Every waitress dusted off her Santa hat and clip-on reindeer antlers and checked to make sure that there were four good pens in her apron. The two weeks before and after Christmas provided a welcome wave of cash into the town’s coffers, tourist-starved since summer. Which is not to say that the locals didn’t get into the Christmas spirit. Pine Cove was expecting only one of the two. Both were vast and irresistible, and miraculous. Christmas was coming, and with Christmas this year, would come the Child. Pine Cove, sleepy California coastal village-a toy town, really, with more art galleries than gas stations, more wine-tasting rooms than hardware stores-lay there, as inviting as a drunken prom queen, as Christmas loomed, only five days away. Pine Cove, her pseudo-Tudor architecture all tarted up in holiday quaintage-twinkle lights in all the trees along Cypress Street, fake snow blown into the corner of every shop’s windows, miniature Santas and giant candles hovering illuminated beneath every streetlight-opened to the droves of tourists from Los Angeles, San Francisco, and the Central Valley searching for a truly meaningful moment of Christmas commerce. Christmas crept into Pine Cove like a creeping Christmas thing: dragging garland, ribbon, and sleigh bells, oozing eggnog, reeking of pine, and threatening festive doom like a cold sore under the mistletoe.
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