On the pier, I had to lie almost prone on the cement to get my cigarette lit. The wind off the bay made cyclones of hard, light snow that stung my face like shrapnel. The melt dripped off my nose and onto my lips, and the cigarette started to get damp. I inhaled steam. It made a crackling noise.

Abigail and Rachel sat on a bench, their feet kicked up on the edge of the pier. They had removed enough snow to make two grooves for seats. Abigail’s head was lolled back, her mouth open, as if she had lost the will or ability to support them. Rachel leaned forward, her chin in her hands, an unlit cigarette in her mouth, steam coming out of her nose. The water gulped and gasped under the pier with the retreating tide.

I cleared a seat next to Rachel and sat down. The bench was cold. I plucked my cigarette and pressed the tip to Rachel’s. She inhaled deeply and it glowed to life. I stuck the mine back between my teeth and said around it, “See anything yet?”

Rachel shook her head. “Nope,” she said, “but I can hear it.”

I cocked my head and scratched my ear. “I don’t hear anything,” I said.

“Shh,” she said. “You have to listen close. Hold your breath.”

I took a deep breath and held it in. Rachel pressed her lips together and watched me. I could hear Abigail’s deep open-mouth inhalations and exhalations, and the water below us, and the snow in the wind, and my heartbeat. I closed my eyes. My nose started to go numb.

“Do you hear it?” whispered Rachel.

“Hold on,” I said, not ready to admit defeat. I noticed that Abigail was breathing in time with the waves. For a moment the whole pier felt alive, in that way that fish frozen under the ice or rodents hibernating underground are still alive. Then, somewhere in the distance, I heard sleigh bells. I adjusted the angle of my ear.

“Jingle Bells,” I said. I opened my eyes. “Right?”

“Jingle Bells,” said Rachel. She raised her arm and pointed towards the mouth of the bay. I could see the lighthouse and the streetlights of the peninsula, but Rachel was pointing slightly off, between our side of the bay and the other, where the water turned black and the horizon disappeared. “They’re gonna come in from over there,” she said.

I nodded. Rachel put her head on my shoulder and sighed, a long cloudy sigh of commiseration or acceptance or frustration. I turned my head, rested my chin on her hair, and looked at Abigail. Snow was melting on her forehead. Her hair glistened. She was still breathing in time with the water. It didn’t look like she was in the throes of a drug-induced ego-destroying journey, but her pupils were still the size of dimes and she wasn’t her normal talkative self.

“Hey,” I whispered into Rachel’s hair, “what are you thinking about?”

Rachel rearranged her coat, shifted her weight, and said, “Santa.”

“Claus?” I asked. She rolled her eyes.

“Yes, Claus. The Santa.” She tapped ash into the snow between her and Abigail. “I think he’s got the best job in the world.”

“Why? Because he gives happiness and joy to children all over the world?”

“No,” said Rachel. A smile pulled at the corner of her mouth, scraping against my jacket. “Because he only has to work one day a year.”

Abigail tensed. I saw it in the corner of my eye and felt the shockwave go through Rachel, into my chin. She snapped her head up from recline and followed through with the momentum until she was leaning forward, neck outstretched.

“What is it?” I said.

“Look!” said Abigail. She pointed with two index fingers at the opening in the bay. A mass of white light was slipping through the blackness, cutting it in two. The sound of music, of jingling bells and changing chords and “Sleigh Ride,” became more pronounced. It traveled over the water like oil. Without moving her fingers, Abigail turned to me and Rachel. Her eyes had grown exponentially, and a smile split her face so wide it looked as if it would push all the other features off. “It’s Santa Claus!”

Rachel laughed, a biting gulping laugh in the cold air that she couldn’t have kept in if she had tried. She buried it in my shoulder. I rested my smile on Rachel’s head and said, “Yeah?”

“Yeah!” said Abigail. She stood up on the edge of the pier. Her toes jutted over the side. Clumps of snow fell noiselessly into the water. “He’s flying! He’s in the air in his sleigh with his lights and his bells and he’s flying.”

The boat made a slow journey towards us, into the calm waters of the bay. It would pass near us before it went back to some private dock, where the merrymakers would probably get cider and candy canes and call themselves warm cabs. They cheered and sang off key, and the noise hit the shore on all sides.

“I don’t think that’s Santa,” said Rachel.

“What?” said Abigail. She looked over her shoulder. Standing up there on the lip of the pier she was a good two heads above us. “You don’t believe in Santa?”

“That’s not what I said,” said Rachel.

“Where are the reindeer?” I asked. “If that’s Santa’s sleigh, he’s gotta have some reindeer.”

Abigail pivoted, faced us, knocked more snow into the darkness. She turned the question over in her head. Slowly, one word at a time, she said, “Santa’s reindeer aren’t normal reindeer.”

“Oh, of course,” I said.

“Obviously,” added Rachel.

“So they might not look like reindeer to us,” said Abigail. “They might not look like reindeer to us at all.”

The people on the boat cheered. They were more distinct now. White lights were strung all around the decks, all around the boat, along with tinsel and Christmas decorations. The crowd on the main deck was watching five or six piece jazz band, and the band members were all wearing suits and Santa hats. Everybody had a drink in their hand. They were going to pass really close, it seemed; close enough that we could hit them with snowballs. I imagined I could smell the odor of alcohol coming in across the water. The band struck up “Jingle Bell Rock.”

“Hey!” shouted Abigail, turning around again. “Merry Christmas, Santa!” She cupped her hands around her mouth and leaned out, over the edge, over the water. “Merry—”

It didn’t look like she fell; it looked like she disappeared. One minute she was there and the next instant she wasn’t, and unlike the snow she’d been kicking there was a tremendous splash when she hit the water. The people on the boat mixed and mingled to a jingling beat and Rachel and I spit out our cigarettes yelling Abigail’s name.

One step got me off the bench. A second got me on the lip of the pier. A third put me in the air, and as I fell in slow motion, I didn’t think about Christmas or Santa or my plans to watch the boat and split a bottle of wine with Rachel, but about how I told Sal we would keep an eye on Abigail. How I told him I would keep an eye on her, and she had disappeared. Now Rachel was saying my name, or at least I think she was, but I only heard the first syllable before I was underwater.

Ice water boiled my skin. Every muscle in my body tensed. My legs tensed down, my arms tensed out, like a starfish, and I kicked in mad fury until my head broke water and I gasped out a burst of steam. I blinked water out of my eyes and hoped they wouldn’t freeze shut.

I sputtered something like “A-a-abig-g-gail.” She was next to me, treading water, shivering. Of course she was. For some reason I’d thought she wouldn’t remember how to swim. I thought she would sink.

“Wh-wh-wh,” she said. “Wh-what are you doing down here?” She was breathing heavily, her head back, and her blonde hair spread out in the water like sunlight.

My body started to go numb. I reached out in both directions — for Abigail with one, for a dock, a ladder, anything, in the other. My hands found Abigail’s jacket and a mooring line. I made a fist and the feeling left my fingers. I hoped my body to keep them clenched.

“Hey!” said Rachel. I looked up. She was leaning over the edge of the pier. Her scarf was hanging from her hand, a sorry plaid lifeline, and there was a look on her face that I had never seen before. The lights from the Christmas cruise glinted in the wetness on her cheeks.

I pulled. I pulled the mooring line with one arm, Abigail with the other, and Abigail started to kick in my direction. Some animal part of her brain had realized the gravity of the situation. The line was tied to a floating dock, covered with knots and frozen barnacles and seaweed. The dock floated closer or I moved towards it. Rachel threw herself onto the ladder that went down to the dock.

The cold bit through my veins. There was something in the water, something in the cold and the wet and the weight of the water itself that was pulling me down, pulling me away from the dock, pulling me away from Rachel. I told my legs to kick but they didn’t seem to listen. The music, I realized, had stopped. The thrum of the cruise boat had stopped. It was replaced by something like screaming. My vision went in and out of focus, and I told myself that I wasn’t losing consciousness. All the liquid in my eyes, in my entire body, was simply freezing.

Abigail got on the dock first, and she took over the pulling. She pulled herself up onto the wooden planks and collapsed with a sound like laundry being dropped. I felt her arms wrap around one of mine. Someone else — Rachel, an angel, Santa — wrapped their arms around the other. Everything went numb, and I was lifted.

We lay there on our backs, looking up. It was a starless night. Rachel threw an arm over mine and started doing something to my cheek. I think it was kissing. She may have been whispering. I couldn’t feel anything. The party cruise floated nearby and I heard footsteps, the sound of somebody coming towards the dock. “Don’t move,” somebody said, “we called an ambulance.”

“Who’s that?” said Abigail.

“It’s the reindeer,” I said. “You were right. It’s the reindeer.” And I started to laugh. Abigail started to laugh to, and swung her arm playfully at mine. I know it hit because it made a sound. Rachel kept breathing, or kissing, or something, on my cheek, and the feeling started to come back.

I closed my eyes and listened to our breathing. It drowned out the water. I held my breath and listened and was able to make out what Rachel was doing. She was kissing my cheek and whispering, “Why? Why did you do that?”

“It’s Christmas Eve,” I said. I turned my head sideways. Tears dripped over Rachel’s nose. Someone’s feet landed on the pier behind her. I whispered, “This is my one day of work this year.” Then I smiled, and she smiled back, and we pressed them together and they turned into a kiss and we started to laugh.