Marie Anderson
I’m dashing through the snow to catch the thief who grabbed my iPhone from my hand when I trip, slip, and slam face first against the door of an SUV parked curbside. I see stars, not festive red and green stars, but orange bursts that sizzle my eyes, and then, horrors, my tongue pushes my front tooth and my front tooth rocks like a hobby horse. It’s loose! I sit up. Blood is pouring from somewhere—my nose? my forehead?—and candy-stripes down my puffy white jacket.
Bells are jingling, carolers are singing, but I’m not hallucinating a Hallmark movie. It’s December 24, and Milwaukee Avenue on Chicago’s hipster north side is jammed with furiously festive folk, none of whom do more than glance at me and scurry away.
The f-word falls from my bleeding lips, over and over. Why, oh, why did I bother to whip out my phone to see who was texting me? Did I really expect the texter to be my freshly exed boyfriend who was recanting his earlier “it’s not you, it’s me” breakup text? I know better than that. I might as well have been holding up a sign alerting thieves that my phone was available to be yanked from my hand! And it’s not that I wanted my ex to recant. I was ready to end things, but I was going to do it the right way, face to face after Christmas.
I don’t trust my legs to stand, so I stay seated, pressing my back against the SUV. I’m not so worried about the data on my phone. Stolen Device Protection is hopefully protecting it.
“Hey, Miss.” I look up. Santa Claus stands before me. “Help you up? That’s my Chevy Trax you’re sitting against.”
I let him haul me to my feet. We’re about the same height, but maybe not. My boots have two-inch heels. He’s wearing reindeer socks and Birkenstocks.
I sob out my tale of woe.
“Come on,” Santa says. “I’ll drive you to Emergency.”
In the car, he removes the beard and wig and Santa hat. He’s cute, maybe late twenties? My age. No ring on those piano-player-long fingers. Could this be the beginning of a meet cute? Or am I really hallucinating myself into a Hallmark holiday movie?
“I was playing Santa at the migrant shelter for families down the street,” he says.
Despite my loose tooth, bleeding head, blood-stained jacket, stolen phone, and freshly exed boyfriend, I can’t stop a smile.
He hands me his phone. “Do what you need to do to report your phone stolen and get it locked.”
I do what I need to do.
Snow starts to fall. Streetlights blink on.
“It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas,” I warble.
“And the prettiest sight to see,” he warbles back, “is the pub after the hospital, where I hope you’ll have a drink with me.”
“My treat,” is what I say. Hallmark movie plot is what I hope.
Marie Anderson is a Chicago area married mother of three millennials. Her stories have appeared in dozens of publications, including Roundtable, and, most recently (2025) in Bloomin’ Onion, Raven’s Muse, and Fiction on the Web. Since 2009 she has led and learned from a writing critique group who meets at a public library in La Grange, IL.
