Santa's Special Delivery

by Lubrican

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Chapter Four

Breakfast didn't slow him down at all.  By the time breakfast was over he had interrogated me enough to find out I was a detective, how old I was, that I didn't have any children and had never been married.  At one point he said "Are you sure you're not trying to be my mother's boyfriend?  Because you sure sound like what she's been looking for."  That flustered her and she barked at him.  I diverted him by asking him to tell me about his school, and what he liked to do, and what TV programs he liked.  I even went so far as to ask him what he remembered about his father, which was a little sad.  He remembered strength and brown eyes and a smile.  And he remembered feeling safe whenever daddy was there.

Eva bore things pretty well, other than the part she barked at him for.  I didn't have much chance to examine her at first, because Timothy talked pretty much non-stop until his mother told him to be quiet and take at least five bites of waffle before he spoke again.  The waffles were good, and he got distracted by that, which gave me the chance to comment on how good the waffles were.  She looked good in the morning, which I suppose means awake and interested in the world.  I detected no make up.  I remembered the kiss from the night before, and the fact that her lips didn't taste like lipstick.  I looked at those lips now as she explained that their tradition was to eat breakfast first and then unwrap presents.  I admit it.  I wanted to kiss them again.

I produced the Slim Jims after breakfast, suggesting they could be viewed as dessert.  Eva laughed at me and called me goofy.  Timothy did not.  I felt pretty good about that.  He laughed at me later when I gave him the Chocolate Santa for Christmas, pointing out that I'd gotten things backward, but that it was okay because he liked them both.

He only had two other presents that were wrapped.  One was a new shirt and the other a pair of snow boots.  His mother opened three drawings that I thought were amazing.  

Then she gave him an envelope.

I watched as he opened it and pulled out pieces of paper.

"What's I-O-U mean?" he asked, looking up at his mother.

"It means what it sounds like," she said.  "I owe you those things for Christmas.  We'll go shopping for them after Christmas, though, because things will be on sale then, and you can choose what is perfect for you."

He looked at one of the slips of paper.  "Any book at Barnes and Noble?"

"Any book you want," she said.

"No matter how much it costs?"

"No matter how much it costs," she confirmed.

"Wow," he sighed.  He looked at another slip of paper.  "A bicycle?  Really?"

"Yup," she smiled.

He looked at another one.  "No way!” he shouted.  "An Ipod?  For me?"   He jumped up and started doing a dance of sorts as I realized she intended to spend the vast majority of the money on the card I'd given her on him.  

I leaned over and spoke into her ear.  "That was supposed to be for you."

She turned her head fast enough that her nose hit mine.  Her eyes were shining.

"It is for me," she said.  "I've always wished I could see him like this at Christmas, just once."

Our faces were only inches apart, our noses almost touching.  I realized it had become very quiet in the room and turned my head to see Timothy standing there, watching us, an interested look on his face.

"Did Santa send you to make a little brother for me?" he asked.

Once Eva calmed down enough that Timothy could actually explain, he basically said that he wasn't stupid, and knew that for a baby to be born there had to be both a mommy and a daddy.  He wasn't sure what they did to make the baby start growing inside the mommy, except that it was called sex.  He pointed out that I was the first man Eva had invited into the house besides that man he didn't like (that's all he'd say about Wally) and that he just thought that maybe Santa had something to do with it.

"That's not why Bob is here," said Eva, who was decidedly pink.

"How do you know?" I asked.  "I am buddies with Santa, you know."

She turned and slapped my shoulder.  "Don't encourage him!" she yipped.

"Well then tell him to quit encouraging me!" I complained.

"All right, boys!" she said firmly. "We're changing the subject now.  All right?"

"I guess so," said Timothy, who was clearly a little dejected.

"Yes ma'am," I said, as dejectedly as I could.

"You want to see what Santa brought me?" asked Timothy, suddenly excited again.

"Absolutely," I said.

He handed the IOUs to his mother and sprinted for his room.  I looked at Eva, who was frowning at me.

"I was just playing," I said.

"Were you?" she asked, one eyebrow arching.

"Absolutely!" I said, crossing my heart.  "I absolutely have no designs on your virtue."

"Why not?" she asked, her voice arching this time.  "Am I ugly or something?"

I blinked, but didn't have time to come back with anything, because Timothy was back with his artist kit, which he opened on my lap.  He had obviously spent a lot of time going through it, because he already had a number of the esoteric names for colors memorized, and pointed them out proudly.

"Will you draw my picture?" I asked.

"I'll try," he said.  "You talk to my mother or something, and I'll get started."

Eva got us tea and we sat on the couch, turned toward each other.  Our conversation was a little stilted, initially, I think because of the residue of sensuality that was left over from Timothy's very precocious comments.

Eventually, though, she relaxed.

"I've never gotten to know a cop before," she said.  "I was always running away from them, instead of inviting them in."

"I doubt that," I said.

"I was a bad girl when I was younger," she said.  

"I doubt that, too."

"I got into all manner of trouble!" she insisted.

"Such as?"

"Well, I stole apples off the neighbor's tree every year."

"Hmmmm," I responded.

"And twice my friends and I tee peed a teacher's house," she said.

"Horrible," I agreed, smiling.

"I threw water balloons at a cop car once!" she said, her jaw jutting forward.

"Was it moving?"

"No, he was parked, trying to catch speeders."

"If he was moving I'd say it was serious.  Drop a water balloon on a car going down the freeway and it will go right through the windshield.  You can kill somebody that way." I was frowning now.

"He was just parked," she argued.  "His arm was hanging out the window and we hoped we could get him wet, that's all!"

"You were a regular Bonny," I said.  "So who was Clyde?"

"There was no Clyde," she said, sulking because I obviously wasn't taking her litany of crimes seriously. "Just Jessica, my best friend, and a few others."

"So you were no doubt the ringleader of the group of girls who terrorized the neighborhood back then?"

"We didn't terrorize anybody," she argued.  "We just had fun."

"By committing grievous acts of criminal mischief," I said.

"All I'm saying is that we never stayed around to give the cops a chance to hassle us," she moaned.

"Which is why I'm here now," I said.  "You've been on the least wanted list for more than a decade, and now I've finally caught up to you.  Now you're going to pay."

"Oh pu-lease," she laughed.  "What are you going to do, spank me?"

I smiled the tight little smile I have been told looks a little scary.

"Not in front of Timothy."

Her reaction to my playful little repartee got my attention.

Part of a detective's job is reading people, and I've been doing it so long that it's just part of how I interact with most folks.  What I read in Eva Marie Sinderson that morning was what I call buzzy.  I get buzzy when I see something I'm not expecting.  Like the time I was eating dinner with a woman one of the guys set me up with.  It was in a nice place, and she was mildly interested in me.  What caught my attention, though, was a well dressed fellow diner who looked wrong somehow ... buzzy in other words.  It turned out that he thought one of the waiters was boffing his wife, and he brought her to the restaurant to see how they both reacted when they saw each other.  He also brought a gun.  That one turned out well, but only because I was ready for something to happen when it did.

My date was less than impressed, though, and it was the last time she went out with a guy who suddenly exploded into action, waving his own gun around and giving orders to just about everybody.  No shots fired, though, so as far as I was concerned, it was a pristine outcome.

But that's what I mean.  I get buzzy when something doesn't look right.  And what I saw in Eva's body was interest, never mind what she was saying with her voice.  Body language takes precedence over voice every single time.  And that was buzzy because I had to be old enough to be her father.  Sure, we had flirted a little, but that's because she was a good looking single woman and I was a man.  But I didn't take it seriously.  She, on the other hand, appeared to be doing just that.  Her pupils had pinpointed, and the carotid in her neck was visible, pitter pattering along like crazy.  Her breath rate had increased and her lips were dry.  I resisted looking at her chest, until she looked away at Timothy for a moment, during which I saw hardened nipples under the red and black T shirt she was wearing.

I decided it had been a while since a man treated her with respect, and that that was all it was.

"You know, I'm forty-eight years old," I said.

She blinked.  "You don't say."

"I just did say," I said, helpfully.

"Yes, but why did you say it?" she asked.

"I don't know," I said, lamely.  "I was thinking about how you're twenty-seven, and that made me think about how I'm forty-eight, I guess."

"I see," she said.  "That would make you twenty-one years older than I am."

"It would," I said.

"I bet you think that's a lot," she said.

"Of course it is."

"Maybe."  She leaned back and I realized we had begun leaning toward each other.  I was astonished. This girl did things to me that made me careless.   "Then again, maybe not."

"How could it possibly be maybe not?" I scoffed.  "Twenty-one years is twenty-one years."

"I'm not a big believer that age itself means much," she said.  "In some cases it's not the age that matters.  What matters is if the body still does what you want it to, when you want it to."  She smiled.  "Assuming the most important thing is already there."

"And what's the most important thing?" I asked, wondering if it was wise to keep this conversation going.

"I have to like a man first," she said.  "If I like him, age is of little consequence."

"You've got to be kidding me," I said weakly.  She was looking absolutely predatory at the moment.

"Not in front of Timothy," she said, suddenly all sweetness and light.

Suddenly there was a little boy standing at our knees, which had been a foot and a half apart from each other when we first sat down, but which were now separated by only five or six inches.  He had a picture in his hand that astounded me.  It didn't look anything like me, but it was most assuredly a man, and a well-drawn one at that.

"That is most excellent," I said, genuinely impressed.

Then I was invited to play board games, which was something unusual for me.  I hadn't done that in more years than I could count.  Timothy liked to make up his own rules, but I didn't care.  I kept glancing at Eva, who seemed to be glancing at me a lot too.

I was actually unsettled.  

Don’t get me wrong.  I go out with women on a fairly regular basis.  I've been out with just about everybody's divorced sister, or niece.  All the guys' wives try to fix me up with their divorced friends, and I'm even capable of finding my own dates once in a while.  And some of the women I'd gone out with had expressed the kind of interest in me that Eva was displaying.  

With the others it was creepy.

But with Eva ... it was more towards scary somehow.  I mean I could get used to this woman looking at me like that ... and that was a dangerous thing to want.  Sooner or later she'd come to her senses and realize that a worn out detective with more enemies than friends, wasn't the best catch.  You know?

Finally Eva said she had to stop playing because she needed to start getting "the Christmas feast" ready.

"Such as it is," she added.  "I didn't think there would be anybody but Timothy and me."

"I don't want to be a burden," I said.

"Oh you're not a burden," she said.  "I just don't have enough food to really make it a feast."

"How about I take you both out?" I offered.

She looked at me quizzically.  "On Christmas Day?  Where would we go?"

"I know a couple of places that are serving food today," I said.  "We might have to pitch in and help, but we'd have our feast."

"Oh!" she said, realizing I was talking about the places that fed the homeless.  "You do that too?"

I knew she was referring to Santa, and nodded.  "Once in a while.  It's something to do on Christmas."

"My, my, my," she said.  Then she turned to her son.  "Want to go eat with a bunch of homeless people?"

"Sure," said her son, astonishing me.  "Can I take my kit and draw them pictures?"

"Yes, you may," said Eva, beaming.  She looked at me.  "We're ready when you are."

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