Jack was all grown up.
The man in the leather coat muttered, “What the fuck?” Then, he addressed Kris. “Hey. Sasquatch. Get the fuck out of here or I’ll kick your ass, too.”
Kris didn’t move, but he did look down at … well, Jack, he supposed … whose hands shook as he touched what was definitely a broken nose. How much time had passed? Jack was an adult now. Unlike the child in need of a haircut, this man wore his dark brown hair short and probably sleek when not ruffled by a thorough beating. His blue Polo was torn at the neck, and jeans covered long, slim legs that ended in combat boots.
Kris’s study was interrupted by the sound of more cussing, which drew his gaze. He watched as the villain pulled a gun from the back of his pants.
Despite sitting on the floor, covered in his own blood, Jack had the audacity to shout, “What? Are you going to shoot me now?”
The man pointed the gun at Jack but only long enough to say, “Shut up,” before aiming the barrel at Kris’s broad chest. “I told you to get out.”
Kris approached the man, and the gun went off, emitting but a wisp of sound due to the silencer. Kris felt no pain, and the intruder got off one additional shot before Kris reached him, took both his wrists in his hands and squeezed.
Two loud pops echoed like thunder in the room when Kris broke the man’s wrists to bits. The gun hit the floor, and the man howled. When Kris let go of him, he fell, writhing, with wrists now bent like broken tree limbs.
Kris loomed above. “I think you should get out.”
Tears tumbled down the man’s face as he rolled over onto his belly and skittered toward the door like a cockroach startled by sudden light.
Kris followed him with slow steps, one after the other, and the man must have noticed because he whimpered, probably expecting his skull to be split.
When they reached the foyer of the small apartment, Kris politely opened the front door. “I suggest you do not come back,” he said to the pathetic creature whose hands now resembled arthritic claws.
“We’ll fucking get you, Benson!” he yelled from the hall, using his elbows and then knees to stand. “Torres will fucking—”
Kris slammed the front door and took them to The Other Place where the man’s continued threats could not echo.
Jack (it was Jack, wasn’t it?) gazed up at him from the floor.
Kris lifted him with a hand under his armpit. “Your nose,” Kris said. He cracked it back into place with his fingers.
Jack covered his bloody face with his hands and bent forward at the waist. “Ow! Fuck! Jesus Christ!”
Five minutes later, Kris found himself sitting on a comfortable couch across from Jack in a cozy-looking chair by small windows that overlooked a brick wall. Despite the view, Kris knew they were in New York City just like he knew which gifts to give each child on Christmas Eve. He was very good at geography.
Jack held a washcloth filled with ice to his face and blatantly stared. “Did you just get shot twice?”
Kris looked down at his chest. He remembered the gun going off but no pain, and there was no evidence of injury now. Kris didn’t think he could be injured. “I’m fine,” he said.
“Yeah, okay. And you’re real,” Jack said, voice nasal and muffled due to the unbroken broken nose and the washcloth that partially covered his mouth.
“How do you mean?” Kris asked.
Jack snorted—and winced. “Uh, well, I don’t know, I …” He glanced at the shattered snow globe amidst the mess on the floor. “I kind of thought you were just some homeless guy who broke into the house.”
In a way, Kris was homeless. He certainly didn’t know where his home was, at least. All Kris had was Christmas Eve and the children he vowed to protect.
“Say something,” Jack said.
“How long has it been?” Kris asked.
Jack lowered the ice before tossing the wet washcloth onto the floor in front of him. “Fifteen years.”
Ten-year-old Jack had become twenty-five-year-old Jack.
“I never saw you again,” Jack said. “After that one Christmas Eve. Why didn’t you come back?”
Kris recalled the weak flickering light that had once surrounded a malnourished, bleeding child. “You must have stopped believing.”
Jack crossed his arms. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“I don’t visit the houses of children who don’t believe.”
“Yeah, well.” He fidgeted. “Not all of us have time for believing in shit. And like I said, I thought you were some homeless guy, all right?”
Kris folded his hands in his lap. “Why was that man hurting you?”
Jack chuckled, revealing straight, white teeth. He must have had them fixed since childhood. Kris remembered them being crooked. “I pissed off a drug dealer.”
Kris’s folded hands curled into fists. Had Jack grown into a villain?
Jack grinned and leaned back in his chair. “Based on that muscle hopping in your jaw, it’s not what you think. I work for a rehab center, getting kids clean. I had a brief relationship with meth myself, so now, I try to help other people. Apparently, I’m really good at my job if Torres is sending guys after me.”
“Torres?”
“Bart Torres.” Jack rubbed his eyes. “Bartholomew. He’s a dick, and he gets high schoolers …” Jack leaned forward with his hands on his knees. Now, his jaw was the one hopping. “He gets high school kids hooked on poisonous shit, and then, he owns them. The cops won’t touch him, so I do what I can.” He looked at Kris, and Kris noticed a dark mark beneath Jack’s left eye that would probably expand into a bruise.
Even though his nose had stopped bleeding, Jack still had swatches of red like watercolor around his mouth. On his right wrist, he wore several bracelets, most of them simple and probably handmade, perhaps by the kids Jack saved in rehab. Even though Kris was proficient at forgetting—existing in a fog, awaiting the next December 24—he believed he would remember all these details. He believed he would even remember the small constellation of freckles on Jack’s nose.
“So.” Jack clapped his hands once. “It was Kris, wasn’t it? I’m not fucking calling you Santa. Santa is supposed to be fat and jolly; you’re mildly terrifying.”
Kris didn’t move. “You’re scared of me?”
“No. I don’t know why, though. I should be. You just appeared in my apartment and cracked a dude’s wrists.”
Kris shrugged.
“You seem nervous.”
Kris realized he was. An uncomfortable weight rested on the center of his chest, and his heart went thud-thud in a rapid beat. “I don’t talk to people much, especially not adults.”
“Lonely in the North Pole, huh?”
“I don’t live in the North Pole,” Kris replied.
“You don’t need to be nervous around me.” Jack stood and passed on his way to the small but charming kitchen, with a bright rainbow backsplash and cabinets in a shade of light blue. He opened one such cabinet and pulled out a box of green tea. “I’m a lousy adult.”
“You were an adult when you were ten years old.”
Jack’s brow furrowed for but a moment. “Tea? Do you want tea? It always makes me feel better.”