Six Days 'Till Christmas (Could Be Short Story #2)

Part the Second

"Why don't you just tell them now?" Sam asked, the moment he had badgered Timothy into admitting why he looked out of sorts the next morning. As if he didn't look out of sorts every morning. Mornings were a terrible invention.

Last night's snow glistened with blinding clarity, making Timothy squint even though footprints and cart wheels had trodden it to a muddy slurry in the middle of the street. Cold, cold, cold. He'd never quite thawed last night, and this morning the frost-rimed windows of The Evening Telegram made him wonder if his nose and eyebrows hadn't donned matching attire. "Have you told your mother about Edith?" Timothy asked, ducking inside the newspaper office when Sam opened the door.

Sam looked horrified. "I value my life, thank'ee kindly."

"Well, then, don't make it so simple," Timothy grumbled, beginning to labor up the vast flight of stairs leading to the second floor. The first floor was overtaken by printing presses running through reams of paper each day—which put on a good show for the people passing the large front windows—but the second floor was where the words they printed were written. It was where the real work was done.

"Your mother and mine are not the same," Sam huffed, following him into the enormous main room of the second floor. "Yours won't turn you out in the cold for daring to love someone not already in the family."

Timothy murmured unwilling agreement. Sam had a point. But truth be told, it wasn't his mother he was worried about. He had five days left.

Dozens of desks with typewriters occupied the enormous room, lit by yellowed electric light and heated with, apparently, nothing. When Timothy and Sam made it to the desk they shared, Timothy cupped his fingers and blew into them. They ached almost as much as his knee in this damp warehouse of a room. "What are we going to write about today? Please tell me we'll go somewhere warm."

"For the life of me I can't figure out how you survived being born in December," Sam said, looking at Timothy askance. "You barely survive it now."

It was fine for him, of course. He was from Elesol. The weak had died off there long ago. Timothy blew on his fingers again. "Never mind my mother's poor scheduling. What I want to know is whether anything interesting has happened in the steel works lately."

Sam laughed and straightened the papers on the desk. "No, but I heard that a new bakery in town is making a special sort of Fluerlysian pastry for Christmas. I suppose their kitchen will be warm."

Timothy was more than amicable with this plan, but when they shuffled into the room where the story meeting would be held, Mr. Hall, the paper's editor-in-chief, was nowhere to be seen. In his place was Hamil Ainsley, and the square-set, balding, middle-aged man seemed to have too much energy coiled up in his being to take Mr. Hall's place. Mr. Hall was perpetually exhausted owing to his large family, and carried that exhaustion with him wherever he went. Hamil Ainsley was a lifelong bachelor.

Timothy and Sam found seats on one side of the long rectangular table taking up the center of the stale, windowless room, and watched the rest of the writers file in until most of the seats were filled. Timothy guessed that illness must be rampant; there were more empty seats than usual.

Mr. Ainsley announced that Mr. Hall had taken the week off to be with his family, then began the meeting with a clap of his hands that made Timothy jump, and swept through it with a rapidity that left him amazed. Mr. Ainsley usually dealt with hiring and public relations—how did he know so quickly what would make a good paper? And yet he heard every idea from every writer around the table and made split-second decisions about what was to be included in the next issue.

Sam's pastry idea was one of them.

Timothy didn't care much about whether Mr. Hall would have cause to complain upon his return to the office, so he didn't look the gift horse in the mouth. He and Sam sallied forth to interview the pastry chef responsible for making such newsworthy delicacies, and found him to be an exacting sort of person with little patience for questions. It was clear that he found Timothy and Sam to be as annoying as unreliable leavening, but at least Timothy was able to thaw in the intense heat of the chef's kitchen.