Then, two minutes later: Not in the jacket. Not in the pretzel cup either, I checked, don't ask. Car's in the hospital garage, I'll look at 7am when I'm off.
Then, a minute after that: Greta. Where did you last feel it?
I thought about it. I typed: In the picture. My hand is on my pocket in the picture. I'm sure it was there.
Then it's in the North Pole, he wrote. Truett's place. Snowdrifts are made of batting, it'd sink right in. Or it rolled under the throne.
The mall's closed, I wrote.
The mall opens at ten. Truett starts at eleven. I'm off at seven. I can be there at ten.
You just worked all night. You need to sleep.
There was a pause. The three dots appeared and disappeared and appeared again.
I've been asking Santa for a full night's sleep for thirty-two years, he wrote. What's one more?
He was there at five minutes to ten, sitting on the edge of the dry fountain in the center of the atrium in his gray work jacket with the orange hat pulled down to his eyebrows and two coffees beside him on the tile. He looked like a man who had been up for twenty-six hours, because he had. When he saw me coming he lifted one of the coffees.
"I didn't know what you drink," he said, "so I got you a peppermint mocha, since you were drinking one when you threw a chess piece at me."
"I didn't throw it."
"That's what the lady in the reindeer sweater said. She said, she didn't throw it, she launched it." He handed me the cup. "How are you doing?"