Santa Steps Out: A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups by Robert Devereaux Page B

back. He brought the fire to a fine blaze, then turned away to decide where to position the little girl, whom he had begun to call Thea. He settled on one corner of the room, just past the window on the far left side. Thea's bed fit to perfection there. She looked as if she'd been sleeping for eons. Santa bent, like a protective parent, to kiss her forehead. With fingers that shook, he brushed past Thea's lips, took hold of one of her two front teeth just at the gumline, and drew it from her mouth. Scarcely had he slipped it beneath Thea's pillow when two fairy arms enwrapped him from behind and the Tooth Fairy's hot breath thrilled his ear.
    "What a lovely gesture," she said, turning him about and tugging his workshirt out of his pants. "And what a lovely little love-nest."
    "You like it?"
    "I do." Her eyes took the place in as she caressed his clothed erection. "Such industriousness deserves its reward."
    Santa's heart pounded. As why should it not? The old ticker had a lot of work to do over the ensuing hours, keeping up with his lover's demands. Just as a tomcat, settling into new surroundings, sprays urine here, there, and everywhere to establish his territorial rights, so the Tooth Fairy, delighting in the romantic rusticity of the woodland hut, brought herself and her fat lover to a boil anywhichwhere she could. Upon every couch and quilt, sprawled over pelt and pillow, pressed to every square inch of Santa's deft handiwork, they oozed love.
    Once, she caught him off-balance and they tumbled straight into the fireplace. "What are you—?" he said. Then the flames engulfed them.
    She lay upon the logs, burning.
    Santa's flesh was afire too. But instead of searing torment, he felt the gentle brush of sunlight on skin. Though his eyes were goggled in flame, he could look down upon her, watch her hair crimp and crinkle yet defy the fire's insatiable hunger. For as fast as it entwined among her flowing tresses, consuming them, so fast did those tresses grow out. Flames licked at her nipples like the tongues of greedy lovers.
    Below, her juices stewed.
    Santa's manhood flamed from testicles to tip. Everywhere, his hair crisped and tickled like seething centipedes. Closed round by a wall of restless flame, Santa pressed his burning flesh to hers, breathed fire, giggled sparks and cinders. Like a smith's beaten iron plunged hissing into water, Santa drove his fiery rod into his lover's boiling stewpit, so that their flesh seethed and sizzled there.
    That night, in the matter of consuming passion, the god of fire took lessons from them.
    *****
    One morning, in the third year of his affair, Santa fished his master weaver Ludwig out from under a riotous sea of patterned bolts and took him aside. "Ludwig," he said, "we've known one another a long time, haven't we? We respect each other. I'm sure we've gone beyond having to sugarcoat a bitter pill when it's time to take our medicine."
    "Medicine, Santa?" Recumbent question marks curled above the elf's puffy eyelids.
    "Tell me, my friend. And please be candid." Santa draped an arm round his helper's shoulders. "Has my work been up to snuff lately?"
    Ludwig wheezed out a long, slow, painful breath. His fingers worked the corners of his mouth. He cocked his head. "Truthfully?" he asked.
    Santa nodded.
    Ludwig looked with great deliberation into Santa's beard, pursed his lips, and squinted up into Santa's eyes. "I'd have to say, without the slightest hesitation, that your work is—as it has always been and shall, no doubt, ever remain—exemplary, superlative, without peer, if I may be so bold, among elfhood and humankind alike." The color drained from him as he spoke, and his voice dwindled in firmness from strong coffee to weak tea.
    "Thank you, Ludwig," said Santa, shaken to the core. "I prize your good opinion, more than I . . . ." Santa's throat tightened.
    Ludwig gave a curt smile and a nod, then ambled off as one scattered in his wits.
    Santa watched him go. He felt a tangle of