Twist of the Magi

  Books by Caren J. Werlinger

  Currently Available:

  Looking Through Windows

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  Neither Present Time

  Year of the Monsoon

  She Sings of Old, Unhappy, Far-off Things

  Coming Soon:

  Turning for Home

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  Short Stories:

  Twist of the Magi

  Twist of the Magi

  Published by Corgyn Publishing, LLC.

  Copyright © 2014 by Caren J. Werlinger.

  All rights reserved.

  e-Book ISBN: 978-0-9960368-2-5

  E-mail: cjwerlingerbooks@yahoo.com

  Web site: www.cjwerlinger.wordpress.com

  Cover design by Patty G. Henderson

  www.boulevardphotografica.yolasite.com

  Book design by Maureen Cutajar

  www.gopublished.com

  This work is copyrighted and is licensed only for use by the original purchaser and can be copied to the original purchaser’s electronic device and its memory card for your personal use. Modifying or making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, without limit, including by email, CD, DVD, memory cards, file transfer, paper printout or any other method, constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Books by Caren J. Werlinger

  Copyright

  Twist of the Magi

  Author Bio

  THE SOUND OF A SNOWPLOW scraping its way down the street made Penny look up.

  “Oh, no, no, no.” Penny leapt up from her chair, and loose pages went flying all over the kitchen. “I can’t be late again.”

  She ran to her bedroom, yanking off her sweatshirt and hopping on one foot to get her flannel pj pants off. She pulled the least-wrinkled pants and shirt she could find from the pile of clothes taking up half her bed and dressed while she hastily brushed her teeth, dribbling toothpaste down her chest.

  “Shoot.” She blotted the toothpaste with a washcloth and inspected the spot in the mirror. “Oh, well. I’ll be home by six, Chester,” she said to the cat sitting on the vanity. He batted a paw at the stream of water running from the faucet and then licked the water off. She turned the faucet off, leaving the cat glaring at her as she hurried out of the bathroom.

  She grabbed her winter jacket from the back of the couch on her way out the door. Taped to the door was a note. She didn’t need to read it. She knew it was a reminder of the rent, which was due today. She’d been late the last two months, and her landlady wasn’t taking any chances. Outside, three or four inches of new snow covered everything. Using a gloved hand, she dusted the snow off the windshield of her baby blue 1979 Ford Pinto and climbed inside. She paused for a couple of seconds to lay her hands on the dashboard.

  “Please start the first time,” she begged, her eyes scrunched tight. She held her breath as she turned the key and whooped when the starter cranked and the engine roared. She patted the dashboard, put the car in gear and pulled away from the curb, the Pinto’s tires spinning in the snow before gaining traction.

  As she drove, she sang along with the radio, “…not much of a girlfriend… la, la, la, la, la… breakfast in America…” Her stomach growled and the song reminded her that she hadn’t had any breakfast. Or a girlfriend. Not for a long time. But, like the song, the last one hadn’t been much of a girlfriend.

  “That was Supertramp,” said the DJ’s voice. “Hey, Columbus, only thirty shopping days left until Christmas! Can you believe it?” His voice droned on about finding the right gift for his wife as Penny continued humming. That song would probably be stuck in her head for the rest of the day.

  German Village looked like a Christmas card, with the snow lying like frosting, dusting everything along Whittier Street. All of the houses and businesses were decorated with garlands and lights and wreaths. Penny turned onto a side street and found non-metered parking. Recalling last week when she’d left work to find a dead battery, she slammed the car door extra hard to make sure it closed all the way and sprinted down an adjacent alley.

  “Penny, you’re late.”

  An older woman, her tight silver bun giving her a severe expression, looked up as the back door to the store opened and Penny blew in, stumbling over a box that hadn’t been there yesterday.

  “I know, Mrs. Reinholtz,” Penny said, trying not to curse as she grabbed her throbbing foot. “It won’t happen again.”

  “That’s what you said Tuesday.”

  Penny pretended not to hear as she tied on a green apron embroidered with “Bavarian Christmas Shoppe” in brilliant crimson.

  Mrs. Reinholtz eyed her. “What’s wrong with your hair today?”

  “Um, windy outside,” Penny said, combing her fingers through her hair and feeling the tangles left from the couple of hours’ sleep she’d gotten before being awakened by an idea for a new story that she just had to get down on paper. “Shall I stock these?” she asked, picking up the box she had tripped over and hurrying away before Mrs. Reinholtz could scold her again.

  “You can dust while you’re at it.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Reinholtz,” Penny said, pausing to stick a feather duster in her back pocket.

  She was dusting the shelf of nesting dolls, filling the shelves with new dolls from the box, when the shop door’s musical bell tinkled and a woman entered with a little boy. Penny was instantly on high alert as Mrs. Reinholtz engaged the woman. No matter the warning signs and pleas for parents to keep hold of children’s hands, the delights of the store invariably lured the little ones away to explore while their parents browsed. Sure enough, the little boy made a beeline for the brightly colored dolls.

  Penny quickly knelt down in front of the display. “What’s your name?”

  “Camden.” He tried to peer around Penny.

  “How old are you?”

  “Free.” He held up four stubby fingers.

  She reached up for a reindeer doll. “Want to see what’s inside?”

  He nodded.

  Penny pulled the top of the doll off to reveal a smaller doll within. His eyes grew big in wonder. She took the smaller doll out and repeated the process to reveal the next doll and the next and the next. She held out the smallest one.

  “You want to open it?”

  He reached his chubby little hands out. The tiny doll was just the right size for him to hold. He pulled the two halves apart and gasped. Inside, was a foil star.

  “Go show it to your mom,” Penny said, catching the dropped halves of the doll as Camden ran off to find his mother. With a shake of her head, she re-nested the dolls and straightened the display.

  She heard the bell ring a couple more times as she continued working her way down the Christmas tree aisle, dusting Christmas ornaments made of brass and wood and glass. There were hand-carved Nativity sets, and Santa Claus dolls with ornately sewn cloaks of velvet and leather. There were boiled wool sweaters and jackets and hats from Germany and Austria. One wall was hung with a variety of carved cuckoo clocks, all ticking away as their pendulums swung back and forth. A set of locked glass shelves held collectible figurines: Hummels were the most popular, but Lladró, Swarovski and Lenox also sold well. One side of the shop held sturdy shelves filled with candle pyramids, their lower tier
s populated with carved figures under wooden fan blades designed to spin when the candles were lit to create an updraft of warm air. Of all the things in the shop, these pyramids were Penny’s favorites. She twirled the tiers of a Noah’s ark pyramid, smiling at the little elephants and giraffes and monkeys as they spun round and round.

  Mrs. Reinholtz called her to the front. “Keep an eye on the cash register, please, while I wrap this.” She peeled the price sticker off a Hummel figurine and placed it carefully in its box.

  “I can wrap it,” Penny offered as the customer browsed the boxed sets of Christmas cards.

  “No,” Mrs. Reinholtz said quickly, pulling the box out of Penny’s reach. “I’ll do it. You just mind the counter.”

  Penny leafed through the Christmas CDs stacked next to the stereo behind the counter. She picked a Mannheim Steamroller disc and put it in the CD player.

  “Excuse me. Could you tell me where the owner is?”

  Penny turned around. Standing there was an angel – a cloud of blond hair, clear blue eyes, full lips smiling at her.

  When Penny just stood there staring, her mouth open, the angel said again, “The owner?”

  Dumbly, Penny nodded and walked toward the stockroom, the angel following behind.

  “Mrs. Reinholtz?”

  Mrs. Reinholtz looked up from where she was tying a bow for the wrapped package. “Oh, hello, Candace. Penny, this is one of the new girls, on break from college. Could you get her an apron?”

  Penny reached for an apron as Candace took off her coat and scarf to reveal a blue sweater that matched her eyes perfectly and clung to her body, showing every curve. A cloud of perfume enveloped Penny as Candace handed the coat and scarf to her. Penny was tempted to bury her face in the coat and inhale as she turned to hang it up, but her hand hit the brooms standing in the corner, sending them to the floor with a clatter.

  “Sorry,” Penny said, scrambling to pick up the brooms. Her face burned a furious red as she stood them back up.

  “You can go watch the store, Penny,” Mrs. Reinholtz said. “There will be another new girl coming in. Bring her to me when she gets here.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Reinholtz.”

  Penny went back out to the front counter, craning her neck to keep an eye on Mrs. Reinholtz as she showed Candace around the store. The bell tinkled and another young woman entered, bundled up in a bulky down jacket topped by an Ohio State scarf. She wore a gray OSU knit hat and large black eyeglasses. The whole gave her the appearance of an owl with its feathers puffed out.

  “Hi.”

  Penny looked at her curiously. “Hi. Are you the other new girl?”

  “No, I’m the new woman.”

  Penny smirked. “You’ll be a girl to Mrs. Reinholtz.”

  “I’m Mary Crosby.” She pulled the OSU hat off and smoothed down her thick, dark hair.

  “Really?” Penny grinned. “Related to Bing?”

  Mary shook her head. “No, but I get that a lot this time of year.”

  “I’m Penny Havers. Mrs. Reinholtz is expecting you. You can come back here to hang up your jacket,” Penny said, leading the way. She handed Mary an apron and pointed to where Mrs. Reinholtz was showing Candace around the store.

  After a while, Mrs. Reinholtz brought the girls to the front counter. “Penny has been with me for a year now. She knows the store almost as well as I do, so you can come to her with any questions.”

  Mrs. Reinholtz handed Candace and Mary a cloth and a feather duster each and sent them all out to the floor.

  “Do we have to dust everything?” Candace asked, looking at the almost-innumerable objects scattered around the store.

  “Mrs. Reinholtz says if we dust as we wander around, everything will get dusted every few days,” Penny said. “She hates it when a customer picks something up and there’s dust on it. Always wipe things off with your dust cloth when you take them up front.”

  “Can a store that sells just Christmas stuff really stay busy all year long?” Mary asked, looking around.

  “You’d be surprised,” Penny said. “People come in here looking for early Christmas decorations and presents, but in this part of town, they also come in looking for stuff from Germany.”

  The three young women spread out around the store. The morning dragged on, and Mary and Candace got to wait on their first customers.

  Penny chuckled as she heard Mrs. Reinholtz say to Candace, “What do you mean you need the register to tell you how much change to give? You know how to count, don’t you?”

  She’d done the same thing with Penny, teaching her how to make change from the old-fashioned brass cash register.

  During a lull, Mrs. Reinholtz opened the Columbus Dispatch and clucked critically at the color newspaper photos of the Clintons posing in front of the White House Christmas tree. “I would have decorated it differently,” she said, peering at the photo through the reading glasses perched halfway down her nose. “But I suppose it will do.”

  She glanced up as all of the cuckoo clocks signaled eleven.

  “Penny, you and the girls may take your thirty-minute break now,” Mrs. Reinholtz said. “I will take mine after the lunch hour when we’re not so busy.”

  “Come on,” Penny said in an undertone to the others. “She means thirty minutes and she already started the stopwatch.”

  A few minutes later, the three were seated at a small sandwich shop three doors down from the Christmas Shoppe.

  “Is that all you’re eating?” Mary asked, sitting with a grilled ham and cheese sandwich and a bowl of soup while Penny had only a cup of potato soup.

  Penny shrugged. “Not very hungry,” she said as her stomach grumbled noisily.

  Beside her, Candace set down a tray laden with a sandwich, chips and a large diet Coke. “Don’t they have salads around here?” she asked. “This food will kill my waistline.”

  Penny, who thought Candace’s waistline was perfect, said, “Sorry. The only salad you’ll find in this part of town is German potato salad.”

  She watched Candace pick the cheese off her sandwich while Mary scowled at the plates and cups on their trays.

  “Don’t they know this polystyrene foam is killing the planet? Why don’t they use something recyclable?”

  “Don’t know,” Penny said. She added four packs of crackers to her soup, trying not to stare at the warm cheese dripping from Mary’s sandwich. “So, are you guys both students at Ohio State?” she asked.

  Mary nodded. “Majoring in engineering.”

  Candace took a sip of Coke before saying, “Otterbein. I like a small college better than a humongous university like OSU, plus they have the best theater department around.”

  “Theater? I’m sure you’ll be great,” Penny said, gazing at her, but Candace was busy checking her reflection in the glass of a painting on the wall while she dabbed at the corner of her mouth with a napkin.

  “What about you?” Mary asked.

  “Oh, well… yes. I mean, I graduated last year with my B.A. in English,” Penny said. “I’m thinking about grad school, but I’m too busy right now.”

  “Doing what? Working at that store?” Candace asked.

  “No,” Penny said. “I’m a writer.” She could feel a hot flush creep up her neck into her cheeks like it did any time she told someone she was a writer.

  “Really?” Mary said. “Have you sold anything? I have a friend who’s sold a couple of articles to a small magazine most people have never heard of, Mother Jones. Have you ever read it?”

  Penny shook her head.

  “I’ll bring you a couple of copies,” Mary said. “They write about important things – political issues, the environment, feminism, things like that.”

  “Feminism?” Candace said, laughing. “That went out in the seventies. We don’t need that rubbish now.”

  Mary stared at her, looking like she was about to retort, but apparently thought better of it as she just rolled her eyes and turned back to Penny. “Have you? Sold anyt
hing, I mean?”

  Penny shook her head again. “I have several submissions pending,” Penny said vaguely. “I should be hearing back any time now.” She stared hungrily at her empty cup of soup and scraped her spoon across the bottom to get the last bits of potato and cracker. Mary knew a writer. A writer who had actually sold her writing. She wished she hadn’t said anything.

  “Who’s your favorite author?” Mary asked.

  “Well, I really like Harper Lee,” Penny said.

  “Who?” Candace looked up from her sandwich.

  “To Kill A Mockingbird,” Mary said impatiently.

  “Oh,” Candace said at once. “Gregory Peck. Great movie.”

  “Better book,” Mary muttered, but neither Candace nor Penny seemed to hear.

  “What kind of theater do you want to do?” Penny asked, watching Candace spear her dill pickle on her fork and cut it with her knife.

  “Stage work at first,” said Candace airily. “All the greats got their start on the stage. Then, I’ll do indie movies. They’re so much more artistic than the big studio movies.”

  “That’s really wonderful,” Penny said, her eyes shining.

  Mary made a sound that might have been her gagging. “We only have five minutes left. We’d better hurry.”

  When Penny drove back to her apartment that night, she parked one block down and walked to the house.

  “Damn.”

  A light was on in her landlady’s part of the house on the main floor. She knew Mrs. Sewell was listening for her. She carefully let herself into the stairwell. There, she retrieved her mail from her box. She took her shoes off and crept up the stairs as quietly as she could. Holding her breath, she turned the key in the lock and slipped inside, only breathing again when she had flipped the bolt home.

  “Shhh,” she hissed to Chester who came limping into the kitchen on his crooked back leg, meowing loudly for his supper.

  She left all the lights off, using the refrigerator light for illumination as she scooped some canned food for the cat. As Chester ate, she kept the refrigerator open and flipped through the mail, pulling out two envelopes. Holding her breath, she tore open the flaps of first one, then the other. The letters inside were nearly identical.