Finally, I turned to Boomer.

“What do I want for Christmas?”

He looked thoughtful for a second, then said, “World peace?”

“Not helpful!”

“Well, what’s in your Amazonian hope chest?” Boomer asked.

“My WHAT?”

“You know, on Amazon. Your hope chest.”

“You mean my wish list?”

“Yeah, that.”

And just like that, I knew what I wanted. Something I had always wanted. But it was so unrealistic it hadn’t even made it to my wish list.

I needed a bench to sit down on, but the only one I could see already had Elizabeth Taylor, Hugh Jackman, and Clark Gable perched atop it, waiting for a bus.

“I just need a sec,” I told Boomer before I ducked behind Ozzy Osbourne and his whole family (circa 2003) to write in the Moleskine.

No smart-assness (assy-smartness?) here.

The truth?

What I want for Christmas is an OED. Unabridged.

Just in case you are not a word nerd like myself:

O = Oxford

E = English

D = Dictionary

Not the concise one. Not the one that comes on CDs. (Please!) No.

Twenty volumes.

22,000 pages.

600,000 entries.

Pret y much the English language’s greatest achievement.

It’s not cheap—almost a thousand dollars, I think. Which is, I admit, a lot for a book. But, criminy, what a book. It’s the complete genealogy of every word we use. No word is too grand or too infinitesimal to be considered.

Deep down, you see, I long to be arcane, esoteric. I would love to confound people with their own language.

Here’s a riddle for you:

My name is a connector of words.

I know that’s a childish tease—the truth is, I’d love to let the mystery remain, if only for a lit le longer. I bring it up solely to emphasize the point—that even though my parents had no idea (and I’m sure my father would have worked will fully against it), somehow they pegged me with my very name to know that while some fell ows would nd their creature comfort in sport or pharmacy or sexual conquest, I was destined to get that from words. Preferably read or writ en.

Please note: In case you happen to be an heiress, hoping to bestow a Christmas wish on a lonesome mystery boy/linguistic rabblerouser—I actually don’t want to get the OED as a gift, as much as I would love to have one. I actually want to earn it, or at least to earn the money (through words, in some way) to get it. It will be even more special then.

This is about as far as I can go without some sarcasm creeping in. But before it does, I must say, with utmost sincerity, that your cookies are good enough to bring some of these wax statues back to life. Thanks for that. I once made corn mu ns for a fourth-grade project on Williamsburg and they came out like baseballs. So I’m not sure how to reciprocate … but, believe me, I shall.

I was worried I was being a lit le too much of a word nerd … but then I gured a girl who left a red Moleskine in the stacks of the Strand would understand.

Then came the hard part. The next assignment.

I looked over to the Osbournes (they were a surprisingly short family, at least in wax) and saw Boomer st-pounding with President Obama.

Stovepiping over the rest of the politicians was Honest Abe, looking like the European tourists taking his picture were worse company than John Wilkes Booth. Next to Abe was a gure I pegged as Mary Todd … until she moved, and I realized it was the guard I was supposed to seek. She looked like an older, less bearded version of fondle-friendly Uncle Sal. There was, it seemed, no limit to the number of relatives Lily could employ.

“Hey, Boomer,” I said. “How would you feel about doing something for me at FAO Schwarz?”

“The toy store?” he asked.

“No, the apothecary.”

He looked at me blankly.

“Yes, the toy store.”

“Awesome!”

I just had to be sure he was free on Christmas Eve.…

six

(Lily)

December 24th

I woke up on Christmas Eve morning, and my rst instinct was sheer excitement: Yay! It’s nally the day before Christmas—the day before the best day of the year! My second reaction was pitiful remembrance: Ugh, and with no one here to share it with. Why had I ever agreed to allow my parents to go on their twenty-five-years-delayed honeymoon? Such a brand of selflessness was not meant for Christmastime.

Grandpa’s calico cat, Grunt, seemed to agree with me about the day starting out less than auspiciously. The cat aggressively rubbed himself across the front of my neck, draping his head over my shoulder, then growled his signature grunt directly into my ear to indicate, “Get out of bed and feed me already, person!”

Since Langston was lost to Benny, I had spent the night in my special “Lily pad,” in Grandpa’s apartment. The Lily pad is an ancient, afghan-draped chaise that sits underneath a skylight built into the at ic apartment that Grandpa turned into his retirement home after he sold his business on the ground oor and my family moved into the third- oor apartment, where Grandpa and Grandma once raised my mom and my uncles. Grandma died right before I was born, which is maybe why I am Grandpa’s special girl. I was named after her, and I arrived into the downstairs just as Grandpa was transitioning upstairs. So while he’d lost one Lily, he’d gained back another. Grandpa said he decided to renovate the upstairs apartment for his later-in-life bachelor digs because climbing the stairs every day would keep him young.