Never Fear (25 page)

“
Shillelagh’s way uptown,
though. They’re invading the Heights too?”

“
It’s a goddamn
infestation of imbeciles. Padraig flipped his shit when he saw them
pouring their wine into sippy cups and using the rocks glasses to
mix their fancy paints. He told them to fuck off and go buy a
gallery or a nursery if they wanted to do that shit, that this was
a bar. They split without tipping. Fucking worthless
weirdos.”

“
Surprised they haven’t
taken an eye to this fine establishment,” I ventured. A dark look
crossed Reli’s otherwise pretty face. She sneered with a raised lip
that’d put Elvis to shame.

“
Oh, don’t think that
little snot from
Santastic
hasn’t tried to bring that shit-show in here.
Hells no. Not a chance I’ll let them get their manicured claws on
my family’s bar. I don’t know how they found us, but I made it
clear they could go back to their precious coffee shop if they
wanted to court cracked-out Christmas fans. That shit they do, it’s
supposed to be some schtick for charity cash, and they frigging
half-ass it. That
Santastic
brat is the worst. I guess his dad’s one of the
main owners of the Obscene Caffeine chain, as if that makes him
important or something just because they were able to tank a bunch
of cool old mom ‘n pop bars and put up churches of coffee
capitalism.”

“
Obscene Caffeine? You
mean those snooty places with the $5 cupcakes and the fake-barn
wood everything?”

“
Yeah. Because only the
coolest of people can hang in their hipster hideout, and by
‘coolest’ I mean ‘trendy-spendy.’ God forbid they actually work on
art, or improving anything about anything. His whole crew moves
like they each drank a pot of meth-laced espresso, and they pull
off the theatre thing about as well as middle schoolers putting on
a self-made skit about dying chimpanzees. This ‘special snowflake’
shit has got to end, I don’t care how many ‘unique’ bits of crap
they buy or wear. Like it makes them automatically interesting, or
something. For the one drink they stayed here, ‘Santastic’ tried to
get Seany to give him some powdered sugar to lighten up his beard
to look more the part. Said he could just mix it with some of his
artisanal beard wax.
Beard
wax
, Sam. What the christfuck.”

“
That’s not particularly
appropriate language for this season,” I mock-chided
her.

“
Well, it’s particularly
appropriate for these losers. I heard that uptown they were acting
all impressed that Shillelagh was ‘authentic’ and ‘special’ since
they haven’t got any TVs, but then they got mad when Padraig
explained they didn’t make mojitos, or frozen drinks, or anything
with organic juice or ‘herbal infusions’. He had to warn them twice
about not going into the bathroom stall in groups of three in the
middle of happy hour, staying in there blowing lines until people
were pissing on the wall outside. Finally, he kicked them out after
they wouldn’t stop huffing some cotton-candy shit out of vaporizers
and begging to hang up their fucking finger-paint art on the walls
next to the framed book covers. They didn’t tip him a dime, on a
hundred-dollar tab. Trust-fund trash.”

“
Well,” I muttered
sarcastically, “Let’s have a shot to never worrying about our love
of Christmas getting tainted by the likes of them.”

A whiskey bottle materialized in
Reli’s hand, and two full tumblers appeared in rapid succession. We
raised them and she toasted.

“
Fuck this season, and let
those special snowflakes wreck someone else’s halls with boughs of
folly.”

I clinked glasses with her. “Cheers. I
hope they melt.”

We skulled. I paid, then headed
out.

As I walked outside, a
lone pigeon (
rock dove?
) pecked at the snow-flecked ground by a corner embankment.
Ruffling its grey and white feathers, it regarded me with either
disdain or curiosity—it’s hard to tell with pigeons—and made as if
to fly in my general direction.

“
Don’t even think about
it,” I demanded.

It stared at me a second longer,
pooped profusely into a snowbank, and then flew away, just another
non-contributor who fed off the guts of this great city and then
left just as quick, crass, and carelessly.

The Third Day of Christmas.

The reality of my situation hit me
squarely in the face when I woke up the next morning still jobless.
I remedied this affront with a hearty round of day-drinking. I
bought three French Hen 22s and shored up on my couch, waiting for
Clara to call and say she was done with work.

I was particularly mad
that I’d gotten fired for drinking, and not for being a drunk. I’d
put in effort not to be a mess, at least overtly. It’s fine lines
like these that keep me from being just another deadbeat in the
streets. Being a drunk would keep me from being able to do
any
job, but drinking
was what facilitated my survival of the job I’d had. I’d even
bothered to hide the scent, slurping that disgusting over-proof
peppermint schnapps. That was how committed I was to appearing
normal, while knowing there was no reasonable way I could operate
within the bounds of corporate workaday “normalcy.”

Sure, it wasn’t healthy. But at least
half of the rest of the gainfully-employed world knows exactly what
I’m talking about. Maybe not booze, but we all have our coping
mechanisms that may or may not also be doping
mechanisms.

I was an old pro at this,
from way back. Even most of my time serving in Vietnam had been
spent inside a pot cloud. I had basically no regrets—I had been
good at what I did, maybe too good. Not that it ended up
doing
any good, but hey,
we can’t have it all.

The worst was thinking about it this
season. Although I’d spent two hellish springs, summers, brutal
monsoon seasons, and falls stationed there as well, it was the
winter—well, Christmas, really—that stuck in my mind like a knife
in the back.

The Special Forces teams
had been training the Degar, the native mountain people, for
months. Indisposed to helping out the Viet Cong, the Degar had
quickly entered into an arrangement aiding us, and they’d been
astoundingly helpful. Whether it was terrain issues for the best
forward mobility, support as fighters, or (best of all) information
on enemy movements, we were happy to have the durable, tenacious
Degar along with us.

It had been an uneventful
Christmas, right up until the trouble started.

The village had been a
small one, nestled in the mountains. Barely even noticeable from
the air, save for small wisps of smoke from cook fires. Under the
jungle canopy in a clearing, there were small hutches made of
sticks and fronds, with large rice barrels sitting outside. Typical
stuff. One of the Degar soldiers, a kid in his teens, had been
living there, and had reported up the chain to the Special Forces
that V.C. had been sighted in the area for weeks now, and that they
tended to terrorize the villagers for food. The intel hinted that
particular division of V.C. were a far-flung faction and, as such,
eradicating them would compromise a considerable tenet of their
aggression in that area.

We’d made it to the
village after an all-day trek, during which we’d sang Christmas
carols, substituting bawdy or silly lyrics to amuse ourselves and
staunch the nagging, nigh-fictional visions of silver bells and
decked halls back home. Here the only chestnuts getting roasted
were when we were nape’ing some V.C. balls.

We were halfway through a
new parody I was pretty proud of—I fancied myself a musician back
then, at least maybe for when I got home—and we’d been belting it
through the chest-high grass that led to the village.

Rudolph the Red Spy
reindeer

Had a very shiny nose

And ranted Commie
prop-a-gan-da

That all the other deer
opposed

All of the other reindeer

Were in favor of
dem-o-cra-cy

They never let poor Rudolph

Crush oppressive
bourgeoisie…

Charlie’s artillery fire
provided the bridge. Immediately we were taking cover in the grass,
running for the tree line hither and yon, completely
confused.

The V.C. hadn’t just been
dropping by there for food. They knew the place inside and out. We
were at a complete tactical disadvantage, totally FUBAR.

I just don’t remember how it happened.
Maybe I do, or did, but I just… well, the details are hazy to the
immediate recollection. Except one.

I’d managed to get
completely lost in the tall grass when I’d ducked, covered, and
ran, and ended up flanking the village. In the commotion, I’d snuck
up behind a hutch and watched as four black-clad V.C. railed at the
few villagers around a central fire.

A kid in a Degar uniform
was being held by the hair. He seemed strangely calm, as though
he’d already accepted his fate, but on closer inspection I could
see he was dazed, probably from the massive, bloody wound on the
back of his head. The V.C. jackass holding him was brandishing a
hunting knife and screaming. It didn’t take much to deduce that
they had figured the kid for a snitch.

Without any delay, the
V.C. bastard spiked one of the kid’s eyeballs onto his knife. The
villagers gasped in horror. The sound of bullets cascaded closer.
The soldier raised the knife again—for what intent, I’ll never
know—and that was it.

I swung out from behind
the hutch and shot the knife-wielding soldier plus the three V.C.
flanking him, all in what seemed like one burst. I paused and
picked off another two at the village’s perimeter, allowing a few
of my fellow soldiers to dash in and secure more of the
area.

The kid who’d been knifed
stood and staggered, admirably attempting hand-to-hand combat with
a remaining V.C. thug who was armed with a machete. Unarmed but
still quick on his feet, the kid took surprisingly accurate swings
at the soldier in close quarters, stunting the other soldier’s
ability to swing the huge blade. It wasn’t nearly a fair fight,
though, as evidenced by the large swath of the now-monocular kid’s
arm the soldier managed to carve open in passing, taking off two
fingers, shortly before I shot him down as well. The kid, still
standing, was bundled off by the villagers, maybe to safety, but
who knew. The term was relative, over there.

I had really thought I was being
helpful. Useful. But who knows.

More V.C. were pouring
into the village. Explosions, gunfire, and smoke became my
world.

The rest is just a
smattering of sensory input. There was more fighting. More
screaming, more noise, more bullets. Orders to retreat, that an
airstrike had been called in. No sight of the helpful Degar kid or
any of his comrades, no warnings for the villagers.

I remember being back in
the tall grass again, hundreds of yards out now, watching the
fireball of foliage and former foes as the attack helicopters
rained hell onto where the village had been. My mind, shocked and
tired and at odds with everything I’d previously known as reality,
defaulted to the seasonal soundtrack. I started humming to myself,
from cracked lips that had somehow become bloody.

Hang a shining star upon the highest
bough.

And have yourself a merry little
Christmas, now.

*

The uptown A train
clattered to a stop at its terminus below
207
^th
street. Once above ground, I hardened all of my senses amidst
the ubiquitous, slush-slinging snow.

Clara buzzed me up and greeted me at
her apartment door, instantly making me forget the tundra-wide trek
I’d endured to get here. Her skin was a perpetual color of caramel
that insinuated she had a private stash of sunshine somewhere
within, some radiance that was tanning her from the inside out,
whatever the season, a tantalizing to-go tropicality that made her
stunning in the warm months and scorchingly irresistible in this
blasted winter.

She was hot in every way
possible.

The coke was definitely a problem,
though.

As I self-medicated with booze, Clara
was fond of the blow. I didn’t hold it against her; she’d been
using before she even came to the states. And, compared to the
pitfalls I’m sure her ecdysiast Pussycat colleagues dealt with, she
seemed to have it in control. But as we drank the French Hen 22s
and snuggled on her collapsing couch in that tiny,
turn-of-last-century apartment, I hated thinking about how much
better she could be doing, and I had to turn my head every time
she’d unsexily huff up a pile of snow that could have put the
sidewalk outside to shame.

To even things out, she lit a joint
wrapped in a red-and-white-striped candy cane paper as she listened
to me bitch about Santastic and his scene.

“
You hate him because
he
maricon
?” She
did a limp-wristed sashay that any twink would have given his flat
abs to pull off as adorably.

“
I don’t give a fuck who
he fucks, that doesn’t factor into any of why he’s a terrible human
being.”