After knocking on her apartment door one more time, I got back in my truck and headed out toward the house. The town was halfheartedly decorated for the holidays. The lights and tinsel hung crooked from the streetlights. After the robbery I hated Christmas, but when Krystal and I started our Friday night meals together it had been unavoidable. She was the only person I ever bought a gift for. I’d go over to her apartment early on Christmas Day, or the nearest Saturday to it, even if we’d seen each other the night before, and we’d open each other’s presents. She always put up a small, scraggly, fake pre-lit tree on her kitchen table, which looked like it had been hauled out of a trash can. Half of the lights didn’t light up, but she just hung more gaudy ornaments on it to cover up the dark spots. Those mornings were nice, I guess, but nice things destroyed me. Krystal’s dumb happy face was a little too much of a portal to the before-times. And what did she have to be happy about, anyway? Suctioning spit and blood out of some rich asshole’s mouth?

Every year, right after we finished exchanging gifts, I said goodbye and took myself to the nearest fast-food joint to stuff burgers into my face, trying to regain footing in the real world with fat and salt and the anonymity of plastic booths. It usually worked.

By the time I arrived at the house, the watery indigo horizon was giving way to black. Exiting my truck, I looked up and saw all the stars, every one; out here it was almost annoying how many stars there were. The sky looked so busy. A few cloud patches hovered, though the snow flurries had almost abated. Krystal’s car was in the driveway, as I knew it would be.

I could tell she had all the lights on from the glow behind the curtains, but I couldn’t actually see in the windows. The brush was so overgrown that it had overtaken part of the porch and obscured the first-floor windows. In a few more years the vines would take over the second story, too; the house would be nearly invisible. I turned off my truck and sat for a second, listening to the engine click, then walked to the front door.

As I climbed the porch steps, I heard music. It was the ending of “Blue Christmas.” A beat of silence, then “Santa, Bring My Baby Back to Me” started. It was Jim’s Elvis record. He’d put it on every Christmas as we decorated the house.

I had packed it up three months ago.

Before I had time to raise my hand to knock I saw the blinds move, and then the door opened. Krystal leaned on the doorjamb. “Well, well, well,” she said.

I was silent for a moment, judging whether she was still pissed. I determined that she was not.

“Hi there. Can I come in?” I held out the bowls I had kept by accident.