Santa Claus worked fast.
On my way back to work no one on the street bothered or even took any notice of me except for one panhandler who was new to the neighborhood and didn’t know he’d have better luck begging the corner phone booth for change.
The phone was blessedly silent when I returned to my office. Doris was sitting at reception, but without the look of love she’d been shooting me the past week.
“You’re a no-good rotten louse bum, Crag Banyon,” she screeched.
“All God’s children have a place in the choir,” I said. “Any calls?”
“There’s never any calls. I don’t know why I came back to this crummy job. I should have stayed at Falducci’s, even with Dominic always trying to grab my ass. He’s a pig. You’re a pig. You’re all pigs.” She attacked her thumbnail with her emery board.
Business as usual. Almost.
Mannix was still in my office. The elf had pulled all my old files from my cabinet and was doing the first serious dusting the place had seen since the Raid flea bomb I set off two summers before. In fact, I saw that in the trash. Mannix had tossed the Raid can from the spot on the windowsill where it had been rusting for the past year and a half.
All the bottles he’d found stashed away inside the file cabinet were arranged like open bar night at the local Elks Lodge on the edge of my desk.
“The whole world’s changed, why are you still here?”
I dropped my fedora on the coat rack.
“Santa stopped in to say goodbye,” the elf said. “He told me your wish.” Mannix handed me a newspaper.
It was the Times from six days ago. The first time I’d seen that issue, I was the front page, but now my picture was gone, replaced by one of Detective Daniel Jenkins looking so baffled I figured he’d probably wet himself when the flashbulb went off. I figured he’d just found out I’d handed him the celebrity he’d always wanted. The caption read: Hero Cop Stops Christmas Caper! Oh, yeah, Jenkins was gonna owe me big time.
Mannix was watching me read, and when I folded up the paper and tossed it over onto the couch, the elf nodded.
“It will only work on humans,” he explained. “Santa didn’t tell you?”
“Must’ve slipped his mind.” I snatched up an old “World’s Greatest Boss!” coffee mug Mannix had found hidden away somewhere in the deep recesses of my file cabinet. I thought I’d tossed it out years ago. I don’t like my mugs to lie to me. I get enough of that everywhere else.
“You want coffee, Mr. Crag?” Mannix offered, pointing out the door. “Lollipops? Gumdrops? Gingerbread men?”
“He wants to break your heart and make you waste your life wishing something better would come along!” Doris shrieked from the outer office. “That and he wants to not pay you. He really wants to do that.”
“Nah, kid,” I said to my new elf best friend. I grabbed the nearest bottle and poured whatever came out into the mug. “I got everything I need right here.”
***~~~***