Yuletide Immortal (The Immortal Chronicles Book 4) Read Online Free Page B

said, eyeing my sandwich with some suspicion.  The food was provided for the staff by the store, and was just exactly edible enough to keep me from leaving the premises for a burger, yet inedible enough to guarantee I would never willingly take a job that involved deliberately consuming such a thing in the future.
    “I’m between jobs,” I said.  “I was a bartender for a while, though.  Good, steady gig, twenty years back.”
    “Are you rich?”
    “I don’t know.  I might be.  I’m not sure what the definition of rich is.”
    I wasn’t really kidding.  I had money sitting in a Swiss account.  At the time of this conversation the account was nearly a hundred years old, yet the bank was still taking my calls.  Or they did the last time I contacted them, which was in 1952.  That year, I had them wire funds to the nearest financial institution in the name I was using at the time, and then I took out the funds as cash.  It was evidently a lot of cash, because the bank took a while to get all of it to me and because I’d been living off of it ever since.
    I had no idea what the overall balance in the Swiss account was.  I only knew every sum I had asked for up to that point had been sent, no questions asked.  One day I would have to get a full accounting, but I find it very difficult to do math and also to drink a lot.  Plus, again, monetary figures don’t mean all that much to me.  If you’ve ever gone to a foreign country that uses a base cash value that isn’t 1:1 with the currency of your own country, you’ve experienced something like this.  With me, that’s all currencies all the time.
    “The definition of rich,” Santa said, “is never having to worry about where your next meal is coming from or where you’re going to sleep.”
    “That’s a pretty low standard.”
    “And being happy.”
    “Now you’ve gone off in the opposite direction.”
    “One can measure wealth in friendships, no?”
    “I believe it’s possible to measure wealth in terms of influence and power, but I’m reasonably sure that isn’t what you’re talking about.”
    “It isn’t, but it’s close.  A calculation that isn’t based on money is what I’m aiming for.  Right here is where my riches are, in the smiles I get from these children, and the joy I feel when I hear their stories.”
    “Well, you’re an imp.  You live for stories, don’t you?”
    “I do indeed.  I do indeed.”
    “And the roof over your head?”
    “The roof is in an uptown penthouse.  My riches are also very monetarily real.”
    Things picked up in the afternoon.  The line got longer and the time between each child a little shorter, possibly because Santa was thinking about the same beer I was.  Mercifully, at six PM someone closed the back of the line.  That should have compelled him to perhaps hurry things along, but of course it didn’t.  He didn’t get to that final child until nearly seven.
    “And what’s your name, young man?” Santa asked of the aforementioned final child, lifting the kid onto his knees.  He’d done this a hundred times already, and was perhaps not as frail from age as I’d taken him to be.  If I had to do that all day I’d probably have dropped two or three children by now.
    “Davey,” the boy said.  He looked about ten.  He was dressed in old clothing that was a little too big for him.  I had always taken ill-fitting clothing as a sign of poverty, but having occupied a seat next to Santa for a full day I could now say that a large portion of the mother-child population of New York City wore clothes that didn’t really fit.  If it was an indicator of poverty, the new affluence I’d been hearing about hadn’t reached clothing yet.  Or perhaps all the tailors in New York had died due to some kind of tailor-plague.
    “And what can Santa do for you Davey?  Do you have a special thing in mind for Christmas this year?”
    The boy nodded, and looked around.  “Yeah but not for me.