The Santa Claus Effect

“Santa Claus,” Joe said, snapping his fingers.

“What about him?” Max asked.

“How old were you when you figured out there was no such thing as Santa Claus?” Joe asked.

“I don’t know,” Max said, wondering where this was going. “Eight or nine, I guess.”

“Eight or nine,” Joe repeated, as though that explained it all.

“And...?”

“So tell me this. Were you a smart kid?”

“Yeah.” In fact, he’d been extremely smart. Downright nerdy, if he were being completely honest, but he chose not to share this with Joe. “What are you getting at?”

“Say you’d never heard of Santa Claus. Went your whole life knowing full well it was Mommy and Daddy who put those presents under the tree. Then imagine when you were eight or nine, somebody told you there was this old guy, lived up at the North Pole with the penguins, making toys in a little shop. This person told you this guy was fat, wore a bright red suit, had elves as workshop helpers, and magic reindeer who flew him all the way around the world in one night, giving out presents to kids he didn’t even know, because he could tell if they were good or bad. What would you have said to that person?”

Max thought for a second. “I’d have probably told them to lay off the eggnog,” he said at last.

“So you weren’t gullible at that age,” Joe said.

It hadn’t been a question, but Max felt compelled to answer anyway. “No,” he said, defending the nine-year old nerd he’d once been.

“You weren’t gullible, and yet at the age of eight or nine you did believe in Santa Claus, ridiculous story that it was. Why?”

“Well,” Max said, not sure how this had turned into a debate about St. Nick. “I’d just always believed it. I’d grown up with the idea.”

Joe’s face lit up. “Exactly,” he said, as though it would all be clear to Max now.

“I don’t get it,” Max said.

“You were first told about Santa when you were young enough to buy it, hook, line, and sinker. The idea got planted early, so you hung onto it well past the age when you should have known better. Human nature works that way: we hang onto what we know to be true, even if it’s well past the point where it makes any sense.”

“OK, that’s an interesting point. But I don’t see what it has to do with him.” Max gestured at the gagged man tied to a chair in the center of the room.

“We need to convince him to talk,” Joe said.

“And what does that have to do with believing in Santa Claus?” Max asked.

“We just have to convince him young,” Joe said, flashing the maniac smile he reserved for special occasions. He walked behind the chair, and put his hands on the man’s temples. Then he crossed one foot behind the other, winked, and did a little spin in place. Except that Joe didn’t stay in place: he vanished.

* * *

Max and Joe had first met eight years ago, when Max was in grad school. Max had been sitting in an all-night coffeehouse, trying to organize copious research notes for a paper, when Joe had walked in and sat down across from him. There had been plenty of empty tables, but this stranger had sat down at his as though they knew each other.

Max had always had difficulty with confrontation. He just wasn’t able to tell someone where to get off. He looked up from his notes at the intruder, gave him a weak, half-assed smile, and then looked back down at the page in front of him. He’d been falling behind on the paper, and hoped that just ignoring the guy would make him go away, or at the very least get him left alone to do his work.

But being ignored hadn’t made the guy go away. And he hadn’t left Max alone, either. “What’s your paper about?” he asked, slurping black coffee from a foam cup with no lid.

“Napoleon and Josephine,” Max said, not looking up from his scattered notes.

“Interesting subject,” Joe had said. “I looked into it once myself. They weren’t as happy as the books make ’em out to be, though.”

Max didn’t respond to the comment. He had been researching the pair so intensely that he was dreaming about them. He doubted this stranger who had “looked into it once” had any real idea what he was talking about.

“Been sitting here long?” the stranger had asked.

Max had paused, looked up from a copy of a love letter from 1795. “Yeah,” he said, all of his bitterness and frustration with the project packed into that one short, scathing syllable.

“Why don’t you take a break?” the stranger had suggested. “I think there’s a burrito next door with your name on it.”

“I can’t,” Max said, but it was hard. The truth was, he’d been thinking about those burritos for the past three hours. He’d continued to try to ignore the man, but had begun to reluctantly appreciate the distraction.

“I’m buying,” the man continued. “You won’t accomplish anything on an empty stomach, anyway.”

It had been a good enough rationalization for Max. He had packed up his books and papers, stuffed them into his backpack, and left the coffeehouse with his new friend without even asking his name. They’d gotten to know each other over two enormous burritos, the kind found only on college campuses.

They’d had a lot in common, sometimes it had seemed like the guy — Joe, his name had turned out to be — was reading his mind. He’d told Max that he wasn’t local, but that he came into town every now and again. He told Max he’d look him up next time he was around.

And he had. Every few months, Joe would turn up. He was a strange fellow, never giving Max any real way of contacting him. He’d said that he didn’t trust technology, so he didn’t carry a cellphone. Said he moved around a lot, so there was no point in signing up for a home phone, or giving out a mailing address. He’d given Max a P.O. box where he could send mail, if he wanted, but warned that if he wasn’t around for a while that letters could go unanswered for a very long time, and please not to take it personally.

Max hadn’t taken it personally, but did write to Joe every once in a while. Joe never once wrote back, but whenever he showed up the next time around, he’d always read the letter, recalling it so clearly it seemed like he’d just read it minutes before.

* * *

This afternoon, Joe had turned up, as usual, out of the blue. “Hey, buddy,” he said from behind Max’s bar stool. Max looked up with bleary, drunken eyes, to find his friend. Joe was holding Max’s last postcard in his hand. “I just got this,” he said. “Sorry to hear.” Max’s wife had left him seven months earlier.

“The divorce was final today,” Max said, slugging back another shot.

Joe had looked sympathetic but then smiled a bit. “Looks like I came along just in time, then, didn’t I?”

“You usually do,” Max observed.

Joe pulled Max out of the bar and taken him to a late lunch. He listened to Max’s tales of woe all through the meal, only interrupting with an “mm-hmm,” or an “I hear ya, buddy,” once in a while. Though they weren’t in regular contact, Joe’s occasional appearances were always so perfectly timed, so poignant, that sometimes it felt as if Joe were his best friend in the world. He told Joe this, a little afraid of sounding like a pussy, but too grateful for the friendship to care much.

“I know what you mean, buddy,” Joe said. “To friendship,” he offered, raising the fresh glass of wine the waitress had just bought. Max toasted him, amazed at how much better he was feeling.

After lunch, they went over by the college and wandered the streets and shops where they’d first met. Max was now teaching at the same university, but it was a walk down memory lane for Joe. After a few hours, Joe turned to Max, his face serious. “I’m glad you’re cheering up, buddy,” he said. “And I hate to bring you back down, I really do. I have no right to ask, especially today, but I’ve got sort of a problem of my own. I was hoping you could help me out of a pickle.”

“Of course,” Max had said, not hesitating. Joe had been such a good friend today; how could he deny him anything? “What’s going on?”

“It’s this guy, been giving me some trouble...”

Joe recounted a tale of a weekend gambler’s luck gone bad. He hadn’t meant to get into debt, especially to those kinds of people. He looked terrified. Max became so caught up in the story and with concern for his friend, that he sort of lost the thread of things, and when he found himself in Joe’s car with him, going to confront the debt-collecting thug, he didn’t quite know how it had happened.

Things went down all wrong. Not that a confrontation with a bookie’s enforcement man had a right way to go down, but it didn’t happen at all the way Joe had predicted.

Or had it? Max really thought about that now, remembering Joe’s words. “We have to be the aggressors,” he’d said. “We can’t let the bastard get his footing, or he’ll be in charge, and then we’ll be in trouble. We have to stay in control of the situation.” And wasn’t that what Joe had done?

The guy didn’t look like a thug, but then Max had never met one before. He didn’t look like the guys on the cop shows, anyway. The man was small and bookish, wearing wire-rimmed spectacles and a tie with Rocky and Bullwinkle on it. He wore brown shoes with his blue suit, and had a complexion that implied he’d only ever seen the sun on a computer screen. But, Max figured, if he was armed, what difference did it make if he didn’t look the part? The thought was unsettling in an already unsettled situation.

Joe confronted the man with an unexpected aggression. The mousy man had appeared both surprised and frightened. At the time Max was happy about this, believing Joe was succeeding in his effort to defend himself.

But now the guy was tied to a straight-backed chair in the middle of a room that would probably have been called a bedroom, had there been any furniture in it. Joe had said that he’d just come to town, and hadn’t bought any furniture yet. Max hadn’t wondered until just now why he hadn’t brought any with him from wherever he’d been living before.

And what was it Joe kept shouting at the guy? Tell me where it is. What was he talking about? Joe sounded more like the enforcer, now that Max thought about it. And while he was now thinking about it, how well did he really know Joe, anyway? Not very. Maybe twenty or so meetings over the last eight years. A couple dozen postcards and letters, all unanswered. He realized he didn’t even know what Joe did for a living. Shit.

The man looked small and helpless, and Max felt a combination of curiosity and sympathy. He moved across the room, stopping in front of the man’s chair and squatting down so that they were eye to eye. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. “I need to ask you some questions, and I need you not to yell, OK?”

He knew that, to the man, it would seem like they were playing good cop/bad cop, but he didn’t know what else to do. He reached up to remove the handkerchief from the man’s mouth. “You’re not going to yell, are you?” The guy shook his head, but Max hadn’t been smart only when he was nine: he kept the gag handy, just in case.

But he was true to his word or shake-for now, anyway. He swallowed and licked his lips, took a few deep breaths. “Thank you,” he said softly.

Max nodded. “What do you know about the man who was here with us?”

The prisoner didn’t answer, but it seemed to be more out of confusion than stubbornness.

“He kept asking you where something is. What’s he looking for?”

“You’re trying to trick me,” the man said.

“No,” Max said. “I know you’ve got good reason not to believe me, but I’m not. I think you and I may be sort of in the same boat here. What is he looking for?”

The man still didn’t answer.

“He told me you were trying to enforce a debt to a bookie,” Max said, hoping his own truthfulness would encourage the hostage’s.

“Me?” the man asked. The ridiculousness of the story seemed to make him forget caution for a bit. “Do I look like a muscle-man?”

Max smiled. “No, you don’t. You look like an accountant.”

The man smiled back. “That’s what I am,” he said.

“And what’s Joe looking for?” Max asked, afraid he was moving back to business too soon, but feeling a mounting urgency. They were both in danger now, he realized. “Money? Records?”

“A book,” the accountant said.

“Like a ledger?” Max asked. Who the hell was Joe, and how had Max fallen into this trap? He’d let himself become an accomplice in this Tarantino nightmare, and had only just begun to wake to how fleeting his acquaintance with his partner in crime was.

“No” the accountant said, as though he thought Max might be an idiot. “The book of-” but he stopped. His eyes glazed over for a moment, then cleared again. “You’re him,” he said. His eyes were widening now, and he was struggling against the bright orange utility ropes that held him, trying to scoot the chair back, away from Max.

“I’m-”

But he was interrupted. “Too late,” said Joe’s voice from behind him.

He whirled around. “Where-how-”

“He knows who you are now,” Joe said in a scolding, smirking tone. “You should have known better. Tsk, tsk.” He shook his head.

“What are you talking about?” Max asked, his guts turning to icy water.

“You think this boy doesn’t know about the boogey man?” Joe asked.

“The boogey man?”

“Well,” Joe said with a casual shrug. “In a manner of speaking. The Jordan Street Slasher, technically. That’s what the kids all called you.”

“What kids?” Max asked, baffled.

“The kids on little Lenny here’s street, of course. Jordan Street. You’re a local legend, buddy. The story big brothers told to scare their little sisters. The reason kids used to dare each other to take one more step closer to the old shack. You’re a monster.”

There was an amused sarcasm in that last bit, you’re a monster, but Max failed to appreciate the humor. He was well beyond confused. Before he could think of anything else to say or ask, Joe was talking again.

“Funny how he hasn’t aged a day, isn’t it?” he asked Lenny, holding up a Polaroid snapshot for him to see. “Still even wearing the same clothes. It’s like someone took that picture just today.” At that he turned to Max and winked.

Max felt his heart try to stop. Joe had taken his picture today. Earlier, when they were wandering the campus stores, they had gone into a junk shop. There was an old Polaroid camera in the glass case behind the counter. Joe convinced the sales girl to load some film into the camera, telling her that he wanted to try it out and make sure it worked. She handed it to Joe, and he snapped a dim, unflattering shot of Max, who was standing in front of a display case housing an odd assortment of old hunting knives and medieval weapons. He thanked her, said he didn’t think he was interested in buying after all, and they left. He hadn’t noticed Joe pocket the picture, but apparently he had.

“How the hell-”

But Joe was back to Lenny. “So, where is it?” he was demanding again. “You see who I’ve got with me, now, don’t you? You’re going to talk now, right? You remember what he does to bad little boys who hide the Book of Chronos, don’t you?”

Lenny nodded, his face even more pallid than it was before. Joe was in his face, shaking him by the collar, but the accountant’s eyes weren’t leaving Max. Max noticed that at some point the frightened man had wet his pants. How had any of this happened? Why did this guy think that Max was some urban-legend slasher from his childhood? He seemed to believe he’d actually seen the photo Joe had taken just this afternoon when he was a kid. What the hell was the Book of Chronos, anyway?

Lenny was whispering something to Joe. “That’s a good boy,” Joe said, stroking his hair like a child. Then he took hold of Lenny’s head with both hands and snapped his neck. He slumped against the ropes, looking like a little boy sleeping.

Joe turned. Max’s mind was casting about for any thread of sense to grab hold of. How could someone he’d known for so long suddenly be someone so different? How could anyone simply vanish into thin air? Granted, they hadn’t known each other well, but better than this, surely. “It was nice meeting you today, Max,” Joe said.

“Today? But we’ve known-”

“No,” Joe said, smiling. “We just met today, in the bar.”

“No,” Max said, confusion surrounding him like a physical presence. “We met at the coffeehouse when-”

“When I went back and met you at coffeehouse. Today. After you told me about writing your Napoleon paper there, and how you always wished you’d stopped for that burrito. You were probably too drunk at that point to remember me introducing myself. But then I made a visit to the men’s room, and when I came back, we were old friends. Eight-year old friends.

“I’ve spent the day hopping through your life, working myself in. Didn’t take much, to be honest, buddy. You’re awfully ready to latch onto a complete stranger. Just like Lenny here was awfully ready to latch onto a neighborhood slasher.

“I just showed the picture to little Lenny, explained the Book to him, and told him what the slasher does to people who hide the Book. Then I hopped through his life, just like I hopped through yours, reinforcing it every few years. Reminded him that all the kids knew about the slasher, not just him. They shared stories, made up rhymes, exchanged dares. Couldn’t let him get past that magical belief zone, you know? Just like Santa Claus.

“See ya around, buddy. I’ve got a Book to retrieve.” And then Joe winked, placed one foot behind the other, and did a little spin in place.

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