Never Fear (28 page)

“
I’m not catching your
point here.”

“
Carnahan thinks his
little benevolent spin as Santa makes him even MORE entitled to
attention, affection, whatever, that he’s
already not getting from these guys
.
He’s just a whiny little weasel who sits at the bar in RareBear and
sulks when all the hot leather daddies go off to smoke cigars in
the library without him, or to chain someone else up for a flogging
on their St. Andrew’s cross. He’s not important,
interesting,
anything
. Just a waste of space.”

“
So why do they even let
him in?”

“
To mess with him.
Sometimes… on
slooowww
nights… they let him play as a submissive, literally just by
throwing a ball-gag in his fat mouth and locking him in a cage
while they talk real business and get down to real… manly things.
Problem is, he’s now getting a rep for approaching certain
well-to-do Wall Streeters at business environments in real life,
and, well, let’s just say he’s not much for conversation or
usefulness in the real world, even when untied and
ungagged.”

“
So he’s trying to claw
his way up in the world, and he’s going to fail. Good. I’m happy
he’s going to know how that feels. Let him dig his own double-wide
grave.”

Phuc’s monocular gaze roamed my face.
“Sam… are you okay?”

“
It’s just… it’s fucking
silly. This is all just silly. I shouldn’t care about any of
this.”

“
Are you having
reservations about… my usefulness?” Phuc wondered.

“
I mean… you just… I know
you want to do this to repay me, but it’s not like it’s a matter of
life and death anymore. I’ll survive, regardless of what happens to
Santastic, or Carnahan.”

“
Ha!” Phak laughed.
“Simply
surviving
is different from
achievement
. You of all people
should know that.”

“
But what are we
achieving?”

Phuc, glowing purple in the
blacklight, took on an ethereal sort of presence.

“
We’re achieving what
we’ve been fighting for all along. What America wanted to bomb my
country for, what they indentured us both as soldiers for, what we
came to New York and struggled for, and what these little hipster
fucks and one-percent heirs want to gobble up and take as their
own, but don’t realize that buying or cajoling it or taking it from
others doesn’t give them more of it. Freedom. The ability to make
things better for people who can’t do it on their own is
liberation—to them, from their oppressors, to us, from the guilt of
having to be at either end of this sick societal spectrum. We are
killing these entitled bastards’ golden goose and eating it for
Christmas dinner. For everyone who’s not naturally crazy-greedy,
we’re after the pursuit of happiness that only happens when it’s
still possible to have a fair shot. We’re taking that shot, Sam,
before it’s too late.”

My silence served as obvious
acceptance. Down the bar, near the entrance, I saw Clara, Marcos,
and Mariana walk in. I waved them over.

We began to lay down our plans. Six
schemes a’laying.

Onstage, the band crescendo’d to a
glorious finale.

When the gods
fight

When your pee
stings

When you’re going
maaad

I simply remember my
favorite things

Before the whole worrrld
goooes baaad…

As we were heading out, I spotted my
old Sanitation Department pal Lenny Lampson sitting at the bar. He
was still in uniform and caked with snow. He didn’t look like a
jolly or happy soul.

“
Nice Frosty the Snowman
outfit, Lenny.”

“
Hah. Hey, Sam. Careful
out there tonight, it’s brutal. Visibility’s nil. I nearly buried
some hipster twat with my snow plow over in Hell’s Kitchen. Who the
fuck tries to mush a dog sled using an inner tube and six
Pomeranians?”

“
It’s not your fault,
Lenny,” I reassured him. “The Idiot Iditarod deserves the
danger.”

“
Hey, you still playin’
drums?” Lenny asked, perking up. “Richie’s got the flu and the band
has a gig at the Christmas parade. We could really use
ya.”

The band Lenny referred to was the
Department of Sanitation’s Emerald Society Pipe and Drum Corps. I’d
played bass drum for them for years when I was working. I missed
it. It’s hard to find pure opportunities to work hard and create
something really good with like-minded people like that.

“
Sure, Lenny. Gimme a call
tomorrow.”

“
You got it Sam. Good
seein’ you.”

Reli ambled over to say goodbye. “Out
so soon?”

“
Busy week coming up,” I
said.

She smiled enthusiastically. “You got
a new job?!”

“
Not exactly,” I smiled. I
didn’t want to say too much, but I couldn’t resist a question of my
favorite, eternally-amenable bartender. “Reli, if I needed to get a
whole bunch of strippers coked to the gills to set them loose on
Santastic’s shit-show and possibly start trouble, would you let us
pre-game here?”

Reli smiled.

“
Absolutely christfucking
not. My first-person chemical warfare tactics here”—she raised a
whiskey tumbler out of thin air—“aren’t meant for mass
murder.”

She slammed the shot, spun a martini
shaker in one hand, and placed both delicately on the bar
rail.

“
But I’ll totally host the
after-party.”

The Seventh Day of
Christmas.

As ugly ducklings turn into swans,
ugly thoughts can turn into beautiful achievements.

You don’t have to like it. You don’t
even have to understand it. Maybe it’s better that way.

But like any incomprehensible, good
piece of magic, it still works.

Once your mind goes to these kinds of
extremes, there’s no recalibrating. It’s like escalating a
Christmas-lights war with your neighbors… once you have full-sized
sleighs on the roof, you’re never just going back to simple candles
in the windows. And neither are they.

However, to properly process the full
extent of the duckling-to-swan growth, I had to see for my own eyes
what we were up against. Of course, that didn’t mean I wanted to
internalize every last detail of things. I went into battle-recon
mode and kept sharp for only what I needed to process. The rest
just hurt too badly.

Phuc and I went to the
franchise of fuckery that was the Obscene Caffeine coffeehouse on
St. Marks, clearly the epicenter of the
Santastic
operation. Until a few
years ago, the spot had been the famous Wursthaus punk rock club,
until coffee apparently became more lucrative than
chaos.

Opening the door felt like breaching
the entrance of a particularly snug spacecraft. The inhabitants
would have been just as happy to have seen us float right back
outside into the aether and not inhale their rarified
air.

That wasn’t happening.

We each ordered a small black coffee,
of which there were an unnecessary number of names, modifications,
and varietals, and Phuc chatted up the apathetic barista who was
wearing both a scarf and cap, despite the abundant warmth
indoors.

“
So, miss, I understand
that this is where the show
Santastic
is being
staged?”

The barista girl looked up from her
smartphone, a look of insufferable dullness radiating out from
behind her yellow thick-rimmed glasses. “Uh, I think that was last
week.”

I gazed around the bland,
fake-barn-wood-paneled walls of Obscene Caffeine. Beneath the glow
of ubiquitous Edison lightbulbs, calculatedly scrappy-looking young
people tapped screens and devices. No one spoke to each other. A
dull drone of what I eventually realized was ambient synth music
slouched from hidden speakers.

Phuc became incrementally more
cheerful as the conversation went south, his tone a stark contrast
to the cultivated boredom that seemed to permeate the room. “Surely
not! We donated some money to your dance corps in Times Square just
the other day, and their ads said the show would be appearing at
this address!”

“
I dunno,” the barista
half-shrugged. “I think it’s over.”

Phuc took a different tack. “Miss, I’m
here from the press, and I was hoping to review the show. Surely
there must be some final performance to occur?”

This perked the barista up enough to
hold Phuc’s gaze for more than five seconds. “Who do you blog for?
The Skinflint? Mawkish? RoboHobo? I’m totally in a band. I can
answer questions about that.”

Phuc glowered. “No, miss.
I’m from the paper, not a blog. I just wanted to learn more
about
Santastic
,
or perhaps your organization’s charity work.”

Her gaze sank to the life-raft of her
smartphone. “Oh. Yeah, I dunno.”

“
Could I possibly speak to
the young man who is in charge of these things?”

“
Braendeyn won’t be back
until tomorrow. He has cat yoga class tonight.”

“
I see,” Phuc pressed on.
“And what of the other young men in his cadre? Are they
available?”

“
Those guys don’t, like,
work here.”

“
Does anybody?” I
interjected. A few wayward eyeballs flitted angrily up at me,
noticed me noticing their clickbait-filled screens, and
retreated.

“
If they’re not in Times
Square, you can see if the Santa squad is out in the park,” she
said. “Union Square or Washington Square, probably. Wherever the
tourists are, ha.”

I gave Phuc a look that clearly
indicated I was done with this. He gave a small nod.

“
Thank you for your time,
miss,” Phuc told the barista. We turned to leave.

“
If… Braendeyn… comes
back,” I said over my shoulder, loud enough for the sullenly,
smugly silent room to hear, “Tell him I’m a gallery owner doing a
winter retrospective on up-and-coming finger-paint artists. The
adult preschool aesthetic is so
necessary
, right now. You know,
rethinking all those boring old conventions about the value of
effort and risk and all that. I hope he and I can
connect.”

With that, Phuc and I left.

Not halfway to the corner, a
scruffy-bearded kid in ratty, skintight black jeans, half-unlaced
boots, plaid earmuffs over a man-bun, and a very high-end shearling
coat ran up from behind us and tapped Phuc on the
shoulder.

“
Excuse me,” he said,
already out of breath. “Did you say you were from the press and
looking for Braendeyn?”

Phuc gazed at him
impassively. “If that’s who’s running the
Santastic
show, then yes, I
am.”

The hipster kid pulled off his
earmuffs and shook both of our hands. “I can tell you all about it.
I’m one of the dancers. There’s more to the show than you
know.”

“
Oh really?” Phuc said
dubiously. “Not just generic gentricidal bullshit?”

“
Really,” the kid said.
“Someone needs to call him out. He’s stealing money from charity,
he’s not paying the dance crew, he’s on drugs all the time, and for
real, this sleazy Santa thing is just so uncool. He should be
impaled on the North Pole, not representing it. Let me help. I’m
Hrothgar.”

“
How do we know you’re
being straight with us… Hrothgar?” I asked.

The kid giggled and pulled a fake
beard from his coat pocket, donning it over his neck-length real
one. A thin but effective Santa hat followed.

“
So?” Phuc
said.

“
So?” the kid admonished.
“Sweetie, I’m the understudy.”

The Eighth Day of
Christmas.

“
It's better to destroy
than create what's unnecessary.”

—
8 ½

Trooley’s decades-deep blend of crazy
and cool had always made it my favorite hangout headquarters, but
after the bout of blandness that had been the Obscene Caffeine
coffeehouse, I appreciated its frenetic, funky fervor even more
that afternoon.

Reli was stringing up Christmas lights
over the back-bar, weaving them around the collection of odd
perpetual-motion machines that twisted and turned and spun above
the booze bottles.

“
You know that there’s
different versions of
The Twelve Days of
Christmas
song?” she said. “In one, the
eighth day is ‘hounds a-running.’ Another’s ‘boy’s a-singing.’
Dunno if that’s better than ‘ladies dancing’, but I like how
there’s options.”

“
We’re going for all of
the above today,” I said, sipping my beer. Phuc nipped at his
martini. We had twenty minutes to kill before the plan went into
effect.

The hipster kid, Hrothgar,
had settled into a few craft beers before telling us his story and
telling us just to call him “Roth.” He had confirmed everything
Phuc had told me about Santastic—real name, Braendeyn—stealing the
take, plus more dirt about him leading on the “dancers” by
promising them part-time jobs at the coffeehouse and not coming
through with that (which, Roth was quick to note, was the reason
he’d decided to go turncoat on the
Santastic scene.) Braendeyn being a literal crackhead with no
knowledge of business practice didn’t help either, and Roth—who
seemed to have a good brain under that goofy man-bun haircut—was
tired of filling in for him when he failed as Santa or as Obscene
Caffeine’s management.