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But it wasn’t. It was Mr. Temple, the neighborhood postman, only these days he wasn’t just delivering her mail.
“Those Johansson kids are poor. They don’t expect nothin’, they don’t even hope. Imagine those poor little mites not hopin’ for anything. I told them to just pretend it could happen.”
“And?” she said.
He passed her a note, a glisten in his eyes, her most enthusiastic researcher, neighborhood spy and conspirator.
It had the boys’ address on it, she recognized it as a particularly dilapidated apartment on Fifth Street. Hans wanted a bike. Lars wanted a basketball.
“Got it,” she said, and for a moment she felt the weight of these new wishes that had been entrusted to her. It didn’t matter that there wasn’t enough money or time. Every year it seemed she would run out of both, and every year miracles happened. A few more phone calls, a few more letters, a few more radio shows. Besides, it was always a relief to get requests that could be fulfilled. She had a file—the Impossible Dreams File—of ones that could not.
“I’ve got something else for you, Kirstie.” He held it out with pleasure.
She couldn’t believe it. “Where on earth did you get this?” she asked, taking the catalog reverently from him.
“I’d tell you,” he kidded, “but then I’d have to kill you.”
It was the Little in Love Special Christmas Catalog. Only those who had reached the tier of Serious Collector of the precious figurines received it, and Kirsten was fairly sure she would never be one of those. Currently she ranked on Tier One, a Little Fan. On the tiny salary she was paid here, she could manage only one new figurine a year. Including gifts, and the odd find at a secondhand store, Kirsten now owned twelve of the hundreds of figurines that were available.
Little in Love was a collection of hand-painted porcelain bisque figurines that artist Lou Little had created in the 1950s. All the figurines were of a young couple, Harriet and Smedley, and depicted delightful scenes of their love. Little had captured something that captured hearts: innocence, wonder, delight in each other, and he never seemed to run out of material.
Trying not to appear too eager or too rude, Kirsten scurried back to her office and shut the door. She opened the catalog with tender fingers and gasped.
In an astonishing departure from tradition, the new Christmas collectibles were called A Little History and showed Harriet and Smedley in different times in history: here he was a World War I flying ace, leaning out of his plane to kiss Harriet goodbye, here he was as a pioneer building a Little house, Harriet looking on.
Then she saw it. A Knight in Shining Armor. She thought it was the most beautiful Little piece she had ever seen with Smedley, visor up, astride a magnificent white horse, leaning down to kiss Harriet’s hand.
She looked at the price, winced and mentally filed the piece—everything in this catalog—in her own impossible dreams file. Reluctantly, she put the catalog away. She would take it home with her and pore over the pictures later.
Really, the catalog should have been more than enough to sweep that other encounter right from her mind. So she was amazed, and annoyed, that it had not. Her mind kept wandering from the bookkeeping tasks. Not that engrossing, but as the Secret Santa Society’s founder and only paid employee, one of her biggest responsibilities. Rather than Smedley on horseback proving a distraction to her afternoon, it was eyes as coolly green as pond ice that she kept thinking of.
“And that is why you don’t even deserve to be a Serious Collector,” she reprimanded herself firmly.
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