Sometimes the Best Presents Can’t Be Wrapped Read online

  Ned was cringing now, trying to force himself into the brick wall. How does he know my name?

  “But you’ve been getting higher and higher on my Naughty List for quite a while now.”

  Ned could hear the capital letters in Naughty List.

  “And I think it’s time I did something about it.”

  What? Do something about it? Ned trembled, and that second of real weakness pissed him off. He jolted upright.

  Santa stepped back this time.

  Of course he did.

  Ned thrust his chest out. “Get away from me, fatso.”

  The fake Santa’s big white eyebrows came together as one. They were really big. Ned actually noticed one hair in particular that curled up impossibly long. You need to pluck that son of a bitch! It’s disgusting.

  “You sure about that, Neddy?”

  Neddy? No one called him Neddy. Not since he was about eleven. “I’m sure you better get out of my face,” he spat.

  “I’ll give you one. Last. Chance,” the Santa Claus said. “One last chance. Tell Bowser here that you’re sorry. Hey. Give him a piece of your Big Daddy’s pepperoni, italian sausage, salami, and roasted red peppers with mozzarella and Romano, extra Romano ‘and don’t forget that last part if you know what’s good for you’ pizza on your way out.”

  “Fuck you,” Ned said again and then pushed past him and around to the front of Papa Daddy’s. He spared the man a glance. The man who was shaking his head, looking at him, and then… laid a finger on the side of his nose and said, or at least Ned thought he heard him say, “Granted.”

  Ned almost stepped away again, but instead he opened the pizza parlor door and went inside. The place was deserted. A young man playing with a cell phone sat at the little host stand by the door. He was skinny, wore a black leather vest, and looked epically bored. He didn’t even glance at Ned.

  “There’s a crazy person out there,” Ned said and shivered. Realized the old fucker had scared him. He shook it off.

  “There are a lot of crazy people out there in the world,” the young man said. He might have been twenty-one but only by the hair of his chinny chin chin, and there wasn’t much of that. He never looked up from his phone.

  “No! I’m serious. He accosted me!”

  Skinny glanced at him with an oh, right! expression and went back to his game or texting or tweeting or whatever.

  “Really. He’s dressed as Santa Claus. He backed me right up against the wall of the restaurant. I thought he was going to hit me.” Which was only partially true.

  Finally, the kid lowered his cell. “Santa Claus, huh? Santa Claus tried to hit you?”

  Ned sighed in exasperation. “I didn’t say he was Santa—”

  “You did, man. You said Santa Claus accosted you.”

  “—I said he was dressed as Santa Claus.”

  The kid got up and went to the glass door. Looked out. “I don’t see nobody,” he said.

  “He’s standing off to the side there,” Ned said and realized, for God’s sake, that he was still shaken up.

  Skinny opened the door and leaned out. Way out. He looked south. Then stepped onto the sidewalk and looked north. It was snowing hard again, but not in the blizzardy way it had been before. “I don’t see nothing. No Santa here, baby.” He grinned at Ned. Whatever Ned could say about him, he had perfect teeth. “I think you was seeing things, man.”

  “I wasn’t seeing things.” He pushed past Skinny and looked both ways up and down Main.

  No one was there.

  Not even the red kettle on its tripod.

  Lardass was quick, Ned saw that much.

  His car must have been parked right there. He must have realized he was in trouble and thrown his shit in the back seat and gotten in and hauled it out of here. Fat fuck.

  Ned turned to Skinny. “I ordered a pizza,” he said.

  “The Big Daddy’s?” Skinny asked.

  Ned nodded.

  “Got it. And we didn’t forget the extra cheese.”

  Ned shuddered.

  He didn’t know why.

  DURING

  1

  NED WOKE up the next morning and stretched. Sunlight was coming through the gaps in the blinds. He looked at the alarm clock. The numbers looked weird. Yellow instead of their usual green. Could something be wrong with it? It was nine o’clock. It hadn’t gone off. Fuck!

  Then he thought, Why do I care? I’m the boss! And he stretched again and started at the weird noise he made when he yawned. High-pitched.

  The house smelled insane. His nostrils flared, and he snorted. Somehow drew in a second long breath through his nose before really letting the first one out. Smells! So many smells. It was almost overwhelming. Sweat and man and pizza. Had he forgotten to put it away? Had he brought it in here? And shit. Had he taken a dump and not flushed it? He’d have dragged Cliff over the coals if he’d peed and not flushed.

  He sat up, and the bed seemed so big.

  I must have had a lot to drink last night, he thought, although he only remembered one beer.

  That pizza! He could smell the pepperoni and the italian sausage, as well as the salami. He could actually differentiate the smells. And roasted red peppers, so strong it was almost sickening. Oh, and the mozzarella and the Romano cheeses. Why had he asked for extra?

  He looked around the room. It all looked weird. All blue and green, as if he were looking through sunglasses. He reached up for them and hit the side of his face with some kind of soft club.

  What the hell?

  He looked down to see what he was holding, and it was… some kind of fake foot. Where had he gotten that?

  But then….

  Why, it looked like….

  No! He laughed at the thought, except it didn’t sound like a laugh.

  Why, it sounded like….

  Well, he wasn’t sure what. Because what he was thinking was ridiculous. Like some kind of bark.

  He huffed and then tried to swing his legs out in front of him so he could get out of the bed. Except his legs weren’t really cooperating with him either. They didn’t want to bend in the right way. He rolled to his side and then tried again and managed it somehow, but….

  He froze.

  What he was seeing wasn’t his legs.

  They were long and narrow and covered in short dark hair. And not like hairy man legs either. Like, covered in hair. Fur.

  “What the fuck?” he said, or meant to. What came out was something more like “Mahwar rup whoof!”

  Ned froze again. What…? What was going on…?

  I’m still asleep. Of course I am. I just need to wake up. And now that I realize I’m sleeping, I’ll wake up, just like normal.

  Except he didn’t wake up.

  Ned sat up and then, without thinking about it, stood up. Except he wasn’t high up. He wasn’t any higher really than whenever he sat up in bed. And….

  His eyes flew wide.

  There was a dog looking back at him from the dresser mirror.

  A big brown dog.

  Dreaming. I’m dreaming….

  Why… it was the dog from the alley, wasn’t it?

  But he’d no sooner thought it when he knew it wasn’t true.

  Fuck.

  Wake up!

  Wake up wake up wake up wake up!

  He closed his eyes. Slowly opened them.

  A dog still looked back at him. A brown Labrador retriever. A chocolate-brown Labrador retriever.

  This is impossible. I’ve got to be dreaming. I’ve got to be. Why can’t I wake up?

  He moved to get up, to get off the bed, and before he knew what had happened, he had very fluidly jumped off the bed and landed on all fours on the floor. All fours. He looked down at dog feet. Four dog feet. Impossible.

  He ran to the bathroom—the one with the horrible shit smells—his dog toenails clippity-clipping on his hardwood floors. Floors he’d paid big bucks to get done. He and Cliff had gone to Provincetown for a week while they’d been
done because of the layers and layers of varnish they’d put down.

  Jesus! What was he doing to the floors?

  So real! This is all so real.

  He went to the bathroom—it was weird being so low compared to normal, as if he were crawling on hands and knees, and then, the toilet! It smelled so bad, and he looked and…. Nothing. Clear. Thank God for that.

  So real. This dream is so damned real. He could smell the drop-in Vanish Scrubbing Bubbles disks in the tank. They were all but overpowering, and he could still smell that human waste smell beneath. Did you smell things in your dreams? Things that were only in your dreams? Why, he would dream about coffee sometimes when Cliff had gotten up and made it. Pancakes too, or bacon and eggs on Sundays. A Cliff tradition. Or at least as it used to be. Now not so much as it used to be.

  He felt a little clench to the stomach. That Cliff won’t ever do again?

  Suddenly, Ned knew something. Knew that he knew that he knew, despite thinking this all had to be a dream—thinking that it had to be.

  Somehow, he had become a dog.

  Even though he knew such things were impossible.

  Then he knew something else.

  Ned knew who did it.

  That fat fucker. He did something to me.

  Ned looked down at his feet. His dog feet. He had a moment of panic, as if he were drowning.

  Get ahold of yourself!

  He looked up at the light switch. Could he get it? He thought that he could. At least reach it. But turn the light on?

  Ned jumped up on his hind feet—was amazed at how natural it felt, as if he’d been a dog his entire life—and placed his two front feet on either side of the switch plate. Now what? Then again, without thinking, he shoved his nose up under the switch and flipped his face up, and just like that, the light came on.

  He’d been able to see before. But now he could see much clearer. Although everything still had that strange looking-through-blue-sunglasses (with a warm tinge of yellow) look to it. Even with the white-white-white of the tile he’d insisted on when he and Cliff had had the bathroom done.

  He remembered something then. Something Cliff had told him once when he was going on and on and on about wanting a dog. Dogs were color-blind. Well, not exactly, but they were green/yellow color-blind and…. Wait. No. That didn’t make any sense, because he was seeing yellow, wasn’t he? Red/green color-blind, then…. That was it. He could see black and white okay, and he could also see blue and yellow, which explained the weird way everything looked now….

  Ned dropped back down to the floor and then used his face—his face!—to nudge the door away from the tub and stand before the full-length mirror at the back of it. In the garish light of the bathroom bulbs—God, Cliff had been right; it was so ludicrously bright in here—he could clearly see the dog in the mirror.

  Ned opened his mouth, and so did the dog. He shook himself—which felt delicious, by the way—and so did the dog. He huffed and saw the slits on the side of his black nose flare. Was bombarded with scents—and scents were exactly what they were, huh?

  Soap. Dove and that lavender kind that Cliff liked so much—Yardley, he thought it was called. And he’d thought the lavender was strong before! Wow.

  There was the mint of the toothpaste. The nostril irritation of the Listerine. It wasn’t even the green stuff, but the classic yellow stuff he’d insisted on that of course was nasty, if he’d only admitted it. Why had he been so stubborn about such a stupid, unimportant thing?

  The itchy smell of the peroxide.

  The Tide and Downy blast of the towels.

  “Do we have to use quite so much Downy, Ned?” Cliff would ask.

  God, if only he hadn’t used so much!

  Ned sneezed. Almost laughed at the dog in the mirror. Dogs sneezing was so funny.

  There was the strong scent of Spic and Span on the floors, the fucking Scrubbing Bubbles of the toilet cleaner, the Windex he used on the mirrors over the sink…. God! Smells that used to comfort him and now made his eyes water. And underneath… that all-too-human odor he most assuredly didn’t like. Why could he smell that? He’d flushed!

  Ned couldn’t stand it anymore and retreated to the bedroom, only to be hit with the smells there. Sweat for one. Socks. The foot smells that always turned him on before and were now so overwhelming. He snorted and followed his nose and yes, found a sock—one of Cliff’s—under the bed. It was foot, and it was… it was Cliff. He whimpered. Startled himself with the sound. Something else. He trotted around the room and used his nose—and God, that nose!—and found behind the hamper a pair of underwear that had overshot their aim. Cliff’s underwear. All the smells that came with them. Detergent and balls and other less sexy ones. And Cliff was clean. Meticulous!

  Cliff. Oh God, oh God, he suddenly missed Cliff so damned much. If only he were here now.

  Hell! He might try to breed me.

  Then something else hit him.

  Ned ran back to the bathroom and looked in the mirror again and lifted his head and chest high and then… he could see and…. God, there it was. His dick. Right out there for anyone to see! What was he going to do about that?

  Oh no! What if someone saw him like this? How would he tell them that he wasn’t, in fact, a dog? He couldn’t speak.

  Or could…?

  Ned tried to talk, and no! What came out were dog sounds. He should have known. They were the same strange dog words and sounds he’d made earlier.

  What am I going to do?

  He panicked. Whined again. And then, without knowing he was going to do it, he howled.

  The sound died in his throat—horrified him.

  God. Oh God God God! I’m a dog. I’m a fucking dog!

  Not possible! Not at all.

  Can’t be can’t be can’t be can’t be…!

  Then another thing occurred to him.

  He froze. What if he wasn’t a dog? Because, really, how could he be?

  It made so much sense!

  He wasn’t a dog. The man in the Santa suit hadn’t turned him into a dog. Ned laughed and ignored the half bark, half huffing noise he made. No. Fat fuck had hypnotized him! He was here, right now, on all fours, and he was looking in the mirror and seeing a dog when in fact it was a man looking back. He just couldn’t see it.

  All because I flipped that fat old man off?

  Then how did he know about me nearly firing Jake?

  Because he hadn’t. He hadn’t nearly fire Jake. That never happened. It was all a part of the hypnotism.

  Except he knew that wasn’t true. He could remember it. Clearly. Could remember every bit of it from the way the hottie had looked at him through the glass window of his office door—

  Hottie?

  —to Lillian and her asking Jake to return to his place on the floor. The conversation—almost fight—the two of them had had.

  How did the second-rate Santa Claus know?

  Jake? Was this all because of Jake? Had he hired the guy in the Santa suit to hypnotize him?

  In the other room, Ned’s cell phone rang. The inoffensive chirping he liked so much. Ned ran for it, only to realize, once he got there, that he had no way of answering it. He couldn’t pick it up. Not with his feet. And while maybe he could use his mouth—disgusting—he couldn’t press the touchscreen. Not with his mouth or his tongue or his clumsy lack of opposable thumbs or soft skin to swipe at the blue spot that was flashing and letting him know about the incoming call.

  Ned brought his brows together and focused—it wasn’t easy—on the little glass screen and saw “Lillian Cobb” blinking at him, along with a tiny picture of her smiling, round-cheeked face.

  “Fuck!” he cried, but howled instead.

  What do I do? What the hell do I do?

  The chirping stopped, and a few seconds later the screen went dark, and then… the landline started ringing!

  (The one Cliff had insisted they keep.)

  He’d never been so glad to hear that old-fashioned sou
nd! He dashed from the room—amazed at how fast he could move!—and down the hall and down the steps and into the living room where the handset stood in its cradle. It was ringing away, a sound Cliff had chosen that was much closer to the classic ring of yesteryear.

  Answer it!

  He had to. Somehow.

  He hopped up, landed both front feet on the edge of the buffet against the wall. It was flashing a lot like a cell phone, and he opened his mouth and tried to pull it free.

  Don’t frigging destroy it!

  Somehow, he did pull it free, and it dropped to the floor. Because it had been in its cradle, the line opened without him touching the screen on the handset’s face.

  A pause, and then Lillian’s unmistakable voice: “Ned? Are you there?”

  Before he could stop himself, he barked.

  “What in the world?” came her words.

  He barked again. This time trying, desperately trying, to make the dog barks sound like, “It’s me, Lil! It’s me!” Now using his private name—his pet name, oh God—for her more than he ever had before. “Help me, Lil! Please.”

  But he could hear it. What was coming out of his mouth was nothing, nothing, like words—no matter how he tried. He was barking. Woofing.

  “Ruff, arf, au au,” and even a humiliating “bow-wow.” But no words. Not human words.

  “What the hell?” came Lillian’s voice, and there was more. He could hear all kinds of things. He could hear her breathing, and he could hear… keys. Fingers on keys! And voices. People talking to other people, and they must be talking to people on the phone because he couldn’t quite make out the responses.

  Lil continued to talk. “It’s a dog. I don’t believe it, but it’s a dog.”

  “Let me” came a second voice: Yvonne Delany—he recognized her instantly—his executive assistant. He could hear a Boston accent although he knew she’d gone to great pains to hide it because she was ashamed of it. “No reason to feel that way,” he wanted to say, but of course couldn’t. “Mistah Bawding?” she said, dropping the final r in “mister” and the l in his last name.

  Geez, sometimes he’d catch the accent now and again—especially if she was upset—but this morning it was crazy obvious.