“Why don’t you just f**k of ?” the woman replied. Then she took her mit ens and got out of there.

This was the miracle of the season, the way it put the f**k o so loud in our hearts. You could snap at strangers, or snap at the people closest to you. It could be a f**k o for a slight reason—You took my parking space or You questioned my choice of mit ens or I spent sixteen hours tracking down the golf club you wanted and you gave me a McDonald’s gift certi cate in return. Or it could bring out the f**k of that’d been lying in wait for years. You always insist on cut ing the turkey even though I’m the one who spent hours cooking it or I can’t spend one more holiday pretending to be in love with you or You want me to inherit your love for booze and women, in that order, but you’re more of a role anti-model than a father.

This was why I shouldn’t have been allowed in Macy’s. Because when you turn a short span of time into a “season,” you create an echo chamber for all of its associations. Once you step in, it’s hard to escape.

I started shaking hands with all the reindeer mit ens, certain that Lily had hidden something inside one of them. Sure enough, the fth shake brought a crumple. I pulled out the slip of paper.

6. I left something under the pillow for you.

Next stop: bedding. Personally, I preferred the word bedding when it was a verb, not a noun. Can you show me the bedding section? could not compare to Are you bedding me? Seriously, are we going to bed each other? In truth, I knew these sentences worked bet er in my head than anywhere else—So a never really understood what I was saying, although I usually chalked that up to her not being a native speaker. I even encouraged her to throw some obscure Spanish wordplay my way, but she never knew what I was talking about when I talked about that, either.

She was pret y, though. Like a flower. I missed that.

When I got to the bedding section, I wondered if Lily appreciated how many beds there were for me to probe. They could house a whole orphanage in here, with a few extra beds for the nuns to fool around in. (Pull my wimple! PULL MY WIMPLE!) The only way I was going to be able to do this was to divide the floor into quadrants and move clockwise from north.

The rst bed was a paisley print with four pillows propped up on it. I immediately launched my hand underneath them, looking for the next note.

“Sir? Can I help you?”

I turned and saw a bed salesman, his look half amused and half alarmed. He looked a lot like Barney Rubble, only with the remnants of a spray tan that would have been unavailable in the prehistoric age. I sympathized. Not because of the spray tan—I’d never do shit like that—

but because I gured being a bed salesman was a job of biblically bad paradox. I mean, here he was, forced to stand for eight or nine hours a day, and the whole time he’s surrounded by beds. And not only that, he’s surrounded by shoppers who see the beds and can’t help but think, Man, I’d love to lie down on that bed for a second. So not only does he have to stop himself from lying down, but he has to stop everyone else from doing it, too. I knew if I were him, I would be desperate for human company. So I decided to take him into my confidence.

“I’m looking for something,” I said. I glanced at his ring finger. Bingo. “You’re a married man, right?” He nodded.

“Well, here’s the thing,” I said. “My mother? She was looking at bedding and she totally dropped her shopping list under one of the pillows. So now she’s upstairs in cutlery, upset that she can’t remember what to get anyone, and my dad is about to blow his last fuse, because he likes shopping about as much as he likes terrorism and the estate tax. So he sent me down here to nd the list, and if I don’t nd it quick, there’s going to be a major meltdown on floor five.”

Super-tan Barney Rubble actually put his finger on his temple to help him think.

“I might remember her,” he said. “I’ll go look under those pillows if you want to look under these. Just please be careful to put the pillows back in their place and avoid mussing the sheets.”

“Oh, I will!” I assured him.

I decided if I were ever to get into booze and women, my line would be Excuse me, madam, but I would really love to bed and muss you.

… Are you perchance free this evening?

Now, at the risk of saying something legally actionable, I have to remark: It was amazing the things I found underneath the pillows at Macy’s. Half-eaten candy bars. Baby chew toys. Business cards. There was one thing that could have been either a dead jelly sh or a condom, but I pulled my ngers back before I found out for sure. Poor Barney actually let out a lit le scream when he found a decomposed rodent; it was only after he ran away for a quick burial and thorough disinfecting that I found the slip of paper I was looking for.

7. I dare you to ask Santa for your next message.

No. No f**king no no no.

If I hadn’t appreciated her sadism, I would’ve headed straight for the hills.

But instead, I headed straight for Santa.

It wasn’t as easy as that, though. I got down to the main oor and Santa’s Wonderland, and the line was at least ten classrooms long.

Children lolled and fidgeted while parents talked on cell phones or fussed with stroll ers or teetered like the living dead.

Luckily, I always travel with a book, just in case I have to wait on line for Santa, or some such inconvenience. More than a few of the parents—especially the dads—gave me strange looks. I could see them doing the mental math—I was way too old to believe in Santa, but I was too young to be after their children. So I was safe, if suspicious.