"That was the unforgivable part," I said. "My grandfather would have loved him exactly as much as he did. He always loved him more than me, honestly. Torben was patient. I was the one who threw things into lakes."
The line moved again. We were in the third switchback now. Through a gap in the crowd I could see Santa Claus for the first time, a big man in a red velvet suit that looked genuinely old, real fur trim gone a little yellow, sitting on a gold-painted throne with a little boy on each knee. His beard was his own; you could tell from the way it moved when he talked. He was saying something to the boys that made them both shriek with laughter, and the photographer, a skinny young man with a camera on a tripod, was taking picture after picture.
"That's Truett," Oren said, following my gaze. "He's been the Santa here since I was a kid. He used to drive log trucks out of Colville. He's the real thing. My sister and I have sat on his lap every year since 1990."
"Every year?"
"Every single year."
"How old are you?"
"Thirty-eight."
"You're telling me you've sat on Santa's lap every year for thirty-six years. As a grown man."
"It's not a lap anymore," Oren said, with dignity. "We stand on either side of the chair. It's more of a flanking position." He scratched the back of his neck under the orange hat. "It's a family thing. My mom started it. My dad left when I was three and she was working two jobs, and the Santa picture was the one thing she could afford to do every year that felt like a real Christmas tradition, like the families on television. Then when we got older it became a joke, and then the joke became the tradition, and now it's—I don't know what it is now. My mom lives in Tucson. She gets the picture every year and she puts it in the album. There are thirty-six pictures. There's one where I have a cast on my arm and one where Hen has blue hair and one where I'm wearing a tuxedo because I'd come straight from a wedding. The year I got divorced, I'm smiling like a hostage."
"When was that?"
"Two years ago." He said it lightly, but his hand went to his jacket pocket and found the folded pretzel cup and turned it over. "The year before that, my ex-wife was in the picture too. Meredith. My mom took her out of the album when we split. Not out of anger. She said she didn't want me to have to see it every time I looked through it. She put a card over it. It says Reserved."
"Reserved?"
"My mother is very optimistic," Oren said.