I walked inside Macy’s and faced the pathetic spectacle of a department store full of shoppers, none of whom were shopping for themselves. Without the instant gratification of a self-aimed purchase, everyone walked around in the tactical stupor of the financially obligated. At this late date in the season, all the fallbacks were being used. Dad was getting a tie, Mom was getting a scarf, and the kids were getting sweaters, whether they liked it or not. I had done all of my shopping online from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. on the morning of December 3; the gifts now sat at their respective houses, to be opened in the new year. My mother had left me gifts to open in her house, while my father had slipped me a hundred-dollar bill and told me to go to town with it. In fact, his exact words were, “Don’t spend it all on booze and women”—the implication being, of course, that I should spend at least some of it on booze and women. Had there been a way to get a gift certificate for booze and women, I was sure he would have made his secretary run out and get me one over her lunch break.

The salespeople were so shell-shocked that a question like “Where do I find the warm woolen mittens with reindeer on them?” didn’t seem the least bit strange. Eventually, I found myself in Outer Garments, wondering what, short of an earplug, would count as an Inner Garment.

I had always felt that mittens were a few steps back on the evolutionary scale—why, I wondered, would we want to make ourselves into a less agile version of a lobster? But my disdain for mittens took on a new depth when looking at Macy’s (Macy’s’s?) holiday offerings. There were mittens shaped like gingerbread men and mittens decorated in tinsel. One pair of mittens simulated the thumb of a hitchhiker; the destination was, apparently, the North Pole. In front of my very eyes, a middle-aged woman took a pair off the rack and placed them in the pile she’d grown in her arms.

“Really?” I found myself saying aloud.

“Excuse me?” she said, irritated.

“Aesthetic and utilitarian considerations aside,” I said, “those mittens don’t particularly make sense. Why would you want to hitchhike to the North Pole? Isn’t the whole gimmick of Christmas that there’s home delivery? You get up there, all you’re going to find is a bunch of exhausted, grumpy elves. Assuming, of course, that you accept the mythical presence of a workshop up there, when we all know there isn’t even a pole at the North Pole, and if global warming continues, there won’t be any ice, either.”

“Why don’t you just fuck off?” the woman replied. Then she took her mittens and got out of there.

This was the miracle of the season, the way it put the fuck off so loud in our hearts. You could snap at strangers, or snap at the people closest to you. It could be a fuck off for a slight reason—You took my parking space or You questioned my choice of mittens or I spent sixteen hours tracking down the golf club you wanted and you gave me a McDonald’s gift certificate in return. Or it could bring out the fuck off that’d been lying in wait for years. You always insist on cutting the turkey even though I’m the one who spent hours cooking it or I can’t spend one more holiday pretending to be in love with you or You want me to inherit your love for booze and women, in that order, but you’re more of a role anti-model than a father.

This was why I shouldn’t have been allowed in Macy’s. Because when you turn a short span of time into a “season,” you create an echo chamber for all of its associations. Once you step in, it’s hard to escape.

I started shaking hands with all the reindeer mittens, certain that Lily had hidden something inside one of them. Sure enough, the fifth shake brought a crumple. I pulled out the slip of paper.

6. I left something under the pillow for you.
Next stop: bedding. Personally, I preferred the word bedding when it was a verb, not a noun. Can you show me the bedding section? could not compare to Are you bedding me? Seriously, are we going to bed each other? In truth, I knew these sentences worked better in my head than anywhere else—Sofia never really understood what I was saying, although I usually chalked that up to her not being a native speaker. I even encouraged her to throw some obscure Spanish wordplay my way, but she never knew what I was talking about when I talked about that, either.

She was pretty, though. Like a flower. I missed that.

When I got to the bedding section, I wondered if Lily appreciated how many beds there were for me to probe. They could house a whole orphanage in here, with a few extra beds for the nuns to fool around in. (Pull my wimple! PULL MY WIMPLE!) The only way I was going to be able to do this was to divide the floor into quadrants and move clockwise from north.

The first bed was a paisley print with four pillows propped up on it. I immediately launched my hand underneath them, looking for the next note.

“Sir? Can I help you?”

I turned and saw a bed salesman, his look half amused and half alarmed. He looked a lot like Barney Rubble, only with the remnants of a spray tan that would have been unavailable in the prehistoric age. I sympathized. Not because of the spray tan—I’d never do shit like that—but because I figured being a bed salesman was a job of biblically bad paradox. I mean, here he was, forced to stand for eight or nine hours a day, and the whole time he’s surrounded by beds. And not only that, he’s surrounded by shoppers who see the beds and can’t help but think, Man, I’d love to lie down on that bed for a second. So not only does he have to stop himself from lying down, but he has to stop everyone else from doing it, too. I knew if I were him, I would be desperate for human company. So I decided to take him into my confidence.

“I’m looking for something,” I said. I glanced at his ring finger. Bingo. “You’re a married man, right?”

He nodded.

“Well, here’s the thing,” I said. “My mother? She was looking at bedding and she totally dropped her shopping list under one of the pillows. So now she’s upstairs in cutlery, upset that she can’t remember what to get anyone, and my dad is about to blow his last fuse, because he likes shopping about as much as he likes terrorism and the estate tax. So he sent me down here to find the list, and if I don’t find it quick, there’s going to be a major meltdown on floor five.”

Super-tan Barney Rubble actually put his finger on his temple to help him think.

“I might remember her,” he said. “I’ll go look under those pillows if you want to look under these. Just please be careful to put the pillows back in their place and avoid mussing the sheets.”

“Oh, I will!” I assured him.

I decided if I were ever to get into booze and women, my line would be Excuse me, madam, but I would really love to bed and muss you.… Are you perchance free this evening?

Now, at the risk of saying something legally actionable, I have to remark: It was amazing the things I found underneath the pillows at Macy’s. Half-eaten candy bars. Baby chew toys. Business cards. There was one thing that could have been either a dead jellyfish or a condom, but I pulled my fingers back before I found out for sure. Poor Barney actually let out a little scream when he found a decomposed rodent; it was only after he ran away for a quick burial and thorough disinfecting that I found the slip of paper I was looking for.

7. I dare you to ask Santa for your next message.
No. No fucking no no no.

If I hadn’t appreciated her sadism, I would’ve headed straight for the hills.

But instead, I headed straight for Santa.

It wasn’t as easy as that, though. I got down to the main floor and Santa’s Wonderland, and the line was at least ten classrooms long. Children lolled and fidgeted while parents talked on cell phones or fussed with strollers or teetered like the living dead.

Luckily, I always travel with a book, just in case I have to wait on line for Santa, or some such inconvenience. More than a few of the parents—especially the dads—gave me strange looks. I could see them doing the mental math—I was way too old to believe in Santa, but I was too young to be after their children. So I was safe, if suspicious.

It took me forty-five minutes to get to the front of the line. Kids were whipping out lists and cookies and digital cameras, while I just had Vile Bodies. Finally, it was my turn. I saw the girl in front of me wrapping up, and I started to move forward.

“One second!” a dictatorial rasp commanded.

I looked down to find the least satisfying cliché in Christmas history: a power-mad elf.

“HOW OLD ARE YOU?” he barked.

“Thirteen,” I lied.

His eyes were as pointy as his stupid green hat.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice not sorry at all, “but twelve is the limit.”

“I promise I won’t take long,” I said.

“TWELVE IS THE LIMIT!”

The girl had finished her stint with Santa. It was my turn. By all rights, it was my turn.

“I just have to ask Santa one thing,” I said. “That’s all.”

The elf body-blocked me. “Get out of the line now,” he demanded.

“Make me,” I replied.

The whole line was paying attention now. Kids’ eyes were wide with fear. Most of the dads and some of the moms were getting ready to jump me if I tried anything.

“I need security,” the elf said, but I couldn’t tell who he was talking to.

I walked forward, knocking his shoulder with my thigh. I was almost at Santa when I felt a tug on my ass—the elf had grabbed the back pocket of my jeans and was trying to pull me back.

“Get. Off. Of. Me,” I said, kicking back.

“You’re NAUGHTY!” the elf screamed. “Very NAUGHTY!”

We’d caught Santa’s attention. He gave me the once-over, then chuckled out, “Ho ho ho! What seems to be the problem?”

“Lily sent me,” I said.

From somewhere behind the beard, he figured it out. Meanwhile, the elf was about to pull down my pants.

“Ho! Ho! Ho! Get off of him, Desmond!”

The elf let go.

“I’m calling security,” he insisted.

“If you do,” Santa murmured, “you’ll be back to folding hand towels so fast you won’t even have time to take the bells off your boots or your balls out of your elfy boxer briefs.”

It was a very good thing that the elf wasn’t packing any of his toy-carving tools at that point, because it might have been a very different day at Macy’s if he had.

“Well, well, well,” Santa said once the elf had retreated. “Come and sit on my lap, little boy.”

This Santa’s beard was real, and so was his hair. He wasn’t fucking around.

“I’m not really a little boy,” I pointed out.

“Get on my lap, then, big boy.”

I walked up to him. There wasn’t much lap under his belly. And even though he tried to disguise it, as I went up there, I swear he adjusted his crotch.

“Ho ho ho!” he chortled.

I sat gingerly on his knee, like it was a subway seat with gum on it.

“Have you been a good little boy this year?” he asked.

I didn’t feel that I was the right person to determine my own goodness or badness, but in the interest of speeding along this encounter, I said yes.

He actually wobbled with joy.

“Good! Good! Then what can I bring you this Christmas?”

I thought it was obvious.

“A message from Lily,” I said. “That’s what I want for Christmas. But I want it right now.”

“So impatient!” Santa lowered his voice and whispered in my ear. “But Santa does have a little something for you”—he shifted a little in his seat—“right under his coat. If you want to have your present, you’ll have to rub Santa’s belly.”

“What?” I asked.

He gestured with his eyes down to his stomach. “Go ahead.”