The Impossible Quest Of Hailing A Taxi On Christmas Eve by George Saoulidis

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Stave
One
     
    "Marley was
dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that," he
read out loud from the first page and then shut the book closed. He
exhaled, a puff of frozen breath forming in front of his mouth and
said, "And this is supposed to be a fairytale? How
morbid."
    He held
the book in his hands, a real, physical print of "A Christmas
Carol" by Charles Dickens. It was only a mass-produced cheap copy
but it was vintage enough in this time and age. His late partner
had left it on his desk, with a handwritten dedication for him.
Scrooge never figured out why.
    His name
wasn't really Scrooge of course. He was John.
    People
just called him like that, and the nickname stuck. It was just that
every Christmas Eve since his business partner's death on the exact
same day, he was reminded of the man. Scrooge didn't have any
pictures or anything, just the worn old book in his drawer. He
never got to read the thing, it was too dour. He just held it in
his hands, feeling the paper, thinking. There's something about the
texture of books that appeals to people. The shiny, glossy surfaces
of the reading devices nowadays just don't evoke anything
similar.
    Across
the freezing office was his assistant, Clara. She was a single
mother of one, in her late thirties and needed a new dye of blonde
hair. She could have been attractive, if she had managed to get
some sleep, enough money to pay her bills and a miracle to lift the
worry off her shoulders. She was an accountant, the only employee
to Scrooge, and she ended up juggling every single job, manning the
phones, doing the accounts, fixing technical issues with the techs,
keeping the office livable with a couple of plants.
    She was
currently rolled up in a blanket like a gyro wrap, shaking and
sniffing her nose. The frigid office was dark, illuminated only by
the lights outside, some colourful ones from the Christmas
decorations, others simply street signs and lamp-posts, and also by
the computer monitors on their desks. She was wearing knit
colourful gloves and was tapping away on her phone, constantly
stopping to check out something on her monitor by pressing a
button, sighing, and then turning back to her phone. It was doing
gling sounds all the time, filled with incoming and outgoing
Christmas wishes to old friends and faraway family. The glove tips
wouldn't normally work on the touchscreen, but she had those
popular touchscreen gloves with capacitive elements sewn in the
fingers. It was a small comfort in the cold office.
    "Mr.
Tsifoutis, it's still not working," she nagged to no one in
particular.
    "The
server works half the time, so it's good enough. How many hours do
you need to input a few accounts woman?" Scrooge grunted, his eyes
not lifting towards her.
    "But I'm
waiting for over an hour to finish this up and go home. The IT
isn't responding, they must have left the office for Christmas
Eve." She sniffed her nose. In the beginning, she was trying to do
it quietly, discreet like a lady should, but after years and years
of enduring a winter office she had just given up and pretty much
blew her nose like a loud trumpet.
    "Bah!
Customer service they call it! It's the same thing every Christmas,
you just can't get any work done anywhere," Scrooge spat out, his
face turning sour.
    "People
just want to go home to their families Mr. Tsifoutis," she
explained softly.
    He got
the hint. "Days off with pay... In my day, you could work 14 hours
a day 7 days a week and not get paid till four months later," he
said shaking his finger.
    She
waited calmly for him to finish his rant, pulling up the blanket in
a futile quest to make herself warm.
    "Christmas! Bah! Nothing but a marketing ploy, I tell you.
Selling Christmas ornaments and Christmas gifts two full months
before the holiday itself. And the waste of it all! The city
lights, paid with my taxes. Stupid snow frosting on buildings,
requiring money to put on and then money