6
Mission Incredible
“Take Fancy and Nancy, my dears, they need the exercise!” said Santa with his jolly chuckle. “And Edison Elf will drive you!”
A particularly small, rotund elf scurried up to them, bowing. “My honour, Princess!”
“Don't let him eat too much or he’ll fall asleep in the way back,” warned Santa. “And the reindeer are not to have any mortal grass, it makes them too frisky.”
“Frisky flying reindeer are the last thing we want!” agreed Ben with a grin. “Thank you so much, Santa!”
“My pleasure, Ben, dear boy! –Elan! Hither! Where’s that list?”
Elan staggered in under a great pile of paper, and they got back to work, as Edison led Ben and Isabella out.
The reindeer were being harnessed as they came into the stableyard. And after Edison had checked the traces and shouted at the ostler elves, they were ready. And it was: “On, Fancy! On, Nancy!” and WHOOSH! Up in a cloud of snowflakes.
“Help,” said Ben numbly, looking down from a great height at a view of the North Pole and its Top, as they circled round in a great swoop.
“Edison!” cried Isabella. “Stop showing off!”
“The reindeer are fresh, Princess!” he gasped, hauling on the reins. “Come up, Fancy; come up, Nancy! Whoa down!”
And the sleigh slowed, steadied, and headed—well, south, everything was south from the North Pole. Hopefully towards New York.
“The reindeer know the way,” said Isabella, smiling her sunny smile at him.
That was good, because that elf didn’t look as if he knew anything, much. “His name is Edison, is it?” he muttered. “I didn't mishear?”
“That's right, Edison. His father’s Eddy Elf, you see.”
Son of Eddy. Right. Logical again. Ben sighed, leaned back, and put his arm round her. Okay, if this was a dream he might as well enjoy it!
They didn’t talk much, just sat back under a huge fur-lined carriage rug, um, sleigh rug, feeling all warm and happy.
It was full daylight in New York. Oh, shit! Not only were they visible to the naked eye, they must be— “They’ll spot us!” he gasped in horror. “The U.S. Air Force has orders to shoot down any unauthorised planes, um, flying objects, that approach the city!”
Calmly Isabella replied: “No, that’s all right, we’re invisible.”
“No, what about their radar?” he gasped.
“Those funny rays, Princess,” explained Edison helpfully over his shoulder.
“Oh, yes. Don’t worry, Ben, dear, they can’t pick up any of Santa’s sleighs.”
Oh, no. Of course not, or he’d have been shot down long since! Well, first Christmas after 9/11, really. Phew!
They landed neatly in Central Park. It had been snowing in New York, looked like they’d be having a white Christmas this year. The reindeer nosed hopefully at the snow but the winter grass was dried and unpalatable under it.
Ben looked back uneasily over his shoulder as he headed for Park Avenue and the subway. “I can see it; thought you said it was invisible?”
Isabella twinkled at him. “Let go my hand, Ben!”
He let go her hand, and the reindeer and their sleigh disappeared. “Okay, got that,” he conceded, seizing her hand again. “But what about us?”
“Us? Oh! We’re not invisible unless we’re in the sleigh.”
Right, that was clear. “Edison, you better pull your cap down over your ears,” he advised.
“Okay! Or you could use the fern spores, Princess Isabella, then no-one will see us.”
“No, there’s no need. I’ll just make your clothes look more mortal,” she decided.
Edison was in a brown elf suit. The styles varied somewhat: his consisted of a short, nut-brown jacket with lots of buttons down it, and matching brown knee-breeches above blue and white striped stockings. With buckled shoes. True, you saw everything on the streets of the Big Apple, but—Phew! That was better! Isabella had changed his gear to a thickly padded brown windcheater and brown corduroy pants. The pointed elf hat seemed to be woollen in any case and now, instead of sticking up, its point drooped down: at a distance you’d have taken it for any woollen beanie. It was still a very bright blue with a silver stripe round it but never mind, no-one would notice or care.
Edison looked down at himself and giggled. “I’ve never been a mortal before! Ooh, I like the pants!”
“Yeah, I like corduroys, too,” agreed Ben. “Tracy says they’re not a desirable look, though.”
“I think they’re very desirable, Ben, dear!” he chirped.
Ben grinned at him and he said immediately: “Do you think we could just try a mortal hotdog, dear?”
“Edison!” cried Isabella.
“Just one, Princess, dear?” he pleaded.
“Well, um, maybe. Later on. We’ve got to carry out our mission, first.”
Edison’s chest swelled proudly. “Our mission! Yes, indeed, Princess! Onward!”
“Yes, uh, this way,” said Ben limply. “Uh, look, the streets’ll be more crowded than what you’re used to, Edison, you better, um—”
“Take your other hand! Of course, Ben!”
Okay, so be it. And they went out of the park gates and headed for the nearest subway station, hand-in-hand-in-hand.
Neither Edison nor Isabella had ever been on a subway before and they were both thrilled by it. Thrilled. It was miles more exciting than a sleigh! Ben would have shushed them but what the Hell, you could say anything at all on the New York Transit System and no-one would notice or care. Well, possibly if you yelled: “Look out, I've got a bomb!”
They changed trains at Grand Central—also thrilling. Edison was convinced the main concourse was a fairy palace. Ben was so used to it he never looked at it. Now he looked. Like... wow! It was magical! Splendid! Enormous, and such gracious lines!
“I guess,” he said somewhat weakly, “it is pretty remarkable, New York does have some remarkable buildings. Maybe we could go up the Empire State later. –If you like,” he ended on a weak note, realising that views from a great height were no treat to them. But they were both nodding and beaming at him. Ben felt very warm indeed—though he’d been feeling pretty warm anyway, and had loosened his muffler and undone his windcheater, never mind Tracy’s sage advice that you kept your coat fastened at all times on the subway if you didn’t want your wallet stolen.
The next leg of the journey was remarkable for the presence of two smelly, unshaven louts—not designer stubble—in very, very beat-up street gear, torn leather was the least of it, who were unashamedly sharing a joint, plus a stout African American woman who glared disapprovingly at the pair of them until they mercifully got off the stop before Ben’s.
“Good, the hobgoblins have gone,” said Edison with a sigh of relief. “Not that Princess Isabella couldn't handle them, Ben, dear!” he assured him quickly.
Ben cleared his throat. “Uh—yeah. Good.” Fortunately the stout woman was now reading a magazine. Oops, Edison was staring at her.
“I think that goblin put a going-away spell on them!” he hissed.
Ben closed his eyes in agony.
“No, she’s just a lovely mortal lady,” said Isabella tranquilly. “Look harder.”
Look harder? Ben didn’t dare open his eyes: the poor woman was just across the aisle: she must be able to hear every word!
“Oh, yes!” agreed Edison happily. “Hasn’t New York got a variety? Ladies with the power of goblins, I’d never have imagined it! What sort of fruit did you say it’s like, Princess?”
“A big apple.”
“Of course! It’s certainly got as many people in it as a big apple has clammy cells!” he said brightly.
Ben opened his eyes. “What did you say?”
The elf looked at him blankly. “Um, lots of people in New York,” he fumbled.
“Yuh—uh—not that. Clammy cells?”
“Apples are full of clammy cells, Ben. Every elf knows that! And pears! Summer o’er-brims them all, you know!” he said brightly. “And the honeycombs!”
Uh-huh. Just sit back and enjoy it, Ben reminded himself.
You passed a newsstand on the way home from his subway stop so, since they were here, he bought a copy of Time magazine. Edison concluded that the elderly, gnarled proprietor with the woollen gloves with the tips of the fingers out of them was a goblin, too. He was as Caucasian as Ben was, so it couldn’t have been that woman’s black skin that had provoked the goblin remark, one small mercy. Unfortunately he couldn’t send her a thought ray apologising if she’d got the impression it was. –There was, as far as he could see, nothing whatsoever the woman and the newsstand proprietor had in common. Different sex, different ages—she’d have been no more than fifty, he looked around eighty. She'd been most respectably dressed in a heavy coat and Russian fur hat, whereas he was in layers of grungy sweaters under the oldest windcheater in New York, NY. All the pockets torn and the zipper didn’t work. Her face had been round and jolly-looking, whereas this guy’s was narrow, greyish and kind of mean, with a squint. Nup. Not a thing.
Isabella hugged his arm. “Fairy logic, Ben!”
Ben found he was grinning like crazy. “Yeah: fairy logic!”
Shit, as they went into his apartment building goddamned Mortimer appeared. He was never there when you needed him, like when the heating broke down or the plumbing was stopped up or Joel Goldblum’s bathroom ceiling started to leak—that was the time Cindy MacDowell had gone on vacation to Bermuda leaving a tap dripping and a face washer in the handbasin.
He looked hard at Isabella and said: “Thought you were in England.”
“Yeah, and I’m not here, Mortimer,” replied Ben grimly.
He sucked his unlovely teeth. “Yeah?”
Ben produced his wallet. “Fifty says I’m not back, okay?”
“Fifty says you might not be back.”
Taking a deep breath through flared nostrils, Ben handed him another fifty.
“Okay, you’re not back,” he conceded. He let them get as far as the elevator, and drawled: “She’s up there.”
Ben stopped dead. “What?”
“It is Sunday.” He looked hard at Isabella again. “Or hadn't you noticed?”
“Uh—right. Thanks for the warning. Uh—hang on.” He gave him another fifty, no sense in alienating the creep, anything could happen, from his heating mysteriously going off whilst the rest of the building was toasty warm, to rats in the kitchen cupboards—there was a rumour, Ben had heard it from three occupants, so come to think of it maybe it was more than a rumour, that that had happened to one luckless guy who’d refused to satisfy Mortimer’s extortionate demands over—uh, well, that bit varied. Fixing a rattling window, putting the guy’s garbage can out with everybody else’s—nominally part of the job he was paid for, nevertheless—putting a fresh light bulb in on his landing... He was reputed to keep the rats in cages in the sub-basement, which was his exclusive domain. Tenants were allowed to penetrate as far as the laundry room. Period.
“Will she stop you?” asked Isabella anxiously as they got into the elevator. “What shall we do?”
“Use the fern seeds, Princess: make us invisible!” urged the elf.
“Edison, that's all very well, but I can't get us through a mortal door!” she gulped.
“Maybe Ben’s got a magic key,” he said on a hopeful note.
“I do have a key, yes. She won’t just have locked the door, though, she’ll have bolted it and put the chain on.” The elf was looking blank so he elaborated: “From her side.”
“Oh, dear! Er, Princess—”
“No, I can’t fix bolts,” she admitted, biting her lip.
“Her revered father always did say her spatial manipulation skills were very poor, very poor,” Edison informed Ben, shaking his head.
“Uh—that so? I see. Look, I can’t knock, she’d throw ten fits, she thinks I’m in London.”
“I could knock!” the elf offered bravely.
Yes, so he could. True, he was odd-looking, but he didn’t look dangerous: she might open the door. And then?
“Then the two of us become invisible and sneak in and look for it!” cried Isabella.
“That might work. Now think up an excuse for Edison to be calling.”
“Lunch?” he groped.
Ben cleared his throat. “No. Gee, can you do that in Fairyland?”
“Yes, and in the Realm of Snow, Ben, dear!”
Lucky them.
“I know!” cried Isabella. “Say that Ben’s friend Tom’s asked you to collect the train set for him!”
“Great idea!” Ben admitted with a laugh. “She’ll most likely throw you out—she loathes Tom and all his works—but yeah, good excuse!”
So they went up to Ben’s front door, and Isabella sprinkled the fern spores—you couldn’t really see them, but there was a faint impression of dust.
Edison knocked, a cross voice said: “Who is it? Who let you in?” and the elf recoiled.
“The superintendent let you in!” hissed Ben frantically.
“The superintendent let me in,” Edison repeated obediently.
“What do you want?” she snapped.
Too early? Ben looked at his watch—he wasn’t invisible to himself, thank goodness, he didn’t need that complication—but it seemed to have stopped. But it must surely be around midday. She was grumpy because she’d decided to skip lunch for the sake of her figure? Or had denied herself coffee this morning because she was watching her caffeine intake? Both?
“Ben’s friend Tom’s asked me to collect the train set for him,” said Edison—verbatim.
“What? –Wait!” There was a pause, and then the chain rattled and Tracy opened the door.
Ben sighed. All alone in the apartment on a Sunday morning: wouldn’t any normal female relax her standards, if only slightly? But no. The tracksuit was immaculate, as was the neat scarf at the neck, the sneakers and socks were sparkling white, and every blonded hair was in place, confined by the neat headband she wore when exercising.
“What train set?” she said crossly.
As Edison returned brilliantly to this: “The train set Ben’s friend Tom’s asked me to collect for him,” Ben hurriedly squeezed past and pulled Isabella inside. They made for the bedroom, while at the door Tracy was haranguing Edison.
Slam!
Ben winced, and closed the bedroom door very quietly behind them. “Here’s the closet.”
He opened a door, and Isabella gaped. She knew the word “closet”, it was what Jessica used instead of Margot’s word “wardrobe”, meaning a cupboard where mortals hung up their clothes, so she hadn’t bothered to look at Ben’s picture of it. But this was a whole little room!
“Ben, are all these clothes yours?” she faltered.
“Mm? Yes, of course: suits over here, you see, and shirts there.”
She looked limply at the ranks and ranks of clothes. “But when do you wear them all?”
He pointed, explaining. He had different clothes for everything he did, apparently. Most of the suits were for work but there were some for the evening as well, and some were for winter and others were for the warmer weather, and the shirts had to tone with the suits, he couldn't possibly wear those blue ones with those suits there, they were brown...
He was looking through a pile of boxes that had been half-hidden by the suits. Cautiously Isabella investigated a door in the wall to their left. Help! Another little room!
This one was smaller, and all it had in it was shoes! Ladies’ as well as men’s. And there was another door—
“Don’t open that!” hissed Ben. “That leads into Tracy’s closet!”
Hurriedly Isabella retreated from the room full of shoes.
Ben sat back on his heels, smiling limply. “I guess it is kind of over the top. Convenient, mind. Tracy had it done when she moved in. I had the place all open-plan: it’s a loft conversion, you see. And I was just keeping my suits and shirts on a moveable rack.”
Isabella saw; she nodded. It seemed a simple set-up, and much more convenient, she would have thought, than this arrangement of little rooms!
“I think it’s in one of these cartons but I dunno which,” he muttered.
“We’d better open them.”
Yeah, and pray Tracy didn’t come in! Well, she didn’t usually go near his closet unless she’d decided to edit out outmoded or worn garments, and she’d done that quite recently. Fingers crossed.
And they began to open cartons...
Gee, the train set was in the last one they looked in. Great, it was intact! Here was Uncle Chas’s station! But... Ben looked around limply at the terrific mess. Isabella didn’t seem to have any idea of putting stuff back as she went.
She was looking at him in a kind of wistful way. “Anything the matter, Isabella?”
“No, um,” she said, going very pink, “if you don’t use those hats any more, I don’t suppose we could give Edison one, could we? For a thank-you.”
“Uh—yeah, sure we can give him something! –Hats?” he groped.
“Yes, one said NY.”
“Oh! The caps! Baseball caps, Isabella. Well, that style, they’re not all literally baseball caps. That one is, though.”
“It doesn’t have to be that one,” she said quickly.
Good, Ben wouldn’t have wanted to lose it, even in a dream.
“I think he’d like the chicken one,” she said shyly.
Phew! He could have that one with his good will, God knew why he’d kept it! It was a souvenir of one of his early venture-capital successes: “Country Chicken”, not another would-be rival to Kentucky Fried Chicken, finger-lickin’ good, that would have been insane, but a wholesale catering firm that supplied ready-made microwaveable chicken dinners to family restaurants. They’d been very successful. The hats had been made for an early promotional thing. The cap was yellow with the silhouette of a brown chicken on its front, crossed diagonally with “Country Chicken” in red. Striking—yeah.
Beaming, Isabella disinterred it from the mess.
Ben looked at the heaps in despair. Why hadn’t he told her to clear as she went? “This is gonna take forever, I hope to God she’s keeping well clear!” he hissed.
Isabella shook her head, and waved a hand. Whoosh! The mess vanished, and everything was stacked up neatly again.
“That’s useful,” he conceded.
Well, yes, but she wouldn’t have needed to do it if he hadn’t had so much stuff! What was he keeping it for? There were things in those boxes that he’d forgotten he even owned! An old football and a funny glove, and old sweaters with very strange messages on them.
“Ben, what’s a Yale?”
“Huh?”
“A Yale. It was on one of your sweaters.”
“Yale,” said Ben limply. “I went there. You know: Isabella: Yale.”
She was getting a picture of big buildings, and lots of young people... “Oh! Your college! So in America people put it on their sweaters, I see!”
“Sure. And their tee-shirts, sweatshirts.” Well, this was only a dream, after all. So he said drily: “Nike isn’t a college, though.”
“Ni-kee? Oh! The one with the tick! –I thought that word rhymed with bike.”
“Yeah, hah, hah. Come on, let’s see if we can open the front door without being spotted.”
“She won’t spot us, but she may notice the door opening.”
Well, yeah!
Rather fortunately Tracy had acquired a large screen that was a must-have and placed it strategically between what she claimed was the draught from the front door and the big open-plan main room. If they could get that far she wouldn’t notice the front door being opened—though she might well notice an increased draught. So all they had to do was get the bedroom door open without attracting her attention. Ben eased it open a crack. Phew! She was in front of the television, grimly copying Ms Fonda’s leg-waving stuff. That glass of brown sludge on the coffee table’d be prune juice, or.... Yeah, very brown. Quite likely the mixture of wheatgrass and carrot juice she also favoured. He grabbed Isabella’s hand and they tiptoed over to the front door...
Phew! He closed it very, very, very quietly, just as Tracy’s voice could be heard saying loudly: “There’s that goddamned draught again! I told him!”
“Come on, run!” he gasped, and they streaked for the elevator.
“Wait! Where’s Edison?” cried Isabella in dismay.
“Uh...” He stared at her in consternation. An elf loose in the Big Apple? He’d be mugged before he’d gone three blocks!
But just as he was really starting to panic the elevator doors opened and there he was. “This is fun!” he beamed. “It goes up and down by itself!”
“Uh—yeah. Can you see us?” said Ben weakly.
“Yes, she’s turned it off, Ben, dear,” he explained kindly.
Sure she had. He tottered into the elevator. No, Edison, let’s not go up and down a few more times, let’s just get right out of the building before Tracy realises the front door isn’t bolted and starts wondering how it got that way!
The elf’s face fell but Isabella presented him with the hat and he brightened immediately. And of course put it on. ...Why did visions of Tommy Lee Jones in the chicken suit keep coming to mind? Well, yeah, the cap was about that yellow.
It was too cold out to eat hotdogs from a stall, so they went to a joint that Ben used to go to back before Tracy, and still did when he could esc— Uh, yeah. Mike's Diner. Pretty much a hole in the wall, or rather, a hole in the ground: Edison recoiled with a gasp of: “A hobgoblin’s cave!” at the sight of the basement entrance. Ben just said firmly: “No, it’s a place for lunch,” and went in. Yes, Edison, it was warm and cosy inside, uh-huh. It must be lunchtime in New York, the place was pretty crowded. Well—Sunday lunch, most people weren’t in a hurry. Dark but cosy, yes, Edison. Uh—no, not goblins’ lanterns— Look, Isabella, can you shut him up about goblins?
“If it’s a dream, Ben, do I need to?” she returned with a giggle.
“Yes, it’ll preserve my sanity, never mind if it’s my dream sanity!”
Giggling, Isabella said to Edison: “Edison, dear, don’t mention goblins again while we’re over here.”
“But Princess,” he hissed: “there’s one here! I can feel him!”
Serenely she replied: “Yes, but there’s no need to talk about it.” She picked up the menu. “Look, here’s a list of things to eat and drink.”
“Ooh! A list!” He took it eagerly; then his face fell. “But Princess, which are naughty and which are nice?” he wailed.
“It is funny, isn’t it? I think they’re all nice, Edison, that’s why it doesn’t bother to say it. Their lists are different, you see.”
“Oh,” he said dubiously.
“Muffins are nice, definitely,” said Isabella confidently. “Buttery!”
“Uh, Isabella, these won’t be English muffins,” Ben warned.
“Oh. Not like the ones we had at the coffee shop, then?”
“No, definitely not. These are sweeter, uh, more like cakes.” She and the elf had brightened terrifically—oops! “No butter,” he finished on a weak note.
“Sweet like cakes is good, though,” offered Edison.
“Thought you wanted a hotdog?” drawled Ben. He was beginning to feel very, very tired of the elf. Jeez, it was his dream, why couldn’t he get rid of the guy? Not that dreams weren't like that: you tried your damnedest to do whatever it was and woke up all sweaty, never having accomplished it. Uh—yeah. This one would definitely not get reported to Tracy.
“Yes, have a hotdog, Edison,” agreed Isabella. “I think I’ll try a muffin. These ones have got blueberries in them, that sounds lovely!”
“Yeah,” said Ben heavily “Do that. –Hi, Julie,” he added as the waitress came up to them with glasses of water. “We’ll have one blueberry muffin, one hotdog with mustard, hold the sauerkraut, hold the chilli, one coffee, and uh—” The Hell with it. The elf would either get a sugar high or he wouldn’t. “Make that two Cokes—regular. Thanks. So how’s Mike, today?”
The beaming Julie gave them a health report on Mike, threw in a pithy appraisal of his ability to predict anything at all related to football, and vanished.
“It’s much friendlier than the coffee shop,” noted Isabella in wonder.
Ben cleared his throat. “Well, I’ve been coming here for years, off and on, you see. Know Mike and Julie quite well. –She’s his wife. The other waitress that’s on today, Christina, she’s their daughter.”
Isabella peered. “I see her— Oh!”
“She’s his daughter!” hissed Edison. “See? I knew there was one!”
She nodded. “I wonder why he’s never brought her back?” she hissed.
“Ooh, hasn’t he? Ooh, perhaps he fell foul of your revered father!”
“If you two mean what I think you mean, bullshit,” said Ben quietly but clearly.
They exchanged glances, giggled, but shut up.
The hotdog went down good. The elf’s cheeks got redder than ever as the level in the Coke glass lowered, but too bad. Isabella drank hers, noting: “Ooh! Bubbles! I don’t think I had this last time I was over here.” Ben had been under the distinct impression she’d never been to the States before, but he didn’t ask. The coffee hadn’t changed since last time he managed to make it in here, one mercy. Well, it wasn’t spectacularly good, no. But it wasn’t bad, either. Just Mike’s coffee.
The lunch crowd was clearing by the time Edison’s last drop of Coke vanished, and Mike himself managed to get out from behind his counter and come over to them.
“Hey, Ben,” he said mildly, picking up his cup and glancing at his companions. The cup hit the table with a crash. “Princess!” he gasped.
“Hullo, Godfrey Goblin,” she replied calmly. “How lovely to see you after all this time.”
“Yuh—uh—call me Mike, that’s what my name is here,” he said with a hunted look over his shoulder.
“Yes, of course! Mike! This is Edison Elf, he’s one of Santa’s.”
“Yeah, sure. Hi, Edison,” said Mike on a weak note, again with that hunted look. “You keep that cap pulled well down, huh? –Well, had a guy in only last week with Spock ears, don’t think it was even a convention in town, maybe there was a re-run on somewheres, but nevertheless. Though come to think, that Hobbit thing mighta started, they’ll only take you for a fan. –You know if that’s on yet, Ben?”
“No idea.” He was trying very hard to tell himself that he never had thought that the wide-shouldered, burly but short and rather bent Mike looked a bit like a goblin. Never. He had one of those gnarled, used-looking faces that could only be called ugly, if you were being frank, but nevertheless there was something very taking about him. Well, maybe it was the twinkle in his eye.
“No,” said Mike weakly. “Well, better safe than sorry, huh, Edison? –Never knew you knew any of us, Ben.”
Okay, he was definitely dreaming. “I met Isabella in London.”
“Oh, right, Daniello’s over there, huh?” he agreed. “So how are Clarissa and the kids, Isabella?”
“Not Clarissa, Mike, dear, that was ages back,” she replied sunnily. “This wife’s called Margot. They’ve got three little kids. Ronny—that’s for short, after Father—and Honeysuckle and Petunia.”
“Pretty,” Mike approved. “So Margot, she knows?”
“Mm. –Oh! You mean your Julie doesn’t?”
“Ssh!” he hissed, with this time an agonised look over the shoulder. “Nope,” he said very quietly. “Not Christina, either.”
“But Mike, she could come back!” gasped Edison.
“She likes it here. No, well, the thing is, how can you break that to a girl after nineteen years?” he said glumly. “She wouldn’t believe me, anyroad.”
“No,” agreed Ben very drily indeed. “She’d probably have you clapped up. Bellevue,” he clarified unkindly.
“Yeah. Lesson not to let things run on, I guess.”
“You could always ask Father to— You know,” said Isabella cautiously. “Make you one of them.”
“He won’t. He said I was the type to change me mind ten years down the track and they got enough guh—uh—you-know-whats of their own over here, they don’t need no more.”
“Hob-ones, too!” hissed Edison. “We saw two on the subway! It goes whoosh, it’s like flying! And guess what: we went up and down, up and down, in an elevator! They do it all by themselves.”
“With machinery, Edison,” said the goblin heavily, “but I guess you don’t need to worry your head about that. –But I’d be mighty obliged, Ben, if you wouldn’t mention the topic.”
“No, well, if this isn’t a dream—which I know it is, Mike, I have known you for years—I promise not to mention the topic of G, or hob-G, or F or anything associated therewith.”
“It’s not a dream, are you crazy?” he hissed. “Wait!” He marched off. Ben’s table companions looked at him in bewilderment. Ben shrugged. They waited...
Mike marched back with a portion of the paper. The sports section. “That a dream?” he hissed viciously, stabbing at it.
Ben smiled weakly. “More like a nightmare. If you backed them—what am I saying, if you had a bet they’d even score a touchdown—”
“What’s she been saying?” he hissed angrily.
“—you’ve only got yourself to blame. Same like always,” Ben finished sweetly.
“Jesus! You haven’t changed!” said Mike in exasperation. “Princess, you sure you wanna take up with this guy?”
Isabella had gone very pink, so Ben got up, saying firmly: “Dream or not, real or not, that’s enough for today, thanks. How much do I owe you?”
Mike gave a startled blink. “Uh—no, it’s on the house, of course!”
Ben shrugged. No skin off his nose. “Okay, thanks. –If you two want to see the Empire State, come on.”
“That bit was a dream, all right,” he announced as they emerged into the frosty air. “Mike giving anyone a free lunch? Ho, ho, ho.”
Isabella hugged his arm. “It’s not a dream, Ben. But never mind. Come on, show us your tall building.”
“Does the elevator go up and up, whoosh?” asked Edison eagerly, hippity-hopping along by his side as Ben looked for a cab.
“Uh—well, no, you don’t feel the motion at all, Edison, they’re very efficient elevators.”
The elf’s face fell. “Oh.”
That was a pretty accurate prediction of their reaction to the Empire State. They conceded it was tall but evinced no desire to go up it. Ben thought it’d be open, but he didn’t insist. Anything else they’d like? More subway? Okay, Edison. So they rode it back to the park.
And gee, since Isabella was again holding his hand, there the reindeer and their sleigh were.
“And back we go!” she said brightly.
“Y—Hic! Ooh, it’s that funny drink with the bubbles!” gasped Edison.
And off they flew, to the accompaniment of: “Hic! Ooh! Bubbles! Pardon! Hic! Ooh! Pardon! Hic!”
“Thank you for showing us the subway and taking us to Mike’s Diner, Ben,” murmured Isabella, as Ben cuddled down under the rug with her arm through his. “I’ll look after the train set, shall I? I’ll slip it under Damian’s Christmas tree when he’s asleep.”
“Mm... Goo’ plan...” Little bluebells and Canterbury bells, tinkling... Ben fell asleep, smiling.
He woke up on a hard park bench. What the— “Shit, did I doze off, Damian?”
“Yeah! Isabella, she said you were tired, it's been a big day! ’Cos we went to the North Pole!” he gasped, jumping.
Ben looked around him dazedly. “Where— Oh.” Through the pale grey murk, past the wintry skeletons of trees, the London skyline could just be discerned. “The Heath, right?”
“Yes. It’s been snowing, see? Dan said it would!” he gasped, jumping.
“Uh—yeah. Where— Oh, right,” he realized. Dan and Isabella were nearby, playing a game in which an adult took a kid’s hands and whirled round, the kid flying up in the air.
“It’s not like real flying,” noted Damian, following his gaze.
Uh—no. Jesus, that had been a weird dream! “What the Hell did I eat for lunch, fella?”
“A hamburger, I think, Uncle Ben.”
With onions, no doubt. That explained it. He looked round but there was no sign of the box with the train set in it, so there you were.
Dan came over to him, grinning. “You awake at last? Come on, better be getting back, we don’t want Damian to get cold. The car’s just over here.”
Right. No reindeer sleighs need apply. Weird and a half!
First thing the kid shrieked when they got back was: “Mum! We went to the North Pole!”
But Jessica just said heavily to her brother: “The Heath?”
“The Heath,” Ben confirmed drily.
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