Okay. Whatever. "I'm going to my parents' now," I told him. "Maybe you want me to drop you someplace. Shopping center, pool hall, loony bin..."

"Boy, that really hurts. You don't want me to meet your parents."

"It's not like we're going steady."

"My assignment is to bring you some Christmas cheer, and I take my job very seriously."

I gave him disgusted. "You do not take your job seriously. You told me you don't even like Christmas."

"I was caught by surprise. It's not usually my gig. But I'm starting to get into it. Can't you tell? Don't I look more cheery?"

"I'm not going to get rid of you, am I?"

He rocked back on his heels, hands in jacket pockets, a large grin firmly in place. "No."

I blew out a sigh, put the car into gear, and pulled out of the lot. It wasn't a far ride to my parents' house in the Burg. The Burg is short for Chambersburg, a small residential community that sits on the edge of Trenton proper. I was born and raised in the Burg and I'll be a Burger for life. I've tried moving away, but I can't seem to get far enough.

Like most houses in the Burg, my parents' house is a small two-story clapboard built on a small, narrow lot. And like many houses in the Burg, the house shares a common wall with an identical house. Mabel Markowitz owns the house that adjoins my parents' house. She lives there alone, now that her husband has passed on. She keeps her windows clean, she plays bingo twice a week at the senior center, and she squeezes thirteen cents out of every dime.

I parked at the curb and Diesel looked at the two houses. Mrs. Markowitz's house was painted a bilious green. She had a plaster statue of the Virgin Mary in her tiny front yard and she'd put a pot of plastic red poinsettias next to the Virgin. A lone candle had been placed in her front window. My parents' house was painted yellow and brown and was decorated with a string of colored lights across the front of the house. A big old plastic Santa, his red suit sun-bleached to pale pink, had been set up in my parents' front yard, in direct competition with Mrs. Markowitz's Virgin. My mother had electric candles in all the windows and a wreath on the front door.

"Holy crap," Diesel said. "This is a car crash."