Tuesday, December 24, 2021 — Christmas Eve

Sofie was standing behind the counter, getting everything ready. Sara, my perfectionist girlfriend, had made ham and turkey sandwiches and even baked some sweet pastries for the Atlas Christmas Eve show. Sofie refused to touch the ham sandwiches and Sara sent Pete out to get some hummus and avocados.

When Pete returned, he had a spring to his step that I hadn’t seen before. He didn’t seem to mind the fact that he looked like a snowman when he stepped into the foyer and stomped his feet to get the snow off his shoes and pants.

“Wow, feels like Christmas,” he said with a big smile on his face. A minute later, he was joking with Sofie as the two stood behind our long counter, making sandwiches.

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Tuesday, December 24, 2021 — Christmas Eve

The sky was dark on Christmas Eve, the sun never stood a chance. It was so dark outside that even Einstein stayed in his favorite spot under our bed, instead of waking me up at 8am as usual.

It was nice to have a lazy morning. I had no plans until our Christmas Eve show at 4. There was nowhere I had to be, nothing I had to do, except got for a walk with Einstein, and hang out with Sara, which was exactly what I wanted to do.

And then the phone rang.

I know that the phone always sounds the same, but I swear I could hear by the tone of the ringing that something was wrong before I picked it up.

It was Mom.

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Monday, December 23, 2021

The walk from Mom and Dad’s only took about forty minutes. Kind of long, yes, but nothing a teenage girl couldn’t handle and when Sofie arrived at Atlas for the next Christmas movie marathon movie, with rosy cheeks and bright eyes, she was the epitome of a wholesome, young, girl next door.

Pete was walking his bike next to Sofie, and judging by Sofie’s reaction, also cracking jokes as he turned the corner to lock his bike next to the Atlas side door.

“Hi there,” I said, as casually as I could, while I pretended to be filling the popcorn machine. (Don’t ask me why I didn’t really do it).

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Monday, December 23, 2021
Mom was home alone, humming along the Xmas songs that were playing on the radio as she worked in the kitchen, baking bread. There was a lot of bread. Too much, if you ask me. I asked Mom.

“Who’s going to eat all this? Even with Tim here, we’ll never be able to finish all those breads,” I said.

“Oh this? It’s for the annual Christmas church sale at the market square. It’s not really a sale, but you know people in Kumpunotko. They don’t like the word ‘charity’ much,” Mom replied.

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Monday, December 23, 2021
Jennifer picked up the phone. I could hear right away that something was wrong.

“Oh, Peter, it’s you? Yes, he’s here, hold on,” Jennifer said.

Not that she usually answer the phone overly cheerfully, but now she sounded like Eeyore.

“What’s wrong?” I asked her.

“Nothing, not really. Well, it’s just that … apparently there’s a storm coming in and Sami may not make it home for Christmas,” she replied. “Well, here’s Pete.”

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Monday, Dec 23, 2021
I woke up with a sense of purpose. I knew I had a job to do, and I knew I was the man for the job. It wasn’t for those faint of heart, but destiny had chosen me.

I had to convince Sara about Die Hard being the next movie in our Christmas movie marathon. It came down to Die Hard and Scrooged and I desperately wanted to save Scrooged as the last movie of the marathon, and not least because Pete had played the lead role in the school play just a few days earlier.

There was a symmetry in it. I didn’t know exactly what it was but surely it was there.

“Listen, Sara,” I began, as we sat at the kitchen table at breakfast. She was reading the newspaper and sipping her tea absentmindedly.

She looked up.

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Sunday, December 22, 2021
I spent the first half of the movie sitting in the office with Sara. She took the spare keys from me and put them in her jeans pocket.

“Just for safe keeping,” she said. “How’s your secret project going?”

“What secret project?” I replied. “How’s yours?”

“I don’t have a secret project. You have a secret project.”

“No, I don’t. You have one.”

“You.”

“No, you.”

We went back and forth like that for a couple of minutes.

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Sunday, Dec 22, 2021
I borrowed Sara’s key to our apartment – she wasn’t happy – and sprinted home. I couldn’t find the spare keys anywhere and when I finally gave up looking for them, our apartment looked like it had been burglarised. The sofa cushions were either on the floor or upside down (or both), kitchen drawers were open, the framed poster of Back to the Future hung crooked.

I knew I couldn’t blame it on Einstein, not all of it anyway. But I’d have to cross the bridge called Sara when she saw the mess. It occurred to me that I must’ve left the keys in my room at Mom and Dad’s so I rushed downstairs and instead of walking back to Atlas to take the Beetle, I got on my Crescent, and started pedaling as hard as I could.

As always, the wind was against me. It was raining, too.

But the bike ride also gave me twenty minutes to clear my head, calm down, and come up with new plans. I was afraid that I had made a lot of people angry, and just as in Ghostbusters II, the anger was poisoning everything.

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Sunday, Dec 22, 2021
When I returned to the office, I found Sara sitting in the big chair behind the computer. She looked at me the way only she could, as if she was x-raying me, and not in a see-through-my-pants kind of a way.

“What’s with the running back and forth to Kim’s? Why was it so important to send Sofie and Pete out together? What did you tell Pete just now?” she demanded.

“Oh, nothing, nothing. I just thanked him for helping out. And it goes twice as fast when they work together,” I said, and made my escape toward the coffee maker in the foyer.

Sara followed me there.

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Sunday, Dec 22, 2021
Dad came by around lunch time, to drop off the poster I had forgot to take with me when Sofie and I followed him to his secret storage. He had outdone himself again. This time he had obviously been inspired by National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, another late 80s classic.

It was a fantastic drawing of a man (who sort of looked like me, I could tell) dressed up as Santa getting electrocuted by Xmas lights. The Santa was on the roof of Atlas, with the sign glowing in the dark, and presents flying all around. On the bottom, instead of “Christmas Vacation”, it said “Christmas Movie Marathon.”

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