Erik was surprised to see that the room was his apartment. Clearly, when it insisted on moving it became almost unrecognizable. But now that things were beginning to steady, he could see the TV, the computer, Ray’s abused textbooks, an artistically stacked selection of old pop cans and bottles, and, for some reason, Ray’s gloves.

One glove was lying on the computer monitor, while the other was on the floor, which Erik thought was strange, since he couldn’t remember Ray ever being without the gloves. Yet there they lay, one of them on the dusty floor, along with Erik’s jeans, a sock, two pairs of boxer shorts, one red, one plaid . . .

Erik’s eyes widened. He sat upright with a suddenness that neither head nor stomach appreciated. Ray yawned, muttered something incomprehensible in his sleep, and slid gracelessly to the floor with a solid thud. Erik stared at his soundly sleeping and very naked roommate in horror as Ray rolled onto his side and muttered something in the direction of the floor.

In times of great stress, or distress, people tend to focus on minor and insignificant things. Erik found that one of the only things sinking into his mind was the fact that Ray appeared to have a rectangular green, white, and red tattoo high on his right thigh. Nothing else seemed to demand his attention, until his stomach churned violently and he stumbled over the edge of the couch to be violently, messily, and festively sick in the toilet.

Erik stared numbly into the depths of his very strong, very black coffee. He took a careful sip, but the scalding bitterness on his tongue wasn’t helping the situation. Throwing up Ray’s so-called festive vodka and what felt like a week’s worth of meals hadn’t helped. Forty-five minutes in the shower hadn’t helped, not had a mouthful of toothpaste and a lot of spitting. He was wearing a pair of old blue jeans and a clean T-shirt, but that wasn’t helping, either. He’d gathered up all the clothing from the night before that he could find and showed them fiercely into the laundry basket, and had even found some other dirty clothing in the bedroom to put on top of the evil underwear, socks, his jeans and sweater, and Ray’s suit, but nothing seemed capable of erasing the fact that he’d . . .

He’d . . .

He shuddered violently, spilling a bit of coffee on his knee.

Maybe if the clothing from the night before was burnt. Bonfires weren’t uncommon things, even in the city, and if anyone noticed that the bonfire contained nothing but clothing, they could always claim to be disposing of the possessions of some guy who had died of the plague. Erik knew, on some level, that there was a flaw with his plan, but he couldn’t quite put a finger to it. He decided to focus on what he was sure of.

“I’m not gay,” he said loudly, so Ray, who was taking his turn in the bathroom, could hear.

“Okay, Thor.” Ray’s voice was muffled, but he still sounded suspiciously calm about the entire incident.

“I’m not,” Erik persisted, in case Ray hadn’t heard properly.

“I heard.”

“That sort of thing can never happen again,” Erik continued stubbornly, “because – ”

“You’re not gay?” Ray asked, opening the bathroom door to peer out at Erik from beneath dripping bangs.

“Well, yeah.”

“That’s fine,” Ray said cheerfully. “I’m not either.” He shut the bathroom door again.

Erik blinked. This wasn’t going the way he had expected. Admittedly, he hadn’t really been expecting anything specific, but of all the ways for things to be proceeding that he hadn’t visualized, this wasn’t on the list. Or something. He frowned, rubbed his forehead, and drank his coffee. “You’re not?” he said at least. “But you . . . and we . . .” He made a face. “Are you sure?”

The bathroom door opened, and Ray emerged, pulling a shirt over his head. When his damp head appeared, he shook it, and stared at Erik incredulously. “Are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Lord, Thor, have more coffee. Me too,” Ray added, wandering into the kitchenette to get some. When he emerged with a cup, he was drinking deeply, all his attention so focussed on the act of consuming caffeine that Erik thought his roommate had forgotten the rather pressing matter at hand. Ray sat down on the opposite end of the couch, putting several cushions between them until he turned and stretched his legs out. His bare toes stretched and twitched as he drank, and Erik shifted closer to the arm on his end of the couch. Abruptly, Ray sat his mug down on the floor. “Are you,” he said, enunciating the words with a clarity Erik thought most unfair when his tongue, eyeballs, and everything else still felt fuzzy, “sure you aren’t gay?”

Erik squirmed, twisting his fingers around the too-small coffee cup. This entire conversation was stupid. The whole situation was stupid, a stupid accident that should never, ever have happened. And festively coloured vodka was evil. “Um, well, yeah, of course . . .”

“Same here,” Ray said with a shrug. “But you can have sex with a guy without being gay or with a girl and still be a total poof. I mean, if you’re a guy. It’s women who go around equating sex with love and all that shit. For guys, though, sex can just be sex, nothing else to it, no strings attached. Plus,” he picked up his mug and gestured with it, “we’re in university, my dear Thor. Nothing anyone does at university is real. Nothing.”

“Nothing?” Erik asked uncertainly.

“Nothing. You go to a bunch of classes that test you and make you spit out thousands of words of bullshit every couple weeks, and at the end of a few months of this, some old geezer who probably doesn’t even know your name slaps a mark on you like you’re a piece of meat. But none of that matters. You go out into the big scary world, and no one will give a damn whether you passed or failed first year calculus. This,” Ray waved a hand to encompass the apartment and who knew what else, “is all just an illusion where real rules don’t apply. That’s why you pay someone to fail genetics – ”

“I’m pretty sure I passed genetics.”

Ray ignored him. “That’s why people who’ll go on to run your country can smoke pot, that’s why all anyone really cares about is free beer nights and pub crawls, and that’s why a girl who’s going to grow up to be the respectable wife and stay-at-home mother type can be a devoted lesbian for years. That’s why a couple of guys can just fuck for the fun of it and not worry. Understand?”

“Um,” said Erik, hoping it was an ‘um’ that sounded like whole hearted agreement. His eyes felt a bit glassy and he was rapidly beginning to pity Ray’s philosophy professors. He wondered if his roommate had secreted a bottle of something-or-other in the bathroom and had been drinking that while he had been trying to put his thoughts in coherent order with the help of coffee.

“Exactly,” Ray said, draining his mug and bouncing to his feet. “So, what should we do for food?”

Erik could feel his temples throbbing with this abrupt topic change. “What?”

“Food, Thor, food. I’m famished,” Ray announced loudly, as though he thought vocalizing his desires would be enough to cause food to magically materialize in the very empty fridge.

“Because yesterday all you ate was a fucking sandwich, you moron,” Erik said, embracing the familiarity of profanities and insults with relief.

“This morning,” Ray corrected calmly. “It was technically Christmas morning when we went to 7-Eleven.”

“Fine. So yesterday you ate nothing. That’s so much better,” said Erik in exasperation. “If you’d weighed in some opinion on food instead of moping in bed for most of the damn day, maybe we’d have cold something to eat. We don’t. Chew on coffee grinds or something.”

“Somewhere must be open,” Ray said firmly, striding to the door. “Somewhere is always open to capitalize on situations like this.” He jammed his feet into his boots and braced one against the wall as he did the laces up. He tipped his head to one side, as thought contemplating his footwear, but what he said was: “At least, I hope someone in this place has enough entrepreneurial spirit to do some serious exploitation at this most holy time of the year. If not we should look into getting some kind of small business license or something. Make note, Thor.”

“Fuck you.”

“See, Thor, that’s your problem. You lack ambition and drive. No vision, no sense of purpose. Sad, really, in one so young.” Ray sighed heavily and pulled on his coat.

“Shut up,” Erik muttered into his coffee. Ray was starting to sound like Erik’s parents, or, even worse, his grandparents. On top of everything else, it was a comparison he did not need. When his coffee was gone, he reluctantly looked up to see Ray pulling on his toque. “You’re really going out?” he asked incredulously.

“Braving the horrors of Canadian weather in the name of food!” Ray announced, pointing upwards as he poised dramatically.

Erik translated this as ‘Yes’. “Ray . . .”

“I’ll be back in a couple hours with a report,” he continued blithely. “Make more coffee or something. And hope I’m not eaten by a bear.”

“Right,” said Erik without enthusiasm, sagging slightly.

Ray had a mitten hand braced on the doorknob when a thought seemed to occur to him. He looked over his shoulder. “Hey, Thor?”

“Yeah?” Erik responded warily, turning to look at his roommate.

“Look at it this way,” Ray said, his voice very serious, “at least now you won’t have to worry about graduating a virgin.”

The door had slammed shut and Ray was probably halfway down the stairs by the time Erik managed to scramble to his feet, his mind full of homicidal thoughts.

When Ray came back a few hours later, he was notably empty handed, despite his loud proclamations. Erik would have strangled him as soon as he came through the door, but a lot of coffee and a few hours with Ray’s latest acquisition, Monkey Conqueror, had helped put everything in perspective. Even if that perspective was “Strangling my roommate to death and being arrested is probably not the best way to celebrate the holiday season. Probably.” Besides which, he was on the phone with Aunt Janet, a factor that was enough to drive any thoughts of murder from his mind.

Murdering Ray, at any rate.

“I still can’t believe they did that to you, dear,” Aunt Janet said in her drippiest voice.

Erik rolled his eyes, shifting his weight impatiently from foot to foot. Ray, pulling off his toque, raised a curious eyebrow in Erik’s direction and nodded at the phone. Erik held up a hand – in a minute – hoping that it would keep Ray from being a bigger pest than usual. “It’s not really a big deal, Aunt Janet.”

Pausing in the act of pulling off one boot, Ray contorted his face into an elaborate grimace.

Erik had to cover the desire to laugh with a cough. His aunt didn’t seem to notice. “You may not think it’s a big deal right now, Sigurd, but when you’re a bit older you’ll realize this is something that will have a huge impact on your psyche, your self-worth, and your relationships with other people. I told Daniel when he called me that this sort of thing was not going to help your intimacy issues at all. ‘Daniel,’ I said to him, ‘Daniel, if that boy hits forty and he’s still single, it will be because of situations like this.’”

Erik muffled a yawn and tried not to look at Ray, who was standing far too close and making goofy faces at him. “I don’t have any issues, Aunt Janet.”

Ray whispered, “Yes you do,” before continuing his attempt to make Erik burst out laughing on the phone.

“Denial, Sigurd, is not healthy. Do you still have Dr. Sobering’s number?” The drippiness was completely gone now, replaced with a tone of voice that was half warm familial concern and half cool grilling and interrogation.

“Yes, Aunt Janet,” Erik said, rolling his eyes again. The flimsy business card was probably somewhere in the apartment.
,p> “Did you call her, Sigurd?”

“Um.”

“Sigurd.” She sighed. She was, clearly, disappointed, so disappointed.

“It’s just kinda hard to find time between classes and studying and work and all,” Erik said, trying to excuse his complete and thorough ignoring of his aunt’s well-meaning meddling.

Aunt Janet made dubious hemming and hawing noises on the other end of the line, clearly not believing a word of it. She had probably extracted exact details of last year’s marks from his dad.

“And I’m pretty sure this kind of thing isn’t covered by the University health plan.”

There was a long, dangerous “Hm” from his aunt.

“Plus, with tuition rising and all, there isn’t exactly a lot of money to spare . . .” Erik trailed off vaguely. He resisted the temptation to do as Ray’s helpful miming suggested and hang up the phone. It would probably just result in Aunt Janet adding another imaginary issue to her list – “Sigurd has become rude, abrupt, uncommunicative, avoidant . . .” – before immediately phoning back.

“None of these excuses really get at the heart of the problem, dear. You’re very nonconfrontational, Sigurd. That makes everything very difficult, for you, for the members of your family who want to help you. For you to help yourself.”

“Yes, Aunt Janet,” Erik said in a resigned way. He’d been convinced within hours of arriving in Saskatoon that somewhere in the city was a guy whose life was smooth and wonderful and a shining symbol of perfect, happy normalcy. That guy probably didn’t get psychoanalysed by an aunt as a Christmas present. Or, he thought, eyeing Ray, who had apparently become bored with making faces and was now rummaging in the stacks of junk mail, other . . . things, his mind shying away from more definite words.

Abruptly, Erik realized that he had been so involved in this rather depressing train of thought that he had not heard a word his aunt had said in the last few minutes. He ventured another “Yes, Aunt Janet” on the basis that, in the end, that was all he ever really said to his aunt. It wasn’t like she ever heard what anyone else said once she’d gotten started, anyway. He could probably have said “Purple monkey dishwasher” and the one-sided conversation would have continued in just the same way.

She “Hm”-ed again in a suspicious manner, but whatever she had said appeared to be her last words on the subject, for the moment. “Still, it doesn’t feel right, you being all alone on Christmas, dear. Your uncle and I would not be troubled in the slightest if you drove out and joined us. The girls are all here. They’d be delighted to see you.”

“Um,” said Erik, which seemed a far more tactful response than his initial desire to let out a cry of “Hell no!” Aunt Janet on her own was bad enough. His aunt and his cousin Twyla, when they combined forces the last time he had been unfortunate enough to fall within their sphere of influence, had been enough to make him glad he could legally drink in front of them. With the help of Twyla’s older sisters, no one, particularly no one named Sigurd Erik Thorbiornsen, would be safe. “But, uh, my roommate’s here too. So I’m not alone or anything.”

“Your roommate?” her tone sharpened. “That short foreign boy?”

“Yeah. Ray Fujimoto. Remember?”

Ray looked up briefly at the sound of his name, then went back to messing with the junk mail.

“After you were both here, Twyla told me a lot about this boy. I’m not sure he’s a good influence on you, Sigurd. Possibly a source of countless foreign vices. At the very least, he’s probably an enabler.”

Erik boggled at the phone and wondered what an enabler was. “He’s, uh, head of the pre-law student society,” he ventured.

Aunt Janet snorted. “Lawyers!” Prior to that, Erik had thought the closest his aunt got to swearing was her coolly dismissive sniff of “Easterners!” which was invariably said while staring directly at Erik’s mother. “You should look into other living arrangements, Sigurd.”

“Maybe,” Erik equivocated. Aunt Janet was one of the last people he wanted to discuss recent developments with.

“Have your parents met him? I’m sure they’d understand your need to move if they met him.”

“Mom met him in February. And Collin did too. They like him.”

“Well, Helen would,” Aunt Janet said dismissively. Erik ground his teeth. “And Collin likes everyone. He’s a child who’s very indiscriminate in his tastes.”

‘No,’ Erik thought viciously, ‘that’s not true. He doesn’t like you. You always tell him to stop focussing so much on sports and put his mind to a real career, or he’ll end up like me.’

“Still, I suppose it’s not his fault. It’s probably just the way he was raised,” Aunt Janet continued calmly. Erik didn’t know if she was talking about Collin or Ray. “Why isn’t your roommate off who knows where?”

“Ottawa, Aunt Janet. His family’s in Ottawa. The capital of Canada Ottawa,” Erik said irritably. “There were some problems with the ticket reservations, or something like that.”

There was another “Hm”, clearly disapproving, as though, if Ray had been Canadian-born there would have been no possibility of made-up ticket problems. “Well, he’s welcome to join us. No one should be alone during the holidays.”

‘And maybe,’ Erik thought with a heavy sarcasm he could never use on his aunt, ‘a polite and inquisition-like Christmas dinner with the successfully dysfunctional Lanes will cure him of being born in Italy.’ He shot a look at Ray, but his roommate had clearly lost interest in eavesdropping. Asking wasn’t even necessary. “No, it’s really okay, Aunt Janet. Ray’s got something planned that took a lot of work, so we’ll just stick with that, eh?” he said, hoping Ray had managed to scrounge up something.

“Sigurd,” Aunt Janet warned.

“Sorry, Aunt Janet, Ray’s wanting the phone to call his family. Can’t be hogging it all day, eh? Merry Christmas, and give my love to everyone,” Erik said hurriedly.

“Merry Christmas, Sigurd, but – ”

Erik hung the phone up violently.

“No rush, Thor. I’ll take care of all the phoning familial duties in good time,” Ray said vaguely from the table, still intent on something in the junk mail.

“Do you want to spent Christmas dinner at my aunt Janet’s?”

Ray, ninja trained or not, jumped. “Jesus, no!” He shuddered. “No matter how cute that cousin of yours is,” he added with none of his usual flippancy.

Erik scowled. “Forget about Twyla. She’s been telling Aunt Janet stories about you messing in campus politics, doing whatever it is you do. Or something.” He glared pointedly at the back of Ray’s head.

“Ah, drama majors,” Ray said in an airy and perfectly uninformative tone. “But I see your point,” he admitted, sounding almost-serious. “Knowing that, I’m surprised you didn’t hang up the phone with greater speed. I’m rather disappointed in you, Thor.”

The best course of action seemed to be ignoring Ray’s comment. “Since I don’t really want to go crawling back to Aunt Janet asking for food – ”

“We’ll never be that desperate, Sigurd.”

“I’m hoping you do have a plan for food of some kind.”

“No worries, Thor my boy, it’s all under control.”

Erik raised a dubious eyebrow. “Really?”

“Would I lie to you?”

“Yes,” Erik said flatly.

“You wound me, Thor. You wound me deeply. But not, luckily for you, fatally. Because if I was fatally wouldn’t I wouldn’t be able to take you to the location of our fabulous Christmas feast.”

“Take? As in going outside?” Erik frowned. He didn’t mind the cold, but something in him rebelled at the prospect of going outside on Christmas day. Even growing up, he hadn’t left the house, not even to go and admire Dustin’s extravagant holiday bounty. Not, he recalled sourly, that he’d ever had much opportunity.

“It’ll be worth it,” Ray said in his Reassuring Voice, which just made Erik paranoid. “It’s going out or ten cent ramen.”

Erik blanched. “Right.”

“Excellent,” Ray said, pushing away from the table with a pleased expression on his round face. On the table now sat a sizeable stack of throwing stars made out of junk mail. “Now, go get washed up and put on some decent clothes. You’ll need a tie.”

“Why?” Erik asked, lifting up one of the stars. The edges were surprisingly sharp. He dropped it quickly.

“For supper.”

“Ray, where are we going? Is this going to be illegal?”

“You’ll see,” Ray said, pushing at Erik’s back. “Just do it, Sigurd. You’ll thank me later.”

Erik found himself moving inexorably towards the bedroom. The ugly apartment carpeting was so hard there was nothing for him to dig his heels into. “But I don’t own a tie or anything like that!” he protested.

“Borrow one of mine.”

“You have more than one?”

“Thor – ”

“I don’t own anything you can wear a tie with!” Erik said, a final desperate stab. Ten cent ramen was starting to look quite appetizing.

“Improvise,” Ray said – ordered – bluntly.

“It’ll take forever.”

“Good,” Ray said, giving Erik one last shove that caused the tall boy to collide face-first with the closet doors. When Erik turned, rubbing his forehead and preparing to muster another round of protests, Ray flashed a disarming grin and headed for the door. “It’ll give me a chance to call my family.”

Erik hunched gloomily over the steering wheel of the clunker and squinted out at the dark Saskatoon streets through the frosted windshield screen. Theirs was one of the only cars on the road; aside from one or two other cars of similar quality and a ghost car, the streets were sensibly deserted. He didn’t ask Ray why he couldn’t have found somewhere that was within walking distance of King Place – it was already clear that he wouldn’t get a straight answer. So he drove grumpily, following Ray’s instructions, and shivered the entire time.

Ray’s directions were being given in the cheerful tone of one who was properly and warmly dressed. That cheeriness wasn’t doing anything to improve Erik’s mood.

Hours had been spent sorting through his meagre wardrobe while Ray had elevated their phone bill to astronomic heights. The end result was that he was now wearing the black pants he had bought over the summer for job interviews, which were mercifully only a bit tattered around the cuffs, and a short sleeved blue shirt with a suitable collar. He’d put on an undershirt, and a T-shirt over that, in an attempt to provide a bit of extra insulation. When Ray had finished on the phone, he’d rummaged in the back of his part of the closet and produced an unremarkable tie in navy blue and white.

Erik had almost strangled himself trying to put it on.

After a lot of swearing and fighting, the tie had been tied and adjusted so it was only casually noticeable that it was clearly meant for someone a good deal shorter than Erik, instead of being glaringly obvious as it had been initially. Ray had said it would do as long as Erik kept his coat on. And that he looked like a scarecrow. Now Erik couldn’t stop himself from noticing morosely that Ray looked impeccable. His roommate’s ability to produce such bizarrities as neatly pressed suits from the depths of a closet that wasn’t even that big was uncanny. It might even lend credence to Ray’s claims of being a ninja, except Erik didn’t think ninjas wore ties, as a rule. Although, if he were a ninja who intended to double as a lawyer . . .

“Park here,” Ray ordered, cheerfully derailing Erik’s train of thought. He restlessly drummed his fingers on the dashboard, even though the clunker’s dashboard didn’t look like it could withstand much of Ray’s vigorous rhythmic sense.

“Why here?” Erik asked, pulling up to one of the many empty parking metres on a sidewalk full of darkened shops and buildings. “I don’t see a damn thing that’ll yield food. Or necessitate me putting on a damn noose,” he complained, even as he put the clunker into park.

“We’ll walk the rest of the way,” Ray said easily, and opened the door.

“Walk!” Erik yelped, hitting his head on the roof as he climbed out of the driver’s side of the clunker.

“It’s only a few blocks,” said Ray. He was being Reassuring again.

Erik gritted his teeth and locked the clunker, an action that seemed pointless whenever he did it, and was doubly pointless on a deserted street on Christmas night. “Easy for you to say. You have proper sleeves.”

“But you have hyper Canadian Viking metabolism, which probably makes us about even.” Ray beamed and patted Erik’s shoulder.

“I hate you,” Erik muttered, hunching his shoulders, but his heart wasn’t in it.

“Yes, yes,” Ray said. Erik was beginning to suspect that Ray was selectively deaf. “I had to call in a favour for this, you know, so you better appreciate it.”

“A favour?” Erik’s heart sank to somewhere near his kidneys. When Ray started talking like this, it usually prefaced, or directly followed, an Incident. The sort of Incident that resulted in people seriously asking Ray if he was sure he was planning on a career on the right side of the law. “What kind of favour?”

“A school one,” Ray said airily.

Academic dishonesty, giant zeroes on transcriptions, expulsion from University, fireworks, a cow from veterinary medicine being found roaming a lab in health sciences . . . Nothing that sprung to Erik’s mind were good. “Ray . . .”

“It was ages ago. In sociology. Hardly anything, really, but a favour is a favour. Besides, Vaughn’s a good guy. Not so bright, but that doesn’t stop a guy from coming through when you call in a favour.”

“Vaughn?”

“Vaughn von Humboldt.”

“That’s a guy’s name?”

“Apparently so. Parents can be so cruel, Sigurd.”

Erik made a face.

“He works in a kitchen.”

“And that’s how you know of an open restaurant?”

“Something like that,” Ray said in such an agreeable tone that Erik knew he was lying. “Only, not quite,” he added, in an unusual display of honesty. He pointed. “Vaughn works there.”

Erik, his heart steadily making its way further down and rapidly getting tangled in his intestines, looked. Then, he stared. He tried to find adequate words to express his disbelief. “That’s the most expensive hotel in the city!” he yelped. The words were completely true, but somehow they didn’t do justice to the mind-boggling fact that Ray had, with the help of this Vaughn guy, concocted a scheme that involved the fanciest hotel in Saskatoon. Possibly in all of Saskatchewan.

“Quite right, Thor. Glad to see God hasn’t struck you blind for your sins just yet.”

“They have water slides! Huge rooms with hot tubs in! A private golf course!”

“But,” Ray said with a sigh, “they don’t outfit their cleaning staff in short ruffly black skirts and lace aprons. Or high heels. Not even bad Parisian accents or those funny white caps. Which is one of the few blemishes on their otherwise exemplary record.”

“Eh?”

“Never mind, my dear, innocent Thor.” Ray gave Erik’s should another unwelcome pat. “What’s important at the moment is the fact that they employ some truly excellent cooks.”

“Like your friend Vaughn?” Erik asked suspiciously.

Ray laughed. “Hell no! Vaughn does dishes. Something like that. One of those jobs that a properly built robot will someday do for nothing.”

“Then how do you know about the cooking?”

“Oh, there was a thing here last month. Dr. Someone spoke at length about the great significance of Something. It was very enlightening. And then there was champagne and shrimp cakes and tiny little pastries with fancy drawing on them. All very classy and, shockingly, very good on top of that.”

“Huh.” Erik wondered why he never got notifications of boring lectures that would involve champagne. “So, Vaughn’s going to smuggle leftovers to us?”

“My dear Thor, it’s Christmas. Even the homeless get freshly heated spam turkey and rehydrated potatoes on Christmas. We’re getting the best food, just like everyone else, and not waiting for it to get cold and congealed.”

“Ray, I’m pretty sure the hotel restaurant is for hotel guests. They won’t let us in.”

“Don’t worry, Thor, we aren’t going to mingle amongst hotel guests.”

Erik let out a sigh of relief.

“Almost the entire place has been set aside for a bloody huge wedding reception. We’ll be slipping in with that lot and enjoying great food and wine and sickeningly rich cake.”

Erik gaped. “We can’t do that!”

“We certainly can’t if you go around looking like you’re choking. You’d be a terrible secret agent,” Ray chided Erik, and calmly walked into the hotel lobby.

“It’s probably horribly illegal,” Erik said, and followed Ray, but only because his shivering was beginning to make his teeth chatter.

“Not horribly,” said Ray. He took a minute to dry his boots on the hotel’s expensive carpet. “And only if we get caught.”

“We’re gate crashing a wedding reception,” Erik whispered fiercely. “How can we not get caught? Weddings are families and friends. They’ll look, not recognize us, and at best some gorilla named Hank will throw us out in the snow.”

“Don’t be silly, Thor. It’s too cold for gorillas.”

Erik groaned, dragging his feet along the carpet as he tried to put off the inevitable. Unlike back at the apartment, it was actually working to slow him down, a bit. The carpet was dense and dark and rapidly becoming very wet. The women at the reception desk were glaring at him. He stopped and hurried to catch up to Ray.

“Besides, you’re tall.” Ray turned. He eyed Erik critically. “If worse comes to worst, just try and look less like a stick. That should make any security simians pause before pouncing on you. It’ll give you time to run before they decide they can take you.”

“Ray,” Erik tried to protest, but his roommate ignored him. He trailed after Ray reluctantly, down an elaborately decorated hallway. Why, he wondered, would anyone waste expensive-looking works of art on a hotel in Saskatoon, or even waste an expensive hotel in general on Saskatoon? How many people with enough money to afford it came to Saskatoon? The McClouds probably stayed there on the rare occasions they visited Dustin, but they were anomalies. “What kind of people would hijack a place like this for a wedding reception, anyway? And on Christmas day, too.”

That, Ray heard. “The disgustingly wealthy, of course. Probably an attempt to overcompensate for the fact that the happy couple will be divorced by the end of the year.” He came to a stop in front of a tall set of double doors. There was a small sign attached to one door, making clear in neat calligraphy that the dining room and the adjacent hall were being used for a private gathering – congratulations, Ted and Nancy – and room service would be happy to provide any guests with supper, at a slight discount. Ray barely glanced at it. “Now, please Thor, try not to stick out too much, okay?”

“Whatever,” Erik muttered. He plunged his hands into his jacket pocket. He just knew this was not going to go well.

“Atta boy.” Ray grinned and pulled the doors open, slipping inside quietly. Erik followed, banging his elbow on the door as it closed behind them.

Inside, Erik couldn’t help staring. The place was huge. Mind-boggling so. Bigger than the huge gyms where final exams were at University. Bigger than . . . he didn’t really have anything else to compare it to. But it was definitely very big, he could see that much. Tables with elaborate arrangements of flowers and decorations on them, even though everyone seemed to be milling about without ever sitting down, taking food from a long, long, long table covered with trays and plates and pitchers and bottles instead of being served like normal human beings. Or they were off in the adjacent room, that was equally big but with dimmer lighting and a lot of music, dancing and partying and congregating around a huge bar. There were decorations everywhere, in brilliant shades of red and green, and, yes, even the white things managed to look bright and tacky. Poinsettias, ivy, mistletoe . . .

Ray elbowed him in the stomach. “You’re staring like a damn yokel, Thor,” he hissed. “Stop it.”

“It’s hard not to,” Erik hissed back. He rubbed his stomach and tried to move casually away from the door, avoiding making eye contact with any of the nicely dressed people. “It’s just so damn tacky.”

“It’s not tacky when you’re rich. It’s extravagant,” Ray corrected in a tone of voice that was maddeningly superior. He was smiling easily, even when he was whispering to Erik out of the corner of his mouth, and making a casual but focussed beeline for the food.

“Even getting married on Christmas?” Erik asked, following Ray warily and trying not to hunch his shoulders in uncomfortable, self-conscious defence against a room full of people who could probably buy Crow Lake several times over.

“Well . . .” Ray elbowed his way past an old man with a charming smile, and frowned when he was face to face with the food. “I guess it’s hard to see someone wanting to usurp the whole day of the Saviour’s birth for their wedding as extravagant. Kind of rude, really.”

“While what we’re doing is, I’m sure, perfectly in line with the Christmas traditions of your religion,” Erik muttered, grabbing a plate and some food without really looking at any of it.

“Always the critic. Have a drink and try to relax, Thor.” Ray reached for a couple of champagne flutes, handing one to Erik.

“Yeah, it’s just that simple. Have a drink, relax, forget the fact that this is probably considered trespassing.” Erik paused his complaints long enough to take a swig of champagne. He nearly spit it back into the skinny glass. Sweet, bubbly, alcoholic . . . a large mouthful of champagne was clearly a bad idea.

“Quiet,” Ray murmured, elbowing Erik again. He nearly choked on his champagne, but Ray ignored his thoroughly stuffed, pop-eyed expression. Instead, he turned to a young woman on his other side, and flashed her a charming smile. “I still can’t believe they went through with it, after what happened with Nancy and Bill.”

The woman stared as Ray wandered off. Before she could open her mouth to ask a question Erik would have been incapable of answering, he shot after Ray, his mouth full of some kind of food he couldn’t taste, but was doing wonders in getting rid of the after effects of a mouthful of champagne.

“I know they look like a good couple, but, well, those stories about Ted make me worry that Nancy’s setting herself up for a lot of pain, poor kid,” Ray was saying to a man with thinning hair, ringing every drop of sincerity and sympathy out of his words.

Erik grabbed Ray’s arm. He bent down to whisper fiercely in Ray’s ear. “What are you doing?”

Ray’s eyebrows rose, and he carefully pried Erik’s fingers from his arm. “Making conversation. Having fun.”

“I thought we were supposed to be quiet and avoid being noticed.”

“You’re supposed to be quiet. I, on the other hand, am mingling.”

“You’re spreading lies about people you’ve never met.” Erik was having trouble keeping his voice down. This was shaping up to be Ray at his worst. All he needed was a bullhorn, and Erik could say goodbye to life as he knew it.

“They might not be lies. How do we know? The uncertainty of the universe, my dear Thor, makes anything possible,” Ray said, waxing philosophic, or quantum, or something. “Besides, at this kind of party, not spreading malicious gossip about the principles makes people very suspicious.”

Erik groaned and straightened. Ray Fujimoto: Force of really stupid nature.

“Don’t worry about it, Thor. Just enjoy the food and free booze.” Ray smiled and patted Erik’s shoulder before calmly slipping a plate from the table and tipping the contents into Erik’s jacket pocket.

This time, Erik didn’t see any point in commenting. Ray beamed, grabbed some more food and alcohol, and continued with his task of cheerful destruction. With a sigh, Erik followed. He ate food that he could barely taste or appreciate, managed to finish his champagne, and had Ray fill his pockets with the more durable food available. After twenty minutes, he just stopped listening to what Ray was saying to people, keeping his mouth full at all times. It almost made the entire thing bearable. Still, it was a relief, almost, when a heavy hand calmly came down on his shoulder.

Erik swallowed. He turned his head, slowly, and looked down. The hand belonged to a man who was, as Ray had predicted, a lot shorter than him. Unfortunately, the hand also belonged to a man so broad he could probably bench press a cow. The other hand was on Ray’s shoulder, one finger hooked into his collar. “Gentlemen,” the man said quietly, “I think it’s time for you to leave.”

“Right,” Ray grinned brightly. “Things to do, can’t stay here partying all nice. Some of us have jobs. It’s good to have such attentive staff. So, if you’d just untangle that hand that seems to have gotten caught up in my jacket, we’ll just be going.”

“I think,” the man said, his voice a low, threatening rumble that promised a future of pain and eternity if the boys didn’t become very cooperative, very quickly, “that you should both leave with me.”

“That’s good too,” Ray said, trying to shrug. The hand seemed to be giving him a bit of difficulty, so he just shrugged one shoulder in a rather awkward, lopsided gesture. “I mean, there’s some sick, sad people who could be lurking out in the parking lot, just waiting for someone unsuspecting and unprotected to go out there and then BAM!” He didn’t explain what BAM was.

“Now,” the man rumbled again, and pushed them both toward the door.

As they were escorted out, Erik hissed, “What did you do?”

“What makes you think it was me?” Ray looked wounded. “You were probably looking suspiciously scarecrow like, that’s all.”

Erik looked over his shoulder. A tall woman in a wedding dress was glaring daggers are their back. He swallowed and looked forward again quickly. “I think spreading stupid lies was a bad idea. I think the bride must have overheard you”

Ray groaned. “Your stupid country doesn’t do anything right!” he complained, rather loudly, as they were both pushed out the dining room door.

Into the waiting arms of two police officers.

The rest was all kind of blurry for Erik. It was just too surreal. The cops talked amongst themselves, ignored Ray’s attempts at explaining why they were there, none of which were true or even believable, and subjected both of them to breathalysers.

One glass of champagne and the lingering effects of festive vodka were enough to make the officers frown. Erik didn’t know how much Ray had been drinking while he’d gone around the room spreading lie after lie, but “A lot” seemed to be a good guess. There was some flipping through their wallets, examining various bits of identification, and then they were being escorted out of the hotel and into a police car.

Erik fell into his seat and pressed his forehead against the bulletproof shield separating them from the cops in the front. He shut his eyes. “Are they taking us home?”

“No,” Ray said, sounding calm. Erik cracked an eye open. Ray was leaning back in his seat, his eyes shut, looking relaxed and nonchalant and exactly like a guy who wasn’t sitting in the back of a police car. “You’re getting good at the whole repressing thing, though.”

“Are we arrested?”

“Hardly. Just going to the drunk tank for the night.”

Erik groaned and shut his eyes.

“It should be an interesting experience.”

“I hate you.”

“I know.”

Even though his eyes were shut, Erik turned his head so he wouldn’t be facing Ray. Next year, he vowed, no matter what, he was going to spend Christmas break somewhere Ray Fujimoto was not.