Read Santa Steps Out: A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups for Free Online Page B

the reindeer made her feel all saucy inside. Part of her wanted him right then in mid-descent with all the elves watching. But the rest of her was more than content to prolong the wait, to savor every moment that stretched from right now to the delicious suspension of time beneath their blankets after the day's festivities were done.
    She couldn't be sure, afterward, when she had first begun to feel unsettled. Without question, the feeling was heavy in her by the time hoof and runner touched snow. Before that, its stages were impossible to define. It seemed much more an accretion of small noticings: the way he held back his descent, the angle at which he cocked his head, a hint of tension in his upraised arm, an unsettling disharmony in the team, the unmistakable impression that he was at once avoiding her eyes and forcing himself to smile in her direction.
    The elves appeared to notice nothing. They swarmed over him as always, lifted him high on their shoulders, carried him (according to tradition) once, twice, thrice around the sleigh, then wrestled him to the snow and fell to tickling him and mauling him until, through the boom and roll of his laughter, he begged for mercy. When at last they calmed down, the elves set Santa back on his feet, brushed him off, and led him up to the porch where his wife stood waiting.
    Without knowing why, Anya felt sick inside.
    No, that wasn't true. She knew this feeling well. She understood precisely what was going on. A name flashed inside her head. Pitys. Spoken in a voice that belonged and did not belong to Santa, thick with crushed grape and guile and eternal boyishness. Then the voice and the name it had spoken were gone, and all that remained were a hard knot in her stomach and a wife's unerring instinct for betrayal.
    Shiny black boots crunched the snow on the steps to the porch. An alien face loomed over her. A chill white beard brushed soft and swirly against her cheek. Around her body, bearish arms wrapped an embrace.
    She watched herself return a kiss, heard the roar of the elves, felt the fire's warmth reaching out to claim her as they stepped inside and closed the door.
    *****
    As Santa stood beside Anya at the fireplace, the crackling flames seemed neither as bright nor as warm as memory claimed they should be. Home didn't feel like home. It felt like some painted replica, a stage set waiting to be struck at the ringing down of some final curtain.
    (That's cuz we don't belong here, Santa old buddy. This place is too perfect, not enough blemish, no room for passion, you catch my drift?)
    Oh fine, thought Santa. Now his intruder had found a voice. Raspy as a hacksaw, biting as a freshly opened can of shellac, as dark as three coats of walnut stain.
    "I must have snow in my ears, Anya dear," he joked. "Couldn't quite hear what you said."
    She grimaced. "I said it's good to have you home." Tension lined her face.
    (Sexless bitch is on to us. Best we should—)
    I won't have her talked about that way.
    "Is . . . is something wrong?" Santa gasped out. His scalp beaded with sweat. A fist clenched deep in his gut, down where truths hide unspoken. Her unwavering gaze unnerved him, and unworthy thoughts—seeds of resentment toward his wife—came upon him. Looking away, he fished for his pipe, his pouch, busying himself with them.
    (That's it, chum. Evasive action's always good. And we've got lots of evading to do, all that fine humping—)
    She took his face in her hands, searched his eyes for oddity. "Something happened to you out there, didn't it? Something you're keeping from me."
    (Oooh doggies, we're in for it now, fat boy!)
    Santa froze. How could he just blurt out the truth? It felt so bitter on his tongue, this blunt admission of adultery. Yet even if he were successful in putting her off with vague denials, his unspoken misdeed would stand there solid but invisible between them. Better to lay it before her, he thought, come what may.
    (Hold it right there, chubbynums. This