Finally we got back, down on the streets of hell. And Nick says, "Another year to go."

And I say, "Nick, thanks for letting me be part of it. Maybe it's not good enough for them, but it's good enough for me."

And he grins and even though he doesn't move, it feels like he just clapped me on the shoulder, and he says, "Then it's good enough for me, too." And off he goes.

Only there's something wrong with this picture. I'm seeing him but there's more to him than the red suit. There's a kind of jauntiness in his step, and even though that's probably my own mind creating the image that fits what I'm sensing about him, the fact is that it's still true. Nick just failed for the fifteen hundredth time to get into heaven, and he's almost dancing.

"Hey!" says I. "Hey, Santa!"

He turns around and there we are, face to face, and I say, "What are you so happy about?"

"It was a good Christmas," he says, all innocentlike, and I know he's not lying because you can't, but he's also not exactly answering me.

"How come you didn't make it this year?" I demanded.

"I don't think you get a list," he says.

"Bull," says I. "I came out of that light knowing every little sin I ever committed. You got the whole inventory, Nick. And I want to know what it is that keeps you out."

He turns around slowly, indicating the street around him. All the Christmas decorations are still up, of course, and there in every window, there's his face, Santa Claus, grinning and selling stuff. "It's all that," he says.

"What, the Christmas decorations?"

"The fact that it's my face and not his."

"You don't paint those pictures! You don't hang them up!"

"Yeah, but I like it that they're there. I like being famous. He never did."

"And that's it? That's all?"

"I don't even know if that's the reason," he says. "Because they don't give me a list of sins. But it's a story. Better than nothing, right?"