The stupidest angel: a heartwarming tale of Christmas terror

suspected her in Dale's disappearance. Yeah, fat chance, with Molly obsessing on Theo's – whatever it was that Theo was supposed to have done wrong. It sounded to Lena like he had just taken a salad shooter to work with him. You were supposed to empathize with your friend's problems, but they were, after all, your friend's problems, and Lena's friends, Molly in particular, could be a little wacky.

    The bar was full of singles in their twenties and thirties and you could feel a desperate energy sparking around the dark room, like loneliness was the negative and sex was the positive and someone was brushing the wires together over an open bucket of gasoline. This was the fallout of the holiday heartbreak cycle that started with young men who, lacking any stronger motivation toward changing their lives, would break up with their current girlfriend in order to avoid having to buy her a Christmas present. The distraught women would sulk for a few days, eat ice cream, and avoid calling relatives, but then, as the idea of a solitary Christmas and New Year started to loom large, they swarmed into the Slug in search of a companion, virtually any companion, with whom they could pass the holidays. Full speed ahead and forget the presents. Pine Cove's male singles, to display their newfound freedom, would descend on the Slug, and avail themselves of the affections of dejected women in a game of small-town sexual musical chairs played hungrily to the tune of "Deck the Halls" – everyone hoping to have slipped drunkenly into someone more comfortable before the last fa was la-la-ed.

    There might have been a bubble around Lena and Molly, however, for they were obviously not part of the game. While both were certainly more than attractive enough to garner attention from the younger men, they had about them a mystique of experience, of having been there and moved on, of unbullshitability. Essentially, they scared the hell out of all but the drunkest of the Slug's suitors, and the fact that they were drinking straight diet Coke scared the hell out of the drunks. Molly and Lena, despite their own personal distress, had slain their own holiday desperation dragons, which was how the Lonesome Christmas party had started in the first place. Now they were on to new, individual anxieties.

    "Sloppy joes," said Mavis, a great cloud of low-tar smoke powering the announcement and washing over Lena and Molly. It had been illegal to smoke in California bars for years, but Mavis ignored the law and the authorities (Theophilus Crowe) and smoked on. "Who doesn't like his meat sloppy on a bun?"

    "Mavis, it's Christmas," Lena said. So far Mavis had only suggested soupy or saucy entrйes – Lena suspected that Mavis had misplaced her dentures again and was therefore lobbying for a gummable feast.

    "With pickles, then. Red sauce, green pickles, Christmas theme."

    "I mean shouldn't we do something nice for Christmas? Not just sloppy joes?"

    "At five bucks a head, I told her that barbecue was the only way to feed them." Mavis leaned in and looked at Molly, who was muttering malevolently into her ice cubes. "But everyone seems to think it's going to rain. Like it ever rains in December."

    Molly looked up and growled a little, then looked at the television screen behind Mavis and pointed. The sound was muted, but there was a weather map of California. About eight hundred miles off the coast there was a great blob of color whirling in jump-frame satellite-photo motion, making it appear that a Technicolor amoeba was about to consume the Bay Area.

    "Ain't nothin'," Mavis said. "They won't even give it a name. If that thing was crouched like that over Bermuda, they'd have given it a name two days ago. Know why? 'Cause they don't come onshore here. That bitch will turn right a hundred miles off Anacapa Island and go down and dump all over the Yucatan. Meanwhile we won't be able to wash our cars because of the drought."

    "The rain at least will stop any sand-pirate attacks," Molly said, crunching an ice cube.

    "Huh?" said Lena.

    "The hell did you say?" Mavis adjusted her hearing aid.

    "Nothing," Molly said. "What do you guys think about lasagna? You know, some garlic bread, a little salad."

    "Yeah, we can probably do it for five bucks a head if we don't use sauce or cheese," said Mavis.

    "Lasagna just doesn't seem very Christmasy," said Lena.

    "We could put it in Santa Claus pans," Molly suggested.

    "No!" Lena snapped. "No Santas! We can do a