Chapter 77
Colin sallied forth. “One Christmas Eve, just like this one, Santa was in Mexico, just like we are, and he needed a reindeer to pull his sleigh.”
“Rudolph!” cried several of the audience members, mercifully missing the horrifying euphemism. Joaquin choked back a laugh. I silently calculated how long it would take me to swim back to the hotel from which we had just come in a waterlogged reindeer suit, and at precisely which point I would drown trying.
“But Rudolph hadn’t come to Mexico,” Colin said.
“How come?” asked a nephew.
“He stayed at the North Pole with Clarice, his wife, who was having a baby. In a manger, actually, because she was a reindeer, but this isn’t that story. This is the story of how Santa had to choose between his two favorite reindeer, on a night just like this one.”
“Colin,” Joaquin and I said together.
“Could you not?” I added.