Kasey Michaels: High Heels and Holidays

"Something such as unpacking your suitcases?"

"Yeah, right. My favorite thing," Maggie said, stopping in front of one of the many wire storage cages that lined the walls. "Anyway, I was looking around, and I suddenly realized that it's December, and we're not going to be here for Christmas unless we have a blizzard and they close the New Jersey Turnpike—which has never happened, even though I've prayed for it every year. I usually put up my Christmas decorations over the Thanksgiving weekend, so I can enjoy them longer, but we went straight to England from Jersey this year and now the condo looks naked, you know? So ... who's going to help me get all of these boxes upstairs?"

Saint Just peered through the wire of the cage, at the stack of boxes that seemed to be three deep and reach to the rafters. "Your holiday decorations are in those boxes? All of those boxes?"

"Yes, most of them anyway. And you love manual labor, right, Alex?"

Socks shrugged. "I'll go get the dolly, and we can use the freight elevator."

"Thank you, Socks," Maggie said as she slipped a key into the lock that hung on the door, then stepped inside the storage area. "My mother hates Christmas, you know. The Grouch Who Stole Christmas, every damn year," she told Saint Just, who was still mentally counting boxes.

"So, naturally, you adore the holiday to the top of your bent, correct?"

Maggie's grin was deliciously wicked. "You know me so well. Oh, Alex, you're going to love New York during the holidays. The tree at Rockefeller Center, the office party drunks ice skating nearby, the department store windows. Barneys is always so out there. Oh, that reminds me. I've got to get to Bloomie's for a cinnamon broom. I get one there every year—it's a tradition. I love the smell of cinnamon. And cookies. We're going to make lots of cookies."

She lifted up two fairly flat cardboard boxes and handed them to Saint Just. "You see, I've just decided something. Bernie's already got next year's hardcover in-house, so I'm just not going to worry about writing again until after the new year. You've been here for months now, Alex, you and Sterling, and I've never really shown you New York. So that's what we're going to do." She added a third cardboard box to the two Saint Just was holding. "Right after we decorate the living crap out of my condo. Come on, Alex, smile. It's Christmas!"

Maggie stood in the middle of her living room, wondering why she'd thought it was such a good idea to start this when she was probably still suffering from jet lag. It looked as if Christmas had just burped all over the room.

"What's this?" Sterling Balder asked, sitting cross-legged in the middle of a multitude of open boxes, and holding up yet another, to him, unfamiliar ornament. He looked so cute and cuddly, with a string of golden garland around his neck, and a Santa Claus hat on his nearly bald head.

Sterling was the child Maggie had always tried to believe she could be, the adult she would have grown up to be if her childhood had been different. Sweet. Kind. Loving. Trusting. When she'd conjured him up, she'd thought it had been, as they said during the Regency Era, "out of whole cloth," that he was a total figment of her imagination. But that hadn't been true, as she'd discovered to her amazement and slight embarrassment once Sterling had shown up in the flesh. Sterling was her good self. Which, of course, left Saint Just to be her not so good self, although she tried not to think about that too much.

"Plastic mistletoe, Sterling," she said, taking it from him. "And it goes in the garbage because it's really ugly. I wanted to buy real mistletoe, but the berries or the leaves are poisonous, someone said, and I couldn't take the chance that Napoleon or Wellington wouldn't take a bite."

As if on cue, Napoleon, one of the pair of Persian cats Maggie had figured writers should have, appeared out of nowhere to launch itself at the ball of plastic leaves and white berries. Maggie raised it out of the cat's reach, and Napoleon landed in the middle of a string of fairy lights that became instantly tangled—after Maggie had spent the last half hour untangling them.

"Napper, knock it off," she ordered, and the cat gave her a look that probably should not be translated from Cat to Human if said cat still wants a nightly pinch of catnip from said human, and walked off in a huff, dignity intact except for the loop of lights caught on its tail.

The tree was already assembled and decorated, thanks to Sterling's assistance, but there was still so much ... so much stuff to be spread out through the condo. The bad part was that Maggie was rapidly running out of enthusiasm, and gas, considering the fact that less than twenty-four hours ago she had been bimbo diving in a rain-swollen lake for a murder suspect. "Sterling? You want some of this for your place?"

"Oh, could I? We have nothing, you understand, and I'm afraid everything will look quite naked after this. Well, not precisely naked. I shouldn't have said that. Do you suppose Saint Just will allow a tree?"

"Allow, Sterling? It's your condo, too, you know."

Sterling's smile was indulgent. "Now, Maggie, we both know that's not true. Saint Just labors long and hard posing for Fragrances By Pierre to earn the funds required in order to keep us in such marvelous style, and all of that. I am only in residence thanks to his generous spirit."

Maggie snorted. "Yeah, right. Alex would be lost without you, Sterling. And you know what? He wouldn't want to hear you say you're there on sufferance. You're his best friend."

Sterling shook his head. "No, Maggie. You are his best friend. I am in the way of a boon companion. Indeed, there are times when I believe Saint Just sees me as a somewhat dim child he must protect, and all of that. But I am as you made me, Maggie, and I'm perfectly happy with that. Although I do sometimes wish you hadn't chosen to make me so sadly lacking in hair. Especially now, as it is sometimes so very cold outside."

"I'm sorry, Sterling, sweetie," Maggie said, unwrapping one of the three Wise Men and placing him in the nativity arrangement that she always set up on the credenza beside the front door. "But, as Rogaine wasn't invented back in the eighteen-hundreds, I'm afraid you're stuck with wearing a hat. We'll get you a nice knit cap when we're out shopping, okay? Maybe one that comes with earflaps? You'd look terrific in earflaps. Oh, damn, there goes the phone. No, don't get it, Sterling. We'll let the machine pick up."

As if in suspended animation, Sterling sat and Maggie stood, both of them unmoving, staring at the phone as it rang five times before the click of the answering machine could be heard.

"Margaret? Margaret, are you there?"

Maggie went down on her haunches, wincing, as if physically hiding herself from her mother's voice.

"Margaret, I just saw the newspaper, and read about your latest embarrassment. I can scarcely believe it! It wasn't enough to make a spectacle of yourself in New York? Now you have to go international with your ridiculousness? And with that sweet little girl who is the spokesperson for Boffo Transmissions? Why, there must be at least a dozen outlets in our area of New Jersey alone. What? Oh, wait, your father is bellowing something from the kitchen. What now, Evan?"

Maggie and Sterling exchanged glances, Maggie rolling her eyes almost in apology.

"Margaret? Your father says there are fifteen Boffo Transmissions in southern New Jersey alone—as if the man had nothing better to do than count them, which he doesn't. But that's not the point. You have no consideration for us, do you? You write those filthy books, and now you're on the news every other time I turn around, consorting with lowlifes and murderers. I have to go to the supermarket at five o'clock, when no one else is there, I'm so embarrassed."