Technology – Blu-ray DVD discs

With his feet toasty and besocked with heavy wool, Luther fell fast asleep and woke up even faster. Nora was roaming. She was in the bathroom flushing and flipping lights, then she left for the kitchen, where she fixed an herbal tea, then he heard her down the hall in Blair’s room, no doubt staring at the walls and sniffling over where the years had gone. Then she was back in bed, rolling and jerking covers and trying her best to wake him. She wanted dialogue, a sounding board. She wanted Luther to assure her Blair was safe from the horrors of the Peruvian jungle.
But Luther was frozen, not flinching at any joint, breathing as heavily as possible because if the dialogue began again it would run for hours. He pretended to snore and that settled her down.
It was after eleven when she grew still. Luther was wild-eyed, and his feet were smoldering. When he was absolutely certain she was asleep, he eased from the bed, ripped off the heavy socks and tossed them into a corner, and tiptoed down the hall to the kitchen for a glass of water. Then a pot of decaf.
An hour later he was in his basement office, at his desk with files open, the computer humming, spreadsheets in the printer, an investigator searching for evidence. Luther was a tax accountant by trade, so his records were meticulous. The evidence piled up and he forgot about sleep.
A year earlier, the Luther Krank family had spent $6,100 on Christmas-$6,100!-$6,100 on decorations, lights, flowers, a new Frosty, and a Canadian spruce; $6,100 on hams, turkeys, pecans, cheese balls, and cookies no one ate; $6,100 on wines and liquors and cigars around the office; $6,100 on fruitcakes from the firemen and the rescue squad, and calendars from the police association; $6,100 on Luther for a cashmere sweater he secretly loathed and a sports jacket he’d worn twice and an ostrich skin wallet that was quite expensive and quite ugly and frankly he didn’t like the feel of. On Nora for a dress she wore to the company’s Christmas dinner and her own cashmere sweater, which had not been seen since she unwrapped it, and a designer scarf she loved, $6,100. On Blair $6,100 for an overcoat, gloves and boots, and a Walkman for her jogging, and, of course, the latest, slimmest cell phone on the market-$6,100 on lesser gifts for a select handful of distant relatives, most on Nora’s side-$6,100 on Christmas cards from a stationer three doors down from Chip’s, in the District, where all prices were double; $6,100 for the party, an annual Christmas Eve bash at the Krank home,
And what was left of it? Perhaps a useful item or two, but nothing much-$6,100!

A crowd had stopped to watch the old Mexican decorate his cigar store window. He was plugging in little robots who trudged through the fake snow, and this delighted the crowd no end, Luther was forced to move off the curb, and in doing so he stepped just left instead of just right. His left foot sank into five inches of cold slush. He froze for a split second, sucking in lungfuls of cold air, cursing the old Mexican and his robots and his fans and the damned pistachios. He yanked his foot upward and slung dirty water on his pants leg, and standing at the curb, with two frozen feet and the bell clanging away and ‘Santa Claus Is Coming to Town’ blaring from the loudspeaker and the sidewalk blocked by revelers, Luther began to hate Christmas.

And every shop was full. Another Santa clanged away with the same bell outside the cheese shop. ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer rattled from a hidden speaker above the sidewalk in front of Mother Earth, where the crunchy people were no doubt still wearing their sandals. Luther hated the store-refused to set foot inside. Nora bought organic herbs there, for what reason he’d never been certain. The old Mexican who owned the cigar store was happily stringing lights in his window, pipe stuck in the corner of his mouth, smoke drifting behind him, fake snow already sprayed on a fake tree.
There was a chance of real snow later in the night. The shoppers wasted no time as they hustled in and out of the stores. The sock on Luther’s right foot was now frozen to his ankle.
There were no shopping baskets near the checkout at Chip’s, and of course this was a bad sign. Luther didn’t need one, but it meant the place was packed. The aisles were narrow and the inventory was laid out in such a way that nothing made sense. Regardless of what was on your list, you had to crisscross the place half a dozen times to finish up.