Present Friends

         “. . . all of a sudden the building near us just goes down and I’m ducking for cover as everything around us starts exploding. I mean, there’s fragments and debris flying everywhere and it feels like I stuck my head in a furnace, I swear the goddamn air feels like it’s on fire.
         “And I have no idea what’s going on at all, I think people are shooting at us but I can’t be sure. So I’m shouting at the top of my lungs for everyone to get down, I’ve made up and chucked like six different plans to get the hell out of there in the last ten seconds . . . then I realize he’s still standing there, calm as the day.
         “I’m about to say something that at best is probably impolite and at worst will get me shot on the battlefield when he turns to me and . . . he looks at me and says:
         “‘Before I forget, since it’s after midnight, Commander, I suppose it’s customary to wish you a Merry Christmas.’”
         Hunched over on the couch slightly, hands somewhere between his knees, Brown paused and waited for a reaction.
         Tristian was first. He was in the middle of drinking when Brown hit his punchline and snorted a little bit, causing a few violent bubbles to form. But he didn’t choke, just calmly swallowed and put his glass down.
         Staring archly at Brown, he said, “Well, it was nice of him to remember. But are you sure the General’s not a comedian in his spare time?”
         Brown clapsed his hands together and leaned back deeper into the couch. “You know,” he said, tilting his head slightly to the side, “I wonder sometimes. Because a sense of humor would really explain some of the bizarre crap that he does to us.”
         “It would be funny if the last billion years of his existence has just been building up to one really elaborate joke.”
         Brown considered that with a frown. “Yeah, but I don’t think I want to be around for the punchline.”
         “You never know, it might be pretty funny,” Tristian pointed out, swirling the dark liquid around in his glass a bit and taking a sip.
         “Because manipulation is always a gas,” Brown answered dryly, almost under his breath. Almost immediately afterwards he brightened, snapping his fingers and springing up slightly. “Which reminds me of another story . . .”
         “Hey, hey, wait . . .” a girl’s voice said from nearby. Tristian and Brown both turned to face the two women sitting on the same couch as Brown. It was the one sitting on the furthest end who had spoken, a girl with shortish dark hair. Her friend sitting next to her, about the same height but with a thinner face and more reddish hair, appeared to be echoing whatever concerns the first girl had without actually expressing them.
         Without waiting for either of the two men to speak, Jina said to Brown, “You can’t switch stories. You didn’t tell us how this one ends.”
         “Oh, I didn’t think it mattered,” Brown said with a shrug.
         “Of course it matters,” Jina countered, bouncing a little on the couch in time with her words. “The ending always matters.”
         “But you know what the ending is,” Brown explained, thumping his hand lightly on the arm on the couch. Behind him was a large window that stretched across most of the wall. It was dark outside, with vague lights and distant stars. It looked cold, as the dark always did. “You weren’t even there and you know how it ended.”
         Jina crossed her arms over her chest, stubborn. “I do not.” Next to her, Lena reached forward and grabbed her glass on the coffee table, taking a quick drink to hide a smile. She glanced at Tristian without really seeing him.
         “Okay, fine,” Brown said, throwing his arms up. With a swift stare he turned to Tristian, saying, “Were you there, Tristian, my good man?”
         “I’m pretty sure I sat that one out, for some reason.”
         “You had other concerns at the time, I think,” Brown said offhandedly. Switching gears, he added, “But that’s not the point. You weren’t there but tell me, how did the story end?”
         Tristian considered. “You won, of course.”
         “See,” Brown said, shooting Jina an accusatory glare, “that was easy. Oh wait . . .” he cut her off with a gesture, seeing her about to speak, “I know what you’re going to say.”
         She settled back with an amused expression, waiting for him.
         “You want to know how . . . but who cares about the how? I’m here, I’m alive, obviously I made it out. Obviously, we won.” His posture was poised, like he was about to leap over Lena and get up in Jina’s face, as if proximity would hammer the point home. “The explanation just ruins the story.”
         She remained adamant. “Every story needs an ending.”
         “Spoken like a writer,” Brown commented, with an arch expression. Jina made a face back at him but didn’t say anything further.
         Lena spoke up then, either to break the stalemate or simply because the question just occurred to her. “How did he know it was Christmas?”
         Brown smiled at her. “See now?” he said, giving Jina a stern look. “That’s how you ask a question.”
         Jina nudged her friend. “Thanks for backing me up. Hope you like walking home.”
         “What?” she said with a laugh. “It’s a valid question.”
         “You travel in time enough,” Brown said, by way of explanation, cutting them off. “You start to carry around a little calender in your head. Helps keep things linear.” He took another swig of his drink and shifted his weight on the couch. Lights from the evergeen tree on his right played over his face, red and green and white, marking him like an airstrip. “Otherwise, how would I have known to come around for this fine holiday?”
         “Come on,” Jina said, “how can you forget Christmas?”
         “How can you indeed?” a different, raspier voice said from the other side of the room. All heads turned to regard a second Tristian that was sitting on the arm of the other couch, his feet on a cushion near Tristian. It was unclear whether he’d been there the whole time or had just arrived, but nobody seemed surprised at his presence.
         Resting his elbows on his knees, his folded hands on his chin, Agent Two paused, his eyes roving over every face. “So this is Christmas,” he said slowly. “It’s a good tradition, you know,” he added, still speaking deliberately, almost physically picking his words out of the air. “I can really admire it, sitting around and giving each other stuff, slathering the house in decorations. I look forward to it, to be honest.”
         Tristian snorted, looked over at the Agent. “What do you know about Christmas? It’s not like they celebrate it anywhere else.” There was a tinge of amusement in his eyes as he said that, like he was setting the Agent up for something.
         “What do I know?” the Agent said, his words suddenly coming more rapidly. “Me, you ask me what I know. Ah, listen to him,” he said with a laugh, swinging his legs around the arm of the couch, pivoting so that he landed lightly on the floor. Coming around the back of the furniture, his feet were hardly touching the ground. “I could fill this house up with Christmas to the point where it sinks into the planet, that’s how much I know.”
         “That doesn’t answer my question,” Tristian noted, standing up with a now empty glass. “Anyone else want a refill?” he asked, seemingly ignoring the Agent. There were murmured noises as the assembled deferred.
         “Hey, hey,” he said, moving past Tristian to cut him off, his long legs causing him to pace crazily around the room. Tristian stopped and regarded the being, face staring into same. “Show a little respect for someone who practically started this whole thing, okay?”
         “Excuse me?” Lena said, looking up suddenly.
         “Oh please, don’t encourage him,” Brown muttered. “And I think I will get that refill,” he added, standing up.
         Agent Two snapped his fingers. “First one is still the best one, in my book. Can’t get any better than keeping it simple.”
         The two girls looked at each other, silently debating who was going to ask the next question. Jina won the short straw, apparently. “So are you saying that you were there when Jesus was-“
         ”Not just there, my dear,” Agent Two noted, stepping forward and into the coffee table, the structure going right through his knees. Lena uncrossed her legs and slid back an inch. “I made it happen.” Seeing the looks on their faces, he waved a hand in the air, saying, “Oh, not that way, get your minds out of the gutter, will you? I just helped facilitate, as they say.” He stopped, ran a hand along his chin, then pivoted, snapped his finger again. “Actually, I really can’t take all the credit. I did have some help. Didn’t I?”
         The question was thrown to a corner of the room. Agent One, standing against the wall, his legs stretched out at an angle to his body and his arms crossed over his chest, merely nodded politely.
         “He’s being modest,” Agent Two said, turning back to his makeshift audience. “But we were great, it was fantastic, I tell you. If we had the time I’d tell the ol’ soldier here to fire up the time machine and take us back but . . . it’s a bugger nearly running into yourself.” Brown, in the kitchen, said something that couldn’t be made out clearly. “Imagine,” the Agent continued, his arms spread out wide, “the night was clear as can be, barely any wind, you had this pregnant lady who was getting ready to give birth to a child that some angels had told nine months before might be a little bit important . . .” he chuckled, shook his head. “I always liked that part. Your angel voice was great,” he said to his brother. “I tell you, it was great. Do it for the kids at home, come on.”
         “Don’t be ridiculous,” Agent One said. “I’m certainly not-“
         “It’s just like that,” Agent Two broke in, stepping away from the table. “Imagine a little more echo, maybe a little deeper and you got it.”
         “Tristian, is he making this up?” Jina called out. Tristian was already coming back into the room, while Brown appeared to be trying to hide in the kitchen.
         “Beats me,” he replied with a shrug.
         “Come on now, where’s the faith?” Agent Two asked, sliding over to his brother and putting his arm around him. A circle of light appeared over his head. “You teleport in, give the lady a little pep talk, some portents, then teleport out. Is that so hard to believe?” His body suddenly became slightly translucent, the back wall visible through his torso. “Perhaps a little more etherealness is what you need?”
         “Don’t forget the other part,” Agent One chimed in, slipping away from his brother.
         “Right, how they all got there,” he said, clasping his hands together. “Quick now, how they did know where to find the kid? Don’t think too hard about it.”
         Lena answered first, almost without thinking, “They followed a . . .” She stopped, staring at the Agent. “Oh geez,” she said.
         Agent Two was floating crosslegged in the air, his head almost completely wrapped in soft light, portruding out in spiky points. His voice came from somewhere inside. “Go ahead, you can say it.”
         Lena abruptly put her glass down on the coffee table. “Okay, I’ve officially had too much. That actually makes sense.”
         “Most things do,” Agent One commented, “once you turn them around enough.”
         “So me and Christmas, we’re old friends,” Agent Two said with a grin. No longer glowing, he bowed a little and said, “I hope I’ve dispelled all doubt.” Tristian, now sitting on the edge of the couch, sniffed but said nothing.
         “And you,” Agent Two continued, pointing at Brown, “that’s how you tell a proper story.”
         “Well that’s why I came,” Brown said dryly from the doorway, his body held pencil-straight, a cup perched loosely in his grasp. “To learn from the master.” He reached up and dinged a small bell that was hanging from the archway.
         Jina covered her mouth and made a noise.
         Agent Two raised an eyebrow at her, but turned the expression into a smirk. “Still, now that I’ve shown everyone how it’s done, it’s your turn.”
         “Me, what?” Jina said, shifting a bit, tucking her foot under her knee, almost defensively.
         “You wanted a story,” the Agent said, with a casual gentleness. He wandered over to the tree, picked up a small package set under it and shook it slightly. Something inside shouted. “So go on, tell us a story.” Without waiting for her to speak again, he pointed a stiff arm at her, saying, “Your favorite Christmas. Don’t think too hard!” The package was balanced on one finger, rotating like a cubist world.
         “I, well . . .” she squirmed a bit uncomfortably and Lena looked about ready to rise to her friend’s defense. Agent One watched from the corner, his eyes hooded, although a tiny smile might have been etched in one corner of his mouth. “There was this time, I was a kid and I was starting not to believe in Santa Claus anymore.” Agent One raised an eyebrow and slipped a little further back into the wall, stretching his arms. “And I was wandering around my house, just, you know, bored. For some reason I looked in a closet, I don’t remember why, it’s just one of those . . . when you’re searching for something to do and you just open a door hoping that you’ll find it in there.” She took a deep breath and sighed. “So I did and behind a bunch of towels, the closet went back really deep . . . behind the towels I found all these toys, still in the boxes. And I looked at them and realized that it was all stuff I had asked for. All of it, sitting right there.”
         “Everything you wanted?” Brown asked with a grin. “You greedy girl you.”
         “Oh shut up,” Jina said without looking at him. The Agent was sort of hunched in the air, strangely poised. “So I realized that my parents had put all that stuff there, for me. Nobody brought them to me at night, they must have put it there while I slept.” She let the glass settle in her lap, perhaps seeing bits of herself in the swaying fluid. “There wasn’t a Santa Claus, it was just them. My parents.” She took a sip, let it swirl around in her mouth for a bit before swallowing. “I put it all back without telling them but every so often I’d go back and check it, just to remind myself what I was getting.”
         Lena laughed. “Joe’s right, you were greedy. I’d better watch out where I hide your present.”
         “Back of your closet, behind some shoeboxes,” Jina said automatically. Lena’s eyes widened and Jina immediately said, “Come on, that can’t really be where it is, that’s too obvious-“
         ”I hate you,” was all Lena said.
         “Oh, come on now-“
         ”Finish your story,” Lena said dismissively, turning away. “Go on, finish.” But there was a smile on her, hidden by a strand of hair. Tristian caught it and raised a glass to her slightly in quiet tribute. She grinned back at him slyly, her face crinkling a little.
         “Geez, whatever,” Jina replied. “So anyway, one day, a little before Christmas I went to check, just one last time . . .” she stopped, waiting. “What, no comments that time?”
         “Sorry, I’m all tapped out,” Brown said. “You’ve used me up.”
         Making a disgusted sound, Jina shook her head and continued. “This time, though, they weren’t there. It was just empty space behind the towels. For a second I thought I imagined the whole thing . . . except there was this note back there, like this piece of parchment. And it had really fancy handwriting, that old kind of cursive you don’t see anymore, and it said, Nosy girls don’t get to stay on the nice list.”
         Agent Two laughed at that, a weirdly human sound. “Damn, that’s cold.”
         “You couldn’t believe how scared out of my mind I was,” Jina said, leaning forward as if confiding to the being. Her eyes shone with the story. “A day before I didn’t believe at all but this stupid trick my parents pulled . . . I ran back into my room and I don’t think I said a word for the rest of the day. For the next few days I didn’t even want to look at the closet. My parents said nothing the whole time and I kept looking for signs that I was on the nice list again. I would lie awake in bed at night and just listen. Christmas Eve was the worst, I kept waiting for hear noises, on the roof, in the living room, anywhere.” She played with a ring on her finger, her face intent. “The next morning, I barely wanted to go downstairs. I was almost sure I wasn’t getting anything.
         “But it was there, all the gifts were wrapped and everything. I . . . I was really excited, I tore it all open and it was all the things that I had seen in the closet but I felt completely surprised with each one. And in the last gift I opened, there was another note, in the same handwriting. Except this time, it said . . .”
         “Did you ever really have any doubt?” Jina’s head snapped up to regard Agent One, who had said the words almost distractedly.
         “How did you-“ she said, surprised.
         The Agent seemed almost embarrassed. “I’m terribly sorry, I . . . it leapt out of your head at me.” He coughed lightly and straightened up, smoothing the front of his shirt.
         “That’s what it said,” she whispered, still staring at the Agnet, who matched her gaze with a calmness of his own. “And for one more year, I believed. One last time.” She relaxed a little, looked back at her friends. “Over the next twelve months, I thought more about it and convinced myself otherwise again. Even without the visual evidence, I never really believed again.” She raised her hands, let them fall back onto her legs. “That’s what I have, how was that?”
         “Excellent, excellent,” Agent Two hissed, drawing the word out the second timne. “Who’s next, then? We got a trend started here, we can’t stop now.” He started to turn to his left then just as suddenly snapped to his right. “Tristian?”
         The man in question looked up, startled. He had moved behind the couch, leaning forward slightly, his arms resting on the back of it. “Hm?” was all he said at first.
         “Boy, if I thought we were going to be quizzed I wouldn’t have come,” Brown said, crossing the room and regaining his position on the couch.
         “Yeah, Tristian, what was your best holiday?” Lena asked him, picking up her glass and staring at him over it but not actually drinking out of it.
         Tristian thought about it for a second. “They all tend to blur together for me,” he said carefully, slowly, rolling his cup between his hands, the liquid sloshing about gently, “but I do remember one year . . . I was pretty young but, ah, something happened to my mother, she got sick or something.”
         “She hurt her leg,” Agent One said, pacing about lazily, hands clasped behind his back. His brow was furrowed, as he was trying to remember something else.
         “And that’s your favorite memory?” Jina said, giving him a look.
         “I wasn’t finished,” Tristian admonished with a stern glance, causing her to stick her tongue out at him. “I was saying, because she wasn’t feeling well that year, all my family came to our house for Christmas. My grandparents, some aunts and uncles, a bunch of cousins, the house was stuffed with people. You could barely move . . . I had gotten a lot of presents that I had already unwrapped and when you added that to the stuff that everyone brought for each other, things were really tight.” He bowed his head a bit, narrowing his eyes. “I remember legs, mostly. Just running in between people’s legs trying to find a path. It’s one of the few times in my life that everyone was together in one place like that, where we could all talk to each other, you know, not all seated in a hall or restaurant. People just mingling, all these conversations over my head, I was too young to even understand them but I guess . . . it was a rare thing. I realized that, even back then.” He smiled slightly. “And there was my mother, sitting practically in the center, everyone either ministering to her or offering to get her something.” He cupped his palm over his glass, let it slide. “All her life she was always doing stuff for other people and now everyone was taking care of her. She’ll never admit it, but she loved it. It was nice. My father wished it could be Christmas every time she wasn’t feeling well.” He laughed a little. “She smacked him for that one and he just sort of chuckled.”
         “After that,” and his expression turned serious, “it felt like everyone just sort of drifted, or moved away.” A shadow crossed his face, a trick of the light. Outside the window twinkling brightness framed his head, festive and sterile. “Or died.” He sighed, straightened into a standing position. “That really wasn’t the case, I guess, but that’s how it felt. It’s been a long time since then and I can’t really remember anything like that.” He shrugged. “I was a kid, everything seems better when you’re a kid.”
         “One day I’ll take you back and we’ll see if that’s true,” Brown said, raising his glass slightly. “You’ll probably be surprised.”
         “I doubt it,” Tristian said, although he smiled as he said it. “Unless we go back to that time in third grade when I forgot my lines during the class play. I really wasn’t popular that day.”
         Agent Two was balancing on his heels. From somewhere in his pocket he had produced a champagne glass and was delicately sipping from it. “It rings a bell for some reason . . . how old were you, then?” He looked over at Tristian. “The party, not the crappy play . . . which in my opinion you didn’t find your proper motivation for that scene at all anyway.”
         “I was a cow looking for a farmer,” Tristian said mildly. Jina stifled a giggle. Ignoring her, he said, “Maybe about five or six. Why?”
         Agent Two looked over at his brother. “Is that the year . . .”
         “No, it was a few years later,” Agent One replied. “The year he’s talking about, it wasn’t snowing.”
         “What did you do?” Tristian asked cautiously, although his face indicated that he really didn’t want to know.
         “Oh, killed a squad of Dark Riders outside your house,” Agent Two said lightly. There was a long silence as everyone in the room just stared at him, the other Agent included. It was that person that Agent Two addressed next. “What? We would have told him eventually.”
         “It was over fast,” Agent One explained, glaring at his brother. “They were wandering around, they had just teleported in and were still getting their bearings. We didn’t even speak to each other, I just disintegrated them.”
         “They were looking for me?” Tristian asked, his face intent. Lena was staring at him, almost studying his features, not saying a word.
         “That would be my assumption, yes,” was all Agent One said.
         “Besides it all worked out and nobody knew the difference,” Agent Two said, breaking in. “Your parents told you all those bootprints were from Santa and his elves anyway.”
         “You didn’t get rid of those?” Agent One asked.
         “No, I didn’t,” Agent Two shot back. “Because I thought it was going to snow, it’s not my fault the cold front turned at the last second. And anyway,” he added, pointing, “it was your job to get rid of the bodies.”
         Agent One shrugged. “I didn’t have to, they dissolved.”
         “Leaving imprints!”
         Tristian ran a hand through his hair. “Well,” he said, exhaling slowly, “that explains where the snow angels in the backyard came from that year.”
         “You’re lucky they didn’t still have smoke rising from them,” Agent Two sniffed.
         “Any way people,” Brown said, jumping to his feet and getting between the two Agents. Something in his eyes expressed how much of a good idea he thought that gesture was. “Why don’t we talk about something that doesn’t involve killing extradimensional creatures, please?”
         “When he starts talking like that, it’s definitely time for another drink,” Lena said under her breath, standing up suddenly. Tristian glanced at her but she waved him off, the gesture indicating that she’d get it herself.
         “He started it,” Agent Two said sullenly.
         Lena came back into the room and stood next to Tristian. Leaning close to his ear, she whispered, “Did you invite them?”
         “Do I look crazy?” Tristian asked her, slightly shocked. “No, they wanted to come for some reason and it’s not like I can stop them.” Agent One was staring at him from across the room but when Tristian looked up he turned away and started examining a picture. Lena, seeing the motion, frowned but didn’t say anything.
         “It’s okay,” she said. “They’re kind of funny.”
         Tristian only raised his eyebrows questioningly.
         “So, you know what, here’s the thing . . .” Brown was saying, clasping his hands together and walking around the coffee table so that he was more or less in the center of the room. Only Jina was left sitting down and sometimes he seemed to be speaking directly to her. “I don’t tell many folks this, but I can travel in time.” He paused a beat to wait for a comment but nobody took the bait. Shaking his head sadly, he muttered, “You all disappoint me.” Without waiting for anyone to respond that time, he plowed on, “The thing is, even though I can go to any Christmas that I ever wanted to in all of history-“
         ”The best one you had was here, with all your friends,” Jina broke in. “Aw, that’s nice.”
         Pointing at her, he said, “Close, but nope. Best one I’ve ever been to in my short lifetime . . . Western Front, nineteen fourteen.” Slipping his hands in his pockets, he took a step back, staring past everyone into the darkness outside. “You had trenches carved into the ground like scars and all these men, scared and dirty and dying by the dozen huddled in them, trying not to get sick, trying to last one more day. But even with that, lasting the day just meant you had to do it all over again.” Maybe there were stars reflected in his eyes, maybe it was distant lights. “They’d go up and get torn to shreds by machine guns. The smell was everywhere, just death and decay and dirt, the air felt bruised, all moans and sobbing and shouts, punctuated by gunbursts and airplanes screaming overhead. It was hell, every second of it was terrible.”
         Whatever he saw outside made him look away, his gaze flickering back to the room at large. Jina was staring at him, her drink untouched. Both Agents were regarding him with twin faces, their expressions unreadable.
         “But on Christmas day at midnight, everything went silent. Not everywhere, but the part I went to . . . you had the Germans and the British, who were trying to kill each other maybe a half-hour before, they came across the area between the zones and . . . stopped fighting. Men greeted each other like brothers, gifts were exchanged, cigarettes were shared, I even saw some people sneak a few drinks in across the lines. I remember, I was walking down the line, just trying to mingle, I saw a group of men teaching each other Christmas caroles. A lot of people didn’t speak the other’s languages but they were trying, fits and starts, and when they screwed up, or said something bizarre, everyone laughed.
         “It was snowing, a little bit, dirty flakes coming down. A plane flew overhead, but it was the only one I saw. One of those biplanes, the pilot dipped his wings in greeting, like he saw me staring. It was cold out but nobody seemed to really feel it. Around us the ground was all churned up from bullets and boots, and everyone was standing around like they had just wandered in from somewhere else. I was talking to two men, one from each side, and it turned out they had each named their firstborn with the same name. A small group of men were debating the merits of Proust, who had just published a book. They were trying to make themselves understood across the language gap and every time someone made a good point, the others would slap him on the back.”
         Brown turned, walked over to where he had left his drink. “It lasted . . . I don’t know how long it lasted. It was one of those times where . . . there doesn’t seem to be any time. Like, you look at your watch and you can’t understand how many hours have gone by. I might have walked the whole front, I don’t even know. I couldn’t even tell who was who anymore, men were swapping coats. I had drinks with so many people who expected to die the next day.” He hadn’t touched his own drink yet. “People kept talking to me, telling me about their families, about the things they’d seen. Someone, a young man, started to tell me how he had watched his friend bleed to death in no man’s land, completely out of his reach. He was telling the story and he stopped, partway through, and he said to me, I shouldn’t be talking about this, because it’s Christmas. And before I could even answer, he said, But we have to remember the ones who didn’t make it.” He finished and stared at a space perhaps halfway between the floor and the window.
         Jina was the next one to speak. “It started up again in the morning, didn’t it?”
         His lips moved like he was about to say something, but instead he just nodded. “Yeah. Dawn came and I heard the guns start up somewhere distant. And they all looked at each other, and shuffled back to their trenches and went back to killing each other.” Tipping his head back, he downed his drink in a smooth, desperate gesture. He swayed a bit, but it otherwise didn’t seem to have any effect. “I kept a bow that I found in the dirt there, dull and frayed and with a crappy knot. I don’t even know which side it was from or how it even got there. I keep it in my office, just to remind myself.”
         “That’s your favorite,” Lena said, somewhat flatly.
         “Yes,” Brown replied, gesturing with the empty glass, “because you know what, it’s easy for us to be nice to each other, because we’re all friends. And it’s even easy to be nice to strangers around this time, because they never did anything to you. But war and . . . killing, when you’re in it, there’s this momentum to it that’s hard to stop. And they did stop, just for a few hours. It had to be the hardest thing in the world, and they managed to stop.” He grinned at her, though there was some saddness attached to it. “So yeah, it’s my favorite, or the one that comes to mind around now.” He shrugged and frowned, looking down. “I don’t even remember why I was there, maybe it was a secret mission, maybe I was just visiting. I don’t even know. All the different years blur together. Getting shot at feels the same, no matter what year it is.”
         The silence that followed wasn’t so much awkward as respectful. The two Agents exchanged glances but didn’t speak, at least not outloud.
         “That’s quite the story,” Jina said eventually, hesitantly, as if afraid to break the mood.
         Fortunately Brown shattered it for everyone. “And the best thing is . . .” and he slid over quickly to Lena, who wasn’t able to back away fast enough, “. . . you get to try and follow that, girl.”
         “What?” she said, a little confused.
         “You’re on deck, my dear,” Brown told her with a grin, throwing his arm around her briefly. He felt her stiffen a little and so he backed off, remembering, hands in his pockets.
         “He’s right,” Jina said with a laugh. “Everyone else has gone.”
         “Oh geez,” Lena said, covering her face with one hand. “Did I mention I hate all of you?”
         “Come on,” Tristian said, nudging her. “They made me do it.”
         “Not you too,” Lena replied, giving him a chastising look. “You’re supposed to be my backup here.”
         Tristian somehow managed to keep a straight face. “Hey, fair is fair.”
         “All right, fine, whatever,” she said, throwing her arms up, making a show of surrendering. Giving Tristian another sharp look, she went around the couch and sat down. “I have to think for a second . . .” she seemed a little embarrassed by everyone staring at her, waiting for some kind of story.
         “Hey, listen, if you don’t want to, we were just kidding. You don’t have to . . .” Jina said, leaning over to her friend.
         “She’s got a story,” Agent One said. Jina started, seeming to forget that he was there. The way the light struck him, his body appeared to be set in the wall, sunken in like a pillar. “Everyone does, somewhere.” Even his brother was giving him a quizzical look.
         Lena put both hands in her lap, sat up a little. “I do, actually.” The Agent nodded to himself and seemed to slip further back into the wall. The other Agent was messing with the tree, apparently rearranging the ornaments to form some obscure geometric pattern. A map of the sky, maybe, seen from a strange angle.
         “It’s . . .” for a second she looked about to give up, not sure where to start. Then she took a deep breath and forged ahead. “Where I come from, where my parents live, the weather is a lot different than here. It’s warmer, like, all the time. Even around this time of year.”
         “So why are we here and not at your parents’ house?” Brown asked with a smirk.
         “Just say the word,” Agent Two stated cheerfully raising one arm. The other Agent looked poised to tackle him, his eyes wide.
         “Uh, no, I was . . . oh God it was just a joke,” Brown said quickly, backing away from the Agent. “Please don’t teleport us across the country.”
         Lena looked braced and even Jina appeared slightly worried but the Agent merely chuckled and lowered his arm. “Boy, who put the fear in you guys?”
         “Ah, you, when you teleported them all out of a restaurant,” Tristian noted.
         Agent Two dismissed that and turned away. “What do you know? Teleporting upsets your stomach anyway.”
         “That true?” Lena asked, pivoting to face him. The concept seemed to amuse her slightly.
         “It, well, it doesn’t exactly agree with me sometimes,” Tristian admitted.
         “Disagree is putting it mildly,” Agent Two chimed in, still facing the other way, intently regarding a wall clock. Under his gaze the hands seemed to bend and run backwards, water up a hill. “You should have seen the mess we had to clean up last-“
         ”I think she was telling a story,” Tristian interrupted. The Agent fell silent but from the periphery it was possible he was pulling a face. Tapping Lena on the shoulder he said, “Go on, most of us are listening.”
         “Thanks,” she said with a short laugh. Composing herself again, she continued, “So we’ve never really had cold weather when I was growing up. When the temperature dropped below like sixty degrees we all felt like it was the end of the world, everyone was breaking out heavy jackets and shivering all the time. If it snowed . . . God, we would have all jumped off bridges or something. Pretty much every year we’d go to the beach at some point during Christmas. People would call up our house and be like, let’s go surfing. I used to just watch because I’m not that good at it but it was . . . it was a little surreal sitting in the sand watching people surf and realizing that it’s Christmas day and that two hours before you were sitting around opening presents.”
         As Lena had been talking, Brown walked over to sit next to Jina. She scooted over a little bit for him, but not much. “One day,” he said, tossing his empty glass to Agent Two, who caught it easily, “we’re going to sit down and have a little talk about what surreal really means.” Without turning away from her, he snatched the glass out of the air that the Agent had sent tumbling back, now full. This time Jina did shift away slightly.
         “I’m starting to get an idea,” was all Lena said, otherwise not surprised. Brown just grinned and lifted the cup in a mock toast, a gesture Lena repeated sarcastically. “But, living in warmer weather, you start to feel left out that everyone else has snow and stuff and you don’t . . .” she stopped for a second, head cocked to one side. “This is where you all chime in with the poor baby comments.”
         “Oh trust me, we’re thinking them,” Jina said.
         “Good. And we knew what snow looked like, I had seen it on TV and everything. But, I don’t know, one year me and my sister were going to try and create snow, we got this idea in our heads to try and make it happen.” Her glass nearly empty, she reached over and put it on an end table. “The only problem was . . .”
         “You don’t know the first thing about making snow,” Tristian said overhead.
         “We didn’t know the first thing about making snow,” Lena confirmed. “We figured that it was frozen water, and so our first brilliant idea was that since ice was really hard and snow wasn’t, snow was just partially melted ice.”
         “Raise your hand if you can’t see where this is going,” Jina said, ignoring Lena’s disapproving glare.
         “Anyway,” Lena said, turning pointedly away from her friend and addressing the Agents, “we got a bunch of ice and tried to let it melt, figuring that we’d grab it when it became snow and use that.” Agent Two had gotten a piece of garland and was busy turning it into a cat’s cradle. “That just got us a lot of water, which made my parents wonder where all the ice went. But we had a backup plan, where we figured that since it didn’t work with ice turning into water, maybe it would work the other way around.” Folding her arms across her chest, she said, “So we stood there with the freezer door open to watch the water, ready to snatch it out when it started to become snow.”
         “And what was the electric bill that month?” Jina asked mischeviously.
         “Not as bad as it could have been. They stopped us after a half-hour. We would have explained what we were doing but from the way they were yelling at us, I don’t think they really wanted to know.” She was still facing the Agents but looking at Jina out of the corner of one eye. “Which was fine because it was pretty cold standing there like that. At that point we abandoned the idea of using frozen water, since it wasn’t getting us anywhere.”
         “And before you either flooded your house or blew a fuse,” Brown commented, mocking flinching away a scant second after he said it.
         “I’ll do it for you,” Jina said, rolling her eyes. She punched him in the shoulder. “Stop interrupting!”
         “Thanks,” Lena said brightly.
         “Oh sure now you’re back on her good side,” Brown said, rubbing the affected area in an exaggerated fashion. “You girls better make up your minds.”
         “Can I finish?” Lena asked, looking around at everyone. She counted off a few beats in her head and when nobody spoke, kept going. “I remember considering using salt just to decorate some stuff to make it look more wintry, but I think my sister talked me out of that one. My parents would probably still be vaccuuming up salt today, if I did that. And, ah, so what we wound up doing was taking tissues and ripping them to little pieces, to make it look like bits of snow.” She brought up her knees so that she was sitting crosslegged on the couch. “My parents caught us this time, but when we explained what we were doing, they gave us a shoebox and a little plastic Christmas tree to decorate. They even let us put it in the freezer so that it felt cold when we were playing with it. I guess they figured we’d cause the least damage that way.” She laughed a little to herself, remembering. If there was anyone else in the room, she didn’t act like she knew anymore.
         “Later that day, it started to rain. Not anything severe just a sunshower. And the two of us went outside and we stood in the rain, pretending that it was snow. We got a few balls and made believe they were snowballs and acted like we had heavy jackets on and made snow angels in the grass and . . .” she shook herself a little bit, coming from wherever she had gone. “I’m sorry,” she said, wiping at her face, “I was rambling. That was a stupid story . . .”
         “No such thing,” Agent One said, crossing the room, his form sliding like an oil slick. “It was a story and all stories are valid, regardless.” He walked around her, bent over like he was examining parts of her that didn’t exist in this plane.
         “It was fun, that’s all,” Lena said, watching the Agent carefully. “The two of us, being stupid kids. That’s all it was.”
         “We’re made of stories,” Agent One said, staring at her with a strange intensity, like he was trying to tell her something important. “From beginning to end, that’s all we are. Take any away and you erase a little bit of yourself.” His gaze swept the room, landed back on Lena. “Remember that, please.”
         Then he blinked out, dissolved in a golden mist. Lena winced and partially covered her face, but it was all over before she could even move.
         Agent Two merely stood on the side, whistling off key.
         “Christ, can you guys do anything without drama?” Brown asked, grabbing his glass. Jina handed her own to him as he walked away. “I swear, they turn getting the newspaper into an epic quest for survival.” Tristian smiled but said nothing.
         “Does anyone want anything while I’m up?” Brown offered, holding the two glasses in his outstretched arms. “Tristian? Lena?”
         Jina yawned, bouncing to her feet. “Actually, if it was okay with Lena, I was going to head out. I’ve got a long day tomorrow, I think.”
         “That’s fine,” Lena said, also getting up. “I think we’re starting to abuse Tristian’s hospitality anyway.” She turned and gave him an impish look, handing him her glass. Tristian just shook his head and sighed.
         “You know you guys are welcome as long as you want,” he said, putting the cups on his kitchen table just to get them out of the way.
         “Actually I have to get back to Legoflas as well,” Brown said, turning and sliding past Tristian in a smooth motion. Crossing the room with his long strides he reached the closet and took his jacket out, grabbing the girls’ and handing them over as well. “Come on, my ride should be here in like five minutes, so I’ll walk you ladies to the car.”
         “Take care of yourself out there, Joe,” Tristian said, shaking the man’s hand.
         “Hey, talk to the boss, it’s not like I go around asking for trouble, hm?” He laughed to himself, perhaps repeating a private joke. Opening the door, he gave the Agent a brief wave. “Try not to blow anything up, please. We’re stretched thin as it is.”
         The Agent only gave him a thin, menacing smile in return.
         “And I’m probably way too late on that warning,” Brown muttered. The screen door open, Brown stepped outside with a grand gesture. “Girls, I will see you in a bit.”
         “Bye, Tristian,” Jina said, throwing her arms around him, hugging him tightly. “Thanks for having us over, this was nice.” One eye strayed to the Agent. “Even with the extra company.”
         “Any time,” he replied and she was gone then, joining Brown outside.
         Lena stood there with him for a moment, neither of them saying anything. Nearby the Agent gave a little start, glanced at a nonexistent watch on his wrist and said, “Boy, I’d better hit the restroom before I leave.” Jauntily, he went up the stairs, shutting the bathroom door behind him.
         “They mean well, right?” she said, glancing up the stairs.
         “I keep telling myself that,” Tristian said with a sigh.
         “Well, thanks for inviting us, I really liked this. It was relaxing.” She poked at him playfully. “Even you seemed relaxed for once.”
         “I’m getting there,” he said.
         “You’re doing fine,” she told him. Putting her arms around his neck, she hugged him close. “Have a good Christmas, Tristian.” Slipping back, she let her hand linger on his forearm for just a few more seconds. “Call me later, if you’re not on another planet or something.”
         “Even then,” he said with a grin. She smiled back at him and ducked out the door. He closed it behind her with a slow click, staring over the top of it for a bit.
         After a few moments he stepped back. His outside Christmas lights bled in through the window, shading his otherwise unreadable face. He put his hand on the back of his neck and squeezed a little bit, face lost in thought.
         The sound of running water to his left caused him to look up. He took a step into the kitchen and saw the Agent there at his sink, hands cupped under the faucet. He was shaping the flow somehow, turning it into something solid, malleable crystals.
         “Your brother isn’t actually using my bathroom, is he?” Tristian said.
         “Hm? Oh no, he just appears to be incapable of doing anything in a rational fashion lately. In fact,” Agent One tilted his head to the side, “he must have heard me, because he just teleported out.” The water sparkled under his touch, curving and bending. Tristian watched him for a few more seconds, and then began to turn away.
         The Agent’s voice stopped him. “You lied to them, you know.”
         “What, who?” he asked, spinning back around. “What are you talking about?”
         Agent One didn’t even look up. “Your friends. When you said what your favorite Christmas was, you weren’t being completely truthful.”
         Instead of shouting, Tristian merely leaned against the doorway, curious despite himself. “What do you mean by that?”
         “Because,” Agent One said calmly, “your favorite Christmas hasn’t happened yet.” He paused, as if waiting for Tristian to deny this. When he didn’t, he glanced over at his host, continuing, “Your favorite will be what happened tonight, but next year. You want to be able to do this again next year, because you want to feel that no matter what else changes, you’ll still have days like this. That some things won’t change, even if everything else does.” Tristian only stared at him, not answering right away. Agent One turned and went back to his sculpture.
         A second later, Tristian spoke. “Will . . . is everything going to change? I mean, a year from now, will it all be different?”
         Agent One laughed dryly. “Oh, I’m afraid that’s entirely up to you. And circumstance too, to some extent, but the choice is ultimately yours.” He shrugged, glancing at Tristian again. “Sorry, but that’s the best I can do. I’m no seer, alas.”
         Tristian just nodded, brow furrowed in thought. After a short while he seemed to come to a decision. Switching sides in the doorway, he looked at the Agent and said, “You never told us what your favorite Christmas was.”
         “I didn’t, did I?” Agent One admitted. The water had become a complicated matrix now, lines collapsing in on each other, hardly an empty space to be seen. Solid and flowing. “I can’t really pick one, to be honest. Every year around this time, what I do is I split myself into a number of different aspects, all at once, and go to different houses to try to give the people there something they want, but can’t really get normally. Generally people are pretty obvious in what they want, so I just leave it there, and move on. Sometimes people want things I can’t give. Your dear friend Jina would like a boyfriend that remembers her birthday without being reminded, for instance. And the good Commander would like a week to go by without something exploding under him.” He bit his lip, splicing in another strand. “And Lena . . . well, she’d like a number of small things, I guess. But don’t we all?”
         “Well, that’s nice that you do . . .” Tristian stopped, stared at the Agent as if seeing him for the first time. “Wait a minute, are you trying to tell me that you’re-“
         The Agent only grinned at him. “With all the strangness in this world, it’s not so hard to believe now, is it?”
         Then he burst in a shower of glimmering motes, and was gone.
         Something clattered into the sink.
         Stepping inside and reaching in, Tristian picked the object up. It was delicately crafted, almost gossamer thin, not unlike a schemetic of an atom gone wild, all intersecting circles and lines. It felt cool to the touch. A piece on the top of it appeared to form a kind of hook.
         Tristian lifted it to eye level, watching the light refract through it, perhaps seeing moving images trapped inside. If he did, he gave no hint as to what they might be. Still holding it before him, he walked back into the living room and over to his tree. He moved it around a bit in the air before finally settling on a spot, hanging it on a lone branch.
         He stepped back, regarded it.
         Then with a slow laugh, he said, “Really, you’ve got to be kidding me.” Still shaking his head, he pivoted on his heel and went upstairs into the dark of his bedroom, leaving only the sound of his passage behind. And after a moment, not even that.

THE END

“I have many problems, the fears I can’t ignore, I don’t know the meaning of ‘self-destruction’, I have many questions, places I can go, and I don’t know the meaning of ‘no trespassing’ . . .” - Damien Jurado, “Like Titanic”

- MB
12/21-12/25/06
RP