Read Online Skipping Christmas by John Grisham - Free Book Online Page A

the thought of crawling into the thing after someone else had just left. He quickly sprayed it with Windex, wiped it furiously, then rechecked the locked door, undressed as if someone might see him, and very delicately crawled into the tanning bed.
    He stretched and adjusted until things were as comfortable as they would get, then pulled the top down, hit the On switch, and began to bake. Nora’d been twice and wasn’t sure she’d tan again because halfway through her last session someone rattled the doorknob and gave her a start. She blurted something, couldn’t remember exactly what due to the terror of the moment, and as she instinctively jerked upward she cracked her head on the top of the BronzeMat.
    Luther’d been blamed for that too. Laughing about it hadn’t helped him.
    Before long he was drifting away, drifting to the Island Princess with its four pools and dark, fit bodies lounging around, drifting to the white sandy beaches of Jamaica and Grand Cayman,drifting through the warm still waters of the Caribbean.
    A buzzer startled him. His twenty-two minutes were up. Three sessions now and Luther could finally see some improvement in the rickety mirror on the wall. Just a matter of time before someone around the office commented on his tan. They were all so envious.
    As he hurried back to work, his skin still warm, his stomach even flatter after another skipped meal, it began to sleet.
    Luther caught himself dreading the drive home. Things were fine until he turned onto Hemlock. Next door, Becker was adding more lights to his shrubs, and, for spite, he was emphasizing the end of his lawn next to Luther’s garage. Trogdon had so many lights you couldn’t tell if he was adding more, but Luther suspected he was. Across the street, next door to Trogdon, Walt Scheel was decorating more each day. This from a guy who’d hardly hung the first strand a year ago.
    And now, next door—on the east side of the Kranks’—Swade Kerr had suddenly been seized with the spirit of Christmas and was wrapping his scrawny little boxwoods with brand-new redand green blinking lights. The Kerrs homeschooled their brood of children and generally kept them locked in the basement. They refused to vote, did yoga, ate only vegetables, wore sandals with thick socks in the wintertime, avoided employment, and claimed to be atheists. Very crunchy, but not bad neighbors. Swade’s wife, Shirley, with a hyphenated last name, had trust funds.
    “They’ve got me surrounded,” Luther muttered to himself as he parked in his garage, then sprinted into the house and locked the door behind him.
    “Look at these,” Nora said with a frown, and after a peck on the cheek, the obligatory “How was your day?”
    Two pastel-colored envelopes, the obvious. “What is it?” he snapped. The last thing Luther wanted to see was Christmas cards with their phony little messages. Luther wanted food, which tonight would be baked fish with steamed veggies.
    He pulled out both cards, each with a Frosty on the front. Nothing was signed. No return address on the envelope.
    Anonymous Christmas cards.
    “Very funny,” he said, flinging them onto the table.
    “I thought you’d like them. They were postmarked in the city.”
    “It’s Frohmeyer,” Luther said, yanking off his tie. “He loves a practical joke.”
    Halfway through dinner, the doorbell rang. A couple of large bites and Luther could’ve cleaned his plate, but Nora was preaching the virtues of eating slowly. He was still hungry when he got to his feet and mumbled something about who could it be now?
    The fireman’s name was Kistler and the medic was Kendall, both young and lean, in great shape from countless hours pumping iron down at the station, no doubt at taxpayer expense, Luther thought to himself as he invited them inside, just barely through the front door. It was another annual ritual, another perfect example of what was wrong with Christmas.
    Kistler’s uniform was navy and Kendall’s