CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT
Ana woke up on the morning of the night before Christmas early, too early to really get up. She lay there for at least an hour, waiting to either fall back asleep or find a reason to get dressed at just after five in the freaking morning, and ultimately decided she couldn't make a big decision like that without coffee. She kicked last night's clothes out of the way and dug some fresh ones out of her dresser. The top drawer needed a little extra oomph to shut—had to fix that—which, through the magic of the First Law of Thermodynamics, sent Babycakes to the floor. She picked him up, feeling the faint hum of his internal mechanisms doing something inside his pink plastic casing, and set him back on the dresser, turning him so his freaky too-human eyes faced the wall. She understood it wasn't his fault he couldn't close them, but she didn't want the creepy thing staring at her while she slept either.
After a brief pit stop in Lala's restroom, she headed for the kitchen. The camera was already in the dining room, scanning for customers from its place on the show stage wall, and it locked on her the instant it found her. She put up one hand to shade her eyes from the brilliance of its light, but she didn't really mind it. Bonnie wasn't in his usual spot on the stage and the Christmas tree wasn't lit up. She could probably walk this whole building blind if she had to, but she was glad she didn't have to.
The kitchen light wasn't working. Running the Christmas tree all night must have flushed through the pizzeria's limited power. She pulled out her phone for light, filled the carafe with water, fished out a filter and then discovered she was completely out of coffee. So that sucked. Determined not to let it ruin her whole day, she opened the fridge and discovered she was down to just one Monster, not to mention her food stores in general were greatly depleted. Still a lot of parsley, though. She tore what was left in half, wadded it up and stuck it in her pocket to dispose of later. As long as Freddy could see it getting smaller, he seemed to think she was eating it, and as long as he thought she was eating it on her own, he didn't feel like he had to stand over her and watch her eat it.
His shenanigan-senses must have been tingling, because almost as soon as her hand left her pocket, she heard Freddy check the lock on the loading dock door.
"Morning, big bear," she called.
A pause, only not really. He had to have been walking, but his new feet made for ninja-light footsteps and the next thing she knew, his eyes were lighting up in the doorway. "Why are you up so early?"
"Hell if I know." Movie night with the old man had lasted longer than she'd expected. She hadn't gotten back until well after midnight and had kind of been looking forward to sleeping in. She didn't get a lot of rest when she stayed up on the mountain. "Gallifreys is opening right about now. Thinking I might go out to breakfast." She picked up a plum—rich in polyphenol antioxidants, good for reducing inflammation and promoting bone health—and wrinkled her nose at the soft cavity that had formed on one side. "And then go shopping, stock up on some stuff. I kind of figured I might stay a little longer. If that's all right with you."
"That is always all right with me." Freddy moved closer and took the plum from her, then peered into the fridge to assess the state of decay within. "Why is everything rotten already?"
"You said get organic," she reminded him.
"Organic is healthier."
She picked up several bags of chunky slime that used to be cucumbers, broccoli slaw and parsley, and plopped them into his hands. "If you say so, bear."
He delivered the mess to the trash box, then went grumbling to the sink to wash his paws. "You should have eaten more of it sooner."
"I wasn't here that much."
"Then you should have taken more of it home."
"Yeah, probably, although I wouldn't have eaten it there either. I don't eat much at the house. Or sleep much. I don't… I don't live there, Freddy."
He grunted, eyeing her as he shook his hands dry (perfectly dry; Yoshi's special sealant was a miracle-worker). "I want to ask why you don't live here then, but I know what you'll say."
"Do you think I'm wrong?"
He gazed at her for a moment, expressionless apart from his ears, which transmitted some conflicted thoughts with subtle changes in angle and rotation, then vented his cooling system and looked away. "I understand your reasoning. I'm not even sure if I really disagree with it or if I just don't like it. I hate to see you so unhappy."
"Things will change," said Ana, thinking of Mammon's death-clock relentlessly counting down the days to dissolution. "Nothing lasts forever."
Freddy looked around the kitchen—one of several he'd seen, and all of them essentially the same. "If you say so."
Ana nodded, sighed, then pasted on a smile and dug out her keys. "I've got to get going before the town wakes up too much. You want anything from the store?"
"Such as?"
"I don't know. Whatever bears want at Walmart. Toilet paper, salmon…a pint of honey-n-grubs ice cream?"
He booped her gently on the nose to let her know what he thought of her suggestions and set off on the next leg of his patrol. Ana collected her jacket from the shelf in the storage room where she'd thrown it last night and went out to the truck.
It was snowing again, not much yet, but coming out of the sort of grim gray sky that said it wasn't going to stop soon either. Which was good, right? New snow would fill up her tire tracks and hide the fact that someone was sneaking into Freddy's. Plus, there'd be a white Christmas. She hadn't seen one of those since she was a kid. Festive. She could almost hear Blue telling her about the power of positive thinking.
She really had to do something about him, but the ground was too hard for a grave and the thought of dumping him in the quarry was too awful to live with, which was almost funny, since she'd dumped the human remains of the Toy Animatronics' victims there long ago. Why couldn't she just throw Blue away? It was almost like there was a difference between an oil drum full of strangers' mummified heads and another version of Bonnie who'd died in front of her. Because she'd killed him.
"Okay, stop with that shit," she muttered, turning the radio up like it could drown out her thoughts. "It's Christmas. Get your fucking jingle on."
The lights were on at Gallifreys. It was early, but they were open and she wasn't even the first customer of the day. She parked in the back lot by habit more than necessity and made her way carefully to the doors. When she walked in, she was struck by three things at once—a wall of warmth and good kitchen smells, the sound of holiday hymns on the radio, and a cheerful, "Look who it is!" from Lucy as she set up chairs in the main room. "The usual, hon? Timothy, Big Canyon!"
"Morning, Stark," said a familiar voice. When she looked that way, she saw Hageman by the kitchen, emptying the coffee pot into his beat-up Thermos. "I'll leave you a cupful," he said generously and poured it for her.
"Thanks," she said, sliding into a seat at the counter to look him over. He was wearing his company coat, the one with Shelton Contractors on the back, over some insulated coveralls, with a pair of heavy gloves sticking out of the thigh pocket. Not the usual walking-around winter wear. "You working?"
He nodded, now starting a new pot brewing. "City asked me to run the plow around for 'em."
"So you're the new plow man, huh?"
"Ha! Nope. I'm just the sucker who had a spare set of keys. So do you, I know," he added. "I told 'em so. Told 'em you had a CDL too, which puts you over me. I'm surprised they didn't ask you first."
"Are you?" she asked dryly.
"Well, no," he admitted. "I suppose the thinking was, since I had a family…"
"Sure, let's go with that," said Ana and drank her coffee.
"Don't know how legal it is, me doing the job at all. Apart from the CDL thing, some bank in Salt Lake's got a lien on everything—the house, the office, the vehicles, and ain't that a hell of a thing? Oh, he's always had a tight grip on the ledger, the sort of man who only opens his wallet to feed the moths, you know? Figured he was just being his stingy self. I had no idea how deep a hole he'd dug. Suppose I should feel bad for the boys. Here they probably thought they'd have to deal with running the company long-distance or dividing it up between them and instead, all they're getting is his debts. Anyhow," he sighed, "City finally got a hold of Adam and Sam—not a word out of Ruben— and they gave the nod to go ahead and use the plow, kind of under the radar, until they can get the estate settled. Might not happen for a while yet."
"That was nice of them."
Hageman acknowledged that with half a shrug and came over to take the seat next to her. "Least they could do, if you ask me. I've told my kids, if something happens to me, I don't care where they are or what they're doing, I expect 'em to be on a plane the next day to sort my shit out. Sorry, ma'am," he added at a disapproving stare from Lucy. "But it's been a month and all they can get out of those boys is a lot of 'it's not a good time' and 'we'll be in touch.'"
"How long do they seriously think they can do that?"
"We'll find out, I guess."
"Yeah, but…" Ana lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "Yeah, but they've still got the body to deal with, don't they? They've got to come for that."
"Ground's too hard right now. They're waiting for it to warm up and then they'll plant him next to Jill. That's all settled, I hear, and it only took a couple phone calls. Sad, what the world's come to." Hageman crooked up one corner of his mouth in a singularly bitter smile. "I suppose they figure since the bank's taking everything, the bank can damn well clean up his yard too. Damn shame, all of it. Still!" he said and slapped the countertop to announce a change of subject. "Life goes on! Where you working, Stark? Suppose you signed up under Villart with Bisano and Taylor."
"I wouldn't work for that jackhat even if my only job was pissing in his coffee. Sorry," said Ana as Lucy threw up her hands with a loud huff. "I'm still looking. You?"
"I got some offers," he said dismissively. "But you get to be my age and this job starts to lose its luster. Men like Shelly don't want a master electrician, they want gen labor that can do electrical work. And I'm too old to slog through the mud at the crack of dawn pounding posts and hucking bricks. So I put out the word—you know how I mean," he added vaguely.
Ana nodded. She knew.
"See if I can't land something in the way of a teaching position. There's a training school up in Ogden that'd be ideal. I figure I can limp along for a couple months and see if something opens up for me there. If not, well, beggars can't be choosers. I'll take what I can get."
"Here's hoping," said Ana, raising her mug to him in a working woman's toast.
"Speaking of schools, you should consider taking a couple courses yourself. You know the job, but you need that piece of paper if you're ever going to get up over minimum wage."
"I'll think about it."
"Oh for…" Hageman rubbed his face, then shook his head. "It kills me to see a smart kid like you shoot herself in the foot day after day because you've just decided it don't get any better. But do what you want," he sighed, pushing himself onto his feet. "What's an old fart like me know anyway? See you around, Stark. Merry Christmas."
"Same to you."
He picked up the boxed food Tiny Tim had just deposited at the kitchen window, waved a goodbye, and went out into the swirling grey snow. Ana's plate appeared next and since Lucy was still working her way through the morning checklist, Ana got up and collected it, nodding a hello at Tim, who nodded one back at her as he scraped down the griddle.
As she sat back down at the counter, he came to the window and leaned on it, saying, "Haven't seen you this early in a while. Must have a big day planned."
Oh, this friendly small-town diner with its friendly morning chit-chat. She missed the lunch rushes already.
"Not really," she said amiably.
He nodded a few times, glanced at Lucy, who was watching them closely, then said, "Who's feeding you tomorrow?"
"I am," Ana said without thinking, then caught on and hurriedly added, "I'm meeting up with some friends and we're doing a pot-luck thing."
"Anyone I know?"
Ana side-stepped the question with a laughing, "You know everybody, don't you?"
"Sure feels that way. Tell you what, why don't you bring your friends by? Mother and I always have the big dinners here, so there's always plenty of extra chairs."
"We'd love to have you," Lucy agreed, closing in from the side like a velociraptor.
"Gosh," Ana stalled. "I'd love to and I wish I could say yes, but I don't want to be that person who changes the plan at the last minute. My friends are hosting and they've really put some effort into it, you know?"
Tiny Tim gave her a little time to come up with a more believable story, then nodded one more time and returned to his kitchen with a, "If you change your mind, we start at four."
"And you're having a pie," Lucy declared, already at the dessert case with a box open. "I have your caramel apple here…and a pumpkin pecan, I think. And take a chocolate peppermint. It's really just a candy bar with a crust," she sniffed, bringing the tower of pies over. "But the young folk seem to like it."
"I'll never be able to eat all that," Ana protested.
"Oh," said Lucy, holding them out with a steely church-goer's stare, "but you'll have all your friends to help you."
"Mother," Tim said from the kitchen.
Lucy glanced that way with a hint of contrition, but there was none on at all on her face when she looked at Ana again. "You take these now, there's a good girl."
Resigned, Ana took the pies. "Thank you."
"And are we going to see you tomorrow?" Lucy prompted.
"I don't think so. Sorry."
"Hmph." Lucy wiped down the counter where Hageman had been, polishing away her disappointment before offering a forgiving smile. "Well, merry Christmas, then. But you're coming for Easter Sunday."
Ana didn't argue, but she was already planning to be sick that Sunday, assuming the town was still around at all.
She finished her breakfast (almost, anyway), reluctantly allowed Lucy to refuse to let her pay for it, and went out to the truck. She sat while the heater warmed up, flipping through her phone and making calls until she found a food bank in Hurricane. She was almost sorry. The pumpkin-pecan looked really good.
After dropping off the pies and leaving a donation roughly equivalent to how much they should have cost her, she continued with her day. She drove past the liquor store without thinking about it (it wasn't open yet anyway) and went to Walmart, which had the kind of crazy going on that you could expect from a Walmart at seven-thirty in the morning the day before Christmas. She got a week's worth of food so she wouldn't have to go out again before New Year's and made sure most of it was healthy enough to satisfy Freddy, then picked up a gingerbread house kit and way too much candy to trim it out. After that, well, she might as well go through the whole store, just to see if there was anything here she didn't know she needed, and of course there was. Little things, stocking stuffers really. A sudoku calendar for Chica, a copy of Rocksmith for Bonnie, a couple snazzy cribbage boards—one for Freddy and one for Mr. Faust—and more nothing for Foxy.
That familiar guilt swelled, forcing her a few aisles over to at least look at the bedding. She told herself she was genuinely looking, that she would actually buy it if she found something she thought he'd like, but of course she didn't. It was all either too flowery, too feminine or too plain, and it was all too big. How was she supposed to fit a queen-sized comforter in Foxy's narrow bunk? She couldn't even spread it all the way out on the floor without getting rid of the table first, and even then, she was pretty sure it wouldn't lie all the way flat. Plus, he wanted a bed, one that could take his weight. That wouldn't be nearly as tough to find as he seemed to think it would be. Yeah, the animatronics were heavier than the average human, but Ana could think of heavier ones, even in Mammon. Tiny Tim could probably claim that dubious honor, and he and his wife clearly had a sturdy bed, sturdy enough to produce four children anyway. She could find one. It was making it fit in his cabin that was the real issue.
'That's not even close to the real issue and you know it,' she told herself and scowled, because as bitter and unlikeable as that part of her was, it was right. There was a reason she was looking at the queen-sized bedding and not the twin-sized ones. Foxy didn't just want a bed to hold his weight, he wanted one to hold his and hers. He hadn't really asked for a bed at all. He'd asked her to move in with him. So if she gave him what he asked for, she wasn't just giving him a bed or a blanket or a pillow…she was saying yes.
She hated the thought of passing out presents to everyone except him, but she couldn't give him what he'd asked for and didn't know what else to give him, so she guessed she was done here. She picked out some wrapping supplies and pushed her cart reluctantly to the check-out lane, telling herself she still had one more day to come up with something. If nothing else, she could always say she'd ordered something online, but it hadn't shipped yet, which gave her plenty of time to retroactively think of something.
But he'd know the whole world wasn't sold out of blankets. Even if she had a hundred other wrapped boxes with his name on them under that stupid tree, if none of them were a blanket big enough to share, he'd know what she was really giving him was an invisible neon sign that said he was good enough to fuck, not good enough to commit to. And that was on her.
Ana drove back to Mammon in a far darker mood than she'd left it, so dark that she even considered driving right past the pizzeria and on up to the big house on Coldslip, not as much to avoid Foxy as just to punish herself for wanting to avoid him. But if she ditched everyone on Christmas Eve after hyping their first holiday together all month long, she had a feeling Freddy would show up on her doorstep to carry her home. Or send Foxy.
Passing the post office gave her an excuse to stop and dig her way out of this gloom before she took it home with her. A brisk walk through the cold to clear her head and then she was in out of the wind. The quaint little bell above the door rang out as she entered and the unseen activity in the back of this small building halted so someone could come to the counter. A pleasant smile of greeting froze on the face that met her. Warm eyes chilled. Thin lips pursed.
"Hi," said Ana. "Haven't had any mail recently and I figured it might be because the plow hasn't gotten up my way, so I thought I'd drop in and—"
"Make accusations," the woman behind the counter interrupted, frostily enough that another face—wind-chapped and barely visible between a trapper hat pulled low and a homemade scarf pulled high—peeked around the wall.
"No," Ana said slowly. "I just wanted to see if there was anything I needed to pick up."
"Because if you're not getting mail, it's obviously because I'm holding your deliveries and not because no one wants to send you anything."
This had been such a good idea.
"Actually, I figured it was the same reason the plow hasn't reached me yet: I'm the only one up on the mountain and that's a long way to go through eight inches of snow just for one person."
The woman pointed at the far wall. Ana looked around (her eyes went to the display of postcards first) and saw a display cabinet. It mostly held old stamps, photos of bygone mailmen and some old newspaper clippings documenting Mammon's historic post office doing historic post office things, but tucked in with these artifacts was someone's grandma's hand-stitched sampler, reading Neither sleet nor snow nor dark of night shall stay us from our appointed rounds.
"Have a nice day," said the woman and started tapping loose forms together in a clear invitation for the door to hit Ana on the ass on her way out.
"Thanks anyway," said Ana, offering a wave that was ignored. "Merry Christmas."
She went back out into the wind, took a few cooling breaths, and got into her truck. As she eased out of the tiny lot and around to the back of the building on her way to the main road, however, she was flagged down by Mr. Trapper Hat. He jogged up to the passenger window when she rolled it down and leaned in earnestly to say, "I wasn't leaving it for spite, Miss Blaylock, I swear. It's like you say, it's all the way up the mountain, and that's twenty minutes out and twenty back, and I got the whole rest of the town to get to in one shift."
"I'm not looking to get anyone in trouble," she assured him. "Ordinarily, I wouldn't even care as long as I get my bills on time, but I ordered some stuff for some people and Christmas is tomorrow."
He popped up a wait-right-here finger and vanished back into the building, returning in short order with an armload of mixed boxes and bulky padded envelopes and depositing them on her passenger seat with a breathless, "So sorry, Miss Blaylock, I just assumed this was all for you. If I'd known you had friends, uh," he interrupted himself, his wind-reddened face turning almost plum-purple with embarrassment. "I meant to say, if I'd known these were for your friends!"
"Yeah, understandable. Also," said Ana, holding up one of the envelopes with her name printed boldly on it, "it's Stark, not Blaylock."
"Right! Uh, sorry. I, uh…Merry Christmas," he blurted and fled.
Ana sighed and rolled the window back up, taking a moment to reorganize her packages so that they wouldn't all slide off onto the floor the first time she had to brake for the next idiot strolling out into the middle of the street. Looked like everything she'd ordered was here, and Ana was far too polite to notice that some of them had been stamped more than a week ago. They were here before Christmas and that was what mattered. So now Freddy had his window and door sensors, which would hopefully cut back on the endless patrolling so the bear could relax once in a while. He also had some new bow ties and a small assortment of magician's trimmings to replace the stuff that had gotten worn out over the years, like his folding flowers and flashpaper. She didn't expect him to put on any shows in the near future, but she knew he could be oddly sentimental about his old life. What else was here? Chica had a sparkly pink cover for her tablet, Bonnie had a leather jacket worthy of the rock star he was, Foxy still had nothing because she apparently loved setting herself up for drama, and…and here was another box? She couldn't remember ordering anything else and she'd been straight-edge forever, so drunk-shopping was out. What was this?
It was bigger than the other boxes, but still small enough to be easily held under one arm, fairly light weight for its size, and thumped when given a cautious shake, as if all it held were another box only slightly smaller. Her name and address was on the shipping label, but the return info appeared to be just a distribution center.
Given the attitudes around here, the reasonable deduction was that it was probably full of deadly spiders, with maybe a postcard at the bottom so she'd have something to read while she died in agony, but her practical side pointed out that even if that were true, it was so cold that the spiders would all be dead or dormant. Maybe it was from Rider. He'd always been vehemently opposed to Christmas stuff, or birthdays or really any occasion where gifts were expected, but he did give the odd gift from time to time on his own terms, and always sent her off with something whenever she got it in her head to leave the stable. Maybe this was his way of letting her know he really did wish her well, even if they never spoke again. Or, hell, maybe Jimmy Moorehead sent her something. Or the Gallifreys. She kept forgetting she'd actually made friends in this town.
She picked at the packing tape, wanting to open it, but no matter who sent it, it was plainly meant for Christmas. She could wait a whole day, couldn't she?
She got back on the road and drove until she put the town behind her, turning in at Edge of Nowhere where Freddy's stood, dark and seemingly abandoned, looking haunted as hell under a cloud-covered sky. But when she walked in, there was a little pink cake with her name on it waiting in the kitchen and cheerful music coming from the dining room where Bonnie kept the tree company with his guitar, a quiet reminder that nothing was as it seemed in Mammon.
"It's me!" she called, unloading groceries onto the counter.
"You know, I thought you were sleeping in awfully late," Bonnie called back. "Where were you?"
"Shopping. We were out of coffee."
"Yeah, I've been hitting it kind of hard lately," he said, appearing in the Tray Return window with his ears at a sarcastic slant. "We, huh?"
"Believe me, we all reap the benefits of me having coffee. Freddy knew where I was," she added. "Didn't he tell you?"
"You've lived here long enough to know that Freddy doesn't exactly volunteer information. He's the guy they invented the phrase 'You never asked,' for."
"He is the man," Freddy rumbled from close by in the East Hall, "for whom the phrase, 'You never asked,' was invented. Is there something you'd like to ask me directly?"
"Yeah," said Bonnie, unabashed at being caught eavesdropping. "Why didn't you tell me Ana was out?"
"You never asked." Freddy came to the kitchen doorway and looked in at her. "Do you need any help?"
She shook her head, shrugged, then nodded. "You can put this away for me, if you want. I'll go bring the rest in. No, I got it," she added as Bonnie moved to join her. "There's stuff in the truck I don't want you to see. Here." She passed the gingerbread house kit through the window. "You can get started on this. Just get the walls together for now. Number one way to fuck up a gingerbread house is to put the roof on too soon."
"Who do you think you're talking to?" he scoffed. "I am the King of the Arts and Crafts room. I've built more gingerbread houses than you've built real ones."
She left Bonnie returning to the stage and Freddy judging her nutritional choices and went out to the truck. With a little effort, she was able to gather everything that was left into one creatively-balanced load that stayed together just long enough for her to reach the store room. She let her mail spill onto one of the shelves and continued to the kitchen, where she let the rest of it spill into the sink.
"Are you all right?" Freddy asked, inspecting the label on a carton of eggnog with a disapproving scowl.
"Yeah, but I left the back door open. Hands were full. Sorry."
Freddy left at once to close it and returned as far as the doorway, fingers drumming on the jamb, as if the act of locking a door had made him restless to check all the other ones. "Anything else?"
"Yep. Give me your hat."
Freddy started to reach for it, paused, and narrowed his eyes. "Why?"
Ana waited, hand outstretched.
He took it off and slowly passed it over. She could hear the tension in his internal mechanisms when she pulled a pair of scissors out of the shopping bags, but he didn't move, which was brave of him. She brought out a spool of bright red satin ribbon next, wrapped it around the base of his hat, snipped it off and taped it down. A short sprig with a few berries clipped off a branch of insanely overpriced plastic holly completed the look. She handed his hat back.
"I know you said no costumes," she said, "but I couldn't resist. Merry Christmas, Freddy."
"Costume?" Bonnie called. "I want to see!"
"It's just the hatband," Freddy said, looking at his reflection in the cooler door.
"Aw, damn. You should have at least got the beard, too."
"Maybe next year," said Freddy before Ana could reply. He glanced at her, touched the brim of his hat, and went on his way.
Ana finished putting things away in the kitchen, then set out the scissors and tape on the stretch of countertop that was soon to become her wrapping station. She went to the store room, but her eye was distracted by the stack of scrap lumber left over from the roof repair and set aside toward the next renovation. She thought, then picked up a piece of plywood that was just the right size to have an axe thrown at it and took it to the Quiet Room.
Once there, she fired up the jigsaw and made a circle out of it, and because she had some laying around and doing nothing for her, popped open some spray cans and painted some concentric rings on it—red, white, red, white and a dot of black at the very middle. The overall effect was not as neat as it could have been with a little more time and masking tape, but it was good enough. She got a hammer and a handful of nails and took it out to the dining room.
The camera, which had been resting on Bonnie, reactivated at the sound of her voice and scanned the room for customers, inevitably locking on Ana when it found her. With the light at her back, she watched her giant shadow grow smaller and more defined as she approached the wall.
"What's that?" Bonnie asked, having completed the demanding task of cookie assembly and who was once more tickling at his guitar while the icing set. "You need a hand?"
"I got it." Ana ran a critical eye over the wall, then set her target firmly against it at what felt like a workable height, and nailed it down. As the last echoes of the hammer faded, a familiar disapproving grunt sounded directly behind her. She didn't jump, but she did grip the hammer extra-tight and maybe have raised it a few inches before she caught herself. "I'm going to put a bell on you, bear," she said calmly.
"What on Earth do you think you're doing?" Freddy demanded.
Ana put her innocent eyes on. "I'm hanging a wreath."
Bonnie snorted.
Freddy's eyes narrowed. "A wreath."
"You don't like it?"
"That looks nothing like a wreath."
"I went for kind of an abstract thing. You know, red for ribbons, white for, uh, winter. And that's the black heart of rampant consumerism rotting out the insides of this holiday," she added, pointing. "Cut me some slack, bear. You know I'm not a fabricator."
"Hm." Freddy's gaze shifted to the target, unconvinced, but he turned away without further comment and continued on to check the lock on the playground door before disappearing into the gym.
"You're cute," said Bonnie. "What's it really for?"
"You'll find out tomorrow," she promised and went back to the kitchen to do the wrapping.
It didn't take long and she saved the best for last: the mystery box she could not remember ordering. She cut the tape carefully, opened it up and found…another box. This one was already gift-wrapped in pretty white paper with a gold diamond pattern and a gold ribbon—real fabric, fancy—twined over and around it and tied in a bow on top. There was also a tag stuck to it with pre-printed names in a cursive font: To Ana, from Freddy.
Which Freddy? Stupid question, had to be Faust, right? Except he'd been so unsure if their relationship was 'sufficiently advanced' for gift-giving. Why would he ship this one to her, but keep the other one until he knew for certain that it was socially acceptable to exchange presents? And would he call himself Freddy on the gift tag? He still thought of himself as a Freddy, at least as far as naming his movie playlist, but he'd never called himself Freddy in front of her.
But if it wasn't him…well, there was only one other Freddy in her life.
Ana extracted the gift from its shipping box and gave it a shake. Fairly lightweight, some shifting of contents in a muffled way. Maybe a winter coat? Seemed like the sort of thing Freddy would want for her, but she just couldn't wrap her brain around the idea that this really was from him.
Still, it was easy enough to find out.
Ana gathered all the wrapped presents together and took them out to the dining room. Freddy was there, standing at the opposite wall and gazing at the 'wreath' with his hands clasped behind his back, so as soon as she'd tucked the other gifts under the tree, she said his name and held the white-and-gold wrapped box up.
He glanced around, saw it, then grunted in an approving way and said, "So it did come. Good. I received confirmation it had shipped, but that was more than a week ago and you didn't say anything."
Ana gave herself a moment to run some thoughts through a filter and finally said, "I'm not mad."
Freddy glanced at her again, then turned all the way around and folded his arms. "But?"
"But I do have a few questions. Like how did you get my home address?"
"From your driver's license," he replied.
"When?"
"When did I get your address or when did I place the order?"
"Let's start with when you got the address and I'll work my way down the ladder from there."
"When you moved in. Well," he amended, flicking an ear as he nodded over at the place where the table used to be. "I did look at your license the first night we met, when you were sleeping. I wanted to know who you were, if I…knew you. I didn't think I did and I didn't think you'd ever come back, so I didn't bother remembering it. Then when you moved in for the roof, I looked again. The license was different and your address was here in Mammon, so I took a screenshot and saved it."
"Why?"
"I don't know. It seemed like the thing to do at the time. I felt rather helpless about you being here. I suppose I wanted to feel like I had some measure of control over the situation. And then when we decided to do this," he went on, using half a shrug to gesture at the tree behind her, "I put the information to use."
"Okay," she said after trying and failing to come up with a reason to be offended by any of that. Sure, it was probably a violation of her privacy that he'd picked through her wallet while she was sleeping, but hell, she'd broken into his house and taken up residence, so turnabout was fair play and all that. "Okay, but—and I'm not mad!" she hastened to remind him.
"But?" he prompted with the faintest shadow of a smile.
"But how much did it cost? Because I have a lot of money in a bag, but I have a whole lot less in the bank, so it's totally fine if you want to use my card once in a while, but I need to know when you do it and how much things cost so I can be sure I've got enough in my account to cover it."
He gave her a grunt of mild censure and said, "I didn't steal from your account, Ana. I used one of mine."
Ana stared at him. So did the camera, swiveling around to put Freddy in the spotlight instead of remaining locked on the only human in the room, as it customarily did.
"Since when do you have a bank account?" Ana said at last.
Freddy chuckled. "Since the very beginning, if you can believe that. It's a long story and not a very exciting one."
"I'm all ears," said Ana, putting the box under the tree and taking a seat on the stage.
"It's boring," Bonnie remarked, his attention on his guitar as he played quietly behind them.
"You know about this?"
Bonnie shrugged with his ears. "I'm kind of kicking myself that I didn't think to dip into them myself. I didn't get you anything."
"I don't want anything," she said automatically and frowned. "But seriously, someone start talking to me about these accounts." Because the only thing Ana could think of was that each pizzeria had a company account, and this one's had been dormant for twelve years, and now suddenly it had a new charge with Ana's name and mailing address attached to it, and if Faust hadn't seen it already, he was going to by the end of the month at the latest.
"It really isn't anything to be alarmed about," Freddy reassured her, unreassuringly. "But all right. I suppose it begins before we were made, with the diner that came before the pizzerias. Father became very wealthy very young, but in those days, he was still a minor and freshly cut off from the military. He had very little, not enough to open a restaurant. Someone…" Freddy twitched, thought, and said, "Someone I suppose you could consider his father, if not by blood, had guardianship of him and helped him finance the diner. It was moderately successful and when it closed, despite the rather…sticky circumstances that led to the closing—"
Ana heard a dry puff of laughter push out of her as Maria Osgoode's autopsy photo passed before her mind's eye. Sticky. Right.
Freddy acknowledged her dark humor with a nod and continued, "—Father's 'father' was willing to invest in a new endeavor. To this end, he created a company and…I'm not sure of how exactly to describe this… He made himself the head of that company, but divided ownership into little pieces and sold them to other people to get the money to build the restaurant."
"Shareholders, right," said Ana. "That's the incorporation part of Fazbear Entertainment, Incorporated, but what does that have to do with…?"
"I'm getting there. I told you it was a long story."
"And boring," said Bonnie.
"Again, Father didn't have much of his own money in those days." Freddy paused, then cryptically added, "As far as anyone knew, in any case. In actuality, he had amassed a considerable sum under his father's name—his true father—and without anyone's knowledge. He called it his runaway fund…but he never ran away."
Freddy was quiet for a moment, then shook his head and continued, "This money was kept in secret accounts—I don't know how—and he didn't tell his foster father about them. Don't ask me why. I know Father trusted the man, but perhaps by then he found it difficult to trust anyone completely. In any event, Father was very much against the idea of giving these other people, these…shareholders, any kind of vote in how the restaurants were to be managed. They were too concerned with profit and had already curtailed many of Father's grander ideas, citing cost factors. Father knew he would be extremely wealthy eventually—"
Bonnie snorted, nodding. "Dad made money like he was spinning it out of straw."
"—so he didn't care if the restaurants ever made a profit. He cared about staying true to his vision."
"You missed a golden opportunity to say 'bringing his vision to life,'" Bonnie remarked.
"Do you want to tell this story?"
"I could," said Bonnie and looked at Ana while his fingers danced and slid over the guitar's strings. "The money guys were butting in and setting budgets on every inch of the restaurant, even before it was built. Wouldn't let him buy a bigger property. Wouldn't pay for the good equipment in the kitchen. They even tried to tell him how many animatronics he could have, which was horseshit because Dad was making us out of his own pockets. Realizing that this was always going to be a problem, Dad did what he did best and fixed it. He couldn't raise the budget, so he decided to lower costs, and the best way to do that was to control all the companies Faz-Inc would be dealing with. So he took that secret money he'd squirreled away and split it up into a bunch of bank accounts for, like, supply warehouses and building companies and anything he could think of, and then he low-bid everything under those names so the share-guys would sign contracts with them. And as Dad made more money, he opened more accounts, until pretty much everyone the pizzeria works with is really Dad in a mask."
"That is so illegal," Ana said, not without admiration.
Bonnie snorted. "Like that's ever stopped Dad from doing anything."
"But he was aware of the consequences, should the truth come out," Freddy continued. "And in the inevitable event that something should happen to him, he wanted a failsafe, a means of continuing the necessary payments without his personal involvement."
"So he involved you," Ana guessed. "Just like he made you part of the security system, he made you part of the payroll?"
"In a manner of speaking. We have all the banking information for every account connected to Fazbear Entertainment, and a few others, should they become necessary in the future, saved to our system. I was able to conduct any necessary business by phone…and then through online banking, once the internet opened to the greater public's use. And then by phone again," he mused, flipping open his wrist compartment to pull his out. "One of the first things I did when you gave me this was check and see if those accounts were still there and if I could still access them. I could. I don't have any use for it, of course, but it's still nice to know the money's there."
"It sure would have been nice to know back at Yoshi's. Why didn't you say something? Because you were unconscious for that conversation," she recalled before he could say it. "Right. But… Look, don't read too much into this, because that's your money and I'm not trying to get at it, but how much are we talking about?"
"Altogether?" Freddy shrugged again. "Somewhere in the vicinity of one and a half billion dollars."
"Son of a bitch," breathed the dead man in the basement and fell back in his chair, howling with laughter.
"And nobody knows about it but you," said Ana, now thinking of Blue in the basement under Mulholland, trying to coax her into a collaboration by promising that he had access to bank accounts the Purple Man didn't even know about, something she'd been sure at the time was a lie calculated to appeal to her gullibility and greed, but he'd been telling the truth. Blue knew…because Bonnie knew. Erik Metzger hadn't deliberately passed it on when he copied Bonnie's core data into his Toy counterpart's CPU, he just copied everything and edited only the parts he wanted changed, the parts he knew about.
And would he have even cared? Erik wasn't exactly hurting for cash himself, not living in that overgrown mansion at the top of the mountain…but on the other hand, he hadn't bought the house, he'd inherited it from his father, who had bought and built onto it with the money he'd been skimming off little underaged Freddy's earnings. And while the old man was surely happy to give money away by the bagful to his best friend, the only money Erik was likely legally making was the paycheck he got as part-owner of a pizzeria that only turned enough of a profit to keep the shareholders from cutting more costs. And Erik had expensive tastes, if the gifts he'd showered on his many teenaged girlfriends were any indication, so…yeah. He probably would have cared, all right. Only the Freddy Fausts of the world could call one and a half billion dollars a petty-cash reserve. Erik Metzger was a lot of things, but he was not and never could be a Freddy Faust.
"Any other questions?" Freddy asked.
Ana looked over at the box, then up at him again. "What is it?"
He tsked. "You'll just have to wait and find out tomorrow, won't you?"
"Don't look at me," said Bonnie when Ana did just that. "I didn't even know he'd done it."
"You never asked," said Freddy and breezed out the West Hall Door on the next leg of his rounds.
"Give a bear a hatband," Bonnie mused and finished the lazy riff he'd been playing with a sudden flourish and a slap to silence the strings. "So what do you want to do today?"
The question rolled around inside her head, finding nothing to bounce off of. She'd told Freddy she was coming early so she'd be sure to have the whole day, but now that she had it, she had no idea how to fill it.
"What do you want to do?" she hedged.
Bonnie thought about it and shrugged. "You want to build a snowman?"
"A snowman?!" she laughed.
"Yeah, why not?"
"It's kind of silly."
"So?"
"It's broad daylight."
"Who's going to see us? No one's riding their bikes through that crap," he pointed out, aiming a thumb through the wall in the direction of the road. "And the great thing about deep snow is how loud it is when people drive on it. If anyone does come, we'll hear them and duck back inside. Most kids get scared away when they see your truck parked outside anyway, but even if they're brave enough to get right up close, what are they going to find but a snowman?"
"And your footprints," said Ana, pointing at his enormous three-toed feet.
Bonnie's ears went crooked, then folded over in disappointed defeat. "Yeah, you're probably right. I guess it was a dumb idea. I just like being outside and I don't get the chance to play with snow very often."
Well, shit, now she felt bad.
"We could go up on the roof," she suggested. "We could put a whole army of snowmen up there and no one would ever know, and we could always hide behind the sign if any cars come."
His ears perked up, then slanted off at a sly angle. "You sure you won't feel too silly?"
"Probably," she admitted. "But fuck it, it's Christmas."
"That's the spirit," he said and hopped up with a broad bunny grin. "This is going to be fun. I haven't done this in years."
"Me, either," she said and to her surprise, that…felt kind of good.
One day passed the same as any other in Pirate Cove, so it was something of a wonder that Foxy felt bored. He wasn't the only one feeling it. Bon had popped in earlier to invite him to, of all bloody things, build a snowman. He'd been bored enough to consider it for a moment, not quite bored enough to give in and go frolicking outside like a git. Bon tried to cozy him around to the idea, but he only got a few words into his wheedling before Foxy went into his cabin and closed the door, knowing Bon wouldn't come in after him, and he didn't. Chica came in a few hours after that and called his name a few times, but Foxy wasn't in the mood for whatever cheery swill she had in mind and she eventually gave up. So Foxy had the whole long boring day to himself and he spent most of it wondering why he thought that was a good thing.
He lay in his bunk, walking a doubloon across his knuckles as he listened to the intermittent shanty music and the laughter of the animatronic crows, counting time by the number of show sets that came and went without him until the restaurant 'closed'. Now, faced with hours of night-time passing in solitary silence, he begrudgingly admitted to himself that he really didn't want to be alone. He wasn't sure he wanted to be with other people either, but he knew he didn't want to be alone, so he got up and went out to see what the night had to offer him. He couldn't expect much out of Freddy, and Bon would likely be keeping his guitar company on the show stage, but Chica might be game for a few rounds of skee-ball, so after finding the Reading Room empty, he headed for the back end of the restaurant, knowing she'd either be in the arcade or the security office, playing her video games.
Chica was in the security office, as it turned it, and she was indeed playing video games. One of the racing games, to put a finer point on it and to hone that point even finer, one of the multiplayer racing games, alongside Bonnie. And Ana.
"Avast!" he blurted, startling what looked to be a fairly intense dead-heat between Chica and Ana into a matched pair of spin-outs, allowing Bonnie to slip by and over the finish line in first place. The three of them burst out in laughter, cussing and groans, as appropriate, while Foxy stood stupidly in the doorway, no more acknowledged than a pixelated road hazard.
"Glad you finally decided to join us, Captain," said Ana, tossing her controller aside in a theatrical display of bad sportsmanship. "Just in time for…?"
"I don't know yet," said Bonnie, rooting through the games with a wandering eye. "If there's going to be four of us, it's pretty much this again or Bomberman and I'm about bombed out."
"There's always skee-ball," Chica said hopefully.
"Call me a killjoy, but I want to play something I've got half a chance of winning," Bonnie said wryly. "We could team up for any of the two-players, I guess. What do you say, Foxy?"
"I says—" He held up his hook. "—say goodbye to yer controller."
"Right. Uh…" Bonnie pushed the game box away and pulled the video box over. "How do you feel about a movie?"
"Well, you guys can work it out. I need a quick break and something to eat." Ana got up, stretching out a long sit-in, and limped away through the other door into the employee's lounge, calling, "Be right back."
"I'll help in the kitchen," Chica volunteered and off they went together, leaving Foxy and Bonnie alone in the office.
"I thought she weren't coming until tomorrow," he said, once they were good and gone. "How long has she been here?"
"Since last night, technically, but she got in late and went straight to bed. And before you get on me about why no one told you, I tried and you shut me out."
"Ye told me to come play in the snow. Ye didn't tell me she were here."
"You didn't let me get that far," Bonnie said, looking up at him in exasperation with a fan of tapes in one hand. "You can't sit in your room all day and then complain because you don't know what's going on out here."
He was right, but Foxy couldn't help thinking that a little more effort could have been made. Why had it been Bonnie inviting him outside and not Ana? Why hadn't she dropped in to say goodnight before going to bed? Why hadn't she said good morning before going out to spend the whole day with everyone else but him?
Foxy had been keeping his thoughts out of his ears and off his face so long, it was second-nature, as automatic a process as venting his cooling system, but he didn't have as much experience with the tail and after a glance at his nethers, Bonnie looked up at him again and quietly said, "Dude, you are the one closing doors."
Foxy fought the urge to show some teeth and won, for the moment. He nodded. "Point made, mate."
"Good. Now get over here and help me find a movie."
Watching cartoons was not high on Foxy's list of fun ways to spend the night, but he still felt the sting of wasting the day, so he went over and dragged his hook through the jumble of options in the box. "What about this'n? It's a Christmas movie at least. I think," he said, flipping it over to look at the back and coming face to face with some kind of kid-friendly skeleton doll.
"Yeah, that's actually pretty good. We watched it while we were doing the house, but I don't think anyone will mind watching it again."
"What do ye mean, 'doing the house?'"
"The gingerbread house. Ana bought one of those box kits like we used to have for Christmas crafts around here and we dumped a bunch of candy on it. Chica tried to get you—"
"Aye," said Foxy, disgusted with himself. "Aye, she tried."
"Don't do that," said Bonnie and nodded at Foxy's hook, which had climbed up on its own to scratch at Foxy's chest. "I'm not trying to rub it in. It's just… Shit, man, what do you want us to do? Kick down your door and drag you out?"
No, of course not. But still…
Foxy dropped the tape back in the box and fished through the others some more. "What do ye reckon Ana'd like to see?"
"Ana?" Bonnie snorted. "I don't know. Is there anything in there about cannibal reindeer or axe-wielding Santas?"
"Not on tape," Ana announced, coming through the other door with a cupcake in one hand and a carton of eggnog in the other. "I could get my tablet if you—what the fucking fuck?"
Foxy looked at her—they all did—to find her staring intently into the tinted glass set in the back wall. He looked at that, too, but saw nothing stranger than three animal-shaped robots and one woman reflected back at him. "Ye all right there, luv?"
"Yeah," she said after a moment, still peering at the glass. "I thought I saw… Must have been a trick of the light or something. What are we watching, boys?"
"If Chica's still unhinged about only watching Christmas stuff, then it's Nightmare again or Muppets," said Bonnie, offering one in each hand.
"I am not unhinged, Bonnie the Bunny," Chica huffed. "I'm festive."
"I see Die Hard in there," said Ana, taking her seat (not without one last mistrustful glance at the window to the Manager's Office). "That's a Christmas movie. Sort of."
"No one actually dies, do they?" Chica asked suspiciously.
Ana shrugged. "Yeah, but they're all bad. Slap it on," she ordered as Chica hid her face in her hands. "Take a seat, Captain. I can scoot over. Hang on a sec, someone's calling me." She pulled her phone out of her pocket where they could all hear it buzzing for an instant before she silenced it with a tap and put it to her ear. "Stark."
The phone was not on speaker. Nevertheless, it wasn't difficult to listen in, when a bloke was standing this close and if his mics were hi-fidelity. The sound on the other end was a busy one, lots of voices and a little scratchy music. A party or some public place, with an older woman's voice cutting over it, raised to be heard over the ruckus: "Ana, dear? I'm sorry, hello?"
"Hello," Ana said, raising her own voice slightly. "Yeah, it's Ana Stark. What can I do for you?"
"Are you here?" said the woman and then laughed self-consciously. "I'm sorry, it's Mrs. Pickett, dear. Are you here somewhere? Did you step outside?"
"Um, I'm not sure what you're talking about. Am I where?"
"At the community center. We've just had the drawing and your name came out."
Ana frowned at first, then her eyebrows lifted into an expression of surprise. "I won the raffle? Really? Sh—uh, shucks, I've never won anything before."
An awkward silence made it possible for Foxy to clearly hear whoever else was on the other end say, "Is she or isn't she? Because if not, we're drawing again."
"Oh," said Ana and laughed. "No, I'm not there. Figures. The first time I actually win something…but hang on, what was the point of me writing my phone number on all the tickets if it wasn't to call me at home if I wasn't there for the drawing?"
No answer. In the quiet, Ana's crooked, curious smile melted away into understanding.
"Oh," she said and laughed again, with a little less humor and a little more force. "Well, whatever. Merry Christmas." She thumbed the End Call icon over the sound of the other woman trying to fluster up some kind of reply and pocketed her phone again, shaking her head.
"Everything all right?" Bonnie asked, just like he hadn't been listening in right along with Foxy.
"Yeah. Wrong number."
Even she had to know that was a terrible lie, but clearly, she wasn't in the mood to be pushed on it, so Foxy didn't comment.
"A wrong number told you you'd won a raffle?" Bonnie pointed at his ears when she looked at him. "These work, you know."
"You had to be there to actually win it," she said.
Well, Bon had already started the push. Might as well keep it rolling.
"Ye in the general sense or ye in particular?" Foxy inquired.
"Doesn't matter. It's not worth getting worked up over and I'm trying to have a good time here." She watched the television stone-faced as teasers for some other movies played, and right as the opening scene of the main feature began, she suddenly got up from her chair. "I'll be right back. Don't stop the movie," she said, already walking fast out through the employee lounge and away. After a short while, Foxy's ears brought him the distant noise of the loading dock door rattling open and slamming shut.
The movie played, oblivious to the mood in the room.
"Dude, if you don't go, I will," said Bonnie.
Foxy looked into the dark where Ana had vanished, then at Chica, tapping her fingers, and finally at Bonnie, to whom he had to admit, "I don't know what to say to her."
"Then don't say anything, but go." Bonnie looked at him, ears flat and eyes just a thin ring of green around a growing black. "This fucking town just took another dump on her on Christmas fucking Eve. Do not make her be alone with that, not for one fucking minute. Go."
'You go,' thought Foxy and for a second there, he thought he might have actually said it out loud. And why not, after all? Let Bonnie go and say all those easy things only he could say without having to worry about how it would sound once his program peppered in a comical pirate's accent. She didn't want Foxy there to watch her getting her feelings hurt. It wasn't like he could help at all. If the town had a single heart, he could stab it for her, but it was a town, with a hundred sneering faces, two hundred postcard-writing hands and no heart, no heart at all, and what could any man do about that?
Foxy went.
He more than half-expected to find the lot empty, but for a fresh set of tire tracks in the place her truck ought to be, but she was there, sitting on the damp concrete and picking icicles off what was left of the safety rail as she stared into the snowy night.
He still didn't know what to say, so he said, "Ye all right?" just to get it out of the way.
She nodded and that was all for a while.
He felt huge and conspicuous just standing there, so he moved over and sat beside her. When she shivered, he put an arm around her, not trying to get covey on her, but just offering a warm furry body to a lady what had no coat, and she took it, so that was all right.
She breathed. He vented steam. The snow fell.
"I keep asking myself why I even care," she said suddenly. "I don't care. I'd forgotten all about the stupid thing. I forgot the second I walked away from the table. Why did she have to call me at all? If they didn't want to give it to me, why not pretend it was Shelly's name on the stupid ticket and just draw another one? I never had to know."
"Perhaps that were the point o' the thing," Foxy suggested. "And if that's the best fuck-ye they had, I could almost feel sorry for 'em."
She shook her head. "You know, I'd believe it if it were Rutter on the phone. She is exactly the kind of person who'd call me just to tell me she wasn't going to let me win. Hell, if she'd been behind this, I wouldn't even be mad right now, I'd have laughed in her fucking face right through the fucking phone. But it was Pickett. I thought she liked me. Yeah, I know," she sighed before he could say anything. "I thought Shelly liked me too. But it was different with Mrs. Pickett. She was always friendly, always respectful of my skills. I really, truly think she called because she wanted me to be there, she wanted to give me the chance to walk in there and pick up my prize."
Foxy waited, ears cocked, listening for the 'but'.
"She was the one who stood up for me to Shelly," Ana said after a moment.
"Was she," he said mildly.
She nodded and broke off another icicle and stabbed it into the concrete, twisting it back and forth as the tip ground down to a stump. "But she didn't stand up for me to whoever was helping her run the raffle. If they were helping. It sure looked to me like she was running that raffle. She was completely in charge, but it's not her fault, really. Her friends didn't want to see me win. And they were her friends." Her voice lowered, roughened. "I'm Melanie Stark's bastard."
"Enough o' that, luv."
"Yeah, that's enough, all right. If I had any fucking class, I'd go down there right now with that whole bag of cash and make them watch me peel a single bill off one of those bricks to buy another cup of their crappy cocoa and walk out again. Hell, I ought to buy a plot of land somewhere downtown and build a goddamn library on my own dime. Ha. And then burn it down."
He laughed. Rotten time for it, but he couldn't help himself. "That's me girl."
Her lips made a smile her heart wasn't feeling. She didn't answer, but she didn't get up and walk away either. She cupped her hand and watched the snow fall into it.
"What did ye win?" he asked.
"Nothing," she said sourly.
"Piss on 'em, ye won it, whether they give it up to ye or not," he replied. "What did ye win?"
She made a fist to melt the snow she'd collected and wiped the wet off on her jeans, stalling for time like she really thought he didn't know that's what she was doing. "I don't even remember," she lied (and he had to admit, it was a fair lie, well-told, and if she hadn't been so genuinely upset over the matter, she might have even fooled him). "Probably some dumb basket with, like, scented candles and a bunch of other crap I don't want and would never use. It's not about the stupid thing I'm not getting," she snapped, expertly walling off the lie behind some well-chosen truth. "It's about them not wanting to give me the stupid thing! It's about them going out of their way to find one more opportunity to fuck me over, and you're right, it's the saddest fuck-you possible. It ought to be funny, so why am I mad? Getting mad is giving them exactly what they want. I should shrug it off, if only out of spite, but I am so damn pissed right now."
"Well, don't swallow it," he said reasonably. "Spit it out."
"It's not her fault," she said through clenched jaws. "It's really not. The whole damn town was watching. Did I really expect her to stand up for me against all of them? I'm not one of them. I'll never be one of them…and I don't even want to be one of them! The hell with her anyway. I'm glad she's not getting her stupid library. I'm glad she's losing her daycare and her house and all her fucking friends when she has to move away. Have fun being a Walmart greeter out in the real world, bitch."
She scooped up some snow and threw it at her truck, then pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them, making herself small against his side. "I'm so fucking mean," she mumbled.
"No, ye ain't."
"I just wished an old lady was homeless because she wouldn't give me a stupid…whatever."
"Yer allowed a spiteful thought, luv. It's acting on 'em proves the powder. Ye going to go egg the old sea-cow's house?"
"No! And don't call her that. She's a nice lady. I'm the awful one," she insisted. "Can I even blame the town? Have I always been this bad?"
He vented some steam, thinking. "Story-time," he announced. He paused, then gave her friendly nip on the ear and patted his thigh. "Sit on me lap."
She pulled away enough to give him a withering look, but then actually shifted around and sat on his lap. "My butt is freezing," she explained when he lifted his ears in surprise. "Don't get too carried away."
"No promises." He folded his arms around her, not too tight, letting her wiggle around until she settled. Not a perfect fit, but they made it work and when she was still, he rested his jaw atop the crown of her windblown head and said, "Once there were a dashing young rogue who dreamed of being a pirate."
That was all for a while. He still didn't know what to say, but the first words had come and he reckoned the rest would come too, in their own time. For now, it felt right to just sit here and keep his Ana warm, so that was what he did.
"It weren't his dream, really," he said at last. "But it seemed a fine dream to him, so he were happy enough to have it and never mind he'd never even seen the sea. In his heart, he were a pirate. And one day, some other bloke put his lights out for him and when they come on again, he found himself press-ganged to the life of a pirate."
"Say hey," she said softly.
"Aye. And it were fun for a few days. He could swagger with the best of them, sing a shanty, tell a tale. He took to it so well, t'were like he were born with a hook for a hand. Oh, he were the dream all the other little lads and lasses dreamed of, when they dreamed of a life at sea. And he knew it. And he loved it. But there's more to pirating than swagger and song. He done things," Foxy murmured and felt Ana shiver in the cold. "Terrible things. No more nor less than any other pirate done in the stories they all loved to hear him tell, but there's a difference betwixt a tale and the truth, aye, like the difference betwixt day and night. Now and then, ye ken, some plucky young lad would sneak aboard our rogue's ship, just like they'd never heard him say what happens to stowaways. And they'd run when he drew his sword, like they didn't know he'd do it. And they'd scream when he split them…lights—" He raised one hand to tap a claw on Ana's smooth brow, then slowly drew a line down, down, down to her belly. "—to liver…like they had no idea it could end that way…the way all his stories end.
"And the years rolled by, breaking on him like waves break on the bow of a fast-sailing ship. Our young rogue became an old one. Eh, not old," he amended and felt more than heard Ana's soft laugh. "Weathered, as ships weather in the sun and the storms and the salty air. Still handsome, though. Still light on his feet and quick with a cutlass. Still sly, ha, like a fox. And still a pirate, telling tales to them what cheered the spilling o' blood in his stories and cried when he spilled it on their feet. He hadn't changed. Even his stories were all the same and all the babbies on shore still wanted to hear 'em, but as time went on, they called him less and less a hero, more and more a monster, until the day came when they caught him on land and dragged his ship into the desert and locked him inside it and threw him into a deep, dark pit in a town with no map and no X to mark the spot where they buried him. And there he sits to this very day and some say the world be better for it, but the world still be telling tales o' pirates and still cheering every drop o' blood them stories spill."
"I'd ask what the moral of the story is, but I know your stories don't have morals."
"No more than the man telling 'em," he agreed. "But now and then, they has a point."
"And the point of this one is…?"
"Folk love to hate a sinner," he said with a carefree flick of his tail. "If'n they can't find a real one, they'll only make one just for fun. If that be yer role…well, sometimes ye deserve it and sometimes ye don't, but all's ye can ever be is that what ye were made to be. So be, luv. Folk'll cheer or jeer as pleases 'em, and forgive a thousand bloody crimes just to hang ye for the one they pure imagined, so pay 'em no mind and just be who ye were made to be."
The wind gusted, picking up snow in flurries and spinning them away across the lot, into the darkness. His sensors picked up light pressure on his arm, soft and rhythmic—Ana, running her fingertips lightly back and forth through his fur.
"I don't like who I am," she said in a hoarse whisper. "I don't want to want to be that person."
"Methinks yer confusing yerself with who them miserly blighters want ye to be."
"What's the difference?" she asked bitterly.
"Well, I be a relativist, if'n ye'll recall," he replied. "Everything's different, depending on the situation. But I'll tell ye one thing ye ain't and never will be, and that's the sort what runs a crooked raffle just to hold back scented candles from them ye deems unworthy of a relaxing bath."
She laughed. He could tell she wasn't in the mood to have her mood lightened, but it was a funny sort of vengeance, after all.
"Like old times, ain't it?" he murmured, thinking of other little talks they used to have in the small hours of the night, tucked away in some dark corner or another of Pirate Cove.
She didn't answer, but after a while, she said, "I'm sorry I haven't been to see you more often."
He shrugged and shrugged her right along with him, she was so close and so tightly held. "I ought to come out more often. Making ye choose where to spend yer time…making ye work harder at it to spend it with me…I ain't playing that game, I swear it. Yer me first, that's all. Eh, the first in the way what matters. I'm new to that game and still figuring how to play." And how to cheat, he thought, but that was an ugly thought, so he pretended he hadn't had it and, desperate for a joke to take the sting out, added, "I didn't think it would be this hard."
He regretted it the instant it was out of his speaker, and even more when Ana softly said, "I don't think it's supposed to be."
He held on to her, determined to make it the same as it had been before he opened his stupid mouth, but he wasn't surprised when she soon shifted, pushing at his arm, and he had to decide right then and there whether to turn her loose or hold on tighter.
Damn him.
He let her go.
"We should go back inside," she said, already climbing to her feet, not meeting his eyes. "Before Freddy comes out to get us and finds me without a coat."
It was a good effort at humor, so he rewarded it with a chuckle and accompanied her in to stare at the screen, pretending to watch the movie while he thought. And later that night, after another movie because Bon liked the first one and a round of skee-ball to please Chica, later still after Ana walked him to the Cove for a private good-nighting on the deckboards and then walked herself to her own bed alone, late late late in the night, when all of Mammon was sleeping in anticipation of some fat bearded git's arrival, Foxy slipped out past a patrolling bear and took himself a wee walk to town.