“She just handed it to you for no reason?”
“Um, well, no. Her daughter was in one of my classes and I, um, accidentally used the shop’s sign as an example when I went off on a rant about unnecessary apostrophes….”
“Oh, jeez. What was her sign?”
“She seemed like a Capricorn.”
Ginger swats me.
“It’s called Nifty Things, and the big sign is fine, but then in the window there are two signs and one says Nifty Thing apostrophe s and the other says Nifty Things apostrophe. Anyway, I guess my student told her mom and her mom got the signs fixed. Then, one day when I was walking past the shop, she just popped out of the front door like she’d seen me coming and gave me those preserves.”
“Creepy.”
“So creepy. Dude, seriously, half the shit that happens in Holiday would seem like something out of a horror movie if there was scary music playing in the background. Or a David Lynch movie.”
“If it had happened in Philly, that lady would’ve come out of her shop with a baseball bat.”
“Right? Rex says I’m pathologically negative because I’m afraid if I admit that things are good, then I have to be scared they’ll go away, so I just make myself expect the worst. Even if it’s a quaint old couple with chainsaws at a Christmas tree farm.”
“Uuuummm, that sounds… accurate? Wait, a quaint old couple with a chainsaw like in that fucked-up movie?”
“Yes, thank you.”
Ginger sighs and slumps onto the floor.
“I like him.”
“Who?”
“Duh, Rex. I think he’s great for you.”
“Well, I liked Christopher too.”
“Obviously.”
I slide onto the floor next to her and push the other gift into her lap.
“This one, I totally cheated on. It wasn’t free and I won’t pretend it was, but it’s awesome and I have a job now, so deal with it.”
“Ooh, babycakes, I love it when you’re so forceful. Oh crap, that’s awesome!” she says, tearing the paper off the novelty ice cube trays. “Let’s make some right now.”
In the kitchen, Ginger fills the little Michigans with water.
“Wait, I know what we have to do.”
Ginger pulls coffee ice cream out of the freezer, the only food she can always be counted on to have in the house. She scoops some into a bowl and mushes it up until it’s soft, then she packs it into the second ice cube tray, smoothing it into perfect little Michigan ice creams.
“Hang on,” she says, rifling through her cabinets. “Ah ha!” She pulls a dusty box of toothpicks from the back of a cabinet and sticks one in the center of each ice cube. “Do you think I should put one in the upper peninsulas too?” she asks. “So they don’t detach when we pop them out?”
“Um,” I say, staring between Ginger and the ice cube trays. “Who the fuck are you right now?”
Ginger drops her gaze to the floor for a second and when she looks back up her expression is sheepish.
“Okay, so maybe I saw Christopher do something like this once.” She rolls her eyes. “Okay, and maybe he’s teaching me to cook a little bit.”
I fake gasp and put my hand to my heart.
“Ginger Marie, as I live and breathe!” She flips me off. “Um, well, Rex may be trying to teach me to cook, too….”
“Oh god, what’s to become of us? Domesticated!”
“It’s just ice cream in an ice cube tray, Ginge, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
“Oh? And what culinary masterpieces have you achieved?”
“Uh. None. I made eggs that actually tasted like what I would imagine it feels like to die. Though I did somehow manage to infuse normal toast with such a strong scent of fire that I think it might be considered molecular gastronomy.”
“Molecular what now?”
“Molecular gastronomy. I saw it on one of Rex’s cooking shows. It’s kind of awesome. It’s like, they use dry ice and a bunch of other chemicals to make one food taste like or look like another. So, like, they could make something that looked like coffee ice cream, but then when you taste it, it’s actually meat loaf or something.”
“That’s the grossest thing I’ve ever heard. Why would anyone want meat loaf when they could have coffee ice cream?”
“Um, I don’t think I explained it well.”
We put the ice cube trays in the freezer and drop back on the couch as Jack Skellington’s minions are abducting Santa.
“God, Oogie Boogie has the sexiest voice,” Ginger says, and I nod.
“Oh, hey, Rex wanted to get you a Chanukah present, but when I told him about the whole free thing—”
“Which you cheated on.”
“Which I cheated on. Anyway, he says that if you want, he’ll build you new shelves in the back of the shop if he’s in Philly again. He says he noticed that yours were uneven.”
“He was only downstairs for, like, two minutes.”
“Dude, he’s creepy observant. It’s….” I shake my head, remembering how I reaped the benefits of Rex’s incredible powers of observation last night. How he held me down and explored every inch of my body, watching my reactions and zeroing in on all the places that had me squirming until, after what felt like hours, I was trembling in his arms, every touch electrifying, begging for him to be inside me. I shiver and shake it off, but Ginger is watching me like she can see the film reel playing in my head. I clear my throat.