Summa Seltzer Missive

Deborah Biancotti

"Tizzit?"

"Tizz...? Er, yes," said Polly. "Yes, this is it."

Polly Daley was once described as a walking Gone to Lunch sign in the empty café of life.

"Whenzel lunge?" asked the girl morosely.

"Er, lunch is whenever you want."

Polly Daley's hearing was going. She wasn't sure whether it was biology or lack of use. She was only thirty-six or so. She didn't mind the loss. She mostly didn't need to hear.

"House and stanza?" said the girl.

"I stanza — stand, I mean! Stand it just fine, thanks. I do," said Polly.

Twenty years in the mailroom of Streck & Serge Shipping and she'd stood it all that time.

But then, Polly Daley was a kind of 'not'. Not so much empty as absent. Not so much hopeless as someone who had put all hope aside. Left it on a bench someplace and forgotten to return. Not unhappy enough to be truly discontent, not any-other-kind-of-anything to be otherwise or else.

Polly Daley was empty like an ice cream cone where the ice cream had melted away. Not like one that had never seen ice cream, that was a different kind of empty. An expectant kind. And Polly had no expectations.

* * *

She liked mornings best, when the mailbags showed up like thick, grey slugs, bloated with daily missives. She would split their skins and reach both arms into their guts to dig out the envelopes. These she spread across the floor, sorting by size until it was time to dock them in the honeycomb walls of pigeonholes around her.

Afterwards, she'd step back and admire the delicate spectrum of coloured envelopes like pale threads in a tapestry. Or settled snow (though she'd never seen snow, she thought, with a twinge of almost-resentment).

It was quiet, her life, but it was all hers.

* * *

Until the girl showed up.

* * *

Late, Polly couldn't help noticing.

* * *

The girl was called Caroline Something (she didn't catch the surname) and she was there, in Polly's mailroom, because Mr Streck had told Polly that kismet is wombing. By which Polly took him to mean business was booming.

It was true.

The usually neat, fat mailbags had begun to bloat and bust (like old suitcases, Polly thought, with reason). They leaned drunkenly and leaked their contents across the floor. Still, Polly would have preferred to be left alone with her room. She'd offered to work longer hours, but Mr Streck had brushed the suggestion aside.

"Wouldn't hear of it," Polly translated him as saying.

Caroline was young, with long black hair and pale powdered skin. Her lips were shadow-bruised and her eyes were dark pools of spilt ink. She wore a loose ebony dress that ended at her ankles where her black lace-up boots began.

The dress looked homemade and home-dyed. Here and there spots of green satin winked through. On her inner elbow, for example, was a mark like a tiny treasure map. When Caroline spoke, Polly found herself staring at that odd little piece of escapee cartography.

Staring and staring.

* * *

"Watch me," Polly directed.

The mailbags were already empty, slouching like empty stomachs to be filled again. The envelopes were gathered across the floor. Polly scooped up a handful and moved across the pigeonholes the way a maestro might traverse a grand piano. She raised each pale envelope high, allowing Caroline — behind her — to clearly see the addressee.

Then she darted her hand into a pigeonhole, came out clean, swept up another white wrap. Down with her arm, up, shift left or right, forward and back, the crescendo building. She worked tirelessly. She was a windstorm caught up in its own momentum, rushing to—

Caroline sneezed, and the image shattered.

* * *

At the end of the first day Mr Streck — the only living partner of Streck & Serge Shipping — stopped in.

* * *

"Howza guitar lounge?" he boomed. He winked at Caroline, then turned hesitantly to Polly.

"We're getting along just fine, thanks, Mr Streck," said Polly.

"Yeah. Mime, tanks," added Caroline, sending Polly a wink in turn.

Polly smiled uncertainly. It seemed a gesture of friendship, though she was out of practice with spotting those. She nodded her appreciation and Caroline nodded back.

The girl — Caroline — settled comfortably into a pattern of her own and they spent their days together apart.

For which Polly was entirely grateful.

* * *

Months of companionable silence passed.

* * *

Then Caroline said unexpectedly, "Gonna tonner summa seltzer missive?"

"Sorry?" asked Polly.

"I said," sighed Caroline, shifting her gum into one cheek, "Going. To the. Summer. Social Mixer?"

Polly wasn't even sure what that was.

"You know," Caroline enunciated carefully. "To mix with people. Socially."

"Oh. No, I've never been to one," Polly puffed up her cheeks in what she hoped was a cheerful smile and returned to the mailbag.

"Cow song in a pig's ear?" said Caroline.

"I beg your pardon?"

"How long," with a sigh, "Have you. Been here?"

"Well," Polly considered. Decades, she realised. "A ... while," she said instead.

Caroline chewed thoughtfully, fixing her dark eyes on the wall to Polly's left. "I sink," she said, (meaning 'I think'), "we should go, by golly!"

Polly smiled. "'By golly!' I haven't heard that for years!"

Pulling out her gum, Caroline shouted, "I said, 'hey, Polly'."

* * *

Next came shopping, with Polly inadvertently launching the journey by saying she had nothing to wear, and Caroline progressing the adventure by insisting it was time she did.

* * *

It was hot. Christmas-hot. Shops had bulging shelves, shoppers shone with a kind of glad seasonal anxiety, and everywhere there was tinsel and bells and bows and banners that applauded The Festive Season.

Festive Season. Always sounded so anonymous to Polly. Though why should she care what they called it? She wasn't Christian anyhow (well, she didn't think so, she'd never really thought about it) and it wasn't like she had family to celebrate with. She usually just wanted to get through The Festive Season without injury or insult, please God.

Caroline, by contrast, grinned a wide chocolate grin at all the foil brocade. It was, she told Polly, "Precarious!"

"Precarious?"

"No! Hilarious, I said."

Caroline grabbed hold of Polly's elbow and navigated the crowds like a champion yachter, ebbing patiently when she needed to, lending her weight to alternatives where she could. Eventually they washed into a shoe store, where Polly found herself ddeposited on a narrow lounge.

"Ear," Caroline said, dropping sandals at her feet. "Fry peas."

Polly tried these and these. She liked those, but hated the ones over there and wondered how anyone could decide anything at all when there was so very much of everything.

But then a spark caught her eye. A splash of red, a glitter of rhinestone that pushed up from the floor. A heel that was tall, but just so, straps that were sheer and yet firm. It was, breathed Polly, plucking it from the ground like fallen fruit, it was just,

"Beautiful!"

"Yeah?" said Caroline, and she looked dubious.

In a bed of pure white tissue, its mate was found. Before she knew it, Polly's stockinged feet were slipping between the straps. Her translucent toenails shone as pale as onionskin in the glare of overhead lights. Her insteps arched, her ankles flexed, the sandals slid along her feet.

* * *

"Up?" Caroline grinned, crouched like a crow on the floor.

* * *

Carefully, Polly stood. She took one experimental step, then another and then she crossed the floor, the crowd of shoppers parting before her. It was like walking on fairy floss. No, it was like dancing on fairy floss. Like flying over fairy floss from a great height.

"You'll have to paint your toenails, then, I'd say," Caroline said, drawing breath to repeat herself.

"Yes!" said Polly. "I will."

Caroline started. "What?"

"I will. I will have to paint my toenails!" Polly said. "Won't I, just?"

She gave a little twirl, fluttering the heavy weave of her sensible tan skirt.

The black pools of Caroline's eyes were widening.

"How ...," she said. "Wow. How do you feel?"

Polly felt the way butter must feel on warm toast.

"I'll have them!" she cried.

Of course she would.

* * *

Buying the dress, by comparison, was remarkably uneventful.

* * *

The shoebox was kept by her bed, the dress on the wardrobe door, for all the weeks it took to wait.

* * *

Meantime, Polly continued to live around the edges and the spaces in-between. A sliver of seat on a bus, a gap in a queue at the bank. She didn't want for much. At night, returning from the office to her modest apartment, she would balance take-away on her knee and gaze towards the television. Noise from the train station below buzzed her walls and rattled windowsills.

She was doing nothing but waiting.

* * *

The date arrived (at last) and Caroline was late (as usual) and wore black — of course — but this time her long hair was pinned up in huge loops over her ears. She waved from an old station wagon that had been painted dark matte grey.

Polly settled into the voluminous passenger seat and Caroline sent the car lurching forward and it was as easy as that. They were there.

The Mixer was in an old hall. Gold fairy lights blinked along the eaves and coloured streamers hung across the walls. Waiters brandished silver trays with sparkling glasses.

"Looks good," Caroline said, swiping two glasses of champagne from a tray.

Polly sipped at the champagne. She felt exposed. Her bare shoulders caught a warm breeze and the dress tickled her knees. She tried to look about herself while trying to look like she wasn't.

She gazed instead at her sandals — strange, bright, red, gaudy things — and she felt glad. She blinked up at the crowd and for a minute thought the rhinestones in her shoes had given her afterglow. Except afterglow was meant to be the reverse of the colour that had burned your eyes, and what she saw was red. Definitely red. Bright red, a thick stab of it.

She frowned, squinted, blinked hard several times. She saw it again. A flash, a flare of ruby behind the crowd. She stared.

It couldn't be.

"That's not..." she began, turning to Caroline. Or rather, to the spot where Caroline had been because Caroline, inconveniently, had disappeared to mix or mingle, or whatever-it-was they were meant to do. Polly looked back to the crowd.

Oh, no.

Oh, it definitely was. She was sure of it now.

It was Santa.

Arms flung above his head, knees bending haphazardly, a wide, red man in a Santa Claus suit was dancing erratically. His majestic white beard flopped against his broad chest. A red hat, fur-trimmed, sat high on his forehead. Two bright red cheeks jutted up, shining with sweat, and possibly within his beard there was a jolly grin.

* * *

On his feet, in strange deference to the season, was a pair of brown leather sandals.

* * *

Polly drank it in with a single glance, and two other things she noted. The first was that he was the only one dancing. And the second: there was no music. Absolutely none at all.

Santa skewered her with his gaze. His bright white eyebrows shot up and waggled. Bopping and jerking he started towards her, nudging people out of the way with his huge belly.

She froze. She felt a blush crawl her cheeks and wondered if she was quite the same shade as his suit (or her shoes). The closer he got, the more she could hear him humming, but even that was out of time to his dancing.

He was just about to reach her and she was just about to speak — unsure what on earth she could possibly say — when a shadow fell on her.

"Mr Streck!" said Polly, by way of objection.

"Call me Kevin," Mr Streck insisted, nearly throwing his glass of champagne at her.

She ducked and tried to lean around him.

"Did you see..." she began.

"Look at you, then, Polly!" said Mr (Kevin) Streck. "Barely recognized you! Who'd have thought! Having a good time?"

"Well, I—"

"Good! The band's about to start. Do you like jazz music?" He took a quick chug from his champagne glass and just as quickly refilled it from the bottle in his other hand.

"I'm not sure," Polly said, scanning the room.

"Good, then," Mr Streck said, swaying. "Bit of a change from the mailroom, eh?"

Polly had to agree with that.

* * *

After which Mr Streck moved — thankfully — away.

* * *

"Mailroom is it?" came a voice to her right.

She turned and found herself looking up into eyes that were a sharp crystal blue.

"Yes," she smiled, feeling the heat return to her cheeks. "I'm Polly. From the mailroom."

"I'm Santa," said Santa cheerfully. "No, really!" he added when she laughed. "What? You think they give these suits to just anyone?"

"But you must be boiling!" she said, still laughing.

"Boiling, baking, steaming and stewing!" he confirmed. "Like a pudding! But to the point, what's a delightful woman called Polly, like you, doing in a mailroom?"

Polly leaned in conspiratorially. "Why, sorting mail!" she replied.

It was Santa's turn to laugh, and he did so generously, throwing his head back and ho-ho-ho-ing with both fists clutched to his red suit.

Polly took another sip of her champagne and grew bold.

"And where," she asked, "is Mrs Claus?"

"Ahhhh," Santa leaned in with a sorrowful smile, preparing Polly, it seemed, for the worst. "I made her up."

"No!"

"Yes! Would you guess, it's less unusual for a family man to be climbing chimneys than some unattached young ruffian. And hey, see this beard—"

"No!" said Polly scandalised. "It isn't real?"

"Oh, it's real," said Santa. "I just wanted to know if you could see it. Stop laughing. I'm quite proud of it."

A waiter swerved by them then and Santa relinquished the man of his tray with a quick swipe of his gloved hand. He proffered the tray to Polly where she saw, arranged in neat rows, tiny castles on squares of white bread. Like a chess game, she thought. She popped a rook in her mouth.

"Marvellous," she told Santa, choosing another. "The best chess pieces I've ever tasted!"

"Oh, I think that might be the champagne," he told her.

"Really? In the bread?" she asked, and was surprised by a long drawn-out and gleeful ho-hooooooooo.

There must have been champagne in all the food, then. Also in the lights and the jazz music and even in the smiling faces that floated past. Polly hardly needed to take a sip from her glass. All she had to do was stand there with Santa opposite her and wait for the world to turn.

"Why don't you tell Santa all about yourself?" said Santa.

* * *

So she did. Little by little, she told him about her life. Or rather, the life of the Streck & Serge mailroom, which was a different life altogether (although she didn't quite know that yet). She told him, for instance, how the seasons came and went, summer producing wild bouquets of correspondence that thinned markedly when winter approached. She told him she knew when the company was recruiting, when they were late paying debts, when business was good and when it was bad. She ended by telling him, quite inadvertently, how sometimes it seemed she was standing just outside life and watching it pass by through tiny plastic windows in business envelopes.

She told him about the new girl, Caroline, and apologised because of course she shouldn't still be calling her the new girl, Caroline was old now.

"I know Caroline, of course," said Santa. "She's a good stick."

Which Polly told him was a strange thing to say.

"You did say 'stick', didn't you?" she asked, suddenly afraid.

"I did."

Eventually she even told him about the day she came home from high school to find two stuffed suitcases in the hall, heavy with portent like pregnant ravens. And how her mother had swept by with a quick, "Darling, I return to the mother country, you're on your own, I'm afraid."

And how Polly had eventually come to wonder, as the memory hardened and hollowed the way overworked memories do, whether her mother had actually said 'You're on your own. I'm afraid.'

* * *

"I mean," said Polly. "She'd never even been to Europe before in her life, so how could it be a mother country, right? No wonder she was afraid."

Santa kept a kindly, twinkling gaze on her the whole time, standing with his sandaled feet apart, his thumbs looped through his belt while the party swung back and forth around them.

"Do you really find this so interesting?" Polly asked at last.

Santa chuckled. "Starboard," he said.

Which made no sense at all, until Polly glanced to her right and saw Mr Streck jiggling wildly towards them.

"Oh, hell," she said. "I think he's drunk."

"Marvellously!" agreed Santa.

At which point Mr Streck reached out towards Santa and placed a hand firmly on his neck.

"Santa!" said Mr Streck. "I never did thank you for that bicycle!"

"The one when you were six?" enquired Santa politely, "Or the one when you were ten?"

"Ten!" shouted Streck. "No, wait. Both! Why, I'd forgotten! How did you ... ahhhhhh!"

And here Mr Streck laughed, lifting his hand from Santa's neck in order to waggle a finger at him. Then he fell, fortunately and unexpectedly backwards, shouting, "Lennie, old boy!" at someone else entirely.

* * *

Polly watched him be carried away on the drift of the crowd. Then she turned back to Santa speculatively.

* * *

"You know," she said. "I think you really are. You are the Santa."

"Oh, ho," said Santa, "did you ever doubt it?"

"I don't know," she said, looking inquisitively at her shoes. She bunched her toes and pushed up against the straps.

Santa leaned in close.

"Are they magic?" he asked.

"What?" asked Polly, startled. "My shoes? How do you mean?"

"Well, it's just that you're looking at them like they might give you an answer."

"Oh," Polly gave a half smile, feeling her face grow hot. "I almost thought they might."

She paused, wondering how to explain it.

"You see, my hearing is usually ..." but she trailed off.

Perhaps she should just show him. The real Polly, plain Polly. Polly without pretty gaudy shoes. Polly like a paper bag when the lollies are gone. Like a muddy old shirt that's been dropped in a hot wash and all its colours have run.

Her arms prickled, but she gave her glass to Santa anyhow and bent to her sandals. She slipped the straps away from her heels and straightened again, stepping backwards from the sandals while Santa reached out an elbow to steady her.

She stood barefoot.

"There. Say something."

Santa watched her silently, silver eyebrows raised. She had time to notice that the band was packing up, the waiters were clearing the glasses, and most of the guests had gone home. Mr Streck didn't seem to be anywhere, and Caroline — well, that might be Caroline, that shadow inside a shadow at the far end of the hall.

Polly had time to wait and wonder whether fate could be, if not avoided, then at least detained and held in a headlock until the time felt right to confront it.

She had time even to wonder where her mother was, what patch of Europe had most felt like home in the end.

"And," Santa began after that long, long pause. "What exactly would you like to hear, Polly from the mailroom?"

Polly stared. "What ...?"

Santa gazed back at her in bemusement.

"I said —" he began.

"Yes," Polly interrupted. "I heard you. I heard every word."

Santa chuckled. "Oh! Is that so strange?"

"You have no idea how," Polly breathed. "Say something else."

"Anything in particular?" Santa replied. "A limerick? A sonnet? Some rhyming couplets from Pope? I hope not, because I don't know any. I could tell you a joke. Have you heard the one about the talking horse? Perhaps it will resonate."

"No," she said. "I haven't. Tell me."

* * *

So he told her the one about the talking horse. And the one about the polar bear that goes to a bar, the one about the drunk on the bus, and the one about the woman and that Freudian slip. He told her every joke he remembered, and when he ran out, he made some up with much apology and laughter.

They had to sit eventually, because Santa claimed — in a clear and even tone — that his feet were well and truly killing him in those new sandals he'd bought.

"You know what I mean?" he asked, sitting down hard and rubbing his ankles.

"Not really," Polly smiled.

She sat with her chin in her hands, one bare foot curled under her, sandals forgotten beside her chair. They talked until the sun peeked through the arched windows of the hall. Once, Caroline drifted over and leaned across Santa's shoulders like a piece of bent black wicker, proclaiming she was tired, and going home, and if anyone needed a lift they better speak up now.

Polly smiled, trying to hide her disappointment and almost rose to go, but Santa held up his hand to stay her. He asserted that though the reindeer had the night off, he could still offer her the use of his sleigh — provided she didn't mind it was actually an old, red hatchback with some decisive rust along its frame.

She didn't mind at all, of course.

That whole ride home she spent with her head turned sideways, gazing at him, and he, in turn, pretended not to notice. In front of her building, he returned her gaze with a cheerful smile.

"So I guess you have lists to check," she said.

"Twice," he winked.

"And then there'll be stockings to fill."

"Indubitably!"

"And will I be on your list this year?"

"Well, hmm, you have been very, very good, Polly from the mailroom. I'll see what I can do."

"You know where to find me, then."

"I will likely need to return so my memory doesn't fail me," he smiled.

"Tomorrow?"

"At the very least!"

"Are you really, really old?"

"Impossibly."

Polly didn't mind. She liked impossible things.

She watched the car skim along the street, barely touching, until it rounded a corner and was gone.

Then she climbed the stairs all the way to bed, shoes still in hand. Her windows buzzed and rattled with the noise of the train station below.

To Polly Daley, right at that time, it sounded for all the world like a skidding jazz beat.

Deborah Biancotti is an Aurealis & Ditmar Award winning writer. Her work has most recently appeared in The Year's Best Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy #1 and online at infinity plus. Other stories have appeared in Borderlands, Orb, Redsine and Altair, as well as anthologies from MirrorDanse, Ideomancer, and Agog!. Upcoming work will appear at Shadowed Realms and in the first new edition of Eidolon. You can find her online at http://deborahbiancotti.net and http://www.livejournal.com/users/ deborahb.