EQMM, January 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Besides, Ben had to admit, there was more than a little truth in what Sidney said, as impolite as he had been. He had to compromise his artistic standards when he worked with Margaret. She always wanted the most pedestrian designs. Ben should've told her long ago that she needed to defer to his judgment on visual matters. If she did want to work with him in the future, he would tell her just that.

  When the check came, Ben suggested that they split it down the middle.

  When Sidney called on Tuesday afternoon, Ben was mocking up some designs for Margaret Chase after all. The Hamilton project was still in limbo, and he had time on his hands. It went against his grain, but if he completed some initial layouts, she might be willing to forget the whole incident, like the proverbial bad dream.

  It was hard though to imagine Sidney as some illusory netherworld figure when his name showed up on the caller ID.

  Ben picked up the phone. “Hello, Sidney."

  "Got your spy phone working, I see,” said Sidney.

  "What's up? I've got a rush project."

  "I hope not for that bimbo."

  "No,” Ben lied. “Something else. But that so-called bimbo commands a lot of business in this town. And she knows a lot of people."

  "Not an issue for me. Looks like I'll be going in-house at Hamilton. Starting next Monday. Thought I should let you know."

  Ben beat his fist quietly into his thigh. He was glad Sidney wasn't there to see the expression on his face. “That's great. Going in as an associate designer?” He imagined Sidney would at least be stuck with the worst rote production work.

  "Come on. Those days are behind me. It's a senior designer position."

  Ben couldn't reply, but Sidney was rambling on. “I wasn't sure if I should take it. I like my independence. At least you've got that. But a few good years with Hamilton, and I could start my own agency."

  "What would you call it?” Ben whispered.

  "I don't know,” said Sidney. “I haven't thought about it.” He paused for a moment, but couldn't come up with an answer. “Look, once I'm inside, I should be able to throw some work your way."

  Ben rolled his lips against his teeth, then managed a simple, “Okay."

  "I owe it to you.” Sidney laughed offhandedly. “I'm responsible for you since I, you know, saved your life."

  "My life?"

  "Forget it,” said Sidney. “I'd better let you get back to your rush job. See you Friday night at the Walpole.” He hung up.

  Ben set his phone slowly back in the cradle. For a second, he imagined moving to another city and starting over again. Or starting some other career. One where he'd never cross paths with Sidney Alstead.

  His invitation to the Hamilton Group holiday party had never arrived. Ben considered attending under the premise that Sidney had invited him. But Sidney didn't work there yet. He could almost certainly crash, but it would be humiliating if they were checking a guest list or had assigned seating.

  On impulse—and against his better judgment—Ben tried Wilson's direct line. He heard Wilson's suave voice on the message. He punched 0 without leaving a message, found the automated directory, and transferred to Cynthia Phillips.

  She was decidedly cold when Ben gave his name. “Sidney Alstead's friend?"

  "Well, not exactly,” said Ben awkwardly.

  "You two were together that night at the Shiva."

  "We'd just met."

  "Right.” She clearly didn't believe him.

  "Look,” Ben said. “I was trying to follow up with Clifton about the Zendo Furnishings project. I'd done some initial concepting—"

  She cut him off. “I'm less informed about Cliff's projects than you think. I believe they've moved forward with that one already. Did you leave him a voice mail?"

  Ben had left him one late last week, but he had never heard back. “No, I'll do that."

  "I'll transfer you."

  "One more—” But she was already gone, and he was back in Wilson's voice mail. He hung up without leaving a message.

  She had missed the chance to ask him to stop by the Hamilton Christmas gala.

  * * * *

  On Friday night, it began to rain around rush hour. By dinnertime, the rain had begun to freeze. It was a lousy night to stand in a doorway, Ben thought to himself. He ducked into a dingy bar across the street from the Walpole Hotel to warm up.

  Under his overcoat he was dressed for the party. He had driven downtown without any clear intentions, let alone a firm plan. He wanted to talk to Wilson. If they weren't going to use his work anymore he wanted to hear Wilson say as much. He'd demand an explanation. He had fantasies of denouncing Sidney in front of his new colleagues. But on what grounds? That Sidney had assaulted some homeless kids? People would want to know why Ben hadn't reported the incident. He couldn't denounce Sidney simply for being large and obnoxious. Maybe beneath his polish, Wilson was simply large and obnoxious, too. Maybe that's how he got ahead.

  Ben had parked a few blocks away, but by the time he was across the street from the hotel, he had lost his nerve. He had stepped back into the shadows of an alley and watched hotel and party guests come and go. When he finally slipped into the little bar, more than an hour had passed. He didn't notice that he was shivering until he got inside.

  "Yeah?” the bartender asked.

  "Brandy,” said Ben.

  "Any particular kind?"

  "No."

  He drank a second one, too. The drinks hardly spurred him to action. He figured that he'd better just go home.

  Outside, he turned his collar up against the freezing rain. He glanced one last time at the hotel, and there was Wilson coming through the revolving doors, walking fast. He looked twice over his shoulder as he crossed the street. Ben followed him into a narrow side street.

  "Wilson, wait up, I've got to talk with you,” Ben shouted. He ran and caught the man by the sleeve. Wilson had slowed at the sound of Ben's voice. In the hazy, rain-streaked light, Ben could see an amused look of scorn on Wilson's face. Out of some primordial instinct, Ben turned, imagining Sidney coming to blindside him, but there was no one there.

  "What do you want, Ben?"

  "You got my voice mail. Why don't you return your calls?"

  "I can't return all my calls. Just the important ones.” He jerked his elbow and his sleeve snapped out of Ben's hand.

  The wool burned Ben's cold fingertips. He put his head down and rammed with his forearms into Wilson's chest. Wilson slid back awkwardly, then toppled hard when his foot caught in a crack. He was dazed when Ben caught him up by the lapels of his overcoat. Ben squatted for leverage and bounced Wilson's head off the curb again and again and again.

  He couldn't remember walking back to his car or even getting in it. He had simply been with Wilson and now he was warming up the engine and rubbing his hands together. What a lousy night. He put the car in gear and drove slowly home.

  * * * *

  Ben was dead tired and he slept soundly, like the dead. The phone woke him in the late morning.

  "Hello."

  "Ben, this is Sidney.” It didn't sound like Sidney. His voice was low and guarded, worried even.

  "Yeah, Sidney, you woke me,” Ben said. He wouldn't put up with the oaf this morning.

  "Listen, you've got to do me a favor,” Sidney pleaded.

  "I thought you were doing favors for me."

  "This is different. I'm in jail.” He spoke the last words slowly and deliberately.

  Ben propped himself up on his elbow. “Yeah, what happened? What for?"

  "Wilson got killed, I didn't do it."

  "Why'd they arrest you then?"

  "I argued with him in a corridor at the hotel, during the Hamilton Christmas party. They were withdrawing their offer. I shoved him a couple of times, but that was it."

  Ben could feel his body relaxing, and his life coming into focus again. “How come they withdrew the offer?"

  "Who knows? What does it matter? I think that bitch Cynthia Phillips put
him up to it. She didn't like me for some reason."

  "I can't imagine,” said Ben.

  "This is no joke. Witnesses saw me bounce Wilson once or twice."

  "Well, what do you want me to do?"

  "I can't make a long-distance call from here. I need you to call my mother. She's in Omaha. She'll know what to do."

  Ben wrote the number down, promised to call, and hung up. He got out of bed and took a long, hot shower. Afterwards, he cooked a three-egg cheddar omelet, which he washed down with a half pot of coffee. Finally, he called Sidney's mother. It wasn't so hard. She sounded like a small, frail old lady. Ben told her that Sidney was in a lot of trouble.

  (c)2007 by Doug Levin

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Fiction: HIDDEN GIFTS by Steve Hockensmith

  Steve Hockensmith tries to contribute a holiday story to each of our January issues and a Sherlock Holmes-themed story to each February issue. The series that began with his first Holmes-themed story has turned into a successs at novel length, with the first book, Holmes on the Range, earning Edgar, Dilys, Anthony, and Shamus award nominations. Look for book two, On the Wrong Track, in paperback now, and The Black Dove (hardcover) in February.

  * * * *

  Karen had just spoken blasphemy, plain and simple. Heresy. Sacrilege.

  Not that her little brother knew what blasphemy, heresy, or sacrilege were. But he did know poo-poo when he heard it. And to Ronnie, this would be big poo-poo. The biggest.

  "That's not true!” he screamed, popping off his pillow and scrambling over the wadded-up macramé blanket that separated his half of the couch from hers. “You're lying!"

  Karen didn't even look away from the television.

  "Oh, don't be such a baby. Everybody knows it."

  And she said it again. The blasphemy. The poo-poo. The innocence-scorching truth.

  "Santa isn't real."

  "No no no no nooooooooo!"

  Ronnie balled up his fists and pounded at Karen with them. But Ronnie was only six, and small for his age. He might as well have tried beating his sister senseless with a pair of earmuffs.

  "Stop it. I can't hear."

  Karen swiped out a long, thin arm that swept her brother off the couch. She didn't do it maliciously. It was a casual gesture, like opening a curtain. There were things she wanted to see. Things she wanted to feel.

  Cousin Rick hadn't been in the apartment when she and Ronnie got home from school. And when their scrawny, thirtyish “cousin” (they refused to call him “Uncle Rick,” like Mom wanted) wasn't around to hog the TV and flick lit cigarettes at their heads and hunch over the phone having hissy-whispered conversations with his creepy friends, Karen tried to make the most of it.

  Today, “the most” meant soaking up Christmas cheer.

  It was December 23, 1979, and the afternoon reruns were Christmas episodes. Andy Griffith, The Beverly Hillbillies, even The Addams Family—they'd all been wrapping presents and drinking eggnog and learning Very Special holiday lessons. It was totally phony and forced, but even bogus Christmas cheer with a laugh track and soap-flake snow was better than no Christmas cheer at all.

  Karen and Ronnie didn't even have a tree that year. They'd started to put one up with Mom, pulling out the big fake fir Dad used to call “the holly-jolly green giant.” But Cousin Rick put a stop to that.

  "Jeez, what are you doin'? A guy can barely turn around in this sardine can, and you're gonna plop that big S.O.B. in the middle of the room? No way. You want a Christmas tree, decorate the bushes in the parking lot. Now shut up, would you? I gotta keep my cool. The Big Call could come any minute, and those guys ain't messin’ around."

  The kids turned to their mother.

  Cousin Rick had been waiting for “The Big Call” for a week, and something was always getting on his nerves. When he wasn't out “hustling"—his word for whatever it was he did all day—he paced the apartment like a barnyard rooster, twitchy, herky-jerky, his round, anxious eyes darting from the TV to the phone. He'd already turned off the Christmas carols (he couldn't bear “B.J. and the Bear") and nixed the stringing of lights (the bright colors reminded him of “a bad trip,” whatever that meant). Now he wouldn't let them put up a tree?

  Surely, Mom would stand up to him this time. Surely, she'd choose their Christmas over her boyfriend's weird little tics. Surely.

  Without a word, Mom packed up the tree and stuffed it back in the closet. The next day, Karen saw it poking out of a dumpster around the other side of the building.

  Which is how Christmas came to be something out there—at school, in stores, on billboards. In the past.

  Or on TV.

  It was the Bradys’ turn now. Little Cindy was asking a department-store Santa to cure her mother's laryngitis so she could sing a solo at their church Christmas service. That's what had brought up the whole Santa Claus thing in the first place.

  "Stupid kid,” Karen had snorted. And then she'd said it, blasphemed—and Ronnie had flipped out.

  "There is a Santa Claus!” he howled from the floor.

  His voice quavered, as if he might cry, but Karen knew it wasn't the tumble off the couch that had hurt him. Their apartment might have been tiny, but the musty, mustard-colored shag covering the floor was as thick and soft as a dirty old sponge.

  No, she'd hurt him, and she wasn't even sure why. His faith in Santa had been irritating her, rubbing on her nerves like sandpaper, for weeks. She was a big kid—almost ten—and she knew she should let Ronnie have his little-kid dreams. Yet another part of her longed to shake him awake.

  She kept her eyes on the Bradys.

  "Santa's fake,” she said.

  "He's real!"

  "No, he's not."

  "How do you know?"

  "I just do."

  "But how do you know?"

  "I just do."

  "Prove it!"

  Karen finally tore her gaze away from the screen.

  "You want me to? Really?"

  Her brother blinked at her. It was up to him now.

  If he insisted on this, she'd have to go through with it, right? That's what big sisters are for—helping little kids learn. And if a lesson stung a little, well, that wouldn't be her fault, would it?

  Ronnie nodded reluctantly.

  "All right,” Karen said.

  She walked over to the TV and switched it off. The reruns would come around again one day. That's why they called them “reruns.” But this moment with her brother—it would come only once.

  "Let's go."

  She headed for the bedroom Mom had been sharing with Cousin Rick the past few months. The door was closed. The door was always closed.

  "Where are you going?"

  Karen looked back at her brother. “Where does it look like I'm going?"

  "But ... we can't go in there."

  "Why not? Mom's at the Tiger tonight—she won't be home for hours. And you know how it is when he's supposed to be watching us. He'll probably show up five minutes before Mom and pretend he was here all day."

  "But if he catches us ... you remember what he said."

  Karen did remember—the tone of Rick's voice, anyway. If he ever found them messing with his things, he'd have to do something ... ugly. Karen had understood that much even if some of the words were new to her.

  "He won't catch us,” she said. “We'll only be in there a minute."

  She turned and opened the bedroom door. The room beyond was messy, dark. Adult.

  She stepped inside.

  The bed—that was the place to start. Karen got down on her hands and knees and pushed away the crumpled clothes and cigarette packs so she could take a look underneath. The shades were drawn down over the windows, yet just enough silver-gray light glowed around the edges to see by.

  There wasn't much to see, though. Just more clutter.

  A single shoe. Dad's aluminum softball bat, the one Mom kept around “for protection.” An old People magazine. A torn wrapper with the word “Tr
ojan” printed on it.

  It suddenly occurred to Karen that she might not find what she was looking for. The thought scared her.

  "What's down there?"

  Karen looked over her shoulder. Her brother stood in the doorway, half in half out of the room.

  "Nothing."

  She stood and started toward the closet. To reach it, she had to step around a pile of dirty clothes as high as her waist.

  The apartment had never been like this when Dad was alive. But after Mom had to start working two jobs—days at the Lawn Devil plant, evenings tending bar at the Toy Tiger Lounge—things changed.

  And then Uncle/Cousin Rick showed up, and things didn't just change some more. They fell apart.

  He appeared overnight, like Christmas presents or Easter eggs. One morning, Karen and Ronnie stumbled bleary-eyed from the tiny bedroom they shared and there he was. A complete stranger eating their Boo Berry at the kitchen table.

  "Hey,” he'd said through a mouthful of cereal. “Your mom's still asleep."

  After another half-hearted bite—and a full minute of awkward silence—Rick dropped his spoon and stood up.

  "I don't see how you can eat this crap,” he mumbled, and he stomped past the still-gaping kids and disappeared into their mother's bedroom—closing the door behind him.

  He'd left the bowl, still filled with milk and soggy blue blobs, sitting on the table. That was The Rick System for dining and dishwashing: Dirty bowls, plates, cups, and silverware were left out, encrusted with food, until there was nothing left to eat with. And when you reached that point, you got all your food from KFC and White Castle and ate it straight out of the box.

  Cleaning (never), sleeping (late), bathing (when people noticed the smell)—soon it was all on The Rick System. Mom was on The Rick System. And it was making her seem less like Mom every day.

  Dad used to warn Karen about “bad influences” at school, but she never really knew what he meant until she saw the effect Cousin Rick had on her mother. If there really were a Santa Claus, she knew what she'd ask him for. Not that the fat man would do it.

  Santa gave bad people a lump of coal. He didn't drop them down abandoned mine shafts.

  "What are you looking for?” Ronnie asked as Karen stepped up to the closet Mom and Rick now shared.