I came across a wonderful live reading on NPR's Selected Shorts one afternoon in the car. Alas, it was a rebroadcast from 2020 and the podcast is unavailable. So I managed to track down a print version to share. It's a lovely, spiced fruit bread filled with holiday fare: friendship, childhood wishes and memories, love and loneliness and clairvoyant vodka.
-Christmas in New York from Christmas Days, 2016-
The week before Christmas me and the guys at work liked to go out for a cocktail and a few plates. There’s a place we know on 12th Street called Wallflower, where the ceiling’s made of tin and the banquettes are made of orange stuff. It serves French food and American cocktails.
The night we went out we got talking about Christmas past – our childhoods mostly, when, according to memory, our affidavit against history, Christmas wasn’t commercialised, so although no one went shopping there were always presents under the tree. Kids went sledging and came home to play board games in front of the fire. Everyone had an old dog and a grandma who played piano. We all wore hand-knitted sweaters.
Everybody built a snowman with a carrot for his nose and a scarf around his neck and sang ‘Winter Wonderland’.
And on Christmas Eve you did your damn best to stay awake and see the fella in red in his sleigh – and you never did see him, but he came anyway, and drank the whisky on the kitchen counter.
‘Santa was an alcoholic.’
‘Yeah, but he spends the rest of the year in rehab.’
‘You want another bourbon? Martini? Twinkle?’
‘Come on, guys! This one’s on me.’
I got up to go to the restroom. I sat down again. Seeing double.
‘Sam? Are you OK?’
It was Lucille, squeezing in next to me in her little grey dress with the white collar. She works in the drawing office. I work in design. I tell her I’m fine.
‘You didn’t say anything when we were all talking about Christmas – don’t you like Christmas?’
The fact is: I don’t like Christmas. I don’t know what it’s for these days – except for running up bills you can’t pay and fighting with your relatives. I live alone so I have an easy time of it. I live alone. That’s good.
‘I’m going home for Christmas,’ said Lucille; ‘what about you?’
‘I’m staying home,’ I replied.
‘On your own?’ said Lucille.
‘Yeah. I need some me-time. Y’know?’
Lucille nodded like she was shaking her head. Then she said, ‘So tell me a story about your Christmas past. Just one.’
‘Choose any of them you like, they were all the same. We didn’t celebrate Christmas.’
‘Is your family Jewish?’
‘No. Just unpleasant.’
I didn’t say any more right then because the others had started singing their version of ‘Fairytale of New York’, which was even worse than The Pogues’.
I mean, what is this bonhomie? Is it because we’re in a bogus French bar that we have to have bogus French feelings, and kiss each other like it’s true?
It’s not true, but here they are, my colleagues, clinking glasses and feeding each other prawns.
Lucille leaned forward and joined in and I guessed that was the end of the Yuletide interrogation. I took a deep breath, made it to the restroom one more time, and decided to cut away right there and walk home.
I took my coat from the rail and looked back at the group. Enjoy yourselves.
Outside on the sidewalk there were people laughing, arm in arm, holding their faces up to the falling snow.
What’s the big deal? Snow’s just rain that’s been left out in the cold.
‘I love it when it snows,’ said Lucille, suddenly standing next to me in her Russian fur hat and Doctor Zhivago greatcoat. Lucille’s OK but strange. She brings flowers to the office. She said, ‘Do you want to walk for a while?’
So we set off through the white light and the gentle screen of quiet snow. The streets were noisy but didn’t seem so. The snow quieted the city and lowered the pulse rate of the place. And the late air smelled clean.
‘This broken world,’ I said.
‘What?’ she said.
‘Hart Crane.’
‘Oh . . . ’
So we walked; past the bars and the eateries, and the small shops open late, and the guy selling bags under a tarpaulin, and the bundle of rags sitting up in the doorway with a sign that said MERRY CHRISTMAS FOLKS. The vent next to him shot out steam and the chemical crack of dry-cleaning. Lucille gave him five dollars.
‘So what was your Christmas past?’
‘Nothing – nada, I told you. No decorations, no tree, no gifts, no family meal. My father drove trucks across to Canada – he always chose the shift over Christmas – paid triple, he said, though what it paid triple for, what he spent it on, I don’t know.’
‘Are you saying you’ve never had a Christmas gift?’
‘No! I’m a grown man. I’ve had girlfriends. I have friends. They’ve given me gifts, of course! But Christmas itself means nothing to me.’
There was a small dog on a leash jumping and snapping at the snow like he could catch it.
‘Christmas does mean something to you,’ said Lucille. ‘Christmas means sadness.’
Oh, no, I said to myself, she’s New Age or she sees a shrink five times a week. Gimme a break.
We reached the corner by the deli – its plastic frontage protecting a row of Christmas trees in pots. I smelled cold pine and detergent.
‘This is where I turn off,’ I said.
‘Your beard’s white,’ she said. ‘Seasonal.’
I brushed the snow from my chin, pushed my hands into my coat pockets and set off down the block. About halfway I turned round. I don’t know why. Lucille had gone. Of course she had gone. Girls don’t stand on street corners in the snow.
I went up the stairs to my apartment – it’s a one-bedroom in a building with a doorman who is dead but kept for show, and because it’s cheaper than getting someone who’s alive, I guess. He sits in his booth with the TV on. I’ve lived here two years. I’ve seen the back of his head but I’ve never seen him move.
I unlocked my door – three locks in a rectangular blank plate of unforgiving steel – and turned on the light. My apartment is like my clothes – I don’t care but you have to wear something. I took this place furnished. I have never brought in anything of my own.
Right in front of me in the middle of the room like it belonged there. A Christmas tree.
I ran back downstairs and thumped on the booth where the doorman is supposed to be alive and well and willing to help the residents of the building.
No response. I swear he turned up the sound on the TV.
Then I’ll have to call the police . . .
I’d like to report an incident.
What kinda incident?
There’s a Christmas tree in my apartment.
Fella, you been drinking tonight?
No. Yes. But not a lot. I mean, somebody has broken into my apartment and left a Christmas tree.
Any material damage? Anything missing?
No.
Buddy, call your pals, say thank you, and say goodnight. Happy holidays, and goodnight.
The line went dead. I phoned downstairs to the dead doorman. He didn’t pick up.
The following day was my last day at work. I got up early, which was easy as I hadn’t slept much. The Christmas tree was still there. I had to walk around it to reach the door. As I looked back, as I was closing the door, I was sure the tree was smiling.
At the office I said to Lucille, ‘Do you think trees can smile?’ She smiled in return, an open, kind smile I had never noticed before.
‘That’s not like you, Sam. That’s almost romantic.’
‘I’m a little distracted,’ I said.
It was a day of winter sun that sparkled the city into diamonds and pearls. Electric-blue sky lit like a neon. The windows of the big department stores like magic mirrors into another world.
I started to walk towards the Rockefeller Center, I don’t know why. The crowds are crazy, and everyone has six bags and no one can get a cab.
Every year the city brings in a seventy-foot Christmas tree and strings it with five miles of lights and tops it with a giant Swarovski crystal star.
I went forward, I don’t know why. Standing under the tree. The scale of it makes a grown man feel like a tiny child again.
Sam! Sam! You come on in now.
I want to see the tree, Mom. They’re bringing the tree from the forest!
You heard what I said. Get inside now or no supper.
Into the dark house. Into bed. And nothing.
‘Sam?’ It was Lucille. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Me, oh, I had an errand midtown.’
Lucille was still smiling – is she always smiling, and if so, why? She said, ‘I love coming to look at the tree. It makes me happy.’
‘It does? How does a tree make you happy?’
‘Because it’s free, and nothing’s free in New York, and it’s beautiful, and look how relaxed people are – with their children – and that old lady over there like she’s dreaming something good.’
‘She’s probably going to be all alone at Christmas,’ I said.
‘Are you?’ asked Lucille.
‘No, no. Of course not. Listen – have a good one, Lucille; I have to . . . ’
‘I was just heading into Bouchon for a hot chocolate. Want one?’
We reached the corner by the deli – its plastic frontage protecting a row of Christmas trees in pots. I smelled cold pine and detergent.
‘This is where I turn off,’ I said.
‘Your beard’s white,’ she said. ‘Seasonal.’
I brushed the snow from my chin, pushed my hands into my coat pockets and set off down the block. About halfway I turned round. I don’t know why. Lucille had gone. Of course she had gone. Girls don’t stand on street corners in the snow.
I went up the stairs to my apartment – it’s a one-bedroom in a building with a doorman who is dead but kept for show, and because it’s cheaper than getting someone who’s alive, I guess. He sits in his booth with the TV on. I’ve lived here two years. I’ve seen the back of his head but I’ve never seen him move.
I unlocked my door – three locks in a rectangular blank plate of unforgiving steel – and turned on the light. My apartment is like my clothes – I don’t care but you have to wear something. I took this place furnished. I have never brought in anything of my own.
Right in front of me in the middle of the room like it belonged there. A Christmas tree.
I ran back downstairs and thumped on the booth where the doorman is supposed to be alive and well and willing to help the residents of the building.
No response. I swear he turned up the sound on the TV.
Then I’ll have to call the police . . .
I’d like to report an incident.
What kinda incident?
There’s a Christmas tree in my apartment.
Fella, you been drinking tonight?
No. Yes. But not a lot. I mean, somebody has broken into my apartment and left a Christmas tree.
Any material damage? Anything missing?
No.
Buddy, call your pals, say thank you, and say goodnight. Happy holidays, and goodnight.
The line went dead. I phoned downstairs to the dead doorman. He didn’t pick up.
The following day was my last day at work. I got up early, which was easy as I hadn’t slept much. The Christmas tree was still there. I had to walk around it to reach the door. As I looked back, as I was closing the door, I was sure the tree was smiling.
At the office I said to Lucille, ‘Do you think trees can smile?’ She smiled in return, an open, kind smile I had never noticed before.
‘That’s not like you, Sam. That’s almost romantic.’
‘I’m a little distracted,’ I said.
It was a day of winter sun that sparkled the city into diamonds and pearls. Electric-blue sky lit like a neon. The windows of the big department stores like magic mirrors into another world.
I started to walk towards the Rockefeller Center, I don’t know why. The crowds are crazy, and everyone has six bags and no one can get a cab.
Every year the city brings in a seventy-foot Christmas tree and strings it with five miles of lights and tops it with a giant Swarovski crystal star.
I went forward, I don’t know why. Standing under the tree. The scale of it makes a grown man feel like a tiny child again.
Sam! Sam! You come on
in now.
I want to see the tree, Mom. They’re bringing the tree from the forest!
You heard what I said. Get inside now or no supper.
Into the dark house. Into bed. And nothing.
‘Sam?’ It was Lucille. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Me, oh, I had an errand midtown.’
Lucille was still smiling – is she always smiling, and if so, why? She said, ‘I love coming to look at the tree. It makes me happy.’
‘It does? How does a tree make you happy?’
‘Because it’s free, and nothing’s free in New York, and it’s beautiful, and look how relaxed people are – with their children – and that old lady over there like she’s dreaming something good.’
‘She’s probably going to be all alone at Christmas,’ I said.
‘Are you?’ asked Lucille.
‘No, no. Of course not. Listen – have a good one, Lucille; I have to . . . ’
‘I was just heading into Bouchon for a hot chocolate. Want one?’
And so we sat – and Lucille was still smiling, and I was still not, and she was chatting about the holidays and suddenly I said, ‘Last night, in my apartment, there was a Christmas tree. It just appeared.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I called the police.’
‘You called the police because there’s a Christmas tree in your apartment?’
A guy in a plaid fleece squeezed by carrying two gingerbread mochas. He leaned down and said to Lucille, audible for my benefit, ‘Get yourself a better date, sweetheart.’
Lucille laughed, but I didn’t see what was so funny. I called at his back, ‘She’s not my date!’
The guy in plaid turned round. ‘So you’re stupid. I get it. Happy holidays.’
‘Somebody broke into my apartment! Asshole!’
But the guy in plaid had gone, and I was on my feet, embarrassed and alone. I wasn’t alone. Lucille was still there.
‘Did you like it?’ she said.
‘The chocolate’s great, yeah . . . thanks.’
‘The tree. Did you like the tree?’
I was walking back home, alone, thinking about what she had said. Do I like it that for the first time in my whole life of thirty-two years I have a Christmas tree in my home?
I rounded the corner. The Afghans who run the deli were standing outside. I said, ‘Did you deliver a tree to my apartment last night?’
They shook their heads and offered me some chestnuts from the hot pan. Am I going home for the holidays? No? They would like to go home. One of them took out his wallet and showed me a crumpled printed picture of the house where his parents lived – a single-storey building made of concrete set against a steep mountain topped with snow. He didn’t say anything – held the picture, like it was a light or a mirror, or an answer to a question. Then a woman came in wanting oranges.
I went inside and bought some cooked chicken with rice and cashews and apricots, and headed round the corner towards my building. My apartment is on the fourth floor with the living-room window onto the street.
There’s a light in my window, coming from inside, somewhere. Like a low lamp. I don’t own a low lamp. I’m a centre-light man.
I rushed into the building.
The Dead Doorman was in his booth watching TV. I stood outside waving my hands to attract his attention but all I heard was the TV set turned up louder. He’s gonna explode the set.
There’s no elevator in my building, so I climbed up the stairs two at a time, spilling some of the juice out of the chicken container. I opened the door – all three locks are tumbled. No sign of a forced entry. Inside, I reached for the light switch but there’s no need.
The Christmas tree is lit up.
Outside on the stairs I can hear someone breathing heavily. I hang back in the doorway, tense, expecting something to happen. Instead Mrs Noblovsky from the fifth floor comes heaving by, carrying or being carried by a flotilla of gaudy bags. I can barely see her. ‘Let me help you,’ I say, because I have to say that.
Mrs Noblovsky pauses, panting, outside my apartment. She sees the serenely glowing Christmas tree through the door, and sighs. ‘So nice, Sam; mine own iz plaztik.’
‘Would you like this one? You can have it if you want it. I can carry it upstairs for you.’
‘Such a good boy. A kind boy. No vank you. I am goink to my daughter tomorrov in Feel-a-del-fia. You must ve havink Christmaz here to hav that fine tree.’
And then she’s on her way up the next flight of stairs, me behind carrying the bags, hearing about Christmas in Soviet Russia and her grandmother’s special vodka that made anyone who drank it clairvoyant.
‘When I voz three, Grandmama says to me, “Agata, you vill live in Amerika.” And here I am.’
There’s no arguing with that. She opens the apartment and I dump her bags in the hall. Her place is bigger than mine. I’ve never seen inside before.
Everything is brown – chocolate carpets, caramel furniture, velvet curtains the colour of coffee. There’s a mahogany standard lamp with a seaweed-brown fringed shade and an ancient TV in a veneer cabinet on legs. The distinct low rumble from the fridge makes the apartment sound like it’s digesting. It’s like she’s living inside a big brown bear.
Mrs Noblovsky fetches me a bottle from a cupboard. ‘Vodka,’ she says, pressing it into my hand. ‘Clairvoyant. My babushka’s recipe. My brother in Brooklyn makes it from potatoes.’
‘Are potatoes clairvoyant?’
‘There iz a secret ingredient. Family secret. Take it. You are a good boy.’
I protest, hesitate, hesitate, protest. Then I suddenly think of something. ‘Mrs Noblovsky, the doorman – downstairs – is he alive, do you think?’
‘I think zo,’ she says, ‘vhy?’
‘I’ve lived here two years now and he’s never spoken to me.’
‘He spoke to me about twenty years ago. I had a gaz leak. Vhy you want him to speak to you? You hav a gaz leak?’
‘He’s the doorman.’
She shrugged and turned on the TV. I thanked her for the vodka and went downstairs.
Back in my apartment there’s the tree. The glowing tree. Whoever did this had good taste in fairy lights but that is not the point. I ate the chicken and rice and cashews and left the apricots. I could have turned off the tree lights. Instead I sat staring at them. By the time I’d had four of Mrs Noblovsky’s clairvoyant vodkas I almost liked the tree. I could see myself buying something similar next Christmas.
I fell asleep on the couch.
‘I bought this for you, Mom. It’s a Christmas present.’
‘We don’t celebrate Christmas, Sam.’
‘Why not?’
‘We never have and we never will.’
‘I saved my pocket money.’
My mother unwrapped the present. It was a butter dish made of aluminum. In the shape of a clam shell. ‘It’s silver, I think,’ I said.
‘Thank you, Sam.’
‘Do you like it?’
Cold light of day. The garbage truck woke me. I went to the window. Still dark on the block. More snow in the night like a secret we keep. The truck pulled away and the dirty tyre tracks were soon filled with white feathers from the snow goose in the sky.
Snow goose? What’s the matter with me?
Get up and go out, get what you need. It’s Christmas Eve.
I went down to Russ and Daughters. Bought lox and cream cheese and pastrami. They were handing out free cookies. I took some. Round the corner is their eat-place and I thought maybe some roe on toast and a cocktail would be the right thing at 9am on Christmas Eve.
I swung in, sat at the counter and picked up the menu that serves as a mat.
‘Hello,’ said Lucille.
She was drinking coffee at a table. ‘Care to
join me?’
Why not? I thought. Hell, the same woman is everywhere I go, and I have a light-up Christmas tree and a bottle of clairvoyant vodka in my apartment.
I explained this to her. Not the part about her but the other parts. She nodded sympathetically. ‘Shall we have an ice-cream?’
‘At nine-thirty in the morning?’
‘That’s somehow worse than a Martini at nine o’clock in the morning?’
She had a point. We ate the ice-cream; ginger for me, strawberry for her. ‘Are you at your friends’ place tomorrow,’ she said, ‘or will they come to you?’
‘We’ll decide later on,’ I said, panicking. I mean, I do have friends, but not at Christmas, but I’m not telling her that part either.
She nodded. ‘So do you want to come shopping? A few last-minute gifts?’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t do gifts. It’s not a tradition of mine.’
‘Didn’t you ever make a list for Santa Claus?’
‘He’s make-believe,’ I said.
‘Wasn’t there ever anything you wanted so badly you wrote to Santa about it?’
‘Are you kidding me?’
She wasn’t.
‘Well, I always hoped I’d get a toboggan, a real wooden one with a leather rein and steel runners.’
‘You could get one now.’
I shook my head. ‘It was a long time ago.’
‘The thing about time,’ said Lucille, ‘is that it’s always there. You didn’t do it then, so do it now.’
‘Too late.’
‘To be a child prodigy, yes, it’s too late. To own a toboggan – no, it’s not too late.’
I smiled at her smiling at me. I stood up and reached for my coat. ‘Happy holidays, Lucille. See you at the office in the New Year.’
She nodded and looked down at the menu. I hesitated. I’m a jerk. But because I am a jerk I didn’t say what I wished I could say. I left.
Heavier snow now and fewer cars. Time to go home. I read somewhere that more than half of the people in Manhattan live alone.
At the deli on my corner Farouk was roasting more chestnuts. He gave me a scoop, rattling the tin shovel against the coals. ‘We’re closing at four. Having a party. Want to come?’
‘Sure; what can I bring?’
‘You bring nothing – you are my guest.’
I remembered that Lucille had picked up the tab twice now. For coffee, and for breakfast. I didn’t even think to pay for my own breakfast this morning. I should call her. I can’t call her. I don’t have her cell.
I went into my building.
A great big silver bell with a red bow had appeared outside the booth of the Dead Doorman. I knocked loudly on the glass but all I could see was the back of his head and Angela Lansbury running around in ‘Murder, She Wrote’.
Am I going to be killed by the Mysterious Christmas-Tree Fairy? I deserve it.
As I tumbled the locks on my apartment door I was both afraid and excited. What now?
Answer: nothing. Disappointment is the default position of my life. There was the tree. There were the lights, but nothing new.
So I caught up on some work emails. They all came back with an out-of-office auto-reply. There’s no work ethic in America. It’s barely 11am on Christmas Eve.
By noon I was showered and shaved and changed with nothing left to do. I thought I’d take a walk. Get something for Farouk anyway. He liked baseball caps.
I was passing McNally’s bookstore. There was a copy of a Hart Crane in the window. I stood looking at it, and I heard myself saying out loud,
‘I could never remember
That seething, steady leveling of the marshes
Till age had brought me to the sea.’
Crane wrote that when he was twenty-six. He was dead at thirty-two. My face was wet with rain or snow. I went into the store and bought the book.
The Hart Crane isn’t for Farouk but the leopard-skin baseball cap is.
I was sitting with him on the rusty treads of the fire escape behind the building. It’s too hot inside now – every Afghan in New York City is at the party. The music’s live and there’s a lot of laughter. Farouk must have seen me slip out on the fire escape. He followed me with a beer. So I pulled out the cap I bought him.
‘Does it fit? Try it on.’
There’s a broken fridge with glass doors propped on the gantry of the fire escape. Farouk peers at the makeshift mirror of the glass, using his phone as a light, pulling the baseball cap low on his head, so that the peak is right on his eyes that are deep like black coals. ‘I never seen a leopard-skin baseball cap.’
‘I guess it’s for winter.’
‘I feel like a mountain cat in the Hindu Kush. You ever been to Afghanistan?’
‘Not me.’
‘Most beautiful place on earth. Here, I show you some pictures. My phone. Goats, eagles, the market where my father works – those sacks are rice. He is seventy and he can carry them. Very strong. He thinks I am a taxi driver. He always wanted himself to be a taxi driver.’
‘Would you go home if you could?’
Farouk shakes his head. ‘What is home? Where is home? Home is a dream. Home is a fairy tale. This Afghanistan does not exist. Not for me. Home is where you make it, my friend. What do you think if I wear this backwards?’
He rearranges his cap. Then he says, ‘Your girlfriend – nice girl, big smile; where is she tonight?’
‘She’s not my girlfriend.’
Farouk looks sorrowful. ‘Girl like that – you should try harder.’
It’s later now, much later, and I am back in my apartment, staring at the tree and finishing Mrs Noblovsky’s clairvoyant vodka. I can see the future and it’s just like today. What kind of a future is that?
I throw open the window. Deep breaths of air. The music’s still coming from the party. I should get some sleep. One night sleeping fully dressed on the sofa is enough.
But there’s something I want to do first.
On top of the wardrobe there’s a box in a box. There are other things in the box too, but it’s the box in the box I want, a cardboard box and tied with kitchen string.
My mother gave it to me when I was leaving home for college. I smiled, kissed her, kept it for the train.
I opened it like I am opening it now. What had she given me to remind me of home?
Inside was the aluminum butter dish in the shape of a shell.
She never could receive. She never could give.
I should have hurled it out of the train window. Instead I kept it like poison I had already swallowed. Why?
My hands were shaking. I went to the window, leaned back and pitched the dish full pelt, past the air-conditioning units and satellite dishes, away through the night stars. Away into nothing. I didn’t hear it fall.
Then I slept.
Morning came. It does.
I went yawning into the lounge in my boxers and T-shirt. There was the tree. There were the lights. Under the tree was a long cardboard box tied with a silver ribbon.
I went back into the bedroom, did the whole yawning and stretching routine again, and returned cautiously to the lounge. The present – it had to be a present, didn’t it, because it was under the Christmas tree? – was still there.
Going into my lounge was getting to be as unpredictable as having a wild animal in the house. What was I supposed to do? I made coffee, checked my phone; no messages. I wasn’t drunk. Yes, the item under the tree was definitely still there.
All right. Deep breathing. Be calm. Get dressed. Jeans. Shirt. Sweater. Now take the box into the hallway and down the stairs and out onto the street and open it. Whatever is in there needs to be out of there.
I grabbed a knife from the kitchen to split the cardboard. The box was heavy and bulky. In the lobby I saw that the blind was down on the Dead Doorman’s booth. Up. Down. So what? Dead is dead.
OK, now I’m outside. It’s a beautiful morning. The sub-zeros last night have crisped the snow into a white carpet the length of the block. The moon is still in the sky although the sun is out. The air is sharp as a knife. My knife is not as sharp as the air, but I rip through the cardboard, pulling it away from the object inside.
Objects aren’t happiness. But this one is.
Inside the box is a deep-polished wooden sledge with a red leather rein and blue steel runners. But this sledge has articulated joints on the footrests so that you can steer it. Forgetting everything, I sat on it and tried the steering. It’s great.
I didn’t notice a car pulling up – until the polished hubcaps of the retro VW Beetle flashed the sun in my eyes.
‘Do you want to go to Riverside Park and try it out?’
It’s Lucille in a bobble hat, the top down on the convertible.
‘Did you give me this, Lucille?’
Where didn’t we go? Pilgrim Hill in Central Park, Hippo on Riverside. Owl’s Head Park. And I was sledding through time or maybe there was no time because Christmas Day comes just once a year.
The sun was going down before we were done. I said, ‘Do you want to come back for some lox and cream cheese? It’s not Christmas dinner but . . . I have black bread and some interesting vodka . . . actually I don’t; I finished it last night.’
‘I’m taking you to my place,’ said Lucille. ‘It’s small and I share it but the others are gone home for the holidays. And I have dinner for us. But let’s go by your place first. I need to drop something off.’
‘Haven’t you dropped off enough already? The tree, the lights . . . they were from you, right?’
Lucille nodded. Such soft eyes. I love the way she smiles.
‘But how did you get in?’
Back at the building I left Lucille in the lobby while I took the stairs at a bound, changed into dry clothes and packed the lox. I hesitated, then threw in a spare T-shirt, shorts and my electric toothbrush. And something else. Something I knew I had bought for Lucille when I bought it.
‘Thank you,’ I said to the tree on my way out.
In the lobby Lucille was standing with an elderly man who had the same kind of bright smile that she did. He seemed vaguely familiar. When she saw me she said to him, ‘This is Sam.’
‘Sure I know it’s Sam,’ said the vaguely familiar guy. ‘Always wants something, so I always ignore him.’
Then he kissed Lucille on the top of her head and went back towards the booth. I recognised the back of his head. ‘See you tomorrow, sweetie.’ The booth door closed on the not-so-Dead Doorman.
‘He’s my grandpa,’ said Lucille.
We got into her VW. We went to her place, small as an envelope. We ate. We talked. I nearly kissed her, but then I gave her the Hart Crane, and she kissed me. She was in charge, I guess. I said, ‘I owe you for coffee and breakfast.’
She said, ‘There’s all of next year.’
