Read High Heels and Holidays for Free Online Page A

be happy about that, but that’s just silly. I mean, maybe I’ve heard a rumor or two about some new up-and-comer Bernie’s nuts about—but who listens to rumors, right?”
    Maggie replaced the receiver and rubbed her hands together as she returned to plop herself down on the couch facing Bernie, resisting the urge to stick a finger in her ear to make sure it wasn’t bleeding, that Faith hadn’t ruptured an eardrum when she’d slammed down her own phone. “I think that went well. And now I don’t have to worry about her showing up here with a Christmas present, as I’m pretty sure she’s probably gotten past that saving her life business. Man, I didn’t know Faith even knew that word.”
    â€œIf I had children I’d want them all to be just like you,” Bernie said as her cell phone began to ring again and both women ignored it. “Hey, not to put a pin in your Christmas spirit, but did you hear about Francis Oakes?”
    Maggie had a vague recollection of a long ago Toland Books Christmas party and a small, rather timid man with suede patches on his worn tweed blazer and a terminal case of menthol breath. “Francis? Sure. What about him?”
    â€œHe’s dead, that’s what’s about him,” Bernie said, getting to her feet. “You have anything nonalcoholic around here? I’m taking some kind of sinus pill that’s dried up all my saliva and my mouth feels like a suburb of the Sahara. You know, if I could treat this cold the way I usually do. . . .”
    â€œYou’d be back in rehab,” Maggie said, following Bernie to the kitchen. “So, how did Francis die? He wasn’t that old, was he?”
    â€œIn his mid-forties, I’d say. Thanks, kiddo,” she said, accepting a cold can of soda and popping the top. “Poor guy just never quite got it together, you know? Kirk took an interest for a while, but we all remember how fickle Kirk was—oh, let me count the ways. Anyway, Francis sort of faded away at Toland Books a couple of years ago. According to the obituary, he lived near CUNY, in one of those student-clogged apartment buildings—making ends meet by writing term papers for undergrads, I’ll bet. Anyway, it must have all gotten to be too much for him, and he committed suicide last week. My secretary clipped the obit and left it on my desk. Not that I could do anything about it. By the time I saw the clipping this morning Francis was already flying freight on his way back to Minnetonka or somewhere.”
    â€œYou’re such a caring person, Bernie,” Maggie said as they sat at the kitchen table, Bernie dying for a drink, Maggie wishing she had a cigarette. “Suicide, huh? I wouldn’t have thought Francis Oakes had the guts to remove a splinter, yet alone kill himself. What else was in the obituary?”
    â€œThat’s it. Mourners pay by the inch now, you know, like they’re fucking buying ads—sorry, I can hear my friend Johnnie Walker Red calling me a lot today.”
    â€œTell me about it,” Maggie said, reaching into her jeans pocket and pulling out her nicotine inhaler, the plastic tube whose end was beginning to look as chewed as her pencil erasers had when she’d been in the third grade, trying to master long division. “Mr. Butts keeps singing love songs to me, too. Ever notice that nobody ever gets addicted to broccoli? But broccoli could be bad for you, right? We could stop selling it in public places, tax it, write editorials on the dangers of secondhand broccoli breath—”
    â€œOh no, you don’t. No riffs on the antismoking Nazis today, Maggie. I’m walking a fine line here. Now, you asked me a question. No, there wasn’t anything in the obit but the basics. Poor, forgettable Francis. But, hey, that’s the way it goes. Unhappy people are even more unhappy around holidays. Everyone knows that. Francis just decided