Sexy Santa

The gig appealed to Pam’s feminist instincts as much as to her pocketbook: Play the role of Mrs. Santa Claus at the Maple Grove Mall from the day after Thanksgiving till Christmas Eve.
Why should Santa get all the glory? Surely Mrs. Claus did more than stay home and bake cookies for the elves.
She liked the idea of sitting on a throne alongside Santa, dressed in a similar white-fur-trimmed red suit, and listening to the
little
kids talk about their Christmas wishes.

Pam’s own son and daughter were grown and gone.
Now in her mid-forties, divorced for nearly a year and recently “excessed” from her job due to budget cuts, she felt at a crossroads. She
'
d been spared a midlife crisis, having hit forty and most recently forty-five without a whimper, only to have life hit her with the one-two punch of losing her marriage and then her job. Pam was an optimist, the eternal glass-half-full type,
however,
and instead of going into a tailspin, she welcomed the new opportunities that she was sure were around the next corner. She didn’t know what her next regular job would be but meanwhile welcomed this temporary gig as Mrs. Claus.
It wasn’t a high-paying job or a
prestigious
job and wouldn’t add much weight to her résumé, but it would bring in some much-needed money and, besides, it would be
fun.

Pam arrived at the Maple Grove Mall on
the morning after Thanksgiving, ready to get into costume and go to work. Unlike Santa’s costume, hers involved no padding. After an earnest discussion with the Special Events Coordinator, who had hired her, Pam had persuaded Reg Winkelhof that the 2012 version of Mrs. Claus should be a lean, health-conscious, vibrant woman, neither chubby nor white-haired. She was pretty much going onstage as a
red-suited version of herself.

Reg led her to the newly set up Toyland in a vacant store in the mall.
In a back room, she changed quickly into her costume. When she emerged,
Santa
, a jolly, beaming, white-haired and white-bearded gent in the best Santa tradition
was already in place on his throne. Pam wondered if the belly was pillow-padding or real. Beneath the voluminous
whiskers,
it was hard to get a good idea of the man’s face. He looked properly
old,
as a Santa should. Pam supposed he was a local retiree looking for a little Christmas money.

“My name’s Pam,” she said with a smile, offering Santa a hand to shake.

“Mine’s Santa…but when the kids aren’t around you can call me Ed,” he said w
ith a smile and a conspiratorial wink, standing up with old-fashioned courtliness
.
He took
her proffered hand,
shook
it, and
resumed
his seat on the throne on the raised platform.

“Is this your first year working the Santa gig?” Pam asked.

“Yes, although I played Santa for our condo association’s Christmas party last year,” he acknowledged. “I’m looking forward to it. Who wouldn’t love to play Santa? Everyone loves Santa, and we all need to be loved.”

True words indeed,
thought Pam, who was ready to be loved again herself.

“Have
you
been a good girl this year?” Santa asked.

“Too good. No opportunities to be bad,” Pam answered with a sad smile.

“What would you like Santa to bring you, then?”

“A new husband…or at least a lover.” She was surprised at her own candor, but somehow wearing the Mrs. Claus outfit and pretending to be someone she wasn’t was a
remarkably
liberating experience.

“Hmmm…that’s a tall order, but I’ll see what I can do. A charming, vivacious, and attractive woman like yourself shouldn’t have much trouble attracting a man, though.”

“Ah, there, you see? That’s the problem. I have no trouble attracting a man, but it’s always the wrong one.
Either they’re twenty
-
something cougar aficionados or they’re senior citizens looking for ‘young stuff’—which, at forty-five, I still
qualify as, by geezer standards. No offense meant,” she hastily added as she remembered the bewhiskered Ed’s
supposed
age.

“None taken,” he assured her with a
chuckle
.

“Are you ready?” Reg Winkelhof called out from the front of the store.

“Yes,” chorused Pam and Ed.

Reg unlocked the door, and a swarm of eager humanity surged into the store
—
very young
believers
and their parents. Pam watched, amused. Some of the kids were pulling sleepy parents
impatiently toward Santa and Mrs. Claus. Some of the parents were tugging hesitant, shy kids. All were directed into a cordoned queue that led to the back of the store where she and Ed were enthroned.

Democratically, as each child reached the front of the line, he or she had a choice to talk to Santa or Mrs. Claus. Understandably
,
more of the kids opted for Santa, yet Pam was gratified to see how many of them actually preferred to speak with her. When Reg had interviewed her, he had admitted this new pairing of a female counterpart with the traditional Santa was an experiment and something of a crapshoot. It looked like it was working.

Reg had organized it so that either Santa or Mrs. Claus was on duty at all times
while
the Toyland display was open. They both got several fifteen-minute breaks during the day, plus lunch break and dinner break, since their working hours were 10 AM to 8 PM, but their breaks were staggered, not simultaneous. Consequently
,
Pam and Ed had little opportunity to talk to each other through the day. They exchanged a few sentences here and there, and Pam warmed to the senior citizen’s sense of humor and genial smile, which seemed to be for real
,
and not just part of his Santa persona.

It wasn’t till eight o’clock that first night that they had a chance to talk
meaningfully
to each other again. Reg had locked the door to the store and
shepherded Ed and Pam to the back rooms, where they could each change back into their own clothes.
As
Pam, once again in street clothes, opened the door of the small room where she had changed, she encountered a
man who looked to be in his late forties, with black hair, blue eyes, a charming smile, and a lean, trim figure. Taken aback, she said, “Oh—hi. I’m Pam. I was just—”

The man laughed heartily. “Do I look that different out of costume?”
S
he recognized the voice as Ed’s.

“Migawd!” she gasped, gaping at him unabashedly. “Santa” was no senior citizen! Santa was a sexy chap around her age. Her eyes darted immediately to the ring finger of his left hand. There was no wedding ring, but that meant nothing. Not all married men wore one.

Indeed, as Reg let them out of the store,
then
lock
ed
the door behind them, a woman was waiting in the corridor who sang out cheerily, “There you are! How did it go?” as Ed emerged with Pam.

Ed gave the woman a quick peck on the cheek and said to Pam, “This is Misty.”

“Glad to meet you,” Pam said, taking Misty’s hand and squeezing it.

Misty squeezed back. “Me too,” she said with a warm smile.

They’re well matched,
Pam thought with a sigh as she mentally shrugged her shoulders and, with a cheery “See you tomorrow!” she waved goodbye to Ed and headed off to the mall exit and her car.

Pam went home to her too-large house and fixed herself a bite to eat. Though she’d had a half-hour dinner break at five o’clock, she hadn’t eaten that much and now, at quarter to nine, she was hungry again. Thoughts of Ed, and particularly images of his smile flitted through her head, and they remained there as she did the dishes, took her bath, watered her plants, and settled into bed. She was tired, and
al
though ten-thirty was earlier than her usual bedtime, she decided she was ready to go to sleep.
U
ntil
sleep claimed her,
however,
images of Ed continued to populate her mind. He certainly was appealing looking, and his smile warmed her heart even now.

Pam woke in the morning with a warm glow in her heart whose origin she could not immediately pinpoint. Soon, though, the glow transformed into a mental image of Ed’s smile, and she remembered the charming and sexy Santa she was paired with for the remaining month of the Christmas season. Despite his status as clearly taken
,
she bounded out of bed eager to see him again. She dressed with care, made herself up with special attention, and when she went downstairs to eat breakfast she found that butterflies had invaded her stomach.

She left the house early, reasoning that if she got to work early and Ed happened to do the same—as he clearly had done yesterday—they would have a chance to
talk before Reg opened the door
and
admitted the throngs. Sure enough, Ed was in the back, already in his Santa suit. “Ho – ho – ho, good morning.
W
ere you a good little girl last night?” he asked with a wink.

“Too good, Santa,” she said with a sigh. “But then, chalk that up to lack of opportunity, not to any great will power.”

“Santa will have to see what he can do about that.” Another wink. “Are you ready for
more
eager kids?”

“I love it!” she gushed. “The pay sucks, but it’s the most fun job I’ve had.”

“Me too. And not a single kid peed in my lap. I understand that’s an occupational hazard that goes with the gig. Guess I broke lucky yesterday. I had kids who clammed up and wouldn’t talk to me, kids who insisted I wasn’t the
real
Santa—one even tugged at my whiskers to prove it!—and kids with wish lists a mile long. I even had one kid say all he wanted for Christmas was for his daddy to come home again. That one broke my heart. I assume it was a case of divorce until the mother whispered to me that her husband is in the service, overseas in the
Middle East
. All I could say after that was, ‘God bless you.’
But not a single kid peed in my lap. I wonder what today will bring
.”

“I had more girls than boys,” Pam said. “One girl said, ‘When I grow up, I  want to marry Santa and be Mrs. Claus. Do you think you’ll be dead by then?’ My goodness!”

Ed looked properly shocked, then burst out laughing.
“Today’s kids!” he exclaimed. “Can you see yourself saying or even
thinking
such a thing at that age?”