Giles and the Mysterious Case of the Stripéd Stocking

"Well, now I've gotten myself into a pretty fix," I said to myself, easing my cramped position in the chimney just a bit by shrugging my shoulders and screwing up my face, but not improving the situation one iota, by the feel of it. Outside the wind continued to howl and I could hear the reindeer stamping about on the roof to keep warm.

This had never happened before; chimneys have always been a breeze for me, which is one of the reasons I took on this job in the first place. But, come to think of it, it's not as if I hadn't had any warning that things were going to be different this year. It had really all started sometime late last March...

The cryptic notice appeared in the odd job section of the bulletin board. Being a mite odd myself, (definitely not a desk job person), I called the number. The office to which I was told to report was in a dingy building in deep downtown. The door was on the side down a small alley. I took a deep breath and held it as I carefully picked my way past old foam cups, burger wrappers and well, who knows...A sudden movement from a pile of rags startled the breath from me. It was right next to the door. A dirty looking mutt raised his head and appraised me with one blue eye and one brown eye. I looked back at the door and rechecked the number. As I reached for the knob, I heard a small, but gravely voice say,

"If you're Preston Page, Saint Nick awaits you".

I spun around. No one was in sight. The only living being here, besides me, was the mutt (and his fleas). As I regarded him again, hand still on the knob, he winked. Quickly, I pushed inside.

A long hall led to a door under which golden light flickered. Suddenly nervous, I paused. The place was silent. No sound of the downtown clamour could be heard at all. I took a deep breath and tried to adopt a "life's an adventure, I'm game" demeanor and entered the room.

It was an immense room, lit by a deep roaring fireplace at the far end. Shelves packed with heavy ledgers lined the wall to my left. On the right were dozens of glass covered cabinets, filled with what appeared to be momentos. Framed black and white photos crammed the dim space on the wall above the cabinets. A huge dark wooden table commanded the far left corner. Its back and sides were decorated with bas-relief carvings of what a quick glance appeared to be heads and faces of childlike persons and deer. But as soon as my gaze had swept this scene and returned to the desk, the short stout fellow behind the desk rose to greet me.

"Ho ho!" he exclaimed, "Mr. Page, so glad you could come! Can you start tomorrow? Your references are excellent!"

My face must have reflected my surprise. I held up my folder. "Uh, here are my references. The message said to bring them."

"Oh! Well, I had my little assistant, Giles, do some checking in the meanwhile. Perfect! Especially your stint as a chimney sweep. This job's a challenge, but a pleasureful one! I presume you met Giles on your way in?

"I saw no one. Well, I saw a little dog." And a laughed a little to show my good humour.

"One blue eye and one brown? Yes, that's Giles. This area's not zoned for the reindeer. They're at headquarters. This is my off-season office."

He poured two steaming mugs of chocolate and ambled toward two seats by the fire. He handed me a mug and gestured me to a seat.

[no tips, but I presume everyone can figure out that the carvings are the legions of elves and reindeer that have lent their services to his cause. Also the ledgers...bad & good any one? And possibly this is not the first Santa.]

After sitting, I took a sip of the sweet smelling hot chocolate. It was perfect and creamy, chocolaty and not too hot.

"How’s the cocoa?" The plump man nodded toward the mug as he looked up from what looked like a very long list of something.

"It’s delicious, thank you. May I inquire what my job description might be?" I asked, as if the carvings and the name Saint Nick hadn’t done it for me. Was this man trying to say that he’s Santa Clause? Impossible. But hey, anything to get away from a heavy desk job.

Santa himself was laughing at me. How much more bizarre could the situation get?

"Do you think you could take over my job as Saint Nick?"

And I just had to ask, I thought in reference to my thoughts on the odd circumstances. "Basically, what would I be required to do?" I questioned in slight disbelief.

"Well, you know; the whole toys, chimney, reindeer routine. You would deliver the presents to each home by way of reindeer and sleigh. Given your previous experience in the chimney field, it should be a cinch to you." The old man laughed as he looked up from his round spectacles.

"Pardon me if it seems rude, but what on earth are you laughing at?" I must have looked awfully puzzled.

"Your appearance," his chest raised in a bit more laughter, "you’re so skinny! We’ll have to fatten you up a bit, and your face seems a smidgen too bare."

I’ve never claimed to be flawless, but I thought my size was significantly average considering my weight of 185, and height of 6’0. My facial hair was then short and clean-cut; I was really a very trim looking man at the time.

"Let me show you to our grooming center and we’ll get started on the look." He stood and stretched out an arm in the direction of two beautifully carved doors.

"Whoa! Wait a minute." I said "I haven't agreed to take the job yet. And I definitely have not agreed to any body altering therapies."

He raised his brows and put both his hands paternally on my shoulders. With a sympathetic gaze he looked straight in my eyes and chuckled:

"Oh oh, now I've gotten you overly concerned. Don't worry Mr. Page, I'm not going to force you to do anything you don't want to do. I guess I've gotten a little too hasty in trying to fill the job. You see, about every seven years or so I try to take a vacation and it is very difficult to find someone like yourself that has the right qualifications."

As he was making his apologies I noticed what seemed to be the toe end of a red and white stripéd stocking sticking out from under one of the glass covered cabinets. It was partially hidden by a wicker waste basket.

He continued. "You see we usually train my temporary replacement for two to three years before asking him to stand in for me. But Jergens, the man we had in that position disappeared 2 months ago and we have not been able to find him. And, well, I have these reservations in December for a wonderful and exclusive resort in Barbados and if I don't start training someone immediately, I may have to wait another seven years before taking that vacation. And Mrs. Clause, well you know, Clementine is getting on in years and I promised myself to get her away from that dreary old North Pole one last time."

I had been taking in all that he was saying but the stocking was nagging for attention. I wanted to ask my prospective employer about it. But a little voice cried out from between my cerebral folds, "Shshsh, don't say anything yet. Shshsh"

Santa looked at me for some response and then momentarily looked in the direction of my stare. In my preoccupation with the stocking, I guess I hesitated a bit too long. But finally I spoke up. "Why do you think I have the right qualities for this job?

He turned back to me, evidently not seeing the stocking as the waste basket must have obscured it from his line of sight.

[Why did Jergens disappear? Is this the real Santa? Will Preston ever get out of the Chimney? What will the reindeer do if he doesn't? What is tapioca anyway? Why do we fall in luh-uv?]

"Well," he replied, "Your chimney sweep experience shows that you're familiar with the one part of the job that most folks aren't at all acquainted with, namely the inside of a chimney. The reindeer are so well trained that the sleigh pretty much flies itself, and they know the route by heart, so negotiating the chimneys is the thing you'll mainly need to deal with. As you know, there are at least a dozen different basic designs, and knowing what you're getting into makes all the difference between getting the job done in one night or, well..." He clenched his teeth, clicked his tongue once and raised his eyebrows to indicate the unthinkable faux pas represented by the alternative.

Since I was apparently not quite ready to go through the two beautifully carved doors, he took my empty mug and went across the room to get me a refill. While he was busy, I quietly stepped over to the cabinet and pulled the stocking out from under it. I just had time to read the name "Jergens" ornately stitched on one of the white stripes around the ankle. As he turned to come back, I hastily stuffed it into my pocket. I pretended to be pulling myself away from some knicknack of irresistable interest and took the proffered mug of newly steaming chocolate.

We settled back into our chairs, and after slurping appreciatively for a moment, I casually asked "So... do you have any idea at all what might have happened to, um, Jergens, was it?" He stared into space for a moment and then intently at me for another moment. "Well," he said, "If you're prepared to take on the job, I'll let you in on a certain aspect of the nocturnal gift-distribution game that somehow hasn't found its way into folklore. And that would be as much of an answer to your question as I can guess at myself."

Not only am I not a desk job person, I'm also not a person who can pass up a chance to discover one of Santa's Little Secrets. I chugged the rest of my chocolate, licked off my upper lip, and said "OK, I'm your man. Elf. Whatever. What's the catch?"

He turned to the door and whistled a bar of "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus". Immediately the door opened and Giles came in, his toenails clicking on the hardwood floor. He looked up at us, panting expectantly. St. Knick gave him a sip of chocolate and then, nodding towards me, said "Tell him."

Chapter Six: The Denouement

Installment One: Giles saves the day.
No, he doesn’t! Yes he does! He just talks a lot! But he does it to save the day! That’s a lot of cagad! What the heck does that mean? I don’t know; I had a friend in college who said it. Well, he was ratters. What the heck does that mean?

Giles licked chocolate from the furry surface that, on a dog, passes for lips, and stared tentatively at the parquet floor. Then he looked up at me.

“You may have read,” he began, “that, by the calculations of careful investigators, what Santa is storied to do every Christmas is, in fact, a physical impossibility.”

“It seems to me I’ve heard that,” I admitted.

“And yet you took the job.”

“I need the work.”

“The difficulty,” Giles continued, “is of course in the matter of time. In order to deliver gifts to each of several billion children spread all over the globe, Santa would, it is argued, need to proceed with self-immolating velocity.”

“It seems to me I’ve heard that.”

Giles cocked an eye at me, then continued. “This argument owes its persuasive weight to a widespread assumption of the completeness of modern science. Therein lies its flaw: Mr. Page, how do you like our quarters here?”

“They’re great. Just great. Lovely. Excellent. Awesome. Magnificent. Palatial.”

“I’m looking for “roomy”, Mr. Page.

“Roomy, indeed. Incredibly roomy. More than generous.”

“Roomier, would you say, Mr. Page, than one might think possible?”

I could tell we were getting to the important part now, because Giles was standing in my lap, forepaws against my chest, breathing his words into my face in carefully measured tones. I stared back into his bulgy dog eyes, reminding myself that, while he might be amazingly smart for a dog, he still saw in monochrome. “Just tell me what you want me to know,” I said.

“All right, Mr. Page. You may not have noticed it, but the dimensions of the room we presently occupy are actually greater than those of the building we entered to get here. And this is just the anteroom. Most of our space lies beyond those beautifully carved doors.” He jerked his head back, gesturing toward the two beautifully carved doors behind St Nick’s desk. “The inside is, in short, larger than the outside. How is this possible? Well, from a purely scientific standpoint, it is not. Yet, when you crossed our threshold we did not knock you on the head such that you are now dreaming, nor have we spiked your cocoa. We have, in fact, stuffed ten pounds of pudding into a five pound sack.”

But he didn’t say pudding.

Back down on the floor now, Giles paced pensively to and fro as he spoke. “I do not attempt to explain this phenomenon to you, Mr. Page, I merely point it out. You might think of it in these terms: a tennis ball contains, in a sense, the universe outside it, since that space is as much bounded by the ball’s spherical wall as the space within…”

“Cut to the chase.”

“Building small; goings-on inside big. Night short; schedule of deliveries big.”

“You’re telling me that, once I jump into that sleigh, somehow there’ll be plenty of time before morning to do the job. But won’t I get old and die before I’m done?”

“Normally, you would not. However, thereby hangs a cautionary tale. Mr. Jergens, a man admirable in many ways, but not one to follow instructions to the letter, met his end in just that way. You have in your pocket, I believe, one of Jergens’s flight stockings, am I not correct?”

“How did you know?”

”It makes a bulge. He had big feet. That stocking should have been on Mr. Jergens’s right foot during his last training flight. He carelessly put on an unmatched pair before the flight, and without paired magic stockings, he aged normally and passed away.”

“So you’re saying if I wear these socks, I won’t age.”

“Yes, Mr. Page.”

“And how do these mysterious magic stockings work their mysterious magic?”

“If we knew that, Mr. Page, they wouldn’t be magic, would they?”

At least I knew what happened to Jergens.

At that moment, St Nick, who had remained quiet, and even, I think, snoozed, during Giles’s explanatory lecture, spoke up.

“Giles, you’ve given me an idea. It’s unfair of us to expect Mr. Page to take on a hazardous task on such short notice without a little extra help. I suggest you accompany him on his rounds. See that he wears correctly paired stockings and so on.”

Giles looked as if his bowels would move. “But Sir, I’m needed here. I’m your right hand. Surely you can’t expect me to…”

“Giles,” said St Nick.

“Yes, Sir?”

“Giles, I can be a nice guy, or….”

“Yes, Sir, or one mean sum bitch, Sir. I get the picture.”

“Thank you, Giles. I think you’ll enjoy seeing the world. You may even have a chance to visit that little friend in New York you’re always talking about. Stemwinder, was it?”

“Pipecleaner, Pipecleaner!”

“Odd name that.”

“When he was small, he chased a rat down a dirty four-inch pipe, and had to be pulled out using a long stick with a big swatch of Velcro tied on the end.”

“Why would he do that?”

“He’s a terrier, Sir. They’re ratters, you know.”

“I’ll say! An old friend of mine once had a terrier and it was completely bonkers, or ‘ratters’, to use your term.”

Installment Two: Giles Cools His Heels, But Warms A Foot

Sometimes, when you are offered a job and you accept the job and then you find out that the job strikes fear into the heart of a very smart dog, you have second thoughts about the job. Checking short-term memory, I found this note: You have just accepted a job in exchange for the information that said job killed your predecessor. As I stared now at the big doors behind St Nick, I was thinking maybe I shouldn’t hold myself responsible for making good on the promises of a man with my poor judgment.

“Think of the children,” said St Nick, reading my mind. He was a sensitive soul. And one who wanted a vacation.

I thought for a moment. “Now, when you say, ‘Think of the children’, I asked, “Do you want me to think of their faces, or their feelings, or of how, stood hip to hip, they’d make a line that reaches Pluto?”

Giles, sitting to the side with a foot tucked protectively under one rump, was silent now. He was rooting for me to renege. He stared up at me with a slightly wall-eyed expression that was clearly a quiet suggestion that I (on whom he fixed his blue eye), could still cut and run for the door (indicated by the gaze of his brown eye.) He jiggled the pair slightly from side to side in a coaxing motion.

St Nick then stuck on a wistful face, stared into his finger push-ups and said, “I don’t know how I’m going to tell the elves that you have reconsidered, Mr Page. They’ve worked so hard on my vacation Bon Voyage party. And that on top of the incredible amount of work they put in to produce the toys. Of course, we owe much to the efforts of the elfettes as well…”

“Elfettes?”

“Giles, I suppose we could postpone those festivities until I return from my deliveries. Of course, I expect I would be quite tired by then.”

“What’s an elfette?”

“I’m sure cake and ice cream will keep for a night, don’t you suppose, Mr Page?”

“An elfette--that wouldn’t be, like, a girl elf would it? Because…Say, what size is an elf, anyway? I mean, are we talking…” I leveled a hand down around knee height.

“Oh, heavens, no, Mr Page. The elves themselves, I speak now of the men, are compact, to be sure, a child’s size, but not midgets. The elfettes, the little ladies, are actually a tad more generously proportioned. Teen-age height, but with a more womanly silhouette, I would say. ”

“A more womanly silhouette, huh? Listen, the elves, they’re pretty busy most of the time, I suppose? Dedicated to the work and all?”

“Oh, yes. The elves do most of the design and construction, but the elfettes play a role equally important in its way. Serious heads-down craftsmen will burn out, you know, without the change of pace provided by more playful companions.”

“Playful?”

“Yes, you know, lively, spirited, sportive.”

“Sportive, you say.”

“But Mr Page, I bore you with unnecessary detail, if, indeed, you have made up your mind to turn down my offer.”

“You wouldn’t have…pictures, would you?”

“Pictures? Do you mean of the elves?”

“And the elfettes.”

“Why, they are pictured right there on the doors, Mr Page, if you’d care to have a look.” St Nick swung his chair away from his desk and waved an arm up at the beautifully carved doors that filled most of the wall behind him. Now that I focused on them, I could see that they were covered with hundreds of what appeared to be squirming figures, too intricate to be made out in detail from where I sat.

I got up and walked around the side of St Nick’s enormous desk. The doors themselves, I saw on closer inspection, were actually only a detail of the huge bas-relief mural. Two tall, skinny panels rising up nine feet or so in the center of the picture, they looked as if they’d been cut out of the larger work and reset in it as a doorway. All over these doors and spreading out beyond them in every direction were hundreds of little portraits, no two alike, intertwined and pushing and shoving and climbing all over one another in what looked like the biggest, wildest block party ever held on earth. Two kinds of characters figured in this panorama. Standing about with t-squares, or grinding at workbenches, or felling trees, or sighting along sticks were dour little bearded fellows with almond-shaped eyes and leaf-shaped ears. Everywhere among them, with plump little arms, legs and torsos insinuating themselves between the men and their work, were draped what appeared to be a whole doe-eyed race of chronically aroused nymphets. It was not always easy to tell which knee went with which arm or face in the tangle of figures, but I was working at it as St Nick explained the background of the mural.

“They are a far older culture than we are, Mr Page. The mural you are studying is more ancient than the oldest artifact on display in any of our museums. They are in some ways quite different from us in their customs. The elfettes, as you may gather from what you are now so closely perusing, are extremely warm and hospitable, but can at times be playful to the point of irresponsibility. These days, of course, they wear clothes.”

“But not too many, right?”

“They meet the requirements of modesty.” St Nick paused a moment, as if reflecting, then said casually, “But then of course, there is the sauna tradition.”

“Indeed? Indeed, indeed! And that would be, most preferably-I mean, most probably-a group activity, I suppose?”

“Oh, indeed, Mr Page. Around the workshop compound you never know, as you go about your work, when a clutch of toasty elfettes will come tumbling out into the snow, right across your path, all pink and raw and laughing and switching one another about the flanks with those cute little birch branches…”

“I’m in!” I shouted hoarsely. Then St Nick was pumping my hand.

“Delighted to have you aboard, Mr Page! Let’s proceed forthwith. Come along, Giles.”

Giles emitted a low, despairing whine and rose to his feet. He seemed to be clenching his hindquarters as he approached the doors.

Installment Three:

We lined up three abreast before the locked doors and Santa grinned down at Giles.

"Will you do the honors, my friend?"

The uberdog’s expression made the transition from panicky to pained. "This is so demeaning," he groused, and gave a little shudder of distaste, then barked loudly three times. It was the English word "Arf!" pronounced exactly as if read from cue cards.

I heard a click and the doors popped gently open just an inch or so.

"I set the code this week," beamed Santa. "We take turns. When Giles set it last week, he made me say, ‘I’m a spectacle of self-indulgence and my reputation for joviality is greatly overblown.’ Before that---"

"We’re ready, sir."

Santa’s hand paused on the edge of the door. "Prepare to be amazed," he whispered, and swung the door wide.

It was a cloakroom.

"A cloakroom?" I said, unimpressed.

"A little joke I like to play on visitors," chuckled Santa. Giles stared at the floor shaking his head. "This is just the cloakroom."

"I didn’t bring a cloak."

"Precisely, Mr. Page. Here is where you acquire one. Take your pick. I recommend you err on the bulky side."

The room was small, but hung all around with heavy fur coats and jackets. I looked around and thought of what my girlfriend, Leah, the animal activist, would have had to say about it.

"Don’t worry," said Santa, "They’re not synthetics if that’s what you’re thinking. There isn’t a pelt in this room that did not in its time house a living, breathing, offspring-nurturing fellow citizen of the class Mammalia."

He waited, face alight, watching my expression. "Just kidding, Mr. Page!" he guffawed. "All fake, I assure you. Incredibly well-crafted and meticulously faithful fakes, utterly indistinguishable from the real thing. We lifted these from the back bedrooms of the Christmas-partying crowned heads of Europe on one of our recent rounds. Animal protectionists all, they are. Oh, yes. Not well known, but true, rest assured."

"I really have no strong feelings about the issue myself," I said, nuzzling my face into the breast of a velvety sable number.

"In that case no need to pussyfoot: they’re real. What are you gonna do? They’ve got ‘em and we need ‘em. I’m Santa, not Albert Schweitzer."

I pulled a pair of knee-high galoshes over my sneakers before addressing the selection of overcoats. Santa was fitting Giles out with a little thing that resembled an Eisenhower jacket with legs.

"Must be tough to not have fingers and thumbs," I offered sympathetically.

"I actually have a few that I’ve bitten off of temp Santas who got too familiar," Giles said.

The cloakroom had a big mirror mounted on the back wall, and I checked out a variety of looks. I toyed with a toga-like garment that appeared to be tie-dyed penguin or something, and briefly considered a dashing platypus pants suit, but finally picked out a long, heavy thing, a tank among armored cars, that I assumed had once been a bear. "I’m ready for Yeti," I boomed, thumping my chest inaudibly.

"Strange," mused Giles. "That’s what Jergens said. Picked the same coat, too."

Santa now stood poised by the cloakroom’s back door. He’d put on one of those multi-peaked doodads that you wonder why arctic nomads wear, and a beat-up antique ermine robe. You could probably clone Good King Wenceslaus from the DNA clinging to it. But he looked comfortable. And he had one hand on the doorknob as he tossed me a big fur pillbox hat. "Here. Put this on."

When I had pulled it down almost over my eyes, he exchanged glances with Giles. They appeared to be waiting for something. While they waited I checked myself out in the mirror. "Oh-wee-ohhh," I intoned deeply, rocking a little side to side as I straightened my pillbox.

"Pay me," said Giles.

"Drat!" said Santa. "Do they all do it?"

"I told you they did. They can’t help themselves."

Santa shouldered the door open and a blast of cold air blew back the pointy things on his hat as he pushed out into the night.

Because beyond the cloakroom’s back door it was arctic night, complete with white stars, chilling wind, blowing snow and a backdrop of moonless blackness.

"Unusual weather we’re having out back," I remarked to Giles. But I knew I wasn’t downtown anymore. This was what he’d referred to when he said most of their space was beyond the carved doors. I looked around behind me at the warm colors of the cozy cloakroom, and then I turned and followed the fat man into the black and white world beyond the doorway.

A few steps into the darkness, Santa whipped out a flashlight the size of a plumber’s friend from under Wenceslaus’s toga. He waved it from side to side until it lit up some trees in the darkness ahead, then crunched off across the snow with us following.

"Is this the North Pole?" I called over the wind. My hands were up in my pillbox now, over my ears.

"No. Pole’s quite inhospitable, " returned Santa. "It would be hard to say in compass terms exactly where this is. The important thing is we know how to get here. That’s our little stronghold up ahead in the woods."

"Couldn’t you have built a tunnel to it?"

"Actually, we have."

His flashlight beam fell on a small boxlike structure just a few yards off to our right.

"I hope you have indoor plumbing as well," I said, eyeing the half-moon cut into one side of the box.

"It is like an outhouse in appearance, Mr. Page," said Santa moving into the lee of the structure. "But," he said, hauling open its door and ushering me and Giles into the well-lighted little interior, "we don’t say ‘Floor, please’ in your bathroom, so please don’t pee in our elevator."

"Sir-err..." whined Giles.

"Yes, yes, I know, it’s a lame one. But I haven’t had time to work on it."

"It’s been seven years since I first mentioned it."

"Shut up, Giles. I’m Santa Claus. I’m supposed to be a little cornball."

"I’ve seen a little cornball, sir. I’ve eaten little cornballs. And trust me, sir, you’re not just a little..."

Santa pulled a lever at waist level and we dropped like a rock for about three seconds.

"Well, there we are!" said Santa, cheerfully. I was on the floor, aswim in my Yeti furs, my pillbox over my eyes. Giles was just removing a paw from my mouth. "Sorry about the landing, Mr. Page. I hope your bearskins provided sufficient cushioning."

"Not a problem," I trooped, "Just glad I didn’t lock my knees. Congrats to you on remaining upright."

"Practice. And here is your tunnel, as requested." Santa threw open the elevator door to reveal a long corrugated-metal passage resembling an ongoing Quonset hut, but shinier. "We chrome-plated this a few years ago, and hung those halide lamps. Before that it was really spooky. It’s just a couple of hundred yards from here to the Homestead. Shall we go?"

I muscled myself up to my feet, letting Giles tumble clumsily off of me and hit the floor, but he immediately righted himself and scurried out the door into the tunnel. He romped around Santa’s legs, his hindquarters fishtailing happily about, as if nothing had happened. He was a dog after all.

The tunnel was cold, but warmer than the outdoors, and I took off my pillbox and crooked it under my elbow, which somehow gave me an entitled feeling, and my stride was jaunty and accustomed as we proceeded down the passageway.

"I assume," I said to Santa, "that I’ll be working with elf-people of both persuasions on a close…comradely basis, right?"

"Certainly," said Santa. "Of course, you will be training intensively at first. Chimney technique, reindeer driving and so on. But it doesn’t matter what you’re doing, life here is pretty much elf-infested.

"The elves invented Santa Claus, you know, Mr. Page. The whole Christmas tradition was their idea. Its roots lie in a civilization eons old when Buddha was born, of which that amazing mural is one of a very few remnants."

"How did they get here?"

"How did Giles’ friend come to be called ‘Pipecleaner’? There is an explanation for everything, my friend, but it is not necessarily helpful to know it."

"You’ll forgive me, sir, if I respectfully submit that that’s utter cagad."

"I won’t forgive you as much as you might think, Giles, and as soon as I find out what that means, it’s going on your performance evaluation."

Santa laid a finger aside of his nose and went pensive, as if reminded of some business matter. I dropped back a step or two and took my topic up with Giles.

"The elfettes," I inquired quietly, exploiting his superhuman hearing, "Are they actually...women?"

"Ask Santa. He’s married to one."

"You kid me."

"Not a bit. And a sweeter couple would trigger your gag reflex. They’re cuter together than baby penguins. He could have a whole harem if he wanted, but he claims the current Mrs. Claus already provides infinite variety. Whatever that means."

"So...as the substitute Claus, would I then get..."

"Mrs. Claus? Forget it."

"No, no, not Mrs. Claus...herself. But shouldn’t there be, like, a substitute Mrs. Claus?"

"Well, you are only temporary, Mr. Page. You can’t expect Santa to encourage his people in serious emotional involvement with a short-timer."

"But I’m a long short-timer. And I’ve been removed from my accustomed sources of… Have you ever had to listen to a lonesome man play harmonica? For hours? Night after night?"

"Well, there is the cook."

"The cook?"

"Glinda. A woman of independent ways, due in no small part to the crucial role her artistry plays in organizational morale. She can prepare you any meal your heart desires, and my lord does that woman know her way around a half-pound of horsemeat."

"I’ve heard that name somewhere before."

"Horsemeat?"

"No, the cook’s."

"Oh, yes. Well, we had it first."

"And is she---?" I made a discreet melon-weighing gesture.

"Jugs out to Jersey and an ass you could camp on. But warm of heart."

"I’m interested."

"Of course you are."

"How do I meet her?"

"Just visit the kitchen. She wears an apron with the word ‘Sass’ scrawled along the bottom in black laundry marker."

"’Sass’?"

"The top part says, ‘Kiss The Cook’. But she means it playfully."

We were nearing the end of the tunnel now, where the Quonset hut covering met a wall of stacked timbers. Apparently we had come up against a large log building. Midway in the wooden wall a heavy door was set on massive black hinges, and from the center of the door protruded a medieval-looking black metal knob. To either side of the door were long benches, above which ran a line of hooks, some already hung with snow gear. Santa sat himself down on a bench, threw an ankle over one knee, and began wrestling off an overshoe. I followed suit while Giles tussled with the Velcro tabs on his doggie tunic. He was going around in circles backwards and snarling quite a bit, and I thought of helping out until I remembered about the thumbs.

When we were done doffing our foul weather garb, Santa stood and went to the door. "And now, Mr. Page, …" He grasped the black knob firmly and, bracing himself, yanked the door open wide, announcing with a flourish as he did so, "Heeeeeeeeeeere’s JUANI!"

Trivia Question: In the sitcom "Friends", Monica is the meticulous gourmet chef now married to Chandler, and Joey is Chandler’s good-hearted well-built meal-loving dumb-guy best friend. In one episode, a brief fantasy sequence flash-forwarded to an alternative future in which Monica had married Joey. What predictable effect had this had on Joey?