The News of the World Read Online Free Page A

sledding. “Good news,” she says. “We’ve got a shot at the record.”
    Drew rises from the pillow and peeks out the blind. “It’s snowing,” she says.
    Christmas Eve, we drive back along the snowy Avenues, and park on Fifth, as always. “I know,” Elise says, hopping out of the car. “You two used to live right over there before you had me and it was a swell place and only cost seventy-two fifty a month, honest.”
    Drew looks at me and smiles.
    â€œHow old are you?” I ask Elise, but she is busy towing the sled away, around the corner, up toward Eleventh Avenue. It is still snowing, petal flakes, teeming by the streetlamps, trying to carry the world away. I take Drew’s hand and we walk up the middle of H Street behind our daughter. There is no traffic, but the few cars have packed the tender snow perfectly. It could be a record. On Ninth Avenue, Drew stops me in the intersection, the world still as snow, and kisses me. “I love you,” she says.
    â€œWhat a planet,” I whisper. “To allow such a thing.”
    By the time we climb to Eleventh Avenue, Elise is seated on the sled, ready to go. “What are you guys waiting for, Christmas?” she says and then laughs at her own joke. Then she becomes all business: “Listen, Dad, I figure if you stay just a little to the left of the tire tracks we could go all the way. And no wobbling!” She’s referring to last year’s record attempt, which was extinguished in the Eighth Avenue block when we laughed ourselves into a fatal wobble and ended in a slush heap.
    We arrange ourselves on the sled, as we have each Christmas Eve for eight years. As I reach my long legs around these two women, I sense their excitement. “It’s going to be a record!” Elise whispers into the whispering snow.
    â€œDo you think so?” Drew asks. She also feels this could be the night.
    â€œOh yeah!” Elise says. “The conditions are perfect!”
    â€œWhat do you think?” Drew turns to me.
    â€œWell, the conditions are perfect.”
    When I say conditions, Drew leans back and kisses me. So I press: “There’s still room on the sled,” I say, pointing to the “F” in Flexible Flyer that is visible between Elise’s legs. “There’s still room for another person.”
    â€œWho?” Elise asks.
    â€œYour little brother,” Drew says, squeezing my knees.
    And that’s about all that was said, sitting up there on Eleventh Avenue on Christmas Eve on a sled which is as old as my marriage with a brake that is as old as my daughter. Later tonight I will stand in my yard and throw this year’s reindeer droppings on my very own home. I love Christmas.
    Now the snow spirals around us softly. I put my arms around my family and lift my feet onto the steering bar. We begin to slip down H Street. We are trying for the record. The conditions, as you know by now, are perfect.

SANTA MONICA
    I’M IN THE King’s Head at the end of Santa Monica Boulevard drinking my fourth pint of bitter wondering if maybe I should eat something and just go home. I’m sitting under the window watching one guy play darts against himself, and he’s not very good. Judith called and said to meet, so I’ll stay. The bitter is good; I haven’t been here for a couple of months, so I might as well wait it out. If she doesn’t show, maybe she’s not in trouble after all.
    I’m trying to make a catalogue in my head of all the pubs in Hampstead. It’s been two years, but I remember the Three Horseshoes at the High Street, where we’d go and watch the teenagers pick each other up. Monday nights they had poetry readings upstairs. I remember one guy read poems with a dummy; he was a ventriloquist. And there was Sir Something who was ninety-six years old. He read from a book he had published at twenty and talked ironically between the