“Two governments. Reese the Surfer turned out to be a double agent for the Chinese.” Trudy leaned forward, pulled the knife out of the gingerbread, and scooped up a glop of white icing.
“Well, at least you’re meeting men.” Courtney picked up her glass to drink and then made a face when she realized it was empty. “So why did they want the Mac?”
“It had the codes to the Chinese spy network on the instruction sheet and then something else was on this thumb drive disguised as a silencer for the gun.” Trudy smeared the icing on the roof. The white mass hung there for a moment and then began to slump its way to the edge. Not enough powdered sugar. The icing plopped off onto the cardboard base, looking like a snowbank.
“Chinese spy codes?” Courtney said.
“I wouldn’t have believed it, except that I saw the thumb drive. That and there were so many guys in bad black suits there at the end.” She glopped more icing on the other side of the roof. It slumped and became a snowbank, too. Definitely too thin. “Where’s the sugar, Court?”
Courtney gestured to the kitchen with her glass.
The kitchen looked like a war zone, bodies of mutilated gingerbread men everywhere, red and green gumdrops stuck to the island like body parts, and a drip of icing pooled on the floor like thick white blood.
“Christmas didn’t used to be this violent,” Trudy called back to Courtney, and then picked up the powdered-sugar box, the half-filled bag of gumdrops, and some toothpicks. Toothpicks were good. She could probably have done more damage in the warehouse if she’d had toothpicks. She could have stuck several of them into Reese.
And more into Nolan. Nolan, she thought, and blinked back tears. Damn.
She went back to the living room. Courtney hadn’t moved.
Trudy dumped her armload on the coffee table and sat down beside Courtney. “Forget about rotten men. There was one good thing that happened tonight. I got you a present.”
Courtney turned her head a millimeter. “Does it have gin in it?”
“No, but you want it anyway.” Trudy pulled the Twinkletoes box out of her last shopping bag and handed it to Courtney, who stared at it for a moment, her eyes unfocused.
Then she sat up slowly, her forehead smoothing out, her lips parting. “Where—”
“They’re making them again. Like a reissue. Second chance. Do-over.”
“Oh, please,” Courtney said, but she said it while she was ripping the cellophane off the package. She pried open the top and pulled out the cardboard shell with the Twinkletoes doll and her manicure set wired to it. “These aren’t the same colors of polish as the old one.”
“I’m sorry—”
“These are better.” Courtney began to unwire the doll. “She has really big feet.”
“Well, she needs really big toenails if little kids are going to paint them.” Trudy watched her for a minute and then went back to the gingerbread house as Courtney set up her play station. One thing had gone right that evening, she thought as she beat sugar into the thickening icing. Now if she could get the icing and the gumdrop shingles to stay on the iced roof, that would be two. It was tomorrow morning that was going to be bad.
Poor Leroy.
Damn it.
She began to spackle the roof with the thicker icing, thinking vicious thoughts about government agents who took toys from little kids on Christmas. She picked up a red gumdrop and shoved it into the icing with more force than necessary and almost cracked the roof.
Easy, she told herself and looked back at Courtney, who was studying the Twinkletoes doll with an odd expression on her face.
Well, she was drunk.
Trudy shoved another gumdrop into the icing and dared it to fall off. It didn’t.
At least Leroy would have a gingerbread house in the morning. That might help calm things down. She filled in rows of red gumdrop shingles, trying to think of things to say to him.
“Sorry about your Mac, Leroy, but Santa sent you this nice toy cow instead.”
No, they’d shot the cow. Jesus.
“Santa got delayed over Pittsburgh but he’s going to put your Mac on backorder.”
No, Santa was not a mail-order house.
“Maybe it fell off the sleigh.”
Trudy shoved another gumdrop in. Bastards.
Not that Leroy would throw a fit. He wasn’t a fit-throwing kind of kid. But he’d be disappointed; that stillness would be on his face, like the stillness that had been there when his father left.
Men, she thought, and shoved in another gumdrop, but that wasn’t fair, she knew it wasn’t fair. Nolan had risked his life for her at the end. Maybe even before the end, maybe that was why he’d gotten in the cab, because he cared. Trudy sat up a little. “You know, I think he came along in the cab to save me.”