Mark

In "Mark," my annual Christmas story, there is always an element of non-fiction ...  Enjoy.

Mark

“A retribution hearing will convene one month from today, January 20^th.  This session is closed.”  Judge Torrez rose from behind the polished walnut bench and descended into her chambers.

         Inhaling deeply, I hoped air might flush antagonizing investigations, briefings, and hearings from memory.  The outcome as we’d calculated before an investigation was ever initiated deserved no celebration …   Legal counsel reaffirmed I’d retain earnings and options as Zenastech Pharmaceutical’s CEO.  Though lawful, our business practices were indicted erroneously as greed by those lacking knowledge as to what we do for our world’s shareholders.

         Financial analysts and market watchdogs filed into the grand ornate hallway.  Attorneys closed their routine.  Ambushed by my daughter, a Chicago University senior, impeded my escape expecting an explanation. 

         “I can’t believe you artificially, no not artificially, excuse me, ‘intentionally’ inflated existing drug pricing 40%.  And then … Zenastech can’t even produce its own cancer drugs.  You hostilely take over other drug patents and then jack treatments up $120K to over a quarter million for a single patient.”

         I hated puppy dog eyes.  She didn’t understand. Pharmaceuticals don’t make undue profits. 

         “Those drugs treat very, very sick people, dad.  You suck their savings and dignity right out of them.  The wealthy have the only access.”  She raised her arms as if to intimidate a bear.  “You even used cash held outside the U.S. to close your multi-billion-dollar deals to avoid paying taxes to the country and her citizens who protect you.  Where’d you and your board pocket those savings?”  She shouted accusations chasing attorneys from court.  “I’d run too, cowards!”

         I attempted to soften her hostility. “Look, Lori, yours is an insurance issue, not a pharma problem.” 

“You raced to do all of this.  Less than five years you drove prices sky high.  Premium greed made on the backs of the suffering.”  

My privately educated daughter pressed my personal space.  The heat of her breath slapped my face.  She failed to appreciate how I rose through the ranks initially as a chemical engineer, through accounting, operations manager, world marketing director, to earn my appointment as CEO.

“I produce returns to investors.  I employ people, young people like you with good jobs. I compete with other companies here and abroad every bit as powerful as we are for future growth and market share.”

         “Sure, dad!  We all hear of your extravagant compensation ….  Where’s it all going?”

         “To you!”

         An unexpected blow, her tension uncoiled with my revelation.

         “Who do you think funds ‘Specialty Camps for the Disabled?’”

         My college senior retreated a step, preparing to defend the non-profit for which she interned.

         “I do.”  I drove my fingers into my chest. “Who’s funding your degree in non-profit management?”

         “So you’re a pharmaceutical Robin Hood robbing the medically insured folks in order to give to the disadvantaged?”

         “Folks stay poor, dad.  You hold the health of others ransom so you can get your ‘feel-goods’ throwing high dollar donations, scraps to the poor while you collect citizen of the month, religious recognition, or business exec of the year for responsible stewardship.  You drain people dry, sucking the lives right out of them.” 

         I turned the tide. 

         “I’m not growing rich on the backs of the less fortunate.  I don’t deceive donors who think their generosity is supporting the disabled when in reality your CEO rakes in $400K annually, a wage six times greater than the average household earnings in this country.  The average non-profit CEO makes a quarter million annually.  No wonder why it is one of the most lucrative, fastest growing occupations in business.  Many employees don’t even support their mission.  Who is actually making their living on the backs of the poor?”

         “They must pay our CEO just compensation to stay competitive with corporate CEO’s.  We need high profile individuals with national recognition to attract significant donors.”

         “And you don’t call that ‘artificial inflation?’”

         Stepping laterally, I passed her to approach the door.  I turned to exit.  I’d seen those eyes when as a child, she presented a video she’d produced featuring a poem she’d written with music.   I was late for a critical meeting.  Sad eyes I’d seen in loss and disappointment as if she’d lost my respect.  Her eyes bore through me, passed me … for if they’d met, I knew she’d tear up.  I couldn’t and wouldn’t intersect them.  I walked away then as I did now.

         I watched my feet descend the marble steps spiraling below Lady Liberty’s rotunda.  They carried me into frigid air along Adams parallel to the Library.  Bronze crafted owls perched like gargoyles spied pedestrians hustling bargains among Chicago’s most exclusive venders.  The scarce sunlight transitioned to mercury lamps marketing Michigan Avenue and the Firehouse District. 

         Pausing among strangers waiting for traffic to clear, I heard a voice channeled specifically to me.  I looked against the flow of pedestrians to acknowledge a man seated on an inverted plastic bucket.  Piercing eyes intercepted mine. 

         “Yes, you!  Spare a dollar for a man to warm his bones!” 

         My mind lagged while my feet dodged folks for an unoccupied section of walk.  A thin man rose with a pipe in hand.  White waves of curls splashed over his ears.  Wild eyebrows unfurled like flames above charcoal pupils.  His mustache, long, ungroomed, curled over his upper lip.  Stubble bristled his cheeks.  Brittle hands unprotected from the cold protruded from sleeves too short, stained, and tattered.  His white sports coat fit tightly over his sweater doing little to shield him from the cold.  He sat seeking heat from steam rising through sewer grates.

         I glanced over my shoulder embarrassed I was about to support a street element I abhorred.  As quickly as I removed a pair of singles from my wallet, a sudden impact, chest-high leveled me to the concrete.  In suspended time, I watched my cell phone teeter on a metal rail.  As I reached for it, it fell through the grate.

         The splash re-engaged my mind.  My lifeline to personals, the business community, and legal counsel, a boat of contacts floated down the underground river.  A final flicker of street light reflected off my screen as it disappeared into sewage.

         Whoever struck, struck efficiently, rapidly.  I didn’t see anyone.  A couple stopped momentarily to assist me to my feet beside the man I’d given two dollars.   

         I stood with a man clearly homeless holding more currency in his pocket than I.

         “Come on.” He motioned for me to walk with him.  “I live down the street.  We can pick up a cup of joe.”

         “Isn’t that what the money’s for?”

         “Not now!  Can’t waste money for that!”

         Neon blue “De Paul University” decorated a browned brick building several stories high.  Panhandlers loitered on the corner.  My escort pushed through clear glass doors.  Security monitored book bag toting students swiping passes and rushing onto elevators traveling to classrooms and studios on the upper floors.  Dwarfing us, fresco archways depicted the Jesuits’ missionary journeys into the north. 

         We curved into an enormous gathering space filled with long cafeteria tables and folding chairs.  Several university students cooked and served the evening meal onto trays. Partitions, collapsed in accordion style, opened to an ordered array of cots aligning the perimeter of the walls.  Shoes neatly coupled with hygiene products anchored each cot.  Gymnasium styled restrooms exited as wings off each wall. 

         “They have great food here!  Almost always hot!  Rarely a surprise.”  My host led me to plates filled with gravy oozing over beef and noodles, small bowls of fruit cocktail and broccoli.  I placed a cup of water at the corner and trailed my homeless escort to a seat facing him. 

         An energetic coed landed in the chair beside me. “Welcome.  I see you’ve met Mark.”  Unaware, she’d interrupted my lack of civility for I’d never inquired of my host’s name.  “You a contributor to our shelter?”

         I was embarrassed as a recipient of her graciousness. “In a very small way.”

         “Donors rarely visit.  We’re thankful you are.  Many of these men would probably end in a prison somewhere.  Unlike you, the public would rather spend a dollar to lock them up than a dime on intervention and prevention.”  As quickly as she landed, she took flight to clearing tables.

         I studied the face of a man whose mustache dripped of gravy.  Bread crumbs sprinkled his soiled white shirt.  “Your name’s ‘Mark’?”

         “Mark Twain,” he garbled while savoring a mouthful of beef. 

         Obviously, the classic white coat, disheveled white hair, ungroomed mustache and eyebrows long enough to comb over.  I’d bet students here carried texts with pictures of Twain in their literature. 

         I intercepted his attention from the noodles.  “I’m Nick.”  There is no way I’d offer my true identity. 

         “Sure you are.  Short for Nicodemus, right Nico?”

         “Yes.” I laughed. “And you’re Mark Twain? You must know Huck and Tom?”

         “Finn and Sawyer?  Sure, I know those fellas.”  He’d inhaled the greens and slurped the cocktail. Finally, exhausted from eating, he reclined and sighed.  Gravy clung to his bristled upper lip for a late-night snack.

         “University’s a good place.  Lots of fine looking women working here.  Makes dining pure pleasure!” 

         I offered him a cup of water hoping he’d rinse some distraction away. 

         “You look like you went to college once.”

         “I managed a few degrees.” 

         He nodded casually running his fingers through his hair. “Wearing ritzy clothes you bought off places on Michigan.  Bet you had a credit card to each one in that wallet you lost.”  He pointed to his forehead.  “Need a sharp mind on the street.” 

         “I don’t live in Chicago.  Here for a court case.”  Twain posed no threat to me. 

         “Court?”  Twain flexed his thumbs beneath suspenders.  “You look too pretty to shoot somebody.” 

         “I didn’t shoot anyone.” I winced.  “I made some bad drug deals.”

         “Ahrrr,” he belched.  “A mafia type.  Don’t see any Columbian in ya.”

         “I direct a large pharmaceutical company.”

         “You make pills.”

         “Yes, lots of pills.”  I reflexively slid my hands into my empty coat pockets.  “Shit.”  I cursed to myself.  No phone.  No market summary.  No updates.  “I’ve always been great with numbers and strategy.  I saved the company at critical junctions from losing value among investors.  We’re no different from other drug companies.  While they raised prices on their older products, I did 10%.  People pay what the market will bear.”

         My homeless host appeared perplexed, but attentive.  I never paused to consider where his mind may have ventured.  No objections arose. 

         “Insurance companies forced us into a corner.  They quit paying as much for prescriptions.  Sales slumped.  So … we raised prices on those that could.  They held profits up.”

         “Got those investors happy again, right Nico?”

         “Not exactly.”  I crossed my forearms leaning on the table.  “Our lobbyists create political gridlock.  They muddy the water with the labyrinth of research costs imposed on sales.  Law makers are wealthy folks.  Many are our biggest shareholders.  My drugs keep them on Michigan Avenue.”

         “Yet, our numbers needed to be higher to attract newer, bigger dollars.  We continue to take over the little companies taking the bigger risks on developing new products.”  I leaned back to savor satisfaction, but my memory replayed my daughter’s eyes of indictment. “I initiated an ‘adapting to scale’ strategy that looked attractive on the accounting side to investors.”

         Twain asked what investors ignored.  “What exactly is ‘adapting to scale?”

         “I conducted a single round of layoffs.”

         “Nico, you fired folks.”  He reached to dip his mustache in coffee. “You murdered people.”  I saw Twain’s frown and heard Lori’s words.

         “My daughter said something to that effect.” 

         “Wise young lady.  I love the brave ones!”

         “’Wise’ … is a bit of a stretch.”

         “With respect to you, it’d be a stretch.”  Twain belched, punctuating the insult trapping my attention.

         “For a company big-shot, you produced a lousy strategy.”  Prosecutors offended me, but the crazy homeless bucket-sitter casually teed me up.  Mark fetched a seasoned stogie from his vest.  Twisting it into the left crease between his lips, he nibbled the stub until it disappeared beneath his brush. 

         “You make any Viagra, dysfunction type drugs?”

         “We manufacture a comparable product.  It’s quite profitable.”

         “Sure it is.  Blend a special formula into your best-selling drugs like your cholesterol drugs that wreak havoc on male performance.”  His clever idea squeezed drool snaking over his chin to drip onto his white chest. “New side effects require new drugs … a sort of codependency.  Now watch profits soar!  Everybody’s happy!”

         “Kind of unethical.” My reflex flushed a conflicted moment.

         “Nico, Nico,” he opened his arms as if to receive a business accomplice.  “Nothing to be ashamed.  Male impotence is a legitimate medical concern.  Though hardly as wide spread as heart disease or, god forbid, the arthritis I feel … all the more reason for these ailments to lead to impotence!”

         Mark pinched the stogie tapping tobacco crumbs upon the table.  “What’s the radio commercial say to men … ‘better sex, more often … it’ll enhance your overall relationship satisfaction!’  They hype marital bliss is only a pill away!”  A giddy Mr. Twain choked on his laughter.  “Marital bliss, my ass.  Hell, the women in those commercials are youngsters.”  He leaned toward me winking.  “I know women like that.  Seen ‘em on Michigan.  Probably in your dollar range?”

         “What da you know?”

         Twain roared, “We’re burned out, stressed.  We turn to the pill.  Guilt over fantasies, infidelities, lies … sex takes the edge off.  Divorce consumes better than half of all marriages.  Adultery is older than Moses … and hooking up, the new normal.  The concept ‘relationship’ shares the same bed with betrayal and defeat.”

         “I’m telling you.  The market’s easy money!  Pardon me, but you’re a pusher.”

         I grinned basking in my host’s exuberance.  “And what exactly am I pushing?”

         “Rejuvenation! Men believe your commercials like they’re gospel’s truth.  They watch old farts like us run off with young babes … and the only hurdle blocking success … impotence.  Reality television, radio hosts, plastic surgeons, film directors, publishers … all feed a public with a voracious appetite for more.  Yesterday’s porn has become today’s advertising!  Fantasy in a pill!  Our youth consume mega-doses.  What was liberation in my twenty’s is a young person’s quick fix for loneliness and boredom.  To hell with the wife and kids.  They’re collateral damage … side effects … which the feds should focus their attention.” 

         I saw lust fade to lifeless darkened pupils.    

“Nico, I was married once.  Her infidelity opened the door to hell.  And I entered it.”

“Were you working then?”

“Think my drug interaction idea’s a good one?  Offering me a job, Nico?”

“Maybe.” 

“I wrote the pulse as a columnist for the Times before I hit the Wild Turkey.  I escorted bitterness from home to work.  I even carried insurance, a few purple pills in my pocket if you know what I mean.  Never knew when a one-nighter might present itself.” He repositioned the stogie.  “Newspaper sales tanked.  And management, guys like you,” he paused and emphasized using newly acquired terminology.  “They initiated an ‘adapting to scale’ strategy cutting jobs.  By that time, I was making new friends, Jack Daniels, Jimmy, Chief Old Crow, Jameson Irish, and little Johnny.”  He chewed the stogie.  “I was an easy cut.  Today, I continue to run with the boys.”  He raised a bushy brow and smiled.  “There’s a hot toddy with my name on it.” 

I surveyed the room.  Street walkers and low income jobbers straggled to their assigned cots.  Several dropped off gear to eat, others shared the day’s stories with neighbors while some trudged to soak in the shower’s heat. 

“Nicodemus, don’t have an open cot, but you can sleep on the floor.”  One from the street offered to one new to the street. 

A closed federal building, locked away my luggage.  Filthy, no phone, no money, no identification, I needed to roam.  “No, I gotta go.”

“Where?”

“Thought you’d recommend some place.”

“Food’s best here at the shelter.” 

Coeds finished with their shift chattered by with book bags in tow.

“There is no finer scenery.  And it is always changing!”

I rose from the table and carried my tray to a small conveyer feeding the dish room. 

The street walker suggested.  “Cathedral is a possibility.  Insane guys, psychos living in the boxes.  No sleepin’ in a box.”

“Cathedral has a shelter?”

“No.  Got cold marble floors, low heat, no food, no scenery,” he paused, “and ghosts.”

I frowned as the red elevated line clamored overhead. “Ghosts?”

“Loners hang around after evening prayer or drift in and disappear.  Night security will throw you out if they catch you.”  My homeless advisor shook his head.  “Lazy bastards don’t hit it too hard.  If you stay out of sight until ten o’clock, security leaves.”

“I can’t believe folks have run of the place.”

“Motion sensors surround the sanctuary, relics, and side altars, anything valuable.  Think an invisible fence around the pews.  Once you’re in, you’re in … and … so are other ghosts and spirits wandering the night.” 

Taxis raced between iron beams elevating mass-transit bullets filled with urban employees.  A steady stream of pubs tempted my guide to purchase his holiday cheer.  I caught him lagging a step as he explored the Wabash Irish Pub.  We dodged faces burrowed into portable screens, shoppers searching for the latest specials.  Others laughed sharing the day’s acquisitions and its conclusion. 

We rounded a corner pub.  Traffic ceased.  An eerie quiet settled upon us as we climbed granite steps to Holy Name Cathedral.

“You Catholic, Mark?”

“Are you kidding?  I’d never be Catholic or any other faith, believing a bunch of malarkey that you know can’t be true.  Only guys I believe in I count on …  Jimmy, Jack, Johnny and the boys.”

“You know the hot coeds you were eying in the shelter?” I mentioned.  “Catholic girls probably working a Catholic shelter.” 

We passed through thick, heavy, carved walnut doors.

“I guarantee, you won’t find any fine women in here.”  The ex-columnist slobbered returning his mauled stogie under his white coat. 

I nodded in recognition of his act of reverence.  “I thought you didn’t believe?” 

We passed through a greeting space opening into a sacred warehouse of marble pillars supporting mason archways and vast wooden buttresses capped by sweeping domes.  Water trickled over horizontal falls filling a baptismal font splitting the center aisle. 

“The place comes with a signature hot tub.  Jump in after midnight!” Mark soothed his arthritic fingers in the font of new beginnings and healing. 

I blindly scanned sections of empty pews for dark shadows.  Clanking boilers cracked the silence as our eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness.  A surprising amount of city light illuminated the large stained glass windows memorializing key figures or critical events in the history of the faith. 

My escort clutched my arm pulling me to the base of a barely discernable figure imbedded in stained glass. 

“Nico, I love this girl,” Mark directed my attention to a figure I imagined was the girl he referred.  “She called herself ‘Joan the Maid.’  We know the young French virgin as Joan of Arc.  Pure in mind, body, and heart, she was an angel of God.  Deeply faithful, illiterate, she listened to voices from above.”  Mark’s eyes scanned the immense mosaic domes between wooden arches.  “Apparitions gave her strength on the battlefields.  Men listened, acted, and victory followed.  The threat of death even from the courts that tried her failed to frighten her.  She is beautiful, simple, loyal … and I love her.”

“She is the most extraordinary person the human race has ever produced!”  My host faded into another era. 

“Mark,” I brought him back to the vastness of the cathedral.  “I thought you didn’t believe any of this?”

Mark pointed to the ceramic body of a man who appeared to be nailed to crossed timbers.  “The only good guy in all of this, they caught and crucified.  All these religious folks argue about a bunch of passages from the Good Book they don’t understand, but they use them to segregate one another.  The passages that bother me most are those I do understand.” 

I stared into his hardened silhouette, the side of a man I regarded during my assault as useless, a waste, a doormat for society.  His other side, hidden in the dark, he revealed as vulnerable, intelligent, and internally tortured … though fruitful, bold, honest.  I sat in a pew.  I spied few darkened figures … praying, sleeping, keeping warm … revealed by invading street light.

Still standing, Mark Twain rested a hand on my shoulder as if bestowing upon me his blessing.  “Nicodemus ...” He shuffled two single dollars in the light now passing through tinted glass, his beloved Joan of Arc.  “I’m gonna chase Jack and Jimmy a little, tonight.  Don’t forget to hide out under a bench a bit before ten.  The ones with the heat ducts, the metal risers, are the warmest.” 

I watched him begin to walk away and then pause.

“Need to fix things with your daughter.  She sounds like she has a little of ‘Joan’ in her.  Loyalty, bravery, and simplicity … blessed things.”  Mark faded in the darkness.  Light creased the heavy doors as his white coat and hair flashed through them.  Nicodemus vanished with him.

Boilers buried deep below clanked as bell shaped risers dispensed heat over cold marble floors.  Oak-plank pews cracked with expansion.  Saints and angels danced upon mosaic domes collecting prayers lifted to the heavens from banks of candles lit below.  Above the center altar, a lone candle burned through a red vessel creating sacred space.

I stepped forward in perfect silence.  Time froze.  A dimension into which I was drawn seemed to carry me forward.  The bench creaked as I sat below the elevated sanctuary.  I felt vulnerable to potential vagrants hidden in the wings of the cathedral behind me.  Light kissed the soft face of a woman seated across the church from me.  Slowly, I slid along the bench to the center aisle.  I eased upright and crossed.  Making myself visible, I entered a pew before her. 

Aware of my presence, she appeared settled.  I whispered the question I’d rehearsed, “If you have a phone, may I borrow it please?”

She dug into a side pocket and extended it to me.  I bowed and side-stepped between pillars as if darkness quenched sound.

I pecked backlit keys and listened. 

“Hello?”  A familiar voice answered.  Uncertainty choked my words. 

She said again. “Hello?”   

“Beth.”  Silence ….  I needed her to accept me into conversation.  I wounded a friend.  I’d run out of relationship to tend to the pain I created. 

“Andrew?”  Her inflection verified me.  “Why you whispering on a woman’s phone?  Secretly tangled in a deal you can’t handle?” My former wife fired hostile terms.  “You can stop your whining.  You got your way in court.” 

“I interrupted some woman’s meditation to borrow her phone.  Lucky she let me use it.  I’m dodging security to sleep under a pew in the cathedral in Chicago.  Guys jumped me.  Stole my wallet … my phone dropped through a sewer grate.  It’s a long story.”

Beth’s sigh eased tension.  “You hurt?”  A question I should have asked.  I cheated her, but not with another woman, … with my promise to love.

“No, I’m fine.  I want to see you when I return to Raleigh.” I’d inflated her cost for my presence.

“Why should I do that?” 

“You shouldn’t, but ….”   

Through transitions in life, couples remarry, not formally, but they remarry each other.  We’d both changed, but we’d failed to appreciate, to merge the changes together.  I chose divorce over renewal.   

“Listen, I haven’t much time.  We can visit about all this when I see you.”  I hoped my assumption seeded our potential meeting.  “I need Lori’s number.”  My face flush as I’d neglected to commit my daughter’s cell to memory. 

Beth recited ten digits.  “Sounds like we may have some questionable investments to share when you’re back in Raleigh.”  I caught her invitation before the signal died.

I raced in hope before I forget Lori’s number.

Candle light hurdled sculpted archways.

“Hello, you have reached …” began, but my daughter’s voice interrupted, “Hello?”

“Lori, it’s dad.” Again, words escaped me.

“You dating someone?” Her voice threw up caution for yet another disappointment.

“No, I borrowed a phone.  I’m stranded at the Cathedral off Wabash.”

“Give me a few minutes.  I live just north of there.” 

Silence intercepted before I could thank her.  The eagerness in her voice replayed the joy-filled greetings I received when she ran to welcome me home each night as a toddler.  Humbled, I returned the stranger’s phone.

I wandered the dark corridor past the crypts of knighted cardinals to the church’s hot tub.  I sold my relationships … and … today’s court action guaranteed further loss of people I’d never know.  I traded stock in Lori’s childhood, silliness, music, service, …guy’s she dated.   When did she grow into a creative, articulate, young woman?

Anticipating the grand door opening, I stood visible in the light slicing the darkness across the pool of water.  An anxious child appeared in the face of a college senior.  She stood uncertain in life, in her studies, and in her father’s eyes.

The pool separated us.  Neither spoke.  Our eyes readjusted to gentle candlelight.  Lori dipped her fingers in the warm waters churning in the marble basin.  A gold hue painted her face. 

“I can do this on my own, dad.  I … I don’t want your help.”  Despite the darkness, I saw the same girl I’d brushed aside with her poetry as I had with her dreams.  The water rippled over her supple fingers.    

“You’re toxic, dad.  If we had any kind of relationship, you’d know I didn’t enter this charity to become rich on the backs of the less fortunate.”

“I agree.  Our CEO’s salary needs correction.”  She lifted warmth to her cheek. “You succeed at what cost?”

Her tempo conveyed she’d thoughtfully chosen her words.  “You possess.  You’re good at it.  But you have no relationships.  No real risks.  ‘Having’ replaces ‘being.’  You collect portfolios rather than experiences.  You quantify pain and sell it rather than feel it.  You spread a culture of death … cutting peoples’ jobs …  bankrupting the critically ill.”

Gurgling waters mesmerized her … offering her peace. 

“You know who Joan of Arc was?”

“A French peasant girl who battled the evil English.”  Lori smiled as if she’d won at trivia.

“I’ve lost big, lost too much of you ... I fear I’ve lost more than I know.” 

A tear trickled over her cheek.  It glistened during its fall to the pool. I rounded the basin to embrace her.  We sat in silence momentarily before exiting the cathedral. 

“You smell bad.”  Lori laughed creating a buffer with open palms.  “I know it’s a long story.”

“Yes, it is.”

“You know, mom said if you’re not doing anything …” Lori left the invitation open.

“I’d like that.”  We pushed through heavy doors onto the street.  “Care to take a walk?  We need to search the bars for Mark Twain before we go?”

“Who?” Lori joked as if she didn’t hear me correctly.

“A new friend …”  I smiled.

Merry Christmas,

Tim Morrison Ó 2016