Angels
Winter comes early, hard-edged and the color of steel. The ground feels rockier under my feet and the air tastes like glass, cold and sterile. All around me there's glitter, suddenly; the flash of tinsel and the glare of ice.
Notice the bright-colored lights. Everyone feels it. They sense the darkness closing in, and they string electric lights that reflect off the tinsel, the ice, the closed windows and the iron sky. They call it festive. I call it hallucinatory. Build a damn bonfire and be done with it.
It's not as bad as it will be two, three weeks from now. That'll be hell. Music blaring, mothers tearing their hair out.
Or maybe not. Maybe not, this year.
I don't assume anything anymore. Do you?
* * * * *
Cold November evening. Mike and Carlos and Joe, clustered by the bar the way they are six nights out of ten, talking current events. Six months ago, it would have been sports, or their girlfriends, or something. Now it's the state of the goddamn world.
Joe's the only one you'd want to actually talk to, if you felt like talking about it. Joe has a brain in his head and he bothers to use it, unless it's around women. He's arguing at the moment with friend Michael, who's of the nuke-the-fuckers persuasion. Carlos stays mostly quiet, maybe not giving a damn, maybe caring too much; maybe, like me, not sure which. If you ask him, he'll shrug, looking away from you, and maybe swear.
You think of lost innocence, and you picture hollow-cheeked children, fifteen-year-old girls with big, bruised eyes. Not guys like this.
* * * * *
The room is dark, except for the trickle of bluish city-glow that leaks through the blinds. It's cold, too, but not here under the covers, with her head on my shoulder and her arm around my waist. She's someone I sort of know, someone who's been here before, someone I know by sight, even if I can never get her name right on the first try. Christine? Kirsten. Yeah.
Somehow, come December, women are more likely to wind up asking for my life story, and less likely to take it in stride when they hear it. Sentiment's in the air like pollen; their eyes water easily. A conversation starts with What are you doing for Christmas, and ends up with Oh honey I had no idea, and then I feel like a jerk. It's hard enough to tell over, without it sounding like a play for sympathy, especially at this time of year.
This year, I wouldn't have a chance in hell of pulling it off.
So it's Kirsten, who knows not to ask.
* * * * *
I got a card in the mail, for God's sake. From the Taylors, all those years back. Nice people, damn nice people, damn patient with a prickly fourteen-year-old. They kept in touch real good for a while, fell out of the habit these past couple years.
And now they're sending me a Christmas card again. With angels, blonde and feather-winged, done up in draperies that mere earthbound humans would trip over. With "Peace On Earth" in gold letters, and a note inside that ends, "God bless -- Karen and Jeff".
God bless. What's with God suddenly?
God and the red, white and blue. One of those women's magazines on the racks in the stores, with a Christmas tree on the cover like there always is, but the tree's covered in tiny flags, eagles, the whole bit. Flags stuck in evergreen wreaths, flags picked out in red and white and blue lights.
Crazy.
But the card's good to have. I tried tacking it on the wall, but it looked pathetic up there by itself, so I took it down.
* * * * *
"Paul."
"Mm."
"I was thinking."
"Yeah?"
Kirsten traces a finger along my collarbone. "You busy Monday night?"
Monday the 24th, she means. It takes me half a second longer to answer than it should. "Don't think so."
"'Cause I was thinking. If you wanted to, you know, do something."
Damn.
"Don't get mad. I'm just asking."
"Thought you were going to your mother's."
"I am. Christmas Day. But I got nothing better to do the day before, and I just thought-- I could come over, maybe, or you could come over my place. Just-- to hang out, you know?"
"That's okay."
She sits up, bracing herself on her elbows, and glares at me. "God damn it, you stubborn bastard."
"What--?"
"Would you for God's sake once in your life not get so goddamn defensive."
All I can do is blink at her in the almost-dark. "I'm defensive?"
Kirsten leans over to put a hand on my shoulder. "So I don't know you that well. But I bet I know you better than a lot of people do, and what I know is, you freeze up every time I ever try to get close to you."
"Look, I--"
"If you don't want to see me on Monday, you don't want to see me on Monday. Fine. It's not a big deal. I'm just asking-- because I like you. Because it might be fun, okay? Because I don't want to spend it alone. Think that one over."
* * * * *
On the counter, beside the magazine rack, there's a little cardboard display. Angel pins. They sparkle unexpectedly bright, in the mediocre light of the store, bright as diamond, which at a buck ninety-nine they're emphatically not. They're just bright and pretty. It comes back to me suddenly that Kirsten has a thing about angels. She admired the Christmas card on the table for a minute, before she left the other day.
It goes down on the counter with the coffee and the packet of tissues. What the hell.
* * * * *
"Kirsten," I start to say, after thinking it over. "Look--"
She interrupts me. "You busy Monday night?"
"No."
"You want to get together?"
I take a deep breath. "If you want. Sure."
She smiles, then, and kisses me.