Christmas Eve, 1972. Mary was clean for the first time in a long time, but determined to stay that way no longer than was necessary, say the next couple of hours at most. The 722s singer was down with strep or mono and so they’d had to cancel the gig they had lined up but it was no big deal, Christmas Eve wasn’t the same as New Year’s Eve.
The Star of Bethlehem’s tender tinsel glinted in a storefront crèche across from the Regis Hotel. Mary had joined the troupe of her usual comrades and hiked across the river for a party that someone said they’d been invited to, but that all the girls were confident they could crash and not be turned away from, if the invitation was a phony.
10th floor, 11th floor, 12th floor, 14th floor, though everyone looked at each other in the crowded elevator and someone said, calling the 13th floor the 14th doesn’t change it, does it?
They fanned out and Mary found herself alone, suddenly not really wanting to be there. Somewhere, but not here. At the end of the hall she saw Jeff Beck, lighting a cigarette and completely alone. Black fragile eggshell in a dome of hospital light. He was beautiful and utterly unaware of her. Should she give him her usual ‘I’m your biggest fan, Mr. [ ]!’ speech? No, let him be.
In the big room there were buffet tables loaded with trays of very pretty canapés, parsley borders and red cloth, little plastic wine glasses filled with crimson, or gold, or everclear. Was that Henry Mancini they had blasting on the record player? ‘It Came Upon A Midnight Clear’. A very drunk girl was warbling in French, one strap of her dress hanging to her elbow, trying apparently to wriggle out of the other one while she balanced a wineglass, a paper plate, and a cigarette. Mary sipped some gold, wondering if she was smudging her lipstick like le drunk girl, picked out a couple of her friends already well-insinuated, laughing, flirty, while their boyfriends wolfed down hors d’oeuvres like condemned men. On a couch nearby a stunning black girl was jabbering in a Julie Christie falsetto, all posh and emotional, with little sob-like giggles, arguing or persuading or simply telling a joke, it was hard to tell. When she flounced back exhausted onto a rubble of cushions Mary found herself staring into the blue blue eyes of none other than:
-Bloody hell … been looking for you up and down the coast …
The guitarist perennially voted Number 4 in the pantheon called across the room.
-Bill! Bill! There she is, the bird I told you about!
Mary watched as the unknown Bill emerged and gazed at her, eyebrows upraised, slight smile asserting itself as he traced her into whatever story he’d been told, watched as other heads turned in her direction.
-Where’ve you been, love? the guitarist cried, and then, to the room in general:
-if you want a taste of glory, there’s the pony to ride! No bloody lie!
Mary drained off her glass and fled.
Down the street Mary found the Underground Railway, a music club in a converted auto showroom a block behind the Biograph theater. She made a promise to the bouncer (fingers crossed behind her back) and went in for some local noise. She seemed to know, or at least recognize, every third person, although there were the usual melees of shit-faced kids from the nearby colleges, and hustlers and whorelets and pushers sprinkled throughout, like the pickpockets at an Elizabethan carnival, complete with drawings and quarterings, steaming hearts held up to please the audience.
Dumbo Hawkins, decent guitarist, so-so singer with the Bedazzlers, waster of time between numbers, lifted his Strat and gave the tremolo bar a sweaty handjob, feedback yowling in waves to a peak and drop dead rumble. He was slurring all over the mic, sugarwhite telltale runniness out both nostrils, paraphrasing Jimi’s spoken introduction to ‘Machine Gun’:
-This next one’s for all the baby-killers out in the Mojave Desert … Sharon Tate, anyone? … oh yeah, and for all the baby-killers still fighting in Vietnam …
The band roared in and there was a scuffle at the front. Mary saw some guy shaking his fist at Dumbo, shouting something, not that Dumbo noticed, expending all his energy on not falling over. Someone shoved the angry guy, someone else took a swing and missed and the guy was yanked backwards by his coat collar and hustled out through the crowd. Mary turned back to the stage, where the band was 4/4ing a bald, badly-played riff, like a cow in a muddy ditch struggling to get to its feet. It took her ten minutes of being shoved, shoving back, slipping through the paws of gropers and drunks to make it outside.
There was a smell like rain coming off the sidewalks and the cold made the streetlights look like they were chiseled with a jeweler’s pen. Mary walked to the corner, already knowing where she was going to score. She passed three guys, one of them backed up against the brick wall while the other two cornered him and talked, low and quick, like they were trying to talk him into, or out of, something. She stopped and looked back at them and all three froze, staring at her, no longer talking.
-Hey, Mary said, you were the guy who was yelling at Dumbo, right?
-Who’s Dumbo? one of them asked.
Mary took a couple of steps towards them.
-Dumbo Hawkins, the guitar player. Weren’t you just there, at the show?
She pointed down the block helpfully.
-You a friend of his?
-Yeah, he’s a friend of mine. Kind of a jerk, but he’s a friend.
-Did you think what he said was funny?
-What, oh you mean about Sharon Tate?
-Yeah, that and the other stuff. Was that supposed to be funny?
-Like I said, Dumbo’s kind of a jerk. He was just trying to be cool, you know, get an easy laugh, I don’t know, get a rise out of somebody. Like he did out of you.
-It’s no big deal, one of them said, but not to her, talking to the guy backed against the wall, the angry one.
-Yes, the angry one said, yes, it is a fucking big deal.
-Watch the language, his friend said, tilting his chivalrous head towards Mary.
-Sorry, the angry one said.
-it hit a nerve. What the asshole said. Sorry. Sure, no big deal. Peace and love, right?
He laughed and Mary smiled and hung on, nosey, wanting to see what was going on.
The angry one looked at her.
-What kind of man calls himself Dumbo, by the way?
Mary shrugged.
-Good question. I mean, I can see some guy calling himself Jumbo …
They were staring at her, not saying anything.
Mary took a better look. Neatly laced combat boots, new-looking bell bottoms, generic tie-dyed jerseys like you’d’ find at the hippie tourist traps all over Georgetown, thrift store corduroy jackets, one of them wearing horn-rimmed glasses, a couple of them with those Robbie Robertson moustaches, all three with shorter-than-average haircuts. Institutional, she thought. Military, she thought.
-Hey. Are you guys in the army or something? The National Guard?
-Told you, one of them said to his companions.
-we stick out like sore thumbs.
He turned to Mary.
-Yeah, we’re army. Trying, and he shot a look at the fierce one, to keep our noses clean.
And there it could have stayed, with Mary backing away and wishing them a Happy New Year, and the three soldiers returning to their peacekeeping mission or whatever mischief they were up to. But, whether it was the snapshot recall of Jeff in the aura of his solitude, or that near miss with the blue-eyed Birdman, Mary let the season’s possibility guide her to her next question.
-Do you guys wanna get high?
The three looked at each other. Didn’t say anything. Some sort of G.I. Joe e-s-p maybe.
The angry one, no longer so angry, spoke up:
-I don’t know about you, but that sounds like a … fugging great idea to me.
There was no sarcasm in his joke.
-Groovy, Mary said, and pointed the way, starting off towards the canal and its mid-nineteenth century haven-holes and warrens.
The four of them walked along the old tram car tracks, Mary in the lead, the three of them trailing diffidently a few steps behind. Mary sang over her shoulder:
-You guys got names?
Significant pause.
-Joe. Joe Smith.
-Joe Jones.
Mary stopped, cocked her head and smiled.
-Yeah? And you?
The last one, sheepish but holding to deadpan:
-Joe Brown.
-Well, pleased to meet you, Mary said, I’m Joe Kidd.
When they passed under a half-bridge, dripping with ivy, soft stink of the Potomac rising a dozen yards to the south, Mary told them to watch their step.
-Slippery when wet.
-You’re pretty trusting, one of the Joes said.
Up her turtleneck sleeve her switchblade crooned in its sleep.
-I was just thinking the same about you. We’re almost there. You just want to get stoned? Or something else? Bradford’s a regular pharmacy.
-Mara-hoo-wanna would be nice.
And the other two stifled their laughter, echoing off the wet cobbles, teasing him no reefer? no weed? no pot? no grass? not even Mary Jane? mara-hoo-what?
-I like the way you pronounce it, Mary protested.
-it sounds really …
-Rectangular?
And here, with a trash can burning as beacon, was Bradford, stamping his feet against the cold, his shadowy back-up man leaning against an old canal shed, doing the numbers with his eyes as they filed up.
-Bradford!
-Is that my girl Mary?
-Uh, Joe, tonight. Hey, Bradford! How’ve you been?
-Can’t complain, baby. You know my cousin Chester? Chester, this is Mary Joe. So, you and these fine young men looking for a little Christmas Eve par-tay?
-Nothing to break the bank, Mary said.
The three G.I.s weren’t saying a thing, standing off to the side, spaced at intervals, eyes on Chester, who was returning the favor with just the slightest smirk tightening the corners of his mouth. Mary knew where he kept it, had seen him use it only once, but that had been enough.
She pocketed the nickel bag, asked for some papers just in case, asked the Joes if there was anything else they wanted, needed. Bradford ran down the inventory of the available, which covered everything required to get one safely under over sideways down, and ended with a grinning flourish, a super discount on a kingsize pack of ready-greased, fine-ribbed rubbers.
Mary frowned, punched him in the arm and he danced away, going Ow! ow! in a fake wounded whimper.
-No harm in asking, he laughed.
He turned and said something to Chester, who grunted and went into the shed. He came back out with a bottle of Ron Rico and a stack of Dixie cups. They all toasted the season and each other’s health and Bradford gave Mary a bear hug and said quietly:
-Don’t be a stranger, baby girl. Yvonne told me what you did for her in Sunnyvale. I won’t forget.
Chester spoke up for the first time.
-That was some ballsy shit alright. You just let Chester know if there’s anyone you think needs a good fucking up, you dig?
He slid his eyes slowly towards the three Joes and gave them a great smile.
-Thanks, Mary said.
-Oh, wait a sec! Bradford said, fishing in his pocket.
-These are on me. Veracruz, baby.
-Yeah?
-Here, give me your hand.
And he tipped a dozen little black beads into her palm.
-now, take these seriously. This is some solid kick. Three will put you out there for a week. Flying carpet time. Thirteen … fourteen … fifteen …
He gave a final tap to the mouth end of the tube.
-and one to grow on.
-How’d you know it was my birthday?
-A little birdie told me. Keep the faith, Mary.
-Always.
It could have been trust. Or rum. Or the cherubic soon-to-be of sweet baby Jesus. Whatever it was the joes cast their lot with Mary, who set before them possibilities. They could catch the bus back across the river where they might doss down at her aunt’s apartment, both her aunt and cousin Robin not due back until mid-Boxing Day at the earliest. Or. Was there an or? If they didn’t want to run the as-yet- unmentioned risk, the yet-unspoken fear by riding public transportation, they could stay on foot for the long slog out of the city, into the forbidding canyons of deserted Rosslyn and to the floor above the bowling alley on Wilson Boulevard, where the 722s had found a new rehearsal space, shared with three other bands, and certain to be free of prying busybodies. The amenities were spare: a small icebox with god knows what inside (cold fried chicken, cold pizza, beer maybe), a case of cheap red wine left over from an Independence Day orgy, sodas and twinkies in the vending machine in the bowling alley proper, which one could access by shimmying through the crawl space just above lane number 7, and dropping down into darkness, quarters and dimes at the ready. And there were sofas and a toilet and a sink to scrub up at. No heat, though, but a pile of carpets under the drums could keep their bones from the damp concrete.
They stopped beside the lion’s paw at the bridge, and Mary, show-off, rolled a quick joint, apologizing for a sudden gasp of spit, and for any twigs she’d missed in her quick laveur. They passed it round, left to right, spirits lightening with each toke, their hunger and the wind off the river burning it down in no time at all.
-What’s that? Smith asked, pointing across the river.
-That’s the National cemetery, Mary said, and the Custis-Lee mansion is the building at the top of the hill.
-You’d expect there to be Christmas lights, at least.
-No way, man, Jones said.
-that’s Robert E. Lee’s old pad. Wasn’t he sort of, you know, what’s that thing were you’re, you know, hair shirts …
-Ascetic? Brown supplied the word.
-Yeah, acid-etic.
-Lead on, Mary Joe.
And she did, and they picked up handfuls of gravel from the shoulder, to cast into the dark river when they got midway.
-So were you over there? Mary asked, and they knew what she meant, and shook their heads, and she started to understand.
-are they looking for you, then?
-Should be. We’ve been gone a week.
-Canada? she asked.
-That’s the plan.
-I might know some people who could help you.
-We’ll see.
Trust having its limits.
Mary wouldn’t offer again.
Live in the fierce now.
How old would Lindsey’s baby be?
Did Lindsey know who the father was?
Probably.
The key to the second floor was in a matchbox inside a folded up cigarette pack at the bottom of a flowerpot right beneath the iron stairs. Mary showed them where the sink was, the icebox, the toilet, the bare bulb lighting up its immediate radius, casting them in giant silhouette on the surrounding walls. She noticed that each one of them looked out the pull-back blind onto the street below, looking both ways. Someone had brought in an old television, a small portable, and they switched it on while Mary sat cross-legged on the floor, rolling joints and they explored, calling out to her from across the big room.
-Lordy, look at all these gee-tars!
-Which band are you in, Mary?
-The 722s.
-722s. What’s that mean?
-It’s an address. Where Bradford used to live.
-Ah, one of those in-jokes, huh?
-Guess so.
-So you’re the singer, right?
-Nah, I’m the guitar player.
-No shit. Which axe is yours?
-That one, Mary pointed with her toe at the black and white Epiphone hollow body she’d been borrowing lately.
-I’d love to see you guys play some time.
-Stick around and it’ll happen.
Two done and one more for back up.
-Are you all from the same place, same state? she asked.
Jones was from Tulsa, Smith from Birmingham, Brown from Gary. They’d met on the bus to boot camp, quickly found the things they had in common, including a foreboding sense that if they got shipped out they wouldn’t make it back.
-So it’s not like political?
-Not wanting to get your balls blown up the back side of your spine feels pretty damn political to me.
And if that makes me a commie-lover, then, what the fuck, guess that’s what I am.
-Man! Please watch your mouth!
That was Smith, southern manners till the end.
-That’s okay, Mary said, handing the slim joint to him, I’ve heard ‘fuck’ a few times, believe me.
-Yo, Tulsa, Gary said, turn the sound up.
Jones reached over and clicked the dial up, gently pinging the rabbit ears with his index till the picture settled.
-Oh, I know this movie, he said.
‘It’s A Wonderful Life’, the scene where everybody falls through the gym floor into the pool.
Tulsa Jones went on, voice soft and wandery.
-I went to see this with my grandmom, when I was a little kid. I think she cried. I didn’t really get it, well, except that I sure did like Donna Reed.
-Everybody likes Donna Reed, Mary agreed.
-Can we listen to some music? Gary Jones asked.
Mary showed him where the record player was, the stack of albums, a collective free for all, ranged around it.
-‘Live At The Fillmore’. This is one motherfucking great album.
-Go ahead and put it on, she said.
‘Statesboro Blues’ strolled across the room, slide guitar driving the song like someone cruising with his elbow resting on the door, fingers barely touching the steering wheel.
She reached over and turned the tv down, leaving the picture on.
-Louder! she yelled, and Jones complied.
They sat through the first side, passing the joint round, and Mary got up and lugged the case of wine over from behind the bass cabinet. She took a swig and passed it round but only Tulsa was interested. When he handed the bottle back she popped one of the Veracruzes in her mouth and swallowed it down, then held another mouthful for a while to push down the smoky metallic taste of the pill. When they got to side four and ‘In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed’, Mary picked up a bottle of wine and wandered into the middle of the room to dance. She watched her silhouette for a while, then danced with her eyes closed, the cold of the room brushing the speed sweat on her arms and chest so that she shivered, cotton socks making a whooshing sound on the stone.
And this being Christmas, and this being Mary, and Mary high, and tipsy, she surrendered to the idea that if it happened it would happen.
The last notes of ‘Whipping Post’ had barely died away when the three soldiers excused themselves and went out onto the stairs, to strategize their bleak and tenuous future in the cold Virginia night. Trust, yes, but not in all things.
Mary, flushed and warm from the wine, the drugs, the dancing, put on ‘Electric Ladyland’, stripped down to her socks and collapsed onto the sofa, bunny-punching the two gray pillows into place, and pulled the thick plaid blanket over her, all the way up to her eyebrows.
A brief blistery dream, a polar bear and a geyser spouting suitably symbolic red. She heard a door opening and closing, distant voices quickly dropping to a whisper, the click of a cigarette lighter in tandem with the lisp of the stylus, the silence as it was lifted and then the Band’s second album, turned down so low it was little more than a hum of mandolins and baggy drums, Rick Danko plaintive and Richard Manuel even more so, cutting through but still far away, on the far side of the woods. She drifted off again, but Bradford had been right and consciousness was never more than an eyelash away, and she tapped through from half-dreams to night-blue porcelain wakefulness as if on every other heartbeat. Birmingham. Smith. Tulsa. Jones. At the time she couldn’t work out the order in which they came to her. The darkness of the room for one, with only a wash of outside light spotty across the ceiling. The similarity of their accents, just a touch of southern in the one, the flat tone of the others, more clues in a pause than a phrase.
When the first one lifted the blanket and slipped in Mary registered his presence the way a sleepy child cooperates in its own lifting up into comfort, and she raised her hips to meet him, wrapping her arms around his head, twisting her back slightly till he had settled above her. He kissed the side of her face, no word spoken by either one of them. He was hunger and nerves and she soothed her fingers over his hair and neck while he probed, tapped, and found. His body was cold and he shuddered against her, absorbing her warmth. An awkward moment as he pushed, not quite huff, not quite puff, and she let go of his ear, moistened palm and fingers with her mouth and squirreled her hand down, lathering spit on his shaft and he eased himself in. She could feel his hunger and need in the rippling beat of his heart, the staggering surge of his torso, like a wolf on a leash. She would have understood if he’d blitzed her and gone full out thrusting, and wouldn’t have cared, vessel of kindness and all that, so his nervous restraint moved her and she held him and let his complicated enjoyment of her body carry him to the point where he gasped, a long level holding rush of air, jerked electric once, twice as he came, and a gentler third as he finished.
Mary’s senses washed slowly back and forth in the shallow space between sleep and not-sleep, his heart drumming down softer, his legs relaxing between her own, until he sighed, kissed her forehead, mumbled what might have been a ‘thank you’, pulled out and slipped back into the room’s darkness.
The wet spot grew cold beneath her and Mary considered wrapping herself in the blanket and sitting up for a cigarette, a swallow of wine, a further poaching from among the little Mexican beads. But she lay still, after-sexed and dreamy. Another polar bear, paddling an ice floe with his enormous black-tipped paws, blue eyes holding an answer she couldn’t find the question to and now a spinning honeyhaze of bees, swarling, swirming, rising in a double helix into the sky.
She greeted the second Joe as she had the first, and he kissed her, fervent, and caressed her small breasts, lowering his head and cupping them to his mouth, half a minute’s sweet attention to each, till her nipples stung from the swipe of stubble. She felt for his cock, hard against her belly and he brought his mouth up to hers as she guided him inside.
The first soldier had brought her nowhere close, and though the second held more promise, Mary was in a generous mood, disinclined to concentrate, mere observer, passive recipient as he rocked, steady in the saddle, each thrust full length and deep, his hands on the insides of her thighs to spread her open, then down and under her ass as he raced downhill towards the edge of the cliff. He bit the pillow beside her head, then whisper-shouted into her temple ohjesusfuckinggod three times and was over the edge, trembling and holding himself rigid and still so that Mary, still perched on the cliffside, felt the explosions go through him as he flooded her.
He pulled out of her while still semi-hard and she squeezed him gently, working her fingers along the heavy slippery worm, and he shivered and put his head close to hers so that she tasted his groan.
-Whenever I hear the Brothers I’m gonna think of you, that’s for damn sure. You got us all pretty stiff when you were dancing’, but I’m guessin’ you know that …
Mary put her fingers to his mouth, could feel that he was smiling. She smiled back in the darkness as he slipped off of her.
She rolled on her stomach and reached down to the floor for her cigarettes and lighter. Her pills were in her pants pocket, wherever that might be. No matter. In the lighter’s brief flare she could see the soldiers ranged on the floor nearby, like big protective dogs. She smoked till the cigarette was down to the filter, tapping the ash onto the floor beside the sofa. Bracing herself against the cold she shook free of the blanket and scrambled off the sofa, guiding herself in a shuffle across the floor, one toe testing cautiously till she felt the heavy weight of the ashtray. She dropped the butt and then on hands and knees reconnoitered till she found the case of wine. Thank the good drunken Lord for twist-offs. The wine was ice cold but she swallowed fast and hard to speed the burn. In the cold her nipples were hard as stone. She touched herself lightly between swigs, shivering halfway between chill and giddiness. Bradford was a genius. Meth without the dark valley or skin-crawl.
Back under the blanket she got through half the bottle and two more cigarettes before the last Joe crept out of the shadows.
-Hey, she whispered and he cozied onto the edge of the sofa, brushing her hair back, hand following the curve of her face.
-Is this okay? he whispered.
-Yeah, it’s okay.
She squirmed her shoulders off the pillows and lay back as he slid on top of her. Like the others his cock was already hard, although he didn’t enter her right away, grinding the keel against her pussy, moistening himself in the leavings of his mates, from head to balls, kissing her mouth deep and slow. After a minute or so of kissing he started to inch down her body, but when his chin reached her navel she caught him by the ears and whispered:
-I’m fine.
-Yeah? I don’t mind. I’d be happy to …
-I’m fine, come back up here.
He slid one arm under her shoulders, his other hand bunching a fistful of her hair, lifting her head as he filled her, withdrew, and filled her again. Her skin was tender and sensitive from fucking and she wrapped her legs around him, crossing her ankles over his lower back, suddenly close enough to almost let it happen. A drop of sweat fell from his forehead onto her cheek and she licked it as it ran down past her mouth. She looked up past his head, watching a little violet line wavering on the ceiling, shivering on and off like a light and she closed her eyes, opened them again to see if it was just the drugs, but the violet perforation snaked on across the high ceiling and she lifted herself against him, legs loosening and rewrapping tighter, wanting him to do it faster, feeling a catch like a sob in her throat. She felt a little ripple, then a scattering of them, linked like spasm, and then broadening, like a wave that she was a few seconds ahead of, watching it, hearing it, feeling it as it crested, and she pressed her lips against his shoulder as she was coming, not wanting to cry out, though she wanted to, the feeling in her head so loud, and she wondered if he was close and a second sob bubbled up from even deeper and she thought she’d have to bite his neck if he made her come again but then he was kissing her hard, muffling his groan against her mouth with that sad, surprised, wounded sound that guys always made right before the end.
He raised himself, letting her catch her breath, and waited a polite second before pulling out and settling on his side next to her.
-Don’t fall! she whispered and turned on her side as well to give him more room.
Their heads were almost touching but it was still too dark to see his face. She put her hand on his chest, felt his heart, regular, strong, barely winded. She was glad he’d been the last. He touched her face softly, inquisitive, thumb over her mouth and nose, over her cheeks, as if feeling for tears.
-I wonder what time it is, she whispered.
-Not sure. Probably four or five.
-Wow.
He laughed.
She must sound like a kid.
-Yeah, he said, wow. Merry Christmas by the way.
It was her turn to laugh.
And after a while, lulled by the warmth of his body, with his fingers still roaming her like she was braille, Mary fell deep asleep.
When Mary woke it was near noon. The soldiers were gone. She was sorry and relieved. Sorry that she hadn’t scribbled a few phone numbers from her paltry contacts among the Movement, something to speed them more safely north and over the border. Sorry that she hadn’t been up to roll them a trio of breakfast joints. And relieved that she had an entire day, maybe more, in which to get high and listen to music, before she got back to the apartment in time to clean up, prepare the Boxing Day meal of French toast and bacon, set up the card table and dust off the Monopoly game, honoring her aunt’s sole holiday tradition. Maybe, if her aunt returned home with her usual headache, they could zip through the game and she could coax Robin into going with her to the party across the river. It wasn’t likely to be one of the wilder ones and she and her cousin hadn’t really talked or spent time together in ages. It might not amount to anything but the invitation alone should get her at least a sprinkle of good karma.
She got dressed, made an orderly setting of the shit she wasn’t taking with her, arranging it on a tray and sliding it under the sofa. She looked around and made sure the place was no more squalid than they’d found it. Blanket folded, pillows into cushions, love stains, well the love stains would dry and remain, and no one would likely notice. Her friends thought she was crazy for letting guys do her bareback, and maybe she was, but, and she sounded like a dope whenever she tried to explain, the thought of catching yet another dose of gonorrhea, getting knocked up even, was not as depressing to her as the chasing down and disposal of the usual half-dozen leaking condoms, sogged and pathetic in the aftermath.
Mary finished dressing and had a little treat of wine to warm up, toasting both baby Jesus and herself. She looked out the window onto a wet street. No cars, no people, weak sun changing the bare branches of the trees from soft to sharp and back again. A man appeared across the street, slowly walking a bulldog. Fat, plodgy, the dog and man. The dog had on little socks against the cold, red ones on his front paws, green ones on his back paws. Mary wondered if they were Christmas presents, being broken in while the man’s family, assuming he had one, bustled about some warm kitchen, fighting over whose corn bread recipe was better, sneaking shots of sherry on the sly.
Mary was happy, armed, or so she thought, with just about everything she needed to make it through this brand new sixteenth year. She thought of the soldiers, her reckless gift of herself, perhaps their last taste of American pussy for a long time. Maybe her friends had a point. The singer’s sister, Debbie, had told her she got fitted for her first diaphragm when she was sixteen. It would be a compromise but maybe it was worth it.
She set out the records she wanted to listen to as she moved from wine to Mexico. ‘What We Did On Our Holidays’, ‘Arthur’, ‘Bless Its Little Pointed Head’, ‘Refugee’, and either ‘Wheels Of Fire’ or ‘Live At Leeds’, she’d know for sure once she was flying. But first she should get some hot tea and some scrambled eggs and maybe a biscuit from the shop a few blocks up from the bowling alley. It was run by a Syrian family and they advertised that they never closed. Ever. Time to find out.
She put on her jacket and that was when she noticed the folded piece of paper, stuck between the strings and the fretboard of her Epiphone.
It was hand printed, blocky cheerful letters.
Dear Mary,
An oficial Merry Xmas to you!
Happy new Year too.
Thank you for bieng such a livesaver.
Thanks for the smokes the jams and
(smiles) you now what else.
Best wishes for you and
good luck with the band
And below, in three different hands:
Jordan (Birmingham)
Matt (Tulsa)
Dwayne (Gary)
Mary read it several times, smiling at the misspellings and the ‘what else’. She folded it into her shirt pocket, next to the tinfoiled speed, and didn’t cry.
So here it was. The tenderness.
And so what if it took something as special as fear and a major holiday to finally force it into words?
So fuck you, doctor, and merry Christmas.