My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories

Faulty Plumbing

I was a quarter of the way through one of Mike’s precious yogurts when there was a knock at the door. I froze, my spoon halfway between my mouth and the plastic carton. Who could that be? You could only enter the building if you got buzzed in, and Mike told me I was the only one in the entire seven-story complex who hadn’t traveled anywhere for Christmas.

More knocking.

Louder this time.

I stashed the yogurt back in the fridge, went to the door, and looked through the peephole. A pretty white girl was standing on the other side—long sandy-blond hair and porcelain skin and light brown eyes. I was still getting used to being around people like this. The kind you see in movies and commercials and sitcoms. Back home everyone you passed on the street was just regular-old Mexican, like me.

I undid the chain and pulled open the door and tried to play it cool. “Can I help you?”

“Oh,” she said with a look of disappointment. “You’re not Mike.”

“Yeah, we work together at—”

“And you’re definitely not Janice.” She looked past me, into the apartment.

“Mike’s my boss,” I said a little too quickly—definitely not cool. “I’m cat sitting while he and Janice are in Florida visiting friends. He totally knows I’m here.” My heart picked up its pace. I didn’t need this sitcom girl thinking she’d stumbled into an active crime scene. I pointed into the apartment, but Mike’s cat—my lone alibi—was nowhere to be found. “I’d be happy to pass along a message. They’ll be back the day after Christmas.”

“Do you know anything about pipes?” she asked.

“Pipes?”

“Pipes.” She paused, waiting for a look of recognition from me that never came. “Like, sinks and showers and … you know, pipes.”

“Oh, plumbing.” I didn’t know the first thing about plumbing, but that didn’t stop me from nodding. When it comes to attractive females my policy has always been to nod first and ask questions later. “Sure. Why, what seems to be the problem?”

The cat strolled out from its hiding place and rubbed itself against my leg. “Awww,” the girl cooed, kneeling down to scratch behind its ear. “She likes you.”

Mental note: Give Mike’s cat extra food before bed. It’s impossible to look like a criminal when there’s a well-groomed calico rubbing against your calf.

“Yeah, we’ve really hit it off these last twenty-four hours,” I said. “I’m already dreading our good-byes.”

“You’re a little cutie, aren’t you?” she said in that strange voice girls reserve for animals and small children. I watched her scratch down by the cat’s tail. She was wearing an old, beat-up sweatshirt, ripped jeans, and Ugg boots, but I could still tell she came from money. This gave her a certain power over me that I was nowhere near schooled enough to understand.

She stood back up, and when our eyes met this time, my stomach growled so loudly I had to cover it up by faking a small coughing fit.

“You okay?” she asked.

I straightened up, nodding. “Yeah. Wow. Excuse me.”

“Anyway,” she said. “I have a little situation upstairs. When I try and turn on the water in the shower, nothing comes out. Like, not even a drizzle. Do you know about stuff like that?”

“A little bit.” Lies! “Need me to take a look?”

“Would you?”

“Lemme grab the keys.” I darted back into Mike’s living room trying to call back all the times I’d seen my old man go at the plumbing underneath the kitchen sink with his trusted wrench. I could still picture him lying on his back, halfway in the cabinet, twisting and turning things in a chorus of clanging metal.

Why hadn’t I paid more attention?

Fake Espinoza

Her place smelled like tomato sauce and garlic bread and Parmesan cheese. As she led me through the kitchen, into the long hall, my mouth started watering its ass off. Maybe I was better off staying in Mike’s pad, where I’d been able to convince myself that the entire borough of Brooklyn was participating in a Christmas fast.

“I’m Haley, by the way.”

“Shy,” I told her.

She glanced at me, still walking. “Like, S-H-Y?”

“Exactly.” I’d been through this exchange dozens of times since landing in New York. Which I found strange. Nobody back home even thought twice about my name.

Haley shrugged and we shook hands awkwardly on the move, and then she stopped in front of the bathroom door and motioned me inside. “This is it. It’s the same thing with my roommate’s shower, too.”

Her bathroom smelled of perfumed soaps, and there was a framed poster of a couple kissing in front of the Eiffel Tower. Her sink was covered with makeup and eyelash curlers and this fancy circular vanity mirror that made my face look three times its normal size. There were pastel-colored towels in two sizes stacked neatly beside the black polka-dot shower curtain, which Haley swept aside. She turned both valves all the way on, but nothing came out. “See?” she said.

“Interesting,” I told her, staring at the faucet and rubbing my chin. I turned on the Hot valve again, then the Cold. They didn’t work for me, either. Then I ducked my head under the bath spout and stared up into the matchbook-sized hole, pretending to be studying God knows what.

I knew my old man was proud of me in certain ways. When NYU called from across the country offering to pay my entire tuition—as well as a monthly stipend for living expenses—he even threw a party to celebrate. My aunties, uncles, a few cousins, and my girl at the time, Jessica, all came over with home-cooked dishes and booze, and just before we sat down to eat, Pops held up his can of Tecate to say a few words (in English out of respect for Jessica). “I never believe this was possible,” he said, looking around our small living room. “A college boy is an Espinoza. But it happens. Congratulations to my son, Shy!” Everybody clinked glasses and drank and patted me on the back and told me they always knew I would do something special.

But at the same time, all of us were aware that I’d failed to learn the one thing that defined Espinoza men: the ability to work with one’s hands. Pops had tried to show me how to change the oil in his truck, how to strip shingles off an angled roof and lay hot tar, how to rewire a dead outlet, but it didn’t take long for him to realize I was a lost cause. My one talent in life? Filling in those little bubbles on Scantron sheets. That was it. Honest to God, I had a gift for those damn bubbles.