan? But that was a case of mistaken identity: the swan was adopted."

She went on to say:

I was definitely not adopted. My mother was an unattractive woman in her own right, and she married a kind-hearted but thoroughly homely young pig farmer named Devon. I'm one of nine and, as one of the younger siblings, I can easily observe that my elders have never shown signs of developing any form of external beauty. Not Donna, Daniel, Darren, Debra, Denise, or David. Neither was the pattern broken by my younger brother, Delwin, or the last addition, little Daphne, who, I'm sorry to say, is quite possibly the ugliest of the lot of us.

Sitting in my place on the dining room bench and surveying my family at each meal, I have been able to evaluate their obvious shortcomings. Each of them is barrel-shaped, with my thin lifeless hair and squinty piggish eyes. We have small vicious little mouths with tiny, crooked teeth that orthodontists see in their nightmares. We have short chunky legs and thick arms, just like mine. When we develop boobs, they are smallish and droopy. Chins are in short supply, as are eyebrows, with several of my sibs sporting a monobrow. Others go through life with the surprised look of no brows at all. Otherwise, hair seems to sprout all over each of us, and in a contrasting dark color to that on our heads. We aren't indolent or lazy or stupid. We are just... unattractive.

This is not to say that we don't have talents. The boys anchored our high school football team's line and can bulldoze through nearly any obstacle. Donna can sing like an angel. Debra is a magnificent artist.

For a long time I wasn't sure what my talent was. Mostly I felt thoroughly average. I wasn't especially teased in school: for a while I thought my talent might be invisibility, until I heard someone point out that offending the sister of the biggest, strongest, ugliest boys in school might be... Anyway, my sex life has been... slow. My older sisters use tons of makeup--eye shadow or fake lashes or rouge, but I think these make them look like a pack of gorgons. I've, uh, resolved to avoid embarrassing myself by copying them.

My mother often told me that my special talent would find me. She also assured me that there would be someone special--somewhere. That's been true for the others, but hasn't extended to me so far.

My mother's talent appears to be amazing fertility, and she fervently believes that her seventh child (which is to say me!) will follow in her footsteps.

Before you say such premonitions are malarky, I will point out that I clearly recall the first time my mother confided this: it was while my father was out preparing the "go bag" to head to the hospital to deliver little Daphne. I was alone with my mom in our parents' room, just keeping her company. She, too, was the seventh child of a fertile mama, and her mama proposed the same doom for her.

In between moments of informing me about her prognostications of my future fertility, she proceeded to pull her dress up and put her money where her, uh... that is to say, she delivered a sister into my arms. I had to look up there at mama's private parts. I had to watch the crest of my sister's head appear, then, listening to mama exhort me about my potential talents in the area, hold out my hands and accept the squishy, squicky, wriggling, blood-covered little Medusan as she erupted into the world.

I was five.

It was like a horror movie come to life. I didn't want to accept that this was my fate, but special talents continued to elude me all through elementary and middle school. All the way up to the end of high school. I was a modest student in most respects. I wasn't athletic in any way. When I graduated from high school, I took a job at a fast-food place and started community college. And I told myself I wouldn't be fated to follow in my mother's footsteps if I never attracted a mate.

She smiled ruefully, her story seemingly over.

"Wow," Mitch said. "Where are your parents and sibs now? And what changed to bring you to the city?"

"My daddy is six feet under--and before you say sorry, my mama is at Iowa State... the Penitentiary, not the school... because it seems her castration technique, the one she applied when she caught him with Sarah Fulbright, was about as well-honed as the tool she used to effect it."

"But it seems like you've found your talent after all," he said, nodding at the book sticking from her handbag, where a thick copy of Trollope's The Warden sticking out of her handbag.

"Actually, I have, but it's mathematics, not literature. The Calculus turns out to be my second language."

"'The' calculus? I didn't peg you for a Newton fangirl."

"More of a Leibniz groupie, really," she replied.

"You could be a quant," he mused.

"A... quant?"

"People who are gifted mathematically. In the business we call them 'quants' for 'quantitative'. Lots of people can do the glad-handing, people-interactive stuff. Think of every used car salesman you've ever met! But hardly anyone has the chops to be a quant. In finance, deep math is a real differentiator," he said, thinking "... and no one will care what you look like."

With that, the train slowed into St. Albans' station. Mitch helped the porter wrestle her bags down to the platform where they were met by an older man, tall, gaunt, taciturn, with close-cropped graying hair. He looked more like a mortician than a valet. He held a small sign, "Mr. Bynam and Guest". He didn't offer to help with the luggage. He took one look at Dawn (only a flickering moue of distaste, Mitch noted) and wordlessly led them to the waiting vehicle, an immense black Escalade. He opened the back and watched Mitch wrestle her suitcases and his own modest bag into the vehicle.

Mitch opened the door for Dawn, and she scrabbled to get her bulk up inside, the vehicle listing alarmingly as it took her weight. He slammed the door, walked around, and climbed in next to her, behind the driver.

"We're looking forward to the time here," he told the driver.

No response. Not even a grunt.

"You're taking us to Mr. Carter's?"

"Mph." A positive nod.

Mitch sat next to Dawn as the vehicle sped away from the parking lot, watching the snow falling past the bare, sticklike trees. The roads turned narrower and narrower until they reached a specific driveway. This was muddy and rutted, running between a pair of stone pillars capped by big stone spheres. A raven was perched on one of these, giving a baleful look as they passed through.

Carter House was a massive Second Empire Victorian, three stories high with a wide porch around the base, a Mansard roof, and a crowning belvedere. The house was dark but for a dim light somewhere in the rear.

The driver alighted and strode to the front door. Within moments lights began to flick on throughout the interior. A tiny Japanese woman in a housekeeper's garb, black dress with a white apron, beckoned Mitch and Dawn inside. Once again, Mitch struggled to lift Dawn's huge bags down and maneuver them to the porch, where the housekeeper, a thin, acerbic, exceedingly plain Asian woman, took charge of them.

The old fossil himself, meanwhile, came out to observe the commotion.

"Well! The Old Lady does not disappoint!" he cried out. Did Mitch detect a shudder as he looked Dawn up and down, but he invited them in, saying, "Miss Sakai, put them in the Red Room."

"Hai!" she snapped, snatching the handles to both of Dawn's bags and waving Mitch and Dawn off.

"Of course, the two of you will join me for some tea," he said.

The interior of the house was redolent with polished wood, carved stone, and sparkling marble floors. Oddly, the foyer was over-decorated for the season. It was festooned with bows and candlesticks and a battalion of nutcracker soldiers. A huge Christmas tree overflowing with lights and decorations filled the middle of the room. Three or four gift wrapped packages looked lost under its broad span of branches.

Mr. Carter skirted the tree, leading them back to a room that smelled of leather and pipe tobacco and old books. He was little more than an animated skeleton, skin sallow and teeth crooked and stained. His nose was huge and beaked like an eagle. His enormous flabby ears sprouted tufts of hair while the rest of his tonsure was just a white stubble, like a badly mown lawn covered in frost. He wore an unkempt beard, equally white, but stained yellow around the mouth. He smelled musty and vaguely like mothballs. In his prime he had probably been a powerful figure, but now he was a wreck of a human being. He was, Mitch reflected, like a refugee Scrooge from a trailer-park production of 'A Christmas Carol'.

Instead of the ghost of Marley, the maid reappeared with a cart on which she began to prepare green matcha tea in the Japanese manner, her movements very formal, whisking the tea with brush-like implement. It wasn't a ceremony, more like a hideous pastiche, but shortly they were each presented with a steaming bowl of bright green broth.

Mr. Carter paid Dawn no attention, never betraying, even with a glance, that he was even aware of her presence. Instead, he interrogated Mitch about his experience, his career, his degree, his aspirations. Miss Sakai stood straight as a ramrod all through it, as if she were a bit of furniture. Finally, he nodded to her and asked her to show Dawn to the room they were about to share for the week.

He set aside the tea and reached down two tumblers from the small table beside his chair. They were followed by a bottle of scotch with the sort of plain label that goes on truly old bottles.

"Now we can talk real business," he said, filling Mitch's glass an inch deep.

Perhaps an hour later, pleasantly warm from the whisky, Mitch could finally go up the stairs and turn towards the Red Room.

He'd forgotten that he was expected to share a room with Dawn. The giant bulge under the covers was his first reminder. She was already in bed and the lights were out. He tiptoed in and kicked off his shoes, wondering how to approach this. The bed was a tall four-poster, magnificent in its 19th Century splendor. It was hip-high and, he thought, rather small for two people. Dawn was to one side under the covers, facing away from what would be his side of the bed.

Mitch opened his bag and drew out pajama pants, stripped down to t-shirt and underwear, pulled on the jammies. Then he pondered whether to slip under the covers.

"So, here we are," she whispered as she rolled onto her back. "Is this the romantic moment you've been imagining?" The bed groaned under her weight.

"I didn't wake you, did I?"

"At any moment I was expecting some strange man to come crawl into my bed, and you think I'll be sleeping?" she asked, incredulously.

"Who are you calling 'strange'?" he replied. She laughed.

"If you're looking to get into my pants, well I'm not wearing any," she said. "But I am wearing a nightgown. You're a cute guy, but let's not pretend about any romantic stuff, 'kay?"

Mitch nodded, vaguely relieved. They turned away from one another to fall asleep. The bed, however, was smaller than either was used to. Mitch's natural sleeping position was facing her, and the room was frigid.

Somewhere in the dark hours of the night he woke to find that he'd turned and snuggled up behind her. Her body was a vast warm mountain range. His right arm had made the ascent and was rappelling dangerously down the smooth boulders of her breasts. More concerning was that a part of him was firmly marking the route between her fleshy buttocks. If she were to waken, there was no doubt that she'd feel its warm presence poking at her.

He tried to sneakily pull his arm back in preparation for turning away. He could only imagine the disgust and commotion that would be produced if she were to discover him nudging her with his willy. His fingers fled up the soft trails in her voluminous nightgown, where they must have brushed something sensitive, provoking a sharp intake of breath. She shifted in bed, not to escape, but rather to press her ass into his thickening boner.

Mitch froze, listening hard. He heard the wind outside blowing snow against the windows. He shivered from the cold outside their bed, which led him to inch closer to her warmth. She made a vague "urm" sound.

"Oh shit," he thought. His shaft was thickening, not just casually hanging there. He could hear each thud of his heart pound in his ears. With each one, he felt the tool harden. It wasn't going down. He knew he shouldn't, but he relaxed and let it be engulfed between the fleshy hills of her backside.

She seemed to push back against him. He put his arm back around her. For a while he dozed slightly. Then a new sensation came to him. His fingers were touching a long, tapering flaccid peak, pointed at the tip with a wide and stiffening nipple. He could feel it crinkling and hardening. He could imagine the end of it yearning to be sucked. He let his fingers rest around it.

Dawn rippled her body in response, gently, lightly humping against him.

"Fuck, Mitch, you're turning me on," she hissed. Her head was close, so he stretched out to kiss her neck. She sucked in a breath. They moved just slightly against each other, then paused to enjoy the effect for a minute. Her hand reached down, and he thought she might have been fingering herself. Carefully, he let himself feel her warm teat nestling in his hand while his cock twitched and throbbed into the fabric between them.

"We should stoo-o-op," she whined under her breath. But she seemed to adjust her ass to feel more of him. He tried to settle down, trying to just enjoy the steady warmth her embrace represented. The steady pulse in his groin area kept poking her, refusing to dissipate. He shifted slightly, his aroused member poking lower. He felt her hand nearby and then the slight nudge of fingers across his tip.

"Dammit," she said, vehemently this time. Now she did stop, pushing him back. The bed groaned and shook as she moved around in it and Mitch felt a frisson of fear: had he gone too far?

"Mitch?"

"Yes, Dawn."

"I don't want any regrets tomorrow."

"Uh..."

"You want me right now, in the dark, when it's all cold, and you can't see me."

"Seems like you want it too?"

"Yeah. I want you to put that big stick you've been kneading my ass with inside me. I'm not a virgin and you have no idea how bad I want it. But we would both regret it in the morning. Because my previous lovers have regrated it in the morning, when they could see me."

"I..."

"Go to sleep, Mitch. We'll see what the morning brings."

He turned away, feeling her try to do so as well. Surprisingly, the Sugar Plum Fairy did come and spread her dark wings over them. Soon he was sound asleep.

When Mitch woke up again, he was still facing away from her. He listened to the windows rattling in their frames as the wind blew outside. The room was utterly dark, and his inner clock said the sky wouldn't begin to brighten for perhaps an hour or two. He tried to shut his eyes and re-lose himself under the weight of the thick covers, the cocooning warmth of their shared bed. This time it was Dawn who was spooning him, her hand around his abdomen.

He had the insistent stirring of morning wood. Her hand was, just barely, not touching it.

Previously his thoughts had been muddled. Now he turned them over and over, like one of Mr. Carter's spreadsheets.

"I like her. She's funny and she laughs at my jokes. She's easy to be around: I like the woman who reads Trollope and enters ugly sweater contests. But... Lord have mercy, is she ugly! I guess, in the dark, it's easy to be a nasty horndog, but I don't feel the urge to even hold her hand in the daylight..." he thought.

On the other hand, he really wanted that hand to slip an inch lower. It would feel so good--and hang the consequences. He resolved to be a gentleman. They could have a good week and it'd be a tale they'd both tell--separately.

Right now, though, that part of him downright ached. She moved slightly, as if to withdraw her hand, and he couldn't help it: he pressed his ass back into her lap, nestling into the warmth. She drew in her breath through her nostrils, the sound close by his ear. Had she wriggled slightly? She pushed her hand down, looking for presents and found one under the tree.

She tugged it, once, twice.

"Oh," he said, betraying his wakeful awareness. He tried to turn towards her, and then they were both scrabbling in the dark. Her gown was an endless acreage of fuzzy flannel that he kept pushing and pushing and pushing, trying to find her body. Beneath it, she was a rolling landscape of undulating skin: hills, valleys, precipices, and clefts. With one hand, he found a padded mound covered in coarse fur and slick with sticky wetness. With his lips, he found her mouth.

The covers were tangled now, resisting their movements. She tried to shift and lay back, her legs akimbo, all the while her hands urgently tugging at his jammies and boxers. Mitch was lost in a sea of heavy starched linen, occasional desperate hot lips, warm breath, the scent of a woman's arousal. Taut. Wet. Hot. The bed squeaked and groaned and shuddered as finally he managed to roll atop her. Her legs drew up and he slid down into endless softness, rippling and shuddering in time to his sudden need to thrust.

Squeak-a-squeak-a-squeak-a. And over that, a duo tone of moaning. Hers. And his. And between these sounds, the squelch of their juicy genitals bouncing together.

He felt the ridges of his helmet stroking her insides, the electric thrill of his skin rolling around inside her velvet vicelike grip. He pressed himself inside, feeling his tool stiffen in a series of hard flexing twitches. Every millimeter of his meat jumping convulsively within her. With each of these twitches came a deep and gut-wrenching "uh". He heard her reply to each one in kind: "Uh... uh... uh... uh..." he heard her grunt uncontrollably, his eyes firmly shut, blood fizzing.

And then each of them found themselves lying there, panting, bodies starting to shiver in the freezing air. Mitch scrambled to pull the blankets back over them both. Holding one another, they fell snoozing into the afterglow.

The morning found Dawn embarrassed in every way imaginable. It began, unceremoniously, with Miss Sasaki flinging open the bedroom door and pushing in a little cart laden with tea. She felt Mitch jump apart from her to face the intruder, taking most of the tangled covers with him and leaving her naked before the erstwhile maid.

"He vigorous lover?" she asked Dawn, the word 'vigorous' taking a tortured turn through her ridiculous accent. "Fill berry good."

The stereotypical Japanese maid thing would have been a crackup, except for the self-conscious, shamefaced fact that the whole house must have heard them rutting in the dark.

"Oh, fuck, she had to say exactly that," she thought. She had no idea how Mitch would feel about their coupling, let alone the possibility of "filling belly good". Miss Sasaki winked at her and then departed, drawing the door closed in her wake.

Sleep banished, she could look upon Mitch for the first time as something other than... whatever they'd been yesterday. She expected that she already knew his thoughts, etched as they were on his face, just like every previous lover she'd ever had: She was exactly as ugly to him as she'd been the day before, her face a grotesque grimace hovering over a jowly neck that disappeared into pale shoulders. He'd be glad that she'd restored the endless bedclothes to hide the rest of her. She tried to recall the feeling, the urgency, with which he'd thrust himself upon her scant hours ago--when they'd been in the dark--and tried to swallow the hurt.

For some reason, though, he leaned over as-if to kiss her, just to see how it felt. She balked at it, trying to avoid clinching with him.

"We have morning breath. And I'm not sure yet if we both meant what happened."

"I... uh..." he said.

"Let's just say it's what we both wanted in the moment," he replied.

"Who the fuck is this guy?" she thought. "Am I really like, letting myself get involved with him?" His hair standing on end, tangled up in the bedclothes, he looked surprised and shocked to be there. The cold wet spot very near her thigh reminded her insistently about her mother's prognostications about her latent talents. Also, she needed to pee, but it was too cold to do anything about it yet.

"You want some tea?" he asked. "At least our, uh, 'Japanese' maid brought us something warm."

"I don't buy the Japanese maid act for one second and it's too far to reach it without leaving the covers," she said.

"That accent has to be fake. No matter: we're well provisioned and if I'm quick enough I won't notice the cold. After all, I'm a man: I don't have feelings" he joked. With some effort he unwound from the tangle of quilts, comforters, and winding sheets, then slithered into the room to pour the tea.

The cold hit him immediately and Dawn laughed to see him hopping about naked, emitting a keening "Eeee!" as he worked. She saw that he was thin, but not emaciated. She knew he was tall, and his height meant that his arms and legs were taut and bony rather than bulky. He had t-shirt tan lines, below which his skin was pink (where it wasn't turning blue). She spied, as he emerged from their cocoon, a very prominent indicator that perhaps his morning affection wasn't all brave face.

"That might be the fattest part of him," she thought mischievously, before biting her lip.

Said indicator deflated rapidly, though, in the frosty air. He poured the tea from the elegant teapot into the dainty cups, the steam curling in the air as he did so. Gallantly, he handed her one, trying not to let his shivering shake it off the delicate saucer. Trying hard not to look at her naked body as she exposed it further, instead watching her reflection in the surface of the tea. Sort of like Perseus with Athena's shield.

"Best drink it before it you have to chip ice off the surface," he told her. Their eyes met as he danced from foot-to-foot shivering.

"I'd love to join you under the covers, but I need..." He glanced down at the deflated tool. He snatched up a robe hanging from the front of wardrobe on a hook, covered his nakedness, and headed off to take a shower.

Following his shower, he returned to the room, but Dawn had already decamped to breakfast. He dressed quickly so that he could follow her. Today would be a workday, so he knew he'd be closeted with the dusty old relic, Mr. Carter, for much of it.

This was probably a good thing. On the one hand, in the abstract, when he wasn't looking directly at her, he felt the gallant need to reassure Dawn that he really liked her. On the other hand, he kept wanting to take himself behind the mental woodshed for crossing that line with her. He might be attracted to the person in the abstract, but the sight of her was like a dreadful forcefield that pushed him physically away.

"Maybe, if I do it with her enough, I'll go blind and it won't matter," he mumbled to himself. He imagined himself with a guide dog. He imagined the guide dog whining to get away from her...

"Alright, objectively, she's quite ugly on the outside, but thinking that makes me feel ugly on the inside," he thought. He gathered his laptop, charged his fountain pen, and broke out a new Moleskine notebook to prepare to go to his doom: Mr. Carter was waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs. He'd ordered strong coffee and fresh baked croissants to be delivered into the library. There was a roaring fire, and the room was overly warm, the way elderly people often kept their houses and in violent contrast with the glacial tundra of the bedrooms upstairs.

On Mr. Carter's desk there were account books and printouts. There were statements and prospectuses. Mr. Carter, in his reedy, sly, pernicious voice added stories of this or that person in this or that business to each of them. Detailed stories with careful notice not just of the dollars, but of the cents.

"Mr. Cre... uh, Carter, sir," Mitch finally said, as they got up for a late lunch, "You don't really need any financial advice, do you? Everything here is handled by our normal work, or you have your finger on the pulse of it already. Why am I here? Is this just a kind of sop to the Old Lady?"

"Oh, some backbone. I do like that," he said, as if Mitch were a kind of pet who could be spoken about without any offense being noticed.

"Some of these bright lads she sends must be poked in the head before they notice. You're here, with your, er, lovely lass, to entertain me and keep me entertained. I like to talk shop some, so we'll spend a time with my dusty notebooks. But mostly... well, you'll see soon enough. Christmas comes but once a year, my boy, let's make it a good one."

Mitch shivered at the tone in his voice, which was more "sizing up the goose for the oven" than "conspiratorial friend".

After lunch, the old fossil went for a nap, leaving Dawn and Mitch to linger over tea and (store-bought industrial) fortune cookies.

"You're not attracted to me, are you Mitch?" she finally asked, as he was fumbling around, trying to think of what to say next. She seen the near double-take when he'd come in to lunch, as if he'd forgotten what she looked like in the cold hard light of day.

"You're not like anyone I've ever dated before, but I wouldn't say I wasn't attracted," he replied thickly. "In fact, you're pretty cute..."

"I'm cute like a dump truck. Regretting what we did?"

"Nope," he said, trying to sound convinced of it. He was studying the cutlery pattern as he said it.

"I don't either, but I still don't trust that this isn't some kind of a put on. When this week is over, we'll go home, and you'll maybe say 'hi' when you buy your coffee. You'll go back to the 'Moth Girls' of the world and talk to your buddies about how you spent a week in the snow with the mastodon."

"Wow! I'm not that shallow, I hope. I mean, this week was kind of unplanned, but spontaneity has its own rewards."

"Oh, like last night," she said.

He smiled.

"We didn't use any protection last night," she observed.

"I guess planning is not our strong suit. Maybe spontaneity is our love language?" he tried. She snorted.

"Family planning might be our strong suit, if we keep that up," she said. Then, for a moment, she seemed slightly bashful, turning her head down while keeping her eyes on him. This was the second time she'd really thought about that as a possibility, but she hadn't meant to say it out loud.

"Maybe you're not the most conventionally attractive woman," he said, eliciting another snort from her, "but I like being around you and, well, you laugh at my sense of humor. You have no idea how rare that is," he said, leaning in towards her, searching for a kiss. She turned her head at the last second.

"Let's take it one step at a time, Mitch. We still hardly know each other and you can't go walking around with your eyes closed."

Mitch went to retrieve his things from the library, so Dawn went up to their room to get her book. The bed was freshly made up, the covers as taut as a trampoline. The room had reached a comfortable temperature, so she climbed up onto the bed. Perhaps she'd take a nap in a bit?

"This what you've been up to?" Mitch asked, as he brought his pile of equipment in.

"I bounced around the house this morning. You sure know how to show a girl a good time, Mitch," she replied, keeping her eyes on the novel.

"Well, I'm free now. What do you want to do?" he asked, glancing nervously at the door to the library, hoping against hope that Mr. Carter would be out of it for the rest of the day.

"I thought I saw a horse barn when we drove in. You want to walk over with me?"

"I grew up a California boy. In California, 'winter' is kept in the mountains, where it belongs. A thing you can drive to, not a thing that happens to you. One hears about 'winter' on the news, sort of like volcanoes or the Ebola virus. When I moved to the East Coast for college and later to work for the firm, it was just this massively inconvenient thing--black iced sidewalks and slush puddles and freezing cold. So, going outside in it deliberately? Scary."

"I'll be right there with you, to keep the Abominable Snow Monster of the North at bay."

"Okay then. Show me?" he said, biting off a quip about bringing his own snow monster.

It took a few minutes to garb up for the weather, but when they emerged from the front door, Mitch discovered that Vermont under freshly fallen snow was an unknown world whose existence he'd never suspected. A world washed in pure white, the snow half a foot deep and crunchy underfoot. The air was cold in a crisp, invigorating way, and smelled fresh and pure. His senses felt heightened.

The barn had been various colors, most recently a classic red, but the paint was faded and older paint colors or plain weathered boards showed through. The metal roof sported a trim of the tiniest icicles. Every detail sparkled.

As they approached it, Dawn would look back occasionally, to see if he was keeping up. Their breath wreathed around their heads, and he could see her cheeks, the only exposed part of her, getting pink. Out here, she was an amorphous dark blue shape, right down to her Gore-Tex mittens.

The barn itself was shut up tight. He couldn't smell any of the typical barnyard smells he'd expected, although that could have been due to the snow as much as anything. If he'd expected a horse or two, he was disappointed. They rounded the corner of the barn, where it bordered the straggly fringes of the nearby wood, to get out of the breeze. There was a sloping area leading into the woods and no prying eyes would see them for a few minutes.

Dawn waited for him to crunch up the last few steps so they could observe the view. Experimentally, he reached out to hold her mitten clad hand with his own glove-shod one. She'd given him the vibe of holding back, afraid to commit, afraid that their coupling in the dark was just him taking advantage of her. He thought of the zombie-rat sweater. Was that her image of him?

Mitch wanted desperately, for no reason he could explain, not to be a rat. He still couldn't exactly see past her outward appearance. Every time he thought he could, he found that his face betrayed him. She'd compared her sisters to the gorgons, so he supposed she could be Medusa: she certainly turned his tongue into stone when he looked at her. And, he thought sardonically, she'd turned something else into stone in the dark. How could he reassure her without, exactly, getting into further trouble?

He reached out and embraced her. Their lips and noses were freezing, but the kiss was hot. With his eyes closed, everything was okay.

She showed him how to make snow angels before they were forced indoors by the cold.

All through dinner, Dawn felt subdued. Mr. Carter dominated the conversation, one that focused strictly on Mitch. She would have felt invisible, except that whenever the nasty old man would glance her way, he would shudder or his lip would curl in distaste. When the last of the interminable nightcaps were consumed, she retreated upstairs. Mitch had arrived in the Red Room just as she had returned from brushing teeth. He'd donned his jammies and was rummaging around in this Dopp kit, looking for something.

She giggled as she sat on the edge of the bed and prepared to pivot her legs under the covers. The room was chilly, and the bed linens were freezingly cold. She thought he was trying not to watch her expose herself while simultaneously trying to be surreptitious about pulling out his small supply of condoms.

"Maybe tonight," Dawn said, "we should try just being close, okay? Just hold me? One day at a time?"

Mitch cautiously agreed, climbing into the cold bed and pulling the covers over them. She reached out to switch off the light and lay there in the darkness. The only warmth in the world seemed to emanate from Mitch. She thought it was amusing, how he tried not to let her feel how hard he was getting. She imagined his cock was like the North Pole in children's stories: long, with a shiny knob on the end and streamers running around it. It made her ache to have it back inside her again. She smiled in the dark, thinking of the phrase "shine his pole".

God, she was dripping. He must smell it!

She knew it was dangerous, that it was growing more and more likely that he'd give her the gift she feared most: a one-way ticket to motherhood. Possibly, he already had, although she thought it was early in her cycle. She'd tried so assiduously to avoid it, but the pill made her complexion break out and, lacking a boyfriend, she'd done away with it. Her appearance appeared to horrify Mitch, but he was still here and still trying to hide his massive organ from her.

Around three a. m., the owls began to hoot in the trees outside, long, mournful calls. She didn't think she'd slept a wink, her consciousness focused on the feel of Mitch shifting about, uncomfortably trying to get his boner under control. Each time she'd moved, feigning sleep, her nightdress worked higher. This time, she felt his cock against her bare thigh, quivering. Enough!

"I need it, Mitch," she whispered, just loud enough to cover the hoot-hoot-hoot outside. She rolled up onto her knees and reached back to align that insistent stiffness with her opening.

He had moaned when she touched him but rose up behind her, not pretending to have been awakened. The fearsome sword began to cleave her flesh. She flushed with excitement, thinking: "Thank god he's big enough to take me from behind."

She felt him reach out, as if to find the condoms.

"Probably too late, lover. Just put it in me," she grunted, and began to work herself onto his shiny pole. Outside the owl hooted. Soon he hooted his own call in reply. She felt her belly warming inside with the heat of his emission and a sick certainty that they'd just done the deed, before they were both embraced by a satisfied, satiated sleep.

Mitch was annoyed to find that Mr. Cretaceous was pretending that the previous day's discussion had never happened. Instead of sleeping in and, perhaps, getting to explore his budding... attraction was the wrong word... with Dawn, instead the maid had banged on the door early. Once again, he was roasting in the dark, wood-paneled library, poring over complex financial derivatives. By lunchtime, Mitch was wishing that Dawn was there for an entirely different reason: all the math might have kept her awake, while he felt his edge slipping minute-by-minute. Miss Sakai brought in bologna sandwiches for lunch, so he didn't even get to visit with her.

They finished late, with the cadaverous oligarch announcing he was tired. The big hall clock was striking eight o'clock when he stumbled from the tenth chamber of Hell into a mostly darkened house. Only the Christmas tree in the foyer was aglow. He struggled up the stairs and stumbled down the hallway to the Red Room. From the dark of the hallway, the doorway shone with a rosy, welcoming glow, illuminated by just a single bedside lamp. Inside the massive mahogany bed, its four posts carved with intricate vines, leaping deer, and capering fauns, was Dawn, dressed once more in her voluminous, tan-colored nightgown, the various fuzzy blankets drawn up around her.

She must have heard the floorboards creaking under his weight, for she was looking at him as he came through the door. Mitch said nothing, but carefully turned and shut the door, turning the key in the lock. No Japanese maid or lecherous old man would barge into the Red Room unannounced.

Heart pounding, he looked back at her. Her eyebrows arched as she held the covers wide for him to join her. His gaze slipped down to her bodice, elaborately stitched with a white placket bordered in teddy bears, rocking horses, candy canes, and sleds. He still felt horrified by her appearance, uncertain how he'd done naked adult things in the dark with her before. Would he be able to fake his way through it now?

"What'cha think?" she asked, as if sensing the inner turmoil. There was no way he could honestly answer that question.

He chuckled: "You look like a Christmas present, wrapped up like that. Julie Andrews..."

"... likes things tied up with string, but any attempt to tie me up might be your last," she finished.

"I'm thinking, um... that maybe you're regretting the other night?" he stammered.

"Me regret? No, I think it might be you who..."

He couldn't let her finish that sentence. He stepped up, closed his eyes, and kissed her.

"Don't do that unless you really really mean it," she growled. His hands reached around her portly waist, and he could feel her voluminous thighs parting, preparing her legs to embrace him and pull him into the bed. His fears of just a moment ago were answered by a surge in his loins. Perhaps it would be only momentary, but there would be no difficulty bedding Dawn, especially if he kept his eyes closed.

"I really really meant it", he whispered, reaching to kiss her again. She trembled only slightly as she gave in to the kiss, one hand gently behind his head. Mitch kept his eyes squeezed shut and let the dance of tongues guide him, his body melding into hers in a full-bodied embrace.

"Look," he said, "maybe we've started out with a 'lack of planning' aesthetic. Maybe we can plan beyond tonight? Also, I need to brush my teeth. I've had the taste of bologna in my mouth all afternoon."

"Ick. Go brush."

He hurried out to the bathroom to do his business.

When he returned and relocked the door behind him, he found her still waiting in the big bed. The nightgown was crumpled on top of her luggage, fallen there like a sack of cement, no doubt. When she lifted the covers this time to invite him in, other than a pair of colorful knitted socks, she was completely naked.

"Your move, Mitch," she whispered. The totality of her had frozen him in place. He could feel the cold of the air seeping into his bones, sapping his will, and driving rational thought away. He'd felt a certain animal lust, lunging into her in the dark last night, but in the glare off the red flock wallpaper, which glowed off the awful reality of her body, he felt turned to stone.

"Can I even get it up for her? Satisfy her? And... is she even attracted to me?" he thought. Maybe this had all been a mistake. He shivered into action, trying to shed his clothing.

"Planning for the future, not just a holiday thing?" she asked him archly.

"Yes," he said, pulling his shirts over his head and then gazing at his toes as he shucked his pants and boxers.

"Good. Get up here in this bed with me."

He tried to hold her gaze, watching as she snuck peeks at his exposed body. He felt his package dangling at half mast, bouncing slightly as his heartbeat wasn't sure whether to inflate or deflate it. Looking in her eyes was the safest. It was hard not to look, instead, at her unkempt bush, with long wiry hair leaning away from her cleft, a canyon of meaty pink and purple folds and the glisten of aroused slime.

Her skin was pale. The shapeless teats he'd felt the other morning hung free, drooping to be supported by her tummy, conical but swelling into dangling pink globes crisscrossed with veins until giving way to light pink areolae. Each of these was a couple of inches wide. His fingers, the other morning had been right: these were pointy in a way that begged to be suckled. These looked ready, even eager to nourish the vast brood that were ready to easily slip from her giant hips and fertile loins.

He kissed her lips again, pushing her back on the bed while scrabbling up beside her. His half-aroused tool dangled near the dangerous geography.

"She feels so alive in my arms..." he thought. He laughed, delighted to have her pulling the covers up to warm them--while simultaneously cutting off the view. She laughed nervously back. He found himself atop her, reaching so he could extinguish the lamp. The fit was strangely natural. His thickened glans was feeling out the damp, warm pool between her thighs, clearing the brush from the opening of her cave. It would be so simple to push in and claim her.

"Dan-ger-ous," she sang, "you might slip on the icy surface, big fella. And this week's too long for Plan..."

He cut her off with a kiss but contrived to lay down beside her. Getting her pregnant was a terrible idea, when he could still barely look at her. It would not be a good start to a potential romance. But she kept the turn going, rolling atop him, her bulk pressing him into the bed. Her knees bent the mattress to either side of him, while her dangling teats and massive belly pressed firmly into his entire chest and torso. He could feel the wet heat of her cleft again brushing against his trembling knob.

It felt hot and inviting, so he tried to nudge and hump his way into her. She grinned: she had him at her mercy.

"You want that, you bad boy. You wanna get your wee willy wet, don't you? Give me your gift without wrapping it up properly, eh?"

"Oh. Oh! I have some..."

"I'm not ready yet. I want to taste you and those things taste icky," she said. She threw the covers back and turned about to sat athwart his lap, facing away from him. He put his hands on the wide porch of her derriere, solid and round, like a dubious planet made of cottage cheese. She stroked his tool, once, twice, where it jutted up in front of her. The one-eyed snake had gazed upon her face and hardened to stone. She glanced over her shoulder.

"I'm going to gobble you up," she announced and pushed him back with her body, her hams looming closer and closer to his face as she worked her mouth closer and closer to his quivering stick. He felt the heat of her breath wafting around his engorged phallus as the dark line down the center of her stupendous ass began to fill his world. What little light was being swallowed by that crack. He followed the scent of feminine arousal, took a deep breath, and pressed his face deep into her fleshy sea. Fronds of pubic hair were dripping with her salty spray. Her weight came backwards, pressing the squishy landscape across his tongue. He pushed his face into the onrushing tide, nose smashed against her deepest recesses, like a diver in a coral reef. He swum his tongue between her lumpy, bumpy lips, hoping to connect lightly with her pearled oyster. Her body shook as he explored her deep canyons.

In the darkness under her groaning weight, black spots began to dance in his head, as his oxygen ran low. Then he plummeted from suffocation into drowning. Squirting blasts, like an undammed creek, gouted out, soaking his face and filling his throat. Her thighs clenched so very tight, smashing his head, as she quivered and then fell forward, her voice a carol, a hymn of need.

Mitch sucked in the cool crisp air, panting in relief from the darkness, a grin of satisfaction at having brought her off plastered on his face.

"So fucking unfair," she mumbled. She proceeded to even up the balance sheet.

"That's enough of that shit," Dawn heard Mr. Carter announce, as they emerged for lunch. Mitch's eyes looked overtaxed, bleary from a welter of names and small print figures, coupled with another night of too little sleep. Dawn shifted her hips uncomfortably as she sat down, feeling a surge of unwanted dampness amid the slight ache of her overtaxed nether bits. She'd never experienced such usage before in her life. She'd spent a good while in the bathroom this morning, trying to clean up, but it didn't completely erase the seeping feeling.

As the two men sat down, Miss Sakai served up a jellied venison tureen and some odd root vegetable puree.

Mr. Carter, as usual, ignored her, barely glancing in her direction. Instead, he soldiered on in whatever technical discussion he'd been having with Mitch.

"These derivatives are very complex. Cutting edge, I'm told. I don't understand the math, but I do understand the results," he was telling Mitch.

"I don't know. The results are good, but I kind of get the feeling that it's mostly down to the execution and timing. They look like normal debentures in other regards. You should show the math to Dawn: she can probably tell you what all the equations are doing."

The old man looked dubiously at Dawn. She tried to smile without showing any teeth.

"These are the best quants in the business. She doesn't look like she'd even begin to understand," Mr. Carter grumbled. This touched something inside Dawn.

"Oh, so you can see how good a 'quant' is by looking at them, can you?" she said, scornfully. "Show me your equations, mister. I'll tell you what you've got."

Mitch passed her one of the thick bound documents, indicating the yellow sticky tab that marked the page. She began to read. The notation was almost baroque in its apparent complexity. The old man slowly began to smile, thinking her overmatched.

"Can I get that pencil?" she muttered to Mitch, who surrendered the instrument silently, wondering if this had been a mistake.

She wrote a single letter in the margin. Then another. Then a third and fourth. Her body began to tremble. Then she began to snort as the suppressed laughter sought to escape. She flipped to the cover to read the report's title, then back.

"Cattle futures contracts?" she asked, the mirth brimming in her voice.

"Yes," the old man answered, slowly, cautiously, his ire up.

"Most of this math goes into using the phrase 'how now brown cow' to pseudo-randomize the distribution of the contracts. The rest is a fairly common statistics stuff. I think this is a Black-Scholes model, maybe with some kurtosis applied to some of the inputs?"

"Show me," the old man said. She walked him through it.

Coffee and these little flan things were brought in for dessert, by which time the old man had begun to shake his head and laugh.

"I'll bet the mutton futures one spells out 'Mary had a little lamb'" he chortled. He looked up at Dawn and barely flinched this time, then glanced at Mitch, who was placidly stirring cream into his coffee and trying not to interrupt.

"Let's go shooting!" the old man announced, as he sat down his coffee cup. It was an abrupt departure from the topic of the futures contracts.

"Shooting?" Mitch asked, unsure if he'd heard him right. But he had. Mr. Carter's valet, the same dour man who'd driven them there, was assembling a brace of shotguns, safety glasses, and ear defenders by the back door. Mitch struggled to don winter mufti while Dawn and Mr. Carter slipped easily into their own. Together the four of them trudged down the slope opposite the barn, past a couple of thickets dense with trees, and into an open field.

He saw no wildlife, no waterfowl. He tried to imagine straw bales with targets, but that was also missing.

The valet handed Mitch a shotgun, then trudged away behind a nearby bush. A low table held boxes of shells. Mitch held the cold steel thing uncomfortably.

"I've never done this before, Mr. Carter. I don't see what we're going to shoot?" he shouted over the ear defenders.

"Pigeons, my boy," he replied. The old man picked up the shotgun nearest him and, putting it to his shoulder, shouted "Pull!!"

A round orange disc shot from behind the bush where the valet was hiding. The gun belched fire and then the disc shattered mid-flight.

"Your turn, Mitch. I no longer have the strength to do more than a couple."

Mitch tried to make himself ready, feeling clumsy with the weapon, before meekly crying "Pull". He had to shout it a second time, louder, before the valet heard it.

The disc shot out. Near the top of the arc, he pulled the trigger. The gun bucked violently, and the clay target fell unharmed into the snow. Mitch tried twice more, and didn't nick either one, while Mr. Carter's scowl built. Out of the corner of his eye, Mitch saw Dawn twitch with the tiniest bit of body English, trying to help him.

"Dawn," he said, "would you like a turn?"

Mr. Carter looked up surprised.

"Come now, Mr. Carter, it doesn't diminish me as a man to let the lady have a go--especially since she probably has more experience than I do."

Dawn pulled off her right mitten to pick up the longer breech-loading fowling piece on the table rather than taking one of the pump-action guns the two men had been shooting. She pushed two shells into the chambers, closed the gun, checked it, assumed a stance, cocked the weapon with a thumb, her trigger finger brushing the cold metal of the trigger guard, and called for a pull.

"Phwiiiit!" went the launcher, then bam! the report of the gun. The clay pigeon exploded mid-flight.

"Again!" she called. The same result. Then she broke the gun and reached for the box of shells, with a shy smile.

"Two please!" she called. This time there were two phwiit noises in quick succession. She fired, adjusted aim, and fired again. Both discs shattered. She broke the gun again, checked it, and then set it on the table.

"Well shot," Mr. Carten said, evenly, maybe even warmly. But as he turned back towards the house, Mitch could clearly see that he'd tented his pants.

Back in the house, Mr. Carter drew back into his leather and wood purgatory.

"You ready for more numbers?" he barked.

"I don't see how any of this is helping you? I mean, aside from having discovered some trick the quants did," Mitch replied, the exhaustion leading to an unguarded moment, "Is this some kind of test?"

"Filling time until the main event. Don't you enjoy the details of business ventures well-managed?" was the reply.

"I do, but... main event?"

"Surely by now you've guessed that Christmas is the main event?"

"Christmas?"

"I had my doubts about you, what with that whale you brought. What impressed me is that you recognized the, erm, hidden talent. That's one a very... capable... woman. Now, corrupting a married man is vulgar and I don't go for any of that Brokeback Mountain shit. I want a man to bring a pretty girl with him--you've failed on that score, by the way--to add intrigue to the Christmas exchange. Actually, I very much expected Romaine to be on that train. With this 'Dawn' character, I was sure you were playing me."

"What?" he asked. This guy was a client and even Croesus would be impressed by the heft of his wallet, but he was thoroughly nasty. "Playing you in what way? I mean, yes, I just met Dawn and, yes, she turns out to be very capable, and yes she's, um... not, um... attractive but so what?"

"And here I was thinking you were insightful."

Mitch sat there, then thought of Mr. Carter's obvious hard-on outside.

"You do this every year?"

He grinned. There was something he was still hiding from Mitch.

"With a pretty girl?"

"They're not all pretty. Usually they are pretty plain. I felt sure you'd bring Romaine, but you brought this one instead. I find myself curiously fascinated. The... exchange should be quite interesting this year," he leered.

"Exchange?" And what was all this about Romaine?

"Your little, or, I guess, in your case, enormous gift for me. In return for my various gifts for you."

"That's..." The word 'repugnant' was coming, but the old man held his hand up and interrupted.

"The previous gents never told. They never do. They are well compensated that way, although the compensation varies widely."

His saccharine smile made Mitch want to bash the old man's face in, but he sat there weakly. Still smiling, still thinking he was going to win, Mr. Carter turned away, effectively dismissing him. The exchange he had in mind seemed obvious enough, but it would certainly quash whatever tentative thing Mitch had going with Dawn.

Mitch's mind spun. Was he supposed to get Dawn to sleep with Mr. Cretaceous? She'd think he'd lured her here for this, especially since this nasty little varmint did this every year. Gets his rocks off, humiliates some guy, probably yukking it up with the Old Lady. He must think Mitch knew--or had figured it out--ahead and brought the moral equivalent of his 'ugly sweater'.

"If I stomp out, I'll probably be unemployed--and unemployable," he thought.

"No," he said, finally. "They never told."

"They were amply rewarded, those who stayed with the firm. You would never have spoken to any of the others. I must say, I was looking forward to it being Romaine, though. Anyway, we're done for the day."

Mitch stumbled from the room, wobbling between seething and despair.

Dawn wasn't in the dining room, but Miss Sakai was.

"He tell you his nasty?" she said to him.

"Um, yeah. He does this every year?"

"Hai."

"So, it's just a scam to get laid or humiliate the guy or something."

"He devious bastard," she intoned, "always get his way in the end. Make you do what he wants." Mitch raised an eyebrow at her. He didn't like the emerging outline of the whole thing.

"Do you have to fake the accent?"

"Yeah, all the damn time, kiddo, or I don't get paid," came a whispered reply, sounding more L. A. than Tokyo Bay. "I've never even been to Japan. Hell, I'm fourth generation, but someone's got to take the bastard's filthy lucre. You know what the deal is, right?"

"Not... entirely? I get the impression that I'm supposed to let him..." he made smooshing hands together motions... "... with Dawn?"

"That's right. And you're supposed to watch as part of the gift exchange."

"Exchange? What am I supposed to get?"

She laughed sarcastically. She was small and kind of plain, but he could see what might be on offer.

"Oh."

"I've done this for four years and I'm almost set for life. Don't fuck it up, monkey boy."

"Thanks for breaking character and giving me the warning," he whispered.

"You seem like a nice guy and, well, uh... I'd say he's got no choice, but, obviously, he does," she said, gesturing to herself. "She's, uh..."

"She's ugly... on the outside, Miss Sakai," Mitch finished for her.

She smiled grimly and shuffled away, back in character. He decided to find Dawn: he needed to tell her as soon as possible.

Dawn found the grand foyer, with its holiday decorations, a quiet and restful place to wait for Mitch to do his work. She wasn't sure if the tree was a spruce or a pine. Whatever sort of tree it was, it stretched up nearly to the second floor and smelled delightful. It was crammed with decorations, like those you'd find on Fifth Avenue in New York this time of year, a thousand sparkly gew-gaws. It felt out of place, a hollow promise of something wholesome and joyous in a house ripped from the pages of gothic horror.

The massive room held a variety of divans, wingback chairs, and a velveteen Victorian Chesterfield sofa in a ripe burgundy color. The furniture seemed poised for a gift exchange with a large family. She had partly reclined on the overstuffed piece with her copy of The Warden.

The lights on the tree cast a rosy glow over the pages of her fat paperback. It was a struggle to concentrate on the tribulations of Mr. Harding, who struck her as the very antithesis of their host here. It was especially hard, since she was listening for Mitch to join her. She'd heard the latch on the library door and then the impression of a whispered conversation. The maid, Ms. Sakai, had bustled through a neighboring room. No doubt Mitch would be looking for her.

She felt an odd tingle, waiting for him like this. It was the memory of this morning's antics or perhaps the thrill of beginning to trust that Mitch might actually be her boyfriend. It was a concept so foreign and impossible to her experience that it made Dawn's stomach flop back and forth, alternating between giddy and sick. Although, right now, the thing that was distracting her was the sloppy, slightly achy, feeling between her thighs. A mixture of juicy arousal and stale, sticky leavings. She wasn't used to that feeling either but was starting to crave it.

Where was he, already!?

There he was. She looked up as he stepped into the room. She smiled, only to get a grave look in response.

"Dawn, I... I just learned something," he said. "I didn't know. I never suspected. I, uh..."

"Mitch. Take your time. What didn't you know?"

"This week turns out to be kind of a sick game."

"That... seems pretty obvious. Why are you upset now?"

He began to explain. Dawn could feel her face hardening into a frown, her lips pursing with distaste.

"I think we should leave now. I want to spend Christmas with you, but not like this. You swear you didn't know any of this before you invited me?" she asked. "I mean, you must have had some idea. From what you said before, you knew it was going to be weird."

"I knew it was going to be weird, but I had no idea what. I mean, I figured it would be a normal sort of weird, you know? Like, I dunno, he'd humiliate me in front of you somehow."

"Is the Firm always this... unusual?"

"You have no idea!"

"Why'd you take this job?"

"I took the job because, well, they're not famous, because they don't have to or want to be. If you know, you know, right? The whisper is that a successful stint there sets you up. They pay to get you all your certifications--all those little acronyms after your name on a business card like 'CPA' and 'CFP' and such. I was told that you can go anywhere--anywhere-- and do nearly anything with their recommendation" The words were like ash in his mouth.

"After I got there, I found out more. Their customers are all sort of like Mr. Cretaceous here: the euphemism is 'high-net-worth individual', but it's more to it than that. These folks are all the oldest of old money. Their names never appear in the news. Most of the work we do is financial in nature, but a lot of it is, uh, more personal."

"Personal?" she asked in a monotone. Was he a gigolo or something?

"Not like that. Especially not like that with Mr. Cretaceous. But... say you have a granddaughter coming of age. She has her heart set on a highly selective college. Well! They must need something. Maybe a new arts pavilion! Or, say the granddaughter matriculates and gets into some trouble. Surely the gentleman in question would be fascinated exploring the possibility of bauxite mining in Uzbekistan?"

"So, you're a fixer?"

"Not even that, just a general dog's body, for now. I'm a cog in the machine that's making sure that every whim or desire the clients have is also a tax avoiding, revenue enhancing, long-term investment opportunity. The saying around the office is 'money doing money things'. We... uh... help money to do money things."

The lights of the tree were glittering on him. He was so handsome. Dawn wondered what he was seeing.

"And...?" she asked.

"And... well... the people who have been at the Firm a long time, they have done well for themselves. If you put up with their crap long enough, it can be you whose money can be doing money things. I don't know how much soul you have to sell to get that. Or, I guess I didn't used to know. But I figured I could spend a few years, take the experience, get a recommendation--and, yeah, money--and then decide what to do with my life. I could, you know..."

"Bauxite mining in Uzbekistan?" she asked, coquettishly.

"Sounds appealing, doesn't it? Got your passport? You up on your vaccinations?"

"What are you going to do now?"

"I was thinking we'd pack up and go. Get a room at one of those B&Bs we passed in town and spend more time getting to know one another. Next week will come soon enough. Do you know if the bodega is hiring?"

She looked at him and then glanced at the windows. Dusk was falling and there was snow falling.

"Why should we run away? Free lodging in upstate Vermont and no distractions? We can get to know each other here," she whispered. She put her hand on his knee, feeling her heart hammering. It felt good. Was he getting used to her? Or was it just because he wasn't looking directly at her?

"Because he wants..."

"Do you always do what somebody else wants? What's the worst he can do?"

"Don't ask that question!" Mitch shuddered.

"What if we went through with it? We'd be building a solid future..." she heard herself say. It was funny to say 'we' instead of 'me' or 'you'. She tried to imagine Mr. Cretaceous in her arms instead of Mitch. She felt her skin crawl and a set of icy fingers grip her heart.

"I think I'd have to murder him," he replied. She felt the cold digits relax just slightly.

"I'm sure there's some mistletoe around here somewhere," she whispered. "After that, we can go pack."

He closed his eyes and leaned over to kiss her. His arms felt strong around her shoulders. She closed her own eyes, let her arms embrace him back and touched her tongue to his. She thought his pants might be tenting again; she was suddenly aware of wanting the tentpole inside her again. Her mouth opened and her lips swiveled in time to his, when she was suddenly distracted.

It was the valet, clearing his throat. He had a child's Red Flyer wagon overflowing with gaudily wrapped presents. The rubber wheels had been silent, tootling up the hallway and the driver, natty as always in his gray polyester suit, was frowning at their antics on the sofa.

"C'mon, Mitch," Dawn said, "Let's go somewhere private."

Somewhat later, Mitch lounged on their bed, watching Dawn dress for dinner. Maybe he was getting used to her appearance? He'd only felt an slight urgent urge to look anywhere else when she'd stood up. This had not prevented him from seeing the huge splat of cum that burped out from her dangling purple labia and thickly forested mound to splat noisily onto the floor.

She made a face that said "whoops", holding her fingers there to feel the last traces dribbling out. And he caught her catching his eye watching her, not in horror.

"There's no room for any more," Dawn said. "Think we're in trouble?"

She dried her hands on the bedspread and started to layer on clothing to cover her mottled hide. Vast panties covered the droopy ravished loins. A stretchy sports bra hid pointy teats. Finally, she had pulled on a shapeless tent of a dress and covered that with the Christmas sweater that had gotten her into this mess. Finally, she went to the nightstand mirror to arrange her hair and consider if, just this once, makeup might be in order.

This gave Mitch a moment to put on a stark white Oxford button-down shirt with a muted maroon tie over charcoal-colored gabardine pants, an outfit that felt more funereal than joyous. Reeking of sex, he'd led her to dinner.

Ms. Sakai had laid out the meal family-style: big platters of goose, gravy, oyster dressing, Dauphine potatoes, green beans, pearled onions in white sauce, jellied cranberries, yams with a toasted marshmallow topping, and mincemeat pie. There were four place settings. Mitch led Dawn into the dining room and pondered where to sit.

The valet stood, waiting to serve, while Ms. Sakai was already seated at the table, still wearing the French maid's outfit, with its knee-length too-short skirt, black stockings, and white half-apron. She'd removed the head bonnet and let her long dark straight hair hang down far past her shoulders. She'd put on red lipstick and subtly powdered her face. She is supposed to be alluring, he thought. An avatar of the mysterious Orient coupled with the fantasy of the pliant servant craving male attention.

It was absurd, demeaning, and insulting all at once. Mitch almost laughed, remembering their whispered conversation before, imagining her as the avatar of Wilshire Boulevard and the 405 Freeway.

Dawn sat at the end of the rectangular table with Ms. Sakai to her left, so Mitch sat across from the maid, leaving the far end of the table for their host. Having seated himself, the valet rang a little bell and the door at the far end of the room rattled open to admit Mr. Carter.

The old man came in wearing a Japanese-patterned silk robe, the image of a crane taking flight stitched in enormous detail across the back, and a pair of fuzzy slippers. The impression Mitch had was that he was naked underneath. He was painfully bony looking, his Adam's apple jutting from a thin throat, his thin gray hair tousled, his saggy cheeks with an afternoon's stubble.

"Merry Christmas!" he chortled. "So, here we are. We are gathered here again to observe another coming of this particular day, to receive this bounty and to acknowledge our commitments."

The old man nodded around at each of them at the table. His employees mutely bowed their heads. Ms. Sakai's frown said what she expected her commitment to be later. Mitch tried to imagine her embracing Mr. Carter's dubious carcass.

"Let's eat," the host declared. They commenced to pass the platters in silence. The valet filled their wine glasses time and again from ancient Bordeaux bottles. The heady, powerful wine slightly browned with age went down easily with the rich food.

Mr. Carter attacked his food with gusto. Ms. Sakai seemed to take only small, carefully considered bites, once again playing at the dainty stereotype.

Dawn began the meal by scowling at her plate, but the food was delicious. Both of them had whetted their appetites earlier, so Mitch found himself enjoying it and watching her enjoy it.

Each time Mitch looked up to say something to her, though, his thoughts were interrupted. The table was narrow enough that one or another of the maid's slender knees was constantly between his own.

When it first happened, he glanced up to see her hooded eyes watching him. The second time a faint quirk of a smile.

He tried to maneuver his legs a bit to avoid a third such incident, but found, instead, that both his knees were between hers. In that moment, fleetingly, while replacing her napkin in her lap, she touched and squeezed one of his knees while bringing hers together just enough. He looked up to see her concentrating on her plate, and to the right, the old man gazing back and forth between the two of them, unable or unwilling to look at Dawn.

"He must be silently egging her on," Mitch thought. "Here I am, between her thighs. Does he really want to go through with this whole charade? Is this part of his endless tests? To see if I'll betray Dawn like this?"

Dawn, for her part, seemed oblivious to the goings-on under the table. Mitch tried to be nonchalant, but he was vaguely aroused.

"Shall we see what's under the tree?" Mr. Carter said, as the last of the wine was glugged down and the dessert forks places asunder.

The valet opened the door to the hall. Dawn walked down the hallway first, then Mitch, and finally Mr. Carter. Ms. Sakai came last, closing the door behind her, leaving the valet behind.

The room before them glowed with what should have been a cheery, festive light, but all Mitch could think of was entering the final circle of Hell. He felt like Faustus, with the devil brandishing his contract before him. He felt his doom closing in all around him.

Rising from the dinner table, Dawn felt slightly tipsy from the wine. The dastardly man in his silk robe had cast a funereal atmosphere over most of the mean, but Dawn wanted Christmas, especially this one, to mean more. She could still feel between her thighs where Mitch had been filling her, making love to her, not an hour ago. She hadn't known he even existed last week, but now? The comforting, traditional food and the bright decoration of the house had her imagining future Christmases with Mitch.

She held his hand as they trouped down the hallway to the expansive foyer, feeling her belly tug as she walked, wondering if she were already carrying his child. Instead of being terrifying, it oddly now gave her strength.

But, of course, the romantic impulses she felt were offset by nerves. Mr. Cretaceous was behind them, waiting and wanting to... to do what? Compromise Mitch. To own him, control him, use him. The awful man wanted something more as well. Something sexual with her. He'd been unable to meet her eyes all through dinner. She knew he found her repulsive but that it somehow excited him.

All that remained was finding out how he thought he could use her. The Chesterfield sofa was available, so she dragged Mitch into it. At least she could sit next to him while the devious oligarch laid bare his plans.

Mr. Carter just leered at her while going to sit in a dark green leather wing back facing the two lovers.

Ms. Sakai didn't sit. She went to stand by the tree or, more like, under the tree, as if she were a present.

"Go ahead, Dawn," the old man said. "I expect you've already figured out that, tonight, the women in this house are the gifts. Go stand under the tree while I explain to Mitch what his choices are. I think you'll learn something."

His sat like a man, with his legs apart in the big chair, like if Hugh Hefner had been the Crypt Keeper. Dawn could see one skeletal hairy leg. It was clear he was otherwise naked. There was a sizeable suspicious bulge beginning to form in his crotch. She looked over at Mitch.

"What do you want to do?" he asked her.

"Let's find out where this goes. At least find out what his game is," she said. She wasn't going to be used if she could help it, but stomping off pouting seemed premature.

"I hope the bodega is hiring, as I'll probably need a new job on Monday."

"After what we've been doing all week, maybe we should think about the future?"

"Not... you know..."

"No."

Dawn rose slowly out of the cushions and went to stand next to the shorter thin Japanese woman. The old man cleared his throat to begin when...

Out on the porch there arose up a clatter. A key zipped in the lock and revealed what was the matter; the door flying open in a winter-swept flash. The snow outside framed a girl wearing a... reindeer sweater?

It was Moth Girl.

"I can't miss all the festivities! Papa, I'm sorry to be so late," she said to Mr. Carter.

"It's okay, peanut, we're just getting started with the gift exchange. You remember how this works?"

"Of course, papa!"

The valet appeared to help her with her overnight bag.

"Never mind that now. We're a man short. Would you join us for the evening?"

Dawn saw his teeth flash in a quick, wolfish grin, as he sat the bag back down and moved to stand next to another of the chairs in the room, waiting expectantly.

"Marvin doesn't normally join in," Mr. Cretaceous informed them, even though the invitation is open. Usually this is a more... intimate game."

Romaine flounced over to stand next to Dawn, so that she was bracketed between the other two women.

"One of these things is not like the others," she thought. "One of these things just doesn't belong."

The old children's rhyme went through her head, and she found herself nervous again. Could she trust Mitch? What would happen if...? What would she do if...? She looked down at her feet, feeling embarrassment taking hold of her.

"Now we're all here," their vile host began. "You know what's funny? I've been doing this holiday thing for so many years. We bring the men up here who will be the next generation of the Firm. We bring them up and see what they're made of. And most of them aren't worth a damn. Kiss-asses. Macho boys who aren't ready to be men yet."

Dawn saw Mitch frowning and braced herself.

"Mitch, you brought the ugliest girl I've ever seen. I knew you were playing me when I first set eyes on her. Calling me on my bullshit, were you, boy?"

"She's only here because you lost our bet," Romaine interjected.

She'd been a dare. A lost bet. The ugly duckling once again.

"She's not ugly," Mitch said quietly. He wanted her and he was fighting for them.

"Since order has been restored to the proceedings, there's no reason not to do our traditional exchange. These women are going to dance for us. They're going to strip tease for us and dance naked for our pleasure."

"And then?"

"And then you'll choose one to mate with."

Dawn's heart fluttered. He'd pick her, she knew he would.

"But there's a catch, isn't there?"

The gnarled old man grinned.

"Oh, yes, of course there is. You get to take home the woman you choose and, before long, she'll have a little bundle of joy for you, and you'll have as good a career at the Firm as your talents provide."

"Unless, well, before you get her, you'll get a lap dance from the other two women. And if you let go in one of them, then you'll be taking that one home instead. And while you're doing that, the other two will warm up for you by warming us up," he told Mitch.

"If Marvin here let's go in one, he gets to keep her, so there's that risk. And I don't need or want a wife, but if I cum up inside your woman, then the bundle of joy you get will probably be mine--for reasons we can get into later. That is, after all, how Romaine and Marvin both came to be."

"Um... what about...?"

"The incest part? Mm. Delicious, isn't it?"

"And if we don't play?" Dawn was grateful for the 'we'.

"My money will do money things with your life. Your life will soon include a credit score of zero, empty bank accounts, criminal record, and history as a sexual predator. We'll see what you make of that. Some men rise to that challenge."

"What do you want to do?" Mitch asked her.

And there it was. His whole life was on the line, and he'd asked her. She'd felt icy fingers around her heart before, but now she felt a warm glow squeezing it instead.

"Let's play," she said, looking him in the eye as she reached down and began to raise the hem of the ugly Christmas sweater.

"That's it, Dawn, dance! Take it all off!" Mr. Cretaceous called out as Mitch's partner began to lift her sweater off. He had some kind of control and from hidden speakers came strains of "Little Drummer Boy". Dawn began to dance.

The grotesque shape of her body undulated from side-to-side as she worked the sweater higher. She turned her back to the male part of her audience while working her arms out of the sleeves and quickly ducking her head from the collar. She twirled the garment and then sent it crashing down next to Mitch on the sofa.

The dress fastened up the front and she undid the buttons one-by-one in time to the music until she could shimmy and shake the thing down about her waist. The song was not really danceable, so her motions were jerky. The other two women stood there watching with sour lemon expressions. Mitch couldn't see what the valet (Marvin, was it?) was doing, but, with a quick glance, he observed that Mr. Cretaceous had started to sport a big boner under his robe.

The dance was a dumpster fire, but Mitch basked in the warmth of it.

Rumpa-pum-pum went the song and, in perfect time, she rocked her hips, working the dress lower. It fell to the floor with a thud. The stretchy bra and baggy panties joined the dress. Mitch could see the dampness clinging, shiny and fresh, to the gusset of her underwear.

The song faded and Dawn stood naked under the lights of the Christmas tree.

"Very... interesting, Dawn, but let's see what Romaine can do?" Mr. Carter said. "Gentlemen, I think the two of you are overdressed. Before she starts, why don't you two get naked so the girls can see what they're dancing for?"

Reluctantly, Mitch loosened his tie. The valet, he noted, went about it in the same manner as he'd displayed before--military precision, precisely folding each piece of his wardrobe and adding it to a carefully placed stack beside the chair he'd chosen. He wasn't young, but he retained a muscular vitality. He was also, Mitch noted, uncircumcised and hung like a horse. The big organ hung semi-inflated, like an elephant's grasping trunk, slowly swelling as the event got more raucous.

Their host merely undid the belt about his waist and exposed himself. His body was decayed, thin, ghostly pale and nearly hairless above his hips. His legs were skinny, but covered in dark hair, as was his pubic region. Sprouting from there, though, was one thing of virality. Long. Thick. Firm. The big tool stood up solid and proud, the head pinkish with a long open slit that was just beginning to weep tears of precum. The old man would have no difficulty putting his offspring into any woman who climbed into that lap tonight.

Bing Crosby began to croon "White Christmas". Romaine began to dance.

If Dawn were hard to watch, Romaine was elegance wrapped around physical perfection, Mitch thought. There was nothing on under the reindeer sweater, but she spent long moments peek-a-booing the perfect delicious mounds before flaunting them proudly, shoulders back, as her hands proceeded south. Bing Crosby's whistling sounded the death knell of her remaining modesty and Mitch became aware that all three men, including himself, were now sporting raging boners.

He forced himself to look at Dawn instead. She was looking a bit concerned, but perked up when he looked at her instead of Moth Girl.

He wanted to feel good about himself, but she was no picnic to look at.

The third song was "Santa Baby", as sung by Eartha Kitt, and Miss Sakai was determined to make the most out of it. As each button of the French maid costume surrendered, less-and-less of the tight-assed, raspy-voiced Japanese harridan remained. She was thin, but not undernourished, and she didn't have huge knockers. They were just little handfuls, surmounted by dusky nipples. Her skin was darker than either of the other gals, but not sallow. The only hair on her other than her head was a prominent dark tangled bush just above her hidden cleft.

As she danced, her eyes were fixed on Mitch's own, making sure he was watching. Making him an audience of one.

"♫... and hurry down my chimney tonight...♫" Eartha Kitt sang and there could be no doubt which chimney Ms. Sakai wanted hurrying down or who should be doing the hurrying.

"R-r-r-rrr!" growled Mr. Carter, "You've never been so seductive, Cindy. You must really want him, bad. Shall we give them a hand, boys?"

The valet and Mitch clapped, the valet with gusto and Mitch half-heartedly. The other two men seemed to flaunt their endowment. Mitch wanted to hide his.

"So, Mitch. It's time. You can see what's on offer. You wouldn't be the first to, uh, trade in at this point. I can even sweeten the pot. Choose one of the other women and your ordeal will be over. You can take your prize home to enjoy, and she won't have to carry my bastard in her belly."

Mitch looked at the man, phallus at the ready, mouth hanging open in anticipation. Then back at the two women. They were beautiful, beautiful but deadly, he thought.

"I came here with Dawn. I brought her into this."

"Very good. I value loyalty. I'll even give you an edge: you can start with Dawn."

He held up the small device he'd used to control the music.

"Two minutes per woman. Either of you cum in her, you keep her. I cum in them, they keep playing--with my spawn in their belly. You'll take home the sloppiest of seconds. We keep playing until you're both engaged."

"You're changing the rules," Mitch observed.

"Only a little. Pray that I don't alter them some more."

"Dawn, you don't have to do this. We can still..."

"Dawn, you agree to the rules?" Mr. Carter interrupted.

"I do," she said, swallowing.

Dawn was moving over, approaching him. Maybe this could be an advantage? But he'd lost his arousal and he and Dawn had done it just before dinner. Starting with Dawn was no advantage. Mr. Carter smiled to see him starting to wank himself, taking it as assent.

"The two minutes starts... now!"

Dawn swarmed into Mitch's lap, the Victorian couch groaning its displeasure. Her face, mouth quivering with concern, filled his view. In spite of their romps these past few days, it was hard to get into the mood. He was aware of Mr. Carter watching them, of the sound of Romaine and the valet getting into it. In fact, the sound of Moth Girl's perfect little quim being impaled by the servant's pole was only matched by the dulcet squeals of delight she produced with every stroke. That sound helped get Mitch going, as Dawn stabbed her well-used cavern down repeatedly on him, praying for a miracle of rapidity. His hands held her blossoming shape, his body knew this dance. If only...

"Time!"

Dawn gave three more lusty stabs, but it wasn't to be. Romain's hands were on her shoulders. Reluctantly, she stepped free of Mitch.

Miss Sakai was already aboard Marvin's train, swiping his big sausage up and down her slick crack and waiting for time to start. Dawn went glumly to Mr. Carter, who beamed as she prepared to climb into his lap.

"You can touch it, baby," the geezer crooned at Dawn. "Touch it and put it inside you, so the clock can start. Don't let the other ladies get too long a lead on you. You don't want to make this too hard on poor Mitch, do you?"

Dawn reached down to touch the disgusting man's prick. If the rest of him was dusty and gray, it was because this part was pink and thick. It fed on his vitality, a warm, stiff meaty organ. It pulsed in her hand, twitching. She could feel the thick tube ready to inject his sperm inside her.

"The clock won't start until it's inside you, but the other girls aren't waiting, Dawn," he said.

She closed her eyes, aligned it with her opening and pressed down.

The length and girth of it surprised her, as if he'd thrust an arm up inside her.

His hands were on her hips, and he leered up at her.

"Old Mitch is going to do well in the Firm, I can tell. Bringing me an ugly slut like you but planting his seed in my daughter? That would be ideal. Epic."

"Not going to happen, old man," she said, trying to hide the doubt in her voice. She was trying to hide something else as well. Her intention had been to just sit there and not arouse a bit of him, but the flexing rigidity inside her was turning her on. She couldn't get comfortable, so she flexed her hips. And flexed. And flexed. And ground herself against the furious pressure of it inside her.

"Oh, baby, that's it!" the old man gasped. "You know, I can tell. You're already pregnant with his kid. But it doesn't matter."

She slammed her drooling pussy against the offender, trying to suppress a moan.

"It doesn't matter, because you're about to get a twin," he hissed. She felt a twinge in her side. "You're ovulating again right now while you prepare to receive my gift."

He was thrusting up inside her now, insistent. Fuller and fuller inside her.

"No!" she squealed, as the nasty man groaned. She felt the heat inside her, felt the strong swimmers pillaging up inside her Fallopian tubes to stir up a new life.

Romaine stood before Mitch, a radiant goddess. He'd been to the Met and seen a Roman statue of Aphrodite, falsely modest, perfect from lips to conical breasts to shapely thighs. Moth Girl was that vision clothed in warm flesh. Irresistible--and cold as stone.

She didn't wait for the clock to start, just took him inside her, pushing him back.

Mitch swallowed as she engulfed him and looked up into her perfect hazel eyes. He put his hands on those perfect hips, felt her velvet embrace, moist and inviting. She was warm and wet, and they locked together like puzzle pieces.

"Oh! Mitch! So nice...!"

They moved. Mitch didn't want to, wanted to save himself for Dawn. But he could feel how tight she was, how her cervix was kissing his tip, and his body had to dance the mating dance. It was just getting good, when Dawn squealed and the nasty man groaned.

Romaine never slowed, but the distraction was enough.

"Time!"

Powerfully, Mitch thrust Romaine off. The smirk on her face made him glad to have had that much self-control. His cock was dripping with her emanations, his balls churning with delight.

Mitch couldn't see Dawn's face, but her posture was one of horror.

"You'll get first shot at sloppy seconds, Marvin," Mr. Carter said. "Stop gawking, peanut, it's my turn with you, honey."

Mitch was startled to find Miss Sakai before him.

Dawn stood two steps back from the chair staring down at her hand. The old man's cum was dripping in spits and spots into her palm. The heat of it had faded into her, but she knew the damage was done. In her heart, she knew she'd been plowed and fertilized. What had Carter said? Twins. One welcome and one a disaster.

She looked up to see the valet eyeing her. He was more robust than his employer, muscular, taut. His cock stood proudly, glimmering in the Christmas lights from the leavings of the maid's excitement. It was almost as large as the thing that had just been inside her.

"Oh, you're an ugly cunt, aren't you?" he drawled. He had nasty little teeth, yellowed, stained, with blackened gums. She hadn't really seen that before. She took her time going over to cozy up to him, not wanting another risk, hoping any excitement he felt would be deflated by her hesitation combined with the contemplation of her lack of attractiveness.

She was in no hurry to sit in his lap.

"We're all waiting for you, Dawn," Mr. Cretaceous cajoled.

Reluctantly she spread her thighs and reached down to guide the servant's tool inside her.

"He likes it when his valet takes the prize. You'll be the making of me girl. I can put a bag over your head. Your insides feel nice enough. You'll serve me right," the man said.

Unlike with the old man, Dawn felt no need to try do anything for him except scowl her ugliest leer. She just needed to sit her and drip the host's goo into his lap for two short minutes, and she could be reunited with Mitch at last.

The man, Marvin, was strong, though. He took control and thrust up roughly under her. She worried that two minutes wouldn't be long enough to keep him from getting his satisfaction.

"It's Cindy," the Japanese lady said, with no trace of the fake accent, holding out a hand for him to shake.

"I've enjoyed waking you every morning you've been here. And I liked our conversation before. I know you don't want it. We weren't looking for it. But I kind of need to win," she said. She had a sheepish expression.

She was older than he was and not much above five feet in height, but her smile, for the first time, seemed natural and unforced. It was natural to let her straddle his knees with her thin legs. He remembered their dance under the table earlier. He'd been between these knees before. His left hand slipped around to hold her flat, slim derriere. Her hand was helping him find her opening. The narrow lips of her opening were blue-black and partially obscured by the thick tangle of bush on her mound. He could see how she'd carefully mowed the edges of her forest. It was a provocative sight, seeing the purple head of his tool disappearing into her nether mouth. He felt the scrape of her pelvic girdle against the back of his cock.

He was aware of her watching his face as they sank together. She was nervous, anticipating him. She must see his cheeks flushed with excitement, he thought. Her small nipples, centered in mere handfuls of tits, grew tighter and more prominent as he reached the bottom of her soaking vagina. And inch or more of him remained untaken. She was small inside and she flinched at the way he poked her furthest recesses.

She pushed her lips up to his and, reflexively, he kissed her quickly. He wanted to stay true to Dawn, if he could. She kissed him again and he let himself kiss back, mouth closed. But he twitched inside her as he did it.

She breathed in his ear, "That's it, Mitch. You will have to stretch me to fit you. I don't want the old man's bastard. I don't want to be the valet's plaything. I want you, Mitch."

She wasn't Dawn. She wasn't the velvet perfection of Romaine. She wasn't even the right amount of tight. He laughed, thinking of Goldilocks and the three bears. It was oddly natural to move with her, feeling the thick brushy mound of her pressing into his pelvis. He was firm and inflexible inside her. That part of him had been teased and taunted all night. That part of him wanted to finish the job.

"I've been lucky a few times. The wussy men he brings here cum inside me and I don't get knocked up. A deal gets made. But you're right in the wrong part of my cycle this time. I can feel it, Mitch-san. You're going to tighten my panties for sure."

"What about Dawn?"

"Make her your mistress. Make me your wife."

"This is all wrong."

"We can be like this every night. We move together so good," she whispered, and kissed him again. He parted his lips slightly this time.

With a start, Mitch realized that he hadn't waited for the clock to start. Glancing right, he saw Romaine toying with the gooey remnants of her father's erection, trying to stuff the sausage into her casing without seeming to care that his virile sperm was clinging to it still. Glancing left he saw Dawn just now mounting the valet, just as he heard Carter telling her that everyone was waiting for her.

Everyone except he and Cindy Sakai had waited.

"I know you've fallen for her. I know I'm a bad woman for wanting to steal you. I... just... can't resist."

The maid was gasping slightly, biting her lips against little mewling moans. It wasn't just that she was fucking him. He was vigorously jabbing up inside her in synchrony. He'd lost track of what he should be doing. He needed to stop, to pull out. He started to struggle, to try to disengage.

"That's it..." she panted, "You're so close... I can feel it... Your hot cum's gonna spill up inside me... Give it to me... So risky... Give it to me-e-e-e!"

Her words swirled around in his ears. He had to hold on. For his sake. For Dawn's sake. His balls were tightening. Her smile was growing even as her nipples tightened and her body quivered. If he lost out, if he gave in, he could visualize his future. Her tiny belly swelling up huge and round, watching her squeeze out one black-haired child after another. The Tiger mom, with a fat diamond ring and bejeweled tennis bracelet, ruling his house with an iron fist, while he slaved to provide for her every need. That couldn't be right. Tiger moms, weren't they Chinese?

She smiled. He needed to think of something else fast. But all he could think about suddenly were tigers. Fast, deadly, supple, smooth. Sleek. Sensual.

"Got to pull out!" he thought.

"Time!" called Mr. Cretaceous. And it truly was time. The two shared a massive groan, and he shuddered and erupted deep into Cindy Sakai's womb.

He'd claimed the wrong woman. Panting, he came down from his climax. He looked left to see the smiling valet, his stiff gonads still dripping his cum onto the green leather of the chair. Romaine had turned in the old man's lap, as they watched the antics around them together.

Dawn was staring right at Mitch, right at where his hard cock was still twitching inside the maid. He felt a terrible chagrin. He'd spoiled everything, and at the last moment.

It was the most horrifying moment, standing there, the cum of two terrible, gross men running down her thighs, watching her erstwhile lover shooting his spunk in another woman.

"Are you proud of yourself, Mitch?" she asked.

The Japanese maid wasn't climbing out of his lap. She stayed put, milking him.

"Are you all proud of yourselves?" she asked.

"C'mon, fair's fair," Marvin grumbled. "You bet, you lost. You're mine now."

"Fuck you. I'm nobody's."

"Marvin," barked Mr. Carter. "You've had your fun. Go help Romaine get squared away. We'll see what's what and who's who later."

"Dawn, I, uh..." Mitch said.

"There was a young Wall Street piker / Who smiled as he rode the tiger/ They returned from the ride / With his cum all inside / And a smile on the face of the tiger" she intoned, corrupting the famous limerick.

"Dawn," said Mr. Carter, "please let me talk to you for a bit. Let me try to explain. This is all my fault."

"Mitch. Cindy. Give us some space? I promise everything will work out."

Dawn sat up in the Chesterfield uncomfortably, waiting for the old man to tell his story. The rollercoaster of emotional turmoil from the past few hours had her churning inside. She'd bought Mitch's story about coming here, but it had been a bet, but he seemed earnest, but... but... but...

She wanted to trust him. She wanted this to be real. The old man cleared his throat and started in:

"I was seventeen in 1941 when the attack came on Pearl Harbor. I got my old man to sign for me to join the Marines. I'd lost two of my brothers, one on the Arizona, you see, and I wanted to help my country."

"We're starting with ancient history?"

"Please, Dawn, it's all relevant. Let me start with the beginning, so you really understand. Anyway, when we got to Iwo Jima, I lost... lost some friends... and I lost my mind along with them. I wanted to kill the Japs. I was like that guy in the movie who's trying to look crazy by saying Kill! Kill! Kill! Do you know the one?" Dawn nodded, although she was unsure.

"Anyway, the Corps had no problem with this. So, I picked them off, one-by-one, with my rifle. I burned them in their holes with a flamethrower. I blasted them with grenades. And... I killed one with my bayonet. Stabbed him right in the heart."

"It was Christmas Eve, 1944. We were on the island of Mindoro, in the Philippines, mopping up. This kid--I say kid, but he was probably older than I had been when I'd enlisted--was in this tunnel they'd dug and I surprised him. He was skinny and dirty and sick and scared. He tried to surrender. Most of them didn't, you know? But he did. He was a Christian, been educated by missionaries, he said. He 'not want to fight'. He held his hands up, had tears in his eyes. He said, 'You no bad man' in broken English."

"And it was Christmas, and you let him live?" Dawn put in hopefully.

"No, Dawn. I told you. I stabbed him right in the heart with my bayonet, stabbed him up through his diaphragm while his tears fell on my boots. I wanted to send them all straight to Hell."

"And eventually the war ended. And suddenly the Japanese were our friends. And I had to learn an important lesson. Things can have more than one nature. The Rape of Nanking, my brothers, Pearl Harbor, Bataan, even my friends on Iwo Jima... the Japanese did all that. But they also have thousand-year-old temples and the bushido code and the tea ceremony. Peace and love and beauty and war and hate and ugliness, nobody and nothing is purely any of these things."

"My father died, and I inherited this empire, this house, this wealth, this influence. I built greater wealth upon that. But I took a life that didn't need taking. I see his face in my dreams... and I know that he wasn't the one going to Hell that day."

"For a while, I tried. I wanted to be a good man. In the fifties, I traveled to Japan and tried to do good things for them, but they didn't need me. I tried to buy my way out of Hell, but it didn't work. Everything I touched in business prospered, but I was always poorer. All I could think about was the one life I had taken. I wanted to atone. But nothing I did helped."

"I thought I could find the kid's family, and... there's a secret Christian shrine on a mountaintop. It's inside what's now the Oze National Park. I found the woman I thought was his mother. She was old and nearly blind. And I told her the story, like I'm telling you."

"And she laughed at me! She told me, 'You want to atone for your sin? You will have to live forever to do that. I want to forgive you, for the Lord's sake, but I want to make you suffer for your redemption.'"

"She made me pray with her for deliverance. And she gave me the eucharist and washed it down with wine. And then she whispered the curse in my ears."

"I will not die. I cannot die. But, like Tithonus, I don't have eternal youth. Every year, on Christmas Eve, I must take a new woman and make a child in her. So long as I do that, I cannot die."

"What if you don't?" Dawn asked.

"I'm too afraid to find out."

"So... you have a lot of children?"

"Living or dead, sixty-seven of them. Many of the senior folks at the Firm. The eldest of most of the senior folks at the Firm. Some people I ruined. And more than a couple from my, uh, Japanese maids."

Dawn snorted a laugh.

"You're doing all this on that old woman's say-so, but you have no way of knowing if you're really immortal. You can grow old, be injured, but of course you're too chickenshit to really test your immortality. It could all be in your head," she told him.

"Except they always get pregnant, even with the strongest birth control. Except I know when I've done the deed: I can feel the strength of the eucharist, the warmth of the wine-turned-blood grow inside me," he growled.

"Romaine is not my god daughter or a niece or something. She is a by-blow of Christmas past. She was so beautiful, I thought she was something special. I wanted her to meet a good man, someone who is 'no bad man'. But it hasn't worked out so far. There is always something missing. My fear is that the missing thing for her isn't in the men. It's the part I stabbed to death in a dirty little hole all those years ago."

"Dawn, I can't speak to all his actions--only those I've witnessed here. But I think... I suspect that what peanut did with her bet and the things I've been doing might have you confused. I think Mitch is an honorable man and I ask your forgiveness for each of our roles in this--Romaine and Marvin and Cindy and... and my... Anyway, I think, you'd be a lucky woman to have him, just as he'd be one hell of a lucky bastard to have you."

"What if he's knocked up your faux Japanese maid?"

"Everything has a price."

"Bullshit."

"Do you want him, Dawn?"

She was silent, thinking of him in the arms of Miss Sakai. Probably right now making a closer acquaintance. Maybe he was happy to have the Japanese lady instead of the ugly duckling?

Except, he'd cared enough to ask what she wanted. He'd looked small and crushed by his mistake.

"I told you, when we were doing it. You're going to have my child. But you're already pregnant with his. Let me take care of Miss Sakai... Now... do you want him?"

"Yeah."

"Then go get him. Take him home."

"What if she has his child?"

"You could always marry me. You could always be his mistress."

"That's disgusting, no offense."

"Then go get him and don't ask questions."

Mitch was sitting on Miss Sakai's bed, wearing a robe and in a definite funk. He was listening for the hall door to open, praying for Dawn to come find him.

Cindy had pulled on a robe of her own.

"Do you want to talk about it?" she asked.

"This is all so fucked up."

"Everything to do with him is degraded, rotten and unwholesome. Did you think to walk through that fire unscathed?"

"Wasn't it enough already? Hadn't he ground me down enough?"

"I don't regret what we did," Cindy said. "It wasn't for him, either."

"You hardly know me."

"No. What I did was selfish. For me, not really for us."

"And now everything is ruined."

"Mitch. I can be a good mother. A good wife, if you'll have me."

"That's... not how it works."

They heard the door and the end of the passage open. Someone was coming. The footsteps came to the door and paused.

"Who is it?" Cindy asked.

"Is he in there?"

It was Dawn.

"Yes," Mitch said.

The door opened.

"We getting out of here?" she asked.

"Let's go," he said.

He turned and looked at Cindy, looking downcast on the bed.

"You joining us?" Dawn asked, holding up the keys to the Escalade. "Bus leaves in five minutes."

It was not the clatter of reindeer hooves on the roof that woke Dawn. It was the wail of babies crying in the nursery through the scratchy connection of the baby monitor. She heard Mitch trying to shush and calm them, but she was certain at this point that it was beyond his means. She pulled a warm robe over her nightgown and stumbled down the hall.

Their nanny was coming the other direction. She paused and let the other woman go first.

They'd caught Mitch mid-diaper change, his eyes wide like a deer in the headlights, as all three children were bawling lustily. Cindy picked up her own baby and brought his hungry mouth to her breast. Dawn followed suit, picking up the other squalling infant to match her.

At least Edward's nappy seemed dry, unlike poor Evelyn's, she thought.

Mitch finished with the changing and managed to calm their daughter down, bouncing her gently while she waited for her turn to suckle. Calm was finally descending across their household again.

"Well, ladies," he chuckled, "would you look at us? Our children's first Christmas Eve."

Dawn shook her head, surveying the scene.

"A year ago, I was interrupting the two of you getting it on in dickhead's house," Miss Sakai laughed. "I was so jealous of you, Dawn. A handsome man, so besotted with you. He couldn't keep his hands to himself."

"Clearly the hands haven't kept to themselves," Dawn retorted. Cindy's belly was just starting to protrude a bit from her second pregnancy.

"Clearly." Dawn's physique didn't show it as much, but she was proving her mother right.

"We still going through with it?" Dawn asked Mitch.

"Yeah. I think we owe it to him. We'll go piss on the old man's grave."

"Romaine and Marvin will be there."

"Let them see what happiness looks like," he said, passing his daughter to his wife so he could burp his son and set him down in his crib. He turned to help Cindy put their son down, then paused to hug her for a moment while Dawn finished up.

When the only sounds were the contented sighing breaths of sleeping babes, the three parents tip-toed out, and, at last, Dawn could take her tired husband off to bed, hoping against hope for dreams of sugar plums.