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  “Sleigh?” Nolan said.

  “… so I’m a little upset with you.”

  Nolan sighed. “Look, you changed.”

  “Of course I changed,” Trudy snapped. “It’s been three months. I’ve grown. I’ve matured. I’m in a new and better place now. A place without you. Go away.” She went back to the Twinkletoes shelf, pulling boxes off at random and dropping them on the floor, appalled to realize that she was close to tears. He did not matter to her; the fact that she’d thought he was darling was immaterial; the fact that she’d told her sister he might be The One was immaterial; the fact that her father had said, Nolan Mitchell, that’s a little out of your league, isn’t it? was … Well, her father was a jerk, so that didn’t count.

  “No, you changed from the library,” Nolan was saying. “You were funny in the library. You talked fast and made weird jokes and surprised me. I liked that. And then I took you out and you, well, you kind of went dull on me.”

  Trudy stopped dropping boxes on the floor. “You took me to a faculty party. If I hadn’t gone dull on you, you’d have lost points. You’d have been Nolan who brought that weird-ass librarian to the October gin fling. I was helping you.”

  “Did I ask for help?” Nolan said, exasperated.

  “And you took me to dinner at the department head’s house. You wanted me weird there?”

  “I couldn’t get out of that,” Nolan said.

  “And then the Chinese film festival.” Trudy dropped another box to the floor. “I thought I was going to see Crouching Tiger Two, but it was some horrible depressing thing about people weeping in dark rooms.”

  “It was?” Nolan said, confused.

  “Not that you’d know, since you left right after it started,” Trudy snarled, flinging a box at him. “You got a call and walked out of the theater and I was left with people weeping in Chinese—”

  She stopped to stare at the shelf, the next box in her hand, her heart thudding harder than it had when she’d first seen Nolan.

  There was a camouflage-colored box at the back.

  She dropped the Twinkletoes box and pulled out the camo box and read the label: Major MacGuffin, the Tough One! “Oh, my God.” Trudy held on to it with both hands, almost shaking.

  The box was not mint—the cellophane was torn over the opening, a corner was squashed in with a black X marked on it, and there were white scuff marks on the bottom—but the MacGuffin scowled out at her through the plastic, looking like a homicidal Cabbage Patch doll dressed in camouflage, a grenade in one hand and a gun in the other, violent and disgusting and the only thing Leroy wanted for Christmas.

  “I do believe in Santa,” Trudy said as Nolan came closer.

  “That’s a Major MacGuffin.” He sounded stunned.

  “Can you believe it?” Trudy was so amazed she forgot to be mad.

  “No,” Nolan said. “I can’t. I knew you were an amazing woman, but this puts you in a whole new league.”

  “What?” Trudy said.

  “I’ll give you two hundred bucks for it,” Nolan said.

  “No.” Trudy stepped away from him, holding on to the MacGuffin box.

  Nolan smiled at her, radiating sincerity. “I know, your nephew wants a Major MacGuffin, but he doesn’t want that one. He wants the Mac Two. The one that spits toxic waste and packs a tac nuke, right?”

  Trudy thought of Leroy, waxing rhapsodic about how the ’Guffin spit green stuff when you squeezed him. “Yes.”

  “What you have there is a MacGuffin One,” Nolan said, sounding sympathetic and entirely too reasonable. “Last year’s model. No toxic waste.”

  Trudy looked back at the box. It did look different from the picture Leroy had shown her. “What does this one do?”

  “It has a gun. Basically, it shoots the other dolls.”

  “And the hand grenade?”

  “Just a plastic ball. Doesn’t do anything.” He shrugged, unimpressed.

  “Damn.” Trudy looked down at the doll’s ugly face.

  “Two fifty,” Nolan said.

  Trudy glared at him. “No. This is for my nephew. And I have to go now. Thanks for putting the boxes back.”

  “Trudy, wait,” Nolan said, but she picked up a perfect Twinkletoes box, stepped over the rest of the pink boxes, and headed for the checkout counter, her belief in Santa restored if not her belief in the rest of male humanity.

  * * *

  Trudy got in the long line to the register, clutching both the Mac and the Twinkletoes boxes, stepping back as a woman in a red and green bobble hat slid in front of her at the last minute. Then Nolan got in line behind her and said, “Three hundred. It only costs forty-nine fifty new. That’s six times—”

  Trudy jerked her head up. “No. I’ll never find another one of these tonight.”

  Nolan nodded, not arguing. “Okay. Five hundred.”

  “Are you nuts?” Trudy said.

  “No, I told you, I’m a collector.” He stepped closer, and she remembered how nice it had been having him step closer on the three lousy dates they’d had.

  She stepped away.

  Nolan nodded to the Mac. “You are holding a doll that is actually rarer than the Mac Two. They didn’t make many Ones.”

  “It’s not rarer from where I’m standing,” Trudy said. “I actually have this one, and there are no Mac Twos in sight.”

  “That looks like an original box,” Nolan said. “May I?”

  “No,” Trudy said, holding on to it and the Twinkletoes box, trying to put her shopping bag between them to block him, but he’d already opened the top and was reaching in. “Hey.” She elbowed his hand away as he pulled out the instruction sheet. “Give me that,” she said, and he opened it so that she could see the drawing of the MacGuffin showing how to detach the silencer from the gun.

  “No toxic waste,” Nolan said. “It’s a Mac One.”

  He slid the instructions back in the box. “Two thousand,” he said, and then Trudy heard somebody say, “I’ll be damned,” and turned to see Reese staring at her from the front of the checkout line.

  “You found it,” he said.

  “Yes.” She turned back to Nolan as he closed the box again. “No. I’m not selling it. This one is Leroy’s.” She checked to make sure the MacGuffin was still in the box, complete with hand grenade and gun, and then her cell phone rang.

  She fumbled the boxes until she could hold both of them with one arm, looked at the caller ID, clicked the phone on, and said, “Hello, Courtney.”

  “Did you get it?” Courtney said, and Trudy pictured her, sitting on the edge of her Pottery Barn couch, her thin fingers gripping her Restoration Hardware forties black dial phone, every auburn Pre-Raphaelite ringlet on her head wired with tension.

  “Sort of.” Trudy looked through the plastic window on the front of the Mac box at the fat little homicidal doll. “Damn, he’s ugly.”

  “What do you mean, sort of? Did you get him?”

  The line moved and Trudy stepped forward, bumping her shopping bag into the woman in the bobble hat.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said as the woman turned. “Really sorry.”

  The woman smiled at her, motherly in a knitted cap with red and green bobbles, her arms full of teddy bears. “Isn’t it just awful, this Christmas rush?…”

  Her eyes narrowed as she saw the MacGuffin. Animals in the bush probably looked like that when they sighted their prey. Trudy clutched the MacGuffin box tighter.

  The woman jerked her face up to Trudy’s. “Where did you get that?”

  “In the back, shoved behind some other boxes.” Trudy tried to sound cheerful and open. “Boy, did I get lucky.”

  The woman’s chin went up. “That’s not this year’s.”

  “No toxic waste.” Trudy nodded. “Well, you can’t have everything.”

  “I’ll give you a hundred dollars for it,” the woman said, her eyes avid.

  Piker. “No, thank you.”

  “Who are you talking to?” Courtney s
aid, her voice crackling with phone static.

  “A lovely woman who just tried to buy the MacGuffin from me.”

  “No!”

  “Of course not, but listen, I’ve got last year’s model. The Mac One. I don’t think—”

  “Evil Nemesis Brandon is getting this year’s model. The Mac Two. With extra toxic waste.”

  Trudy shifted her weight to her other foot. “Okay, this ‘Evil Nemesis Brandon’ stuff? You have to stop that. Do you want Leroy thrown out of kindergarten for calling names?”

  “Evil Nemesis Brandon’s mother knows we don’t have a Mac,” Courtney said. “I saw her today at Stanford Trudeau’s Christmas party. She said if we hadn’t found one, Brandon would let Leroy borrow his last year’s doll.”

  “Okay, she’s a terrible person, but you have to stop calling her kid names.”

  Trudy shifted the boxes, trying not to drop either one, and the eyes of the woman in front of her followed the Mac box. A man with a cap with earflaps, standing in front of the woman in front of Trudy, looked back idly and then froze and said, “Is that a Major MacGuffin?”

  “Last year’s model,” Trudy said to him, and shifted the boxes again. It’s like being on the veldt. Gazelle vs. lions.

  The woman in front of her stepped closer, and Trudy backed up and bumped into Nolan.

  Lots of lions.

  “Do you have any idea how humiliating that was?” Courtney was saying. “Do you have any idea—”

  “Well, that’s what you get for going to a cocktail party while I’m busting my butt searching for a nonexistent war toy.” The line moved up and Trudy followed, praying she wouldn’t drop the Mac box. There’d be a bloodbath if she did. “I’m all for you getting out and playing well with others, but it’s Christmas Eve and you should be home with your family, baking something, not looking for your second husband. I’m sure Stanford Trudeau is a lovely man with an excellent retirement portfolio, but—”

  “I’m baking gingerbread men and a gingerbread house right now, and Stanford Trudeau is five. It was Leroy’s playgroup’s Christmas party. And that woman mocked me.”

  Trudy took a deep breath and reminded herself that Courtney had troubles. “Okay, so now you can tell her he has his own last year’s doll. I’m getting ready to buy it right now.”

  “Last year’s is not good enough!” Courtney said, her voice rising.

  “Oh, get a grip. This one is a collector’s item. It has a hand grenade.”

  “And a gun,” Nolan said from too close behind her, obviously listening in.

  “And a gun,” Trudy told Courtney as she ignored Nolan.

  “Who said that?” Courtney said. “Who’s with you?”

  “Nolan.”

  “Nolan.” Courtney sounded confused and then she said, “Nolan Mitchell. The Chinese lit prof with the swivel hips you thought was going to be The One?”

  “Yes,” Trudy said, cursing her sister’s excellent memory.

  “Whoa,” Courtney said. “He’s the only guy you ever wore sensible shoes for.”

  “I just ran into him,” Trudy said repressively. “It was an accident. It will not happen again.”

  “It could happen again,” Nolan said.

  “I don’t believe in The One anymore,” Trudy told Courtney, ignoring him. “But he is right that this Mac has a gun. Very convenient. It can shoot the other dolls.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “Well, I don’t think so, either.” Trudy shifted the boxes again, making the woman in front of her twitch. “This is a really horrible toy, Court.”

  “I mean it’s not funny that it’s not this year’s. Leroy has been talking about toxic waste for weeks.”

  “See, that’s not a good thing.”

  “Two hundred,” the woman in front of her said.

  “No.” Trudy shifted the box again. “Listen—”

  “Leroy says that Evil Nemesis Brandon—”

  “Will you stop calling him that? I don’t believe for one moment that Leroy came up with ‘Evil Nemesis Brandon’ on his own. That was you.”

  “That was Prescott,” Courtney said, loathing in her voice for her AWOL husband. “But Leroy cares. A lot. He … Wait a minute. Talk to him.”

  “Court, no—”

  Trudy heard the phone clunk as the line moved up a couple of feet. She stepped forward, thinking, At least Courtney will have the Twinkletoes this year. Courtney had been waiting to polish those toes for twenty-five years.

  And now poor little Leroy would probably be waiting another twenty-five years for his toxic waste. She had a vision of herself many years in the future, handing the Mac Two to a sad-eyed thirty-year-old hopeless wreck of a nephew.

  “Three hundred,” the woman in the cap said.

  “No.” Trudy heard the phone clank again and then she heard her nephew’s voice, bright as ever.

  “Aunt Trudy?”

  “Hey, bad, bad Leroy,” she said, smiling as she pictured his happy little face under his shock of little-boy-blond hair. “Isn’t it time you were in bed?”

  “Yes. And then Santa will bring me a ’Guffin. Hurry up and come home so you can see.”

  “You know, Leroy,” Trudy said, looking at the box in her arms. “There are several kinds of MacGuffins and they’re all good—”

  “I want the one with toxic waste,” Leroy said clearly. “It’s okay. I told Daddy, and he told Santa, and Santa said he’d bring one. And Nanny Babs said Santa never lies.”

  I’m going to kill that fucking son of a bitch. And then I’m going to kill that fucking nanny. Assuming they ever come back from Cancún. “Well, we’ll just have to see, won’t we? Now you go to bed—”

  “I know, and when I wake up, Daddy will be on vacation, but he loves me, and Santa will be here with my ’Guffin.” He breathed heavily into the phone for a moment and then said, “Brandon said there isn’t any Santa Claus.”

  Rot in hell, Evil Nemesis Brandon. “What do you think?”

  “I think there is,” Leroy said, not sounding too sure. “And I think he’s going to bring me a ’Guffin tomorrow.”

  “Right,” Trudy said, holding on to the box tighter.

  “With toxic waste,” Leroy said.

  Oh, just hell. “Merry Christmas Eve, baby. Go to bed.”

  “Aunt Trudy?”

  “Five hundred,” the woman in front of her said. “And that’s my final offer.”

  “For the love of God, no,” Trudy said to her, and then said, “Yes, Leroy?”

  “Do you believe in Santa?”

  What is this, a movie of the week? “Well…”

  “Mommy says Evil Nemesis Brandon is wrong.”

  “Don’t call him that, sweetie.”

  “Is he wrong?” Leroy’s voice slowed. “It’s okay if there isn’t a Santa.” His voice said it wasn’t okay.

  Nolan nudged her gently and she realized the line had moved again. “Well, Leroy, I don’t really know if there’s a Santa. I’ve never seen him.”

  “Oh.”

  Trudy swallowed. “But that doesn’t mean there isn’t one. I’ve never seen SpongeBob, either.”

  “SpongeBob?” Nolan said from behind her.

  “SpongeBob is real. He’s on TV.” Leroy sounded relieved. “So is Santa.”

  “Well, there you go,” Trudy said, feeling like a rat.

  “That’s the best you’ve got, SpongeBob?” Nolan said.

  Trudy turned and snarled, “He loves SpongeBob. Shut up.”

  “I know there’s a SpongeBob,” Leroy said, happy again.

  “As do we all,” Trudy said.

  The woman in front of her let her breath out between her teeth, clearly frustrated. “It’s the old MacGuffin; it’s not worth more than three hundred.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” Trudy said to her. “Leroy? Honey, it’s time for you to go to bed.”

  “And when I wake up, I’ll get a ’Guffin,” Leroy said. “Good night, Aunt Trudy.”

  “Good
night, baby,” Trudy said, and the phone clunked again as he dropped it.

  “Your nephew’s name is Leroy?” Nolan said.

  “It’s a nickname,” Trudy said, not turning around. “His real name is Prescott Thurston Brown II.”

  “Oh.” He paused. “Good call getting a nickname.”

  She heard the phone clunk again as Courtney picked it up.

  “That little bastard Brandon,” Courtney said.

  “I think I prefer ‘Evil Nemesis,’” Trudy said. “He’s just a kid, Courtney.”

  “His mother is a hag,” Courtney said. “After she offered Leroy a hand-me-down MacGuffin, she asked me if I’d found another nanny.”

  “Bitch,” Trudy said, and then smiled when the woman in front of her finally turned away, offended.

  “He’s counting on that toxic waste.” Courtney’s voice was still teary, but now she sounded a little slack.

  “Court? You haven’t been hitting the eggnog, have you?”

  “No, the gin. I’m a terrible mother, Tru.”

  “No, you’re not.” Trudy shifted the boxes again.

  “I can’t even get my baby toxic waste for Christmas.”

  Trudy heard her sob. “Okay, step away from the gin. You’re getting sloppy drunk in front of your kid. Do something proactive. Wrap some presents. Ice your gingerbread.”

  “I’m out of Christmas paper. And I tried to ice those little bastard gingerbread men, but their arms kept breaking off.”

  “Were you twisting them?”

  Above Trudy’s head, the ancient speakers blared Madonna singing in baby talk again.

  “Sing ‘The Little Drummer Boy,’” Trudy said to the speakers. “Anything but ‘Santa Baby.’ God, Madonna is annoying.”

  “She’s a good mother,” Courtney said. “I’m a terrible mother.”

  “No, you just have terrible taste in husbands and nannies.”

  “I wasn’t the one who picked out the nanny,” Courtney said, her voice rising.

  “Right.” Trudy moved up another step. “Sorry. She came highly recommended.” I’m pretty sure yours is the first husband she ran off with.

  “I wasn’t the one who brought home the husband, either,” Courtney cried.