Even Santa’s Elves Fall in Love

His arrival is greeted with silent indifference despite the winter breeze and stray snow flurries that accompany him through the revolving door. Compared to the bustling city streets on the other side of the serene, all-glass hotel facade, its lobby is one of the most peaceful spaces into which the man has ever stepped foot.

Wreaths, garland, twinkling lights, and splashes of crimson red adorn every spare surface amid the hotel’s crisply upholstered furniture and soft-hued marble surfaces. Staff of the Riverfront Inn & Suites appear to glide about the quaint lobby without noticing this man, who for his part, continues to stand just a few feet from the door through which he just entered. Somewhat stunned by the abrupt change of scenery, he continues to shiver from the cold as he allows his eyes to flit from one holiday decoration to the next.

“Can I help you, sir? Are you here for the event?” The voice of the dark skinned woman at the reception desk in front of him pierces the silence, echoing all around him.

“Uh… yes, sorry. I am. The invitation didn’t say—”

“The ballroom, down these stairs and to your left. If you prefer the elevator, it’s just beyond the bell hop station.” The woman points to the man’s right where a shallow set of marble stairs slinks down and around a corner, lit by the warm glow of glistening, low-to-the-ground sconces.

“Thanks. Have a good night.” The man wraps his pea coat tight around his torso, runs a flustered hand through his dirty blonde hair, and springs into motion past the desk and toward the stairs. At their apex sits a rack of newspapers, magazines, and brochures, and as he passes it, the man clocks the many stacks of local newspapers on the top shelf. He shudders once more, but not because he is cold. He proceeds down the stairs without stopping to read the front page headline because he has read it too many times before.

— — —

“Welcome!” A short woman with long, straight black hair, a ridiculously oversized Santa hat, and the largest pair of glasses he has ever seen greets the man from behind an otherwise nondescript table just to his left at the bottom of the stairs. Pretending not to be startled by her exclamation, he waves without speaking and scans the placecards strewn about the table, unable to discern a pattern to their configuration. “Once you’ve found your placecard, my colleague, Ben, will show you to your table.”

A man wearing a similarly oversized Santa hat and a sweater atop a festively patterned dress shirt materializes out of nowhere, a corny smile plastered across his face as he speaks. “Is this your first time at a SinglesMeet event?”

“Uh… yes, it is. Thank you for hosting this.”

“Nowhere else to go on Christmas Eve? Me, too.” The woman inserts herself back into the conversation, and the man can now see her reindeer-shaped name tag: ‘SHEILA.’ She lets out a forced chuckle before continuing. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. It’s not your fault you’re single…”

“You’re right, it isn’t,” the man replies without an ounce of affect in his tone. Sheila practically melts behind the table before turning her attention to a bright red clipboard. Ben’s smile fades from his face before he steps in to save his colleague from her embarrassment.

“What table will I be taking you to this evening, uh—?”

“Scott. Scott Matthews. Let’s see...” Scott scans the assortment of placecards once more and frowns. “There are two Scott cards here, no last initials. Should I just pick one at random?”

Ben shoots a quick, damning look at Sheila before focusing on Scott once more. “I suppose that is your only option, Mr. Matthews. In the meantime, I’ll have Sheila look into this… mishap… and we will adjust accordingly. As you probably read in the email, the evening will unfold in two parts. We can always shift things around and match you up with the appropriate partner if we find that you took the wrong card by accident. So sorry for the inconvenience.”

“Really, it’s fine. I’m just happy to be here.” Though he does not intend these words for her, Scott can tell by the way Sheila’s shoulders drop that she has let go of some tension. For now, she is in the clear. After another beat, he picks up the nearest ‘SCOTT’ card and walks toward Ben. “Table 7, if you will.”

“Right this way, Mr. Matthews.”

— — —

She is already seated at the table when he arrives, and the first thing he notices is her beautifully patterned red dress. Her long, brown hair ripples down from her head and rests with a placid sheen upon one shoulder. She is stunning, and he feels positively underdressed by comparison, wearing nothing more than a cable-knit sweater and wrinkled khaki pants beneath his winter accoutrements. He even forgot to change out of his sneakers before he rushed out the door. Scott unwraps himself from his scarf and pea coat and throws her a meek smile as she rises to extend a hand toward him.

“You must be Scott. I’m Heather. So nice to meet you! I was beginning to think I’d been stood up.” Though her tone is like honey, the cloudiness around her eyes tells a different story. All around them, dozens of other blind dates have already begun.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Scott offers in return. “Pleasure to meet you, Heather. I was so excited that I spent all afternoon, plus my entire dinner break, researching the best way to get here on time, only to find at the end, that I should’ve left fifteen minutes ago. Go figure.” She softens ever so slightly at the sound of his voice before retracting her hand and taking a seat once more.

“A server should be by with some hot cocoa shortly. Enjoy, you two!” Ben claps his hands together softly twice, pats their table as if it were an obedient puppy, then vanishes in an instant.

“Hot cocoa? Really?” Scott, though grateful for the excuse to leave his apartment, is beginning to doubt that this is the right occasion. He might be single, but he isn’t desperate. Not yet.

“It’s a bit much for me, too. But hey, it’s Christmas Eve and I haven’t been on a good date in months. What do I have to lose? I imagine you must feel the same way, at least a little bit, right? That, or else you wouldn’t be here with the rest of us losers.” Heather now speaks with fire but her face communicates honey. A reversal.

“Well, that’s not exactly why I’m here.” He tries to couple his statement with a laugh, but she does not bite. The honey is gone. She must think he fancies himself to be above all of this. “What I mean to say is, I recently went through a breakup and I’m trying to get back out there before the depression catches up with me, you know? It being the holidays and all, it just felt like the right move. If that means I have to drink hot cocoa with a stranger in a hotel ballroom on Christmas Eve, then so be it.”

“We don’t have to remain strangers, you know.” She finally lets out a slight laugh, delicate and without even a hint of irony. “This could be the first day of the rest of our lives, Scott.”

“You’re right. So, tell me something about yourself. Something you don’t normally tell someone on a first date. I’ve heard it all, so don’t be shy.” He leans in ever so slightly, and she does the same. Finally in sync.

— — —

The Riverfront Inn & Suites Ballroom lies off to the side of the main lobby on a sub-level overlooking the river and the brand new redevelopment of its shoreline. Through the sleek bank of windows along the space’s outermost wall, one can see the ice forming atop the river’s surface, a herald of the coming freeze. The Inn’s website states that the Ballroom can hold up to two hundred people standing, one hundred sitting. On this particular Christmas Eve, the exclusive SinglesMeet social club is expecting fifty lonely hearts to be drinking hot cocoa, building gingerbread houses, and finding true love during either one of the two time blocks. Club members had to submit basic personal information, but no pictures, and just one club administrator — Sheila Pendergast — is responsible for taking all of that information and pairing each member with two others.

The night prior to the Even Santa’s Elves Fall in Love event, Sheila got into a loud, messy altercation with her boyfriend, Sam, and by the time she crawled into bed next to him, she’d drunk one too many glasses of wine to remember to check her email before falling asleep. The next morning, while scrolling through her inbox long after Sam got up and left for his restaurant shift downtown, Sheila shot upright with a yelp.

The event.

Ben had made last minute changes to its format, and she didn’t have enough time to adequately prepare. Plus, there was at least one new registration since she retrieved the printed placecards from the FedEx/Kinkos down the street the night before. Everything was wrong. How could she be so stupid? She couldn’t even blame Sam this time.

With only three hours to spare before she needed to supervise event setup at the hotel, she ripped open her laptop and got to problem solving. She could afford only two hours of work before she’d need to throw makeup and an appropriate outfit in a duffle bag, run to FedEx/Kinkos a second time, print out the new placecards, and perhaps grab a sandwich from the corner market before hailing a cab. First, though, she had to check out the new registrant’s information and get a sense of his credentials:

Scott Matthews. 30 years old. Financial Planning Analyst for a national bank chain.

As her fingernails clacked away against her keyboard, she was reminded of the recent article in the local paper about the ‘finance bro’ who said all of those awful things about the city’s homeless. His name wasn’t Scott, but Sheila wondered if this new registrant might know that jerk.

In fact, she was so lost in thought, she completely forgot there was already another Scott attending the event that evening.

— — —

“Can you pass the bag of green icing? I think our house needs a nice front lawn,” Scott says as he affixes a gum drop to the top of a pretzel rod. “To go with this streetlamp, of course.”

Heather erupts in a peel of laughter and rises from her own side project to shove Scott playfully. The attendees at nearby tables look up from their own houses quietly, envious. “You’re such a nerd. But here you go. I don’t trust myself with the icing anyway. I’m much better with the gingerbread.”

“I’ll say.” They’re both laughing now as he accepts the bag of icing from her.

“Where do you think our little house would be if it were real? The city? Countryside? Oh God, what about Chatterton Woods, with all of the yuppies? Can you imagine?”

“Hey, that’s where I live.” Scott glowers midway through doling out green mounds of icing upon their house’s cardboard base. “Have you been out there recently? It’s really not that bad. More and more young people are moving there every day. Lower taxes, fewer homeless people… you know, all of the perks of city living without actually living in the city. What’s not to love?”

“Oh God, you sound like that guy from the paper.” Heather snaps a piece of gingerbread in half and begins to construct a chimney without looking up at him.

“What do you mean?” Scott can feel sweat beginning to drip down from his hairline. “I… don’t really read the news anymore. Too bleak.”

“Really, you haven’t heard about this? Some idiot gave an interview, disparaging the homeless encampments along the river, saying they should be moved somewhere else. As if the Riverfront is too good for them, you know?” She snaps another piece of gingerbread in two, still laser focused on her handiwork.

“Huh… interesting.” A drop of sweat plops down onto his ‘grass’ and he watches as the food coloring bleeds into a nearby dollop of white icing.

“Yeah, he never should’ve agreed to the interview, honestly. They clearly bated him and then twisted his words to make him out to be some kind of rich, stuck-up homeless-hater. An out-of-touch elitist. I knew what he was trying to say, but no one else seemed to get it. Not even the person writing the article.”

Scott looks up from the sweat pools now seeping through the cardboard base and out toward the palatial windows. Somewhere out there among the glowing city lights lies a narrow stretch of greenspace and miles of freshly poured sidewalks: The Riverfront. After years of advising an up-and-coming development firm on the project, he was happy to finally see it come to fruition. And when the local news asked him to comment on the impending grand opening, he thought nothing of it. Of course, the reporter’s line of questioning eventually turned to the homeless, and the rest was history.

And his name isn’t Scott.

He couldn’t attend an event like this under his real name. No way. Not after all of the vitriol that came his way in the aftermath. He had to get a new phone number. He was taken off of the bank’s public-facing projects, just a short walk away from being asked to resign. But tonight wasn’t about that mess. It was a misunderstanding, and Heather seemed to know that. The other client he worked with before all of this — the Riverfront Rehoming Coalition — was about to break ground on a massive condo building geared toward low-t0-no-income citizens, in cooperation with the local government, and he had forgotten to mention that in his interview. Heather was right: he was an idiot.

“Poor guy,” he finally says in response, shifting his attention back to her and their nearly-finished gingerbread house. “I bet he’ll think twice before speaking to the press next time.”

Through a puff of air, Heather replies: “Yeah, I bet. I love the press, but sometimes they miss the mark. It’s no wonder you missed the article, though, Mr. Chatterton Woods.”

“Hey, what did I tell you?” They’re laughing again. The news story, and the conversation surrounding it, is but a memory now.

“Sorry, I can’t help it. This city rat likes to poke fun at you country mice any chance she can. What do you do out there in the ‘burbs, anyway?”

Shit. Maybe he spoke too soon. “Oh, uh… I’m… an accountant.” Another drop of sweat hits the cardboard.

“Boring.” Another puff of air, and a knowing glance. “I don’t do numbers. I’m actually a journalist, believe it or not, but I cover arts and culture. You know, things that really matter. Hard-hitting news.”

“Right. The next time I need some context on the day’s political scandals, I’ll be sure to ask the opinion of the woman who reviewed the most recent ballet premiere.”

“Shut up!” She breaks another piece of gingerbread, this time by accident. After a beat, she gives him a piercing look. “Hey, do you want to get out of here? There’s a great new restaurant a few blocks from here. My favorite chef just started there — Sam Obell. You heard of him? I think he used to work out in Chatterton Woods, too.”

“I don’t follow celebrity chefs, but I do eat food. And I haven’t had nearly enough today. Yes, let’s go. I’m starting to hate Christmas. Ha!”

From three tables away, Ben overhears the couple’s conversation and allows himself to relax a bit. Despite how poorly the rest of the event is going, at least one couple has worked out. He unearths his phone from his pants pocket and shoots off a series of barbed messages to his assistant. She’ll need to make a few more adjustments to the second block of dates. Hopefully she can do better this time. When he finally puts his phone away again, the two lovebirds are gone, leaving their unfinished gingerbread house behind. Next to it, just one placecard: ‘SCOTT.’ Heather’s placecard is nowhere to be found.

— — —

“I’m sorry, ma’am, I have no idea what happened. I double, triple, even quadruple checked the lists. You must’ve registered for a different event. What was the name again?” Sheila, her Santa hat long discarded in the utility closet that served as her green room, holds the same red clipboard with a vice-like grip so as not to let on that she is about to explode.

“Heather Wallace. I registered, like, five weeks ago! How could you not have a placecard for me?” This tall woman, practically towering overtop Sheila’s slight frame, presses her jewelry-clad hands to either side of her head, deflating her tight blonde curls in the process. “Maybe someone took my card by mistake? Another Heather, perhaps?”

“No, I only have one Heather — you. I even remember seeing your card in the stack when I picked these up from the printer. You’re right, someone must have yours.” A single tear rolls down Sheila’s cheek as she ponders the optics of throwing the clipboard across the room, running up the stairs, and out the revolving door into the bitter winter air.

“What’s going on over there, you think?” A man with dirty blonde hair in a pea coat and scarf wraps his arm around his elegant, red-dress-clad date as he speaks, and as they both pass the registration table, neither of them give it a second glance. Together, they ascend the stairs, never to see Sheila or Ben again.

“Who knows. The sad little women who run these events are always making mistakes. Any old person could walk in from off the street and pretend to be whoever they want and no one would notice. They aren’t organized enough to know the difference,” the elegant woman mumbles to this man as she glances at her phone. A single text flashes up at her:

‘Carrie, call me when you get a chance. Need to talk logistics for tomorrow. Love you.’

“Yeah, she messed up my registration, too. There were two Scotts, and she couldn’t remember which table was mine. I’m glad I picked yours, though.”

“Oh, so for all I know, you might not be an accountant from Chatterton Woods? Is that what you’re saying?” Laughing and squeezing the man’s arm, she slides her phone into a clutch bag. She’ll respond to that text after dinner.

“Exactly. And you might not be a city-dwelling arts and culture reporter for the local paper.” The man doesn’t even notice that his date checked her phone just a moment ago.

“Exactly.”

— — —

Long after Ben left his beleaguered colleague behind to tear everything down alone; and long after Heather Wallace slapped that same colleague in the face, knocking her large glasses to the floor; and even longer still after that happy couple left the SinglesMeet event prematurely; Sheila Pendergast now stands alone at a street corner, a hefty duffle bag slung across her shoulder. She cannot stop crying.

A dark blue Toyota pulls up to the curb and the passenger-side window recedes out of sight to reveal a familiar face at the wheel. “Didn’t realize I could pick up women such as yourself on the corner in this part of town.”

“Shut up, Sam. I’ve had the worst night imaginable.”

“Sorry, honey.”

She opens the car door and flops into the seat, not even removing the duffle from her shoulder. “About all of it, really. I am. I would’ve apologized before I left for work, but I couldn’t even wake you up this morning. Not even the smell of bacon got through to you.”

His girlfriend offers nothing in response.

The germ of an idea pops into his head just then. “We could get ice cream on the way home? It’s freezing out, and your favorite place might be closed, but it’s worth a shot.”

Despite everything, Sheila allows herself to smile. “I’d like that.” Her way of apologizing in return.

“You really need to tell that prick, Ben, you don’t want to be his bitch anymore. Tell him he needs to get laid, then shove that stupid clipboard in his face. Why do you still volunteer for this shit anyway?” Sam, his dark and well-defined features practically glowing in the city lights as they zip down the highway, always knows exactly what to say to her.

“Because, I want others to find what we have. Am I crazy?” She must be crazy, she’s still crying.

“No, of course not. You’re just a good person. Too good, sometimes. I don’t deserve you.”

“I don’t deserve you, either.”

“Well, just know that I’d rough up that slimeball if you asked me to. He creeps me out.” Sam slides his car into the adjoining exit ramp and slows to a halt at its terminus. The light is red, so he takes his eyes off the road for just a moment. He cannot see his girlfriend’s tears in the darkness of the car’s interior.

“He just wants what we all do. He means well.” Sheila sniffs and turns to look out the window as the light turns green. The ice cream place is just two blocks off the exit. A detour, but she doesn’t mind.

“Even so. I hate how he makes you feel when you host these events. What happened tonight? You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

“Oh, nothing. It doesn’t matter. The guest list kept growing, and he changed the format at the last minute. I was so worked up about our fight that I ran out of time to double check things. People got mad, but at least one couple hit it off. They left early.”

“Well, sounds like a success to me. And now, ice cream.” They park, get out of the car, and order two vanilla cones.

“We close in ten minutes,” the pimpled teenager at the ordering window confirms.

“How was the restaurant?” She almost forgot to ask about his day.

“Fine; busy. Lots of couples on dates. I was thinking of you the whole time, how similar our jobs were tonight. Both of us making sure people had a good time.”

“I guess.” Sheila can’t think what else there is to say, so she kisses her boyfriend on the cheek and takes to her ice cream cone. She never got around to grabbing that sandwich from the corner market.

Sometimes, she feels like she doesn’t know this man at all. They’ve been together for going on three years, two of which they’ve spent in the same apartment, and yet…

For one thing, Sam hates ice cream, but anytime she suggests they stop here, he never says ‘no.’ And tonight, it was his idea. Doubly mystifying.

Does she really even know herself, though? Does anyone?

Whoever she and Sam really are, they’re in love. That much she knows.

And that’s all that matters.