He never talked on the phone. He spent very little time on his computer. If he brought work home, it was in the form of paperwork—files with kids’ names on them, psych evaluations, medical histories. Jack often cussed over these stacks of paperwork. He often dug his hands into his hair and closed his eyes for long, silent minutes before getting back to work.
It hurt him—what he did. The job hurt Jack and made his breath shorten. He hurt for the kids who hurt, kids like him, like he once was.
One evening, Kris finally made himself leave Jack’s apartment. New York was now covered with snow. Shop fronts shouted promises of “sale” and “great deal” and “the perfect gift!” In one window, Kris saw the countdown: four days. Christmas Eve would arrive in four days, and the woman in black would arrive, as well. They would leave to perform their annual journey across continents and oceans to visit children of all colors, shapes, and sizes.
The ones who believed, at least, but there were so few of them left anymore. One day, Kris would no longer have a purpose. One day, Christmas Eve would be just another day spent wandering. Maybe then Jack would be his only distraction, but eventually, Jack would grow old and die. Everyone died. Everyone but Kris.
The thought settled with a great weight. He could have walked back to Jack’s, but his booted feet were like lead. He questioned whether he would make it. Surrounded by winter night, Kris made the wind whip and lift him from the ground. Seconds later, he arrived in the middle of Jack’s living room.
On a normal night, Jack might be watching TV at that hour. He had indiscernible television taste, his choices ranging from comedic cartoons to violent action programs to bloody horror flicks. But the TV was not on when Kris arrived—and Jack was not alone. He wrestled in the foyer with someone.
Kris moved to intercede. Who was this new villain who dared threaten Jack Benson? Who?
Kris’s forward momentum halted when Jack chuckled, his face lit only by a dim lamp in the kitchen. The supposed threat turned Jack around with his arms around Jack’s waist and pressed his face against the side of Jack’s neck. Jack seemed pleased by this. His head lolled back, a smile on his face, while his arms enveloped the stranger’s neck.
“Bedroom?” asked an unfamiliar voice.
Jack lifted his chin in the proper direction and kissed the man who was broader than Jack and who had shaggy blond hair that fell in perfect curls around his chiseled face. The man growled into Jack’s mouth, but the stranger laughed when they crashed into Jack’s kitchen table on their way to the bedroom. Jack kicked the door open, and the two men passed through, once again attached at the mouths.
Kris followed.
Both men had removed their clothes with surprising efficiency. Kris took a step back at the sight of their bare skin but did not leave the room. They rolled around together, still kissing, mussing Jack’s perfectly made sheets. With Jack open-mouthed on his bed, the blond licked and nibbled across his chest, then lower and lower.
Kris had seen Jack without clothes before. After a shower, he had once walked stark naked to the kitchen for a glass of water. Kris therefore knew Jack had a small blackbird tattooed between his pecs—a tattoo the blond man licked on his way down. Although he couldn’t see them, Kris knew about the scars on Jack’s back, too—scars in the shape of cigarette burns.
Yes, Kris had seen Jack naked before, but not like this.
Kris watched as the blond man used his hands to push Jack’s thighs up. Then, he rubbed his face between Jack’s legs.
“Christ, I needed this,” Jack mumbled to the ceiling because the blond was much too busy with other activities to listen. Jack rubbed his hand across his own chest, naked of Kris’s silver chain, which now hung from a lamp on the bedside table.
Between Jack’s spread legs, the other man’s head bobbed. Eventually, Jack curled his fingers in the back of the stranger’s hair and lifted his head to watch the proceedings.
Familiar.
Familiar.
Images flashed into Kris’s mind.
His own huge hands clenched to the back of someone’s head—someone female with black hair, oily hair, in need of a wash. The smell of too much perfume. Kris’s pants down around his ankles, his red coat on a threadbare chair in the corner of a candlelit room. Sounds from other rooms. Men and women. Grunts, groans, the occasional shout. A dropped glass shattering in the bar downstairs.
Jack’s gasping returned Kris to the present.
How long had he been standing there? The handsome blond no longer had his face between Jack’s legs. He was back to kissing, looming above Jack. His hand had replaced his face, but he did something different now. He did something that made Jack’s body arch and tremble. Jack’s hands clutched to the other man’s shoulders as he murmured, “yes, yes, yes.”
They both fumbled for something in the bedside table. Then, the blond rolled Jack onto his stomach and pulled him up to all fours.
Jack’s ass was without blemish and small.
Not like hers. Hers was full, lush, with pockmarks on the right cheek.
Images returned, from another time, another place. When? Where?
Kris fucking that whore.
That’s what it was called, wasn’t it? Fucking.
Fucking her at the brothel on Christmas Eve while hiding from the men to whom he owed money. Kris had gambled away so much of his money, but he still owed more. He’d actually spent the coin for his children’s Christmas gifts on gambling—that and on Rita, the prostitute.
Wait, children?
Kris had children.
Jack moaned on the bed. He moaned as the blond man draped himself across Jack’s back and fucked him with his arms around Jack’s chest. The stranger’s open mouth closed on the side of Jack’s neck as they rocked together and fucked and fucked.
Blood.
Kris saw so much blood.
His wife’s dead body on the porch of their home and five small, broken, bleeding bodies inside.
The men had come looking for Kris. They had killed his family while he drank and fucked in the village to avoid his punishment. Now, he protected children. He gave them gifts because he had never bought gifts for his own.
The sound of his knees hitting hardwood made a loud thunk, which halted the proceedings on Jack’s bed. Vaguely, Kris heard the unfamiliar voice, a startled shout.
Then, there was Jack: “Kris? Kris?”
He lay on the floor and closed his eyes. Above him, agitated voices bounced off walls and corners. Jack and the stranger argued. Someone tripped over his leg, which made Kris realize he was no longer in The Other Place. The reemergence of memories long lost had evicted him from that safe spot. He was back in the world, amidst people who could see him, hear him, scream at him.
Somewhere, a door slammed.
When hands gripped his shoulders, Kris didn’t bother fighting. The stranger’s hands shook him, but the voice calling his name was not strange. It was Jack. “Kris? Please!” He sounded scared; that wouldn’t do.
Kris opened his eyes to find Jack kneeling in front of him, brushing Kris’s long, black hair out of his face with frantic fingers.
Isabel.
Daniel.
Frances.
Abigail.
Mark.
His five children, all dead. Dead because of his misdeeds. Dead because their father cared more for himself than for them.
“Kris!” Jack shouted.