Gift-Wrapped & Toe-Tagged: A Melee of Misc. Holiday Anthology

by Dr. Freud Funkenstein, ed.

  The dancer arose, slowly enacting the classic birth of Venus, and couldn’t resist a quick glance down to check on the zit-in-waiting. It looked like a boil, it was going to be a bad one. Deciding that Anaïs wouldn’t be thankful for a close-up view of glistening pustulence, she turned to crawl away to the pole when a light touch brushed her shoulder. She froze – no touching was Rule No. 1, and that went for anyone, no matter how much they paid or how much they begged. Drum, if nothing else, was a businessman, and called Verboten on anything likely to endanger the smooth and profitable running of that business. His women were dancers, he would say, entertainers; he didn’t employ hookers, and he publicly despised pimps with a loud and colourful repertoire of four-letter epithets.

  “Don’t turn away,” the customer smiled, her words timed perfectly to snake their way around the dancer’s ears as the beat died and the music faded into the whooshing synthesized outro. The touch lifted again, and when she turned, Drum’s least confident entertainer was eye to eye with that serene stare, shades and tones of forest glades and cool autumn sunsets swirling in the irises. They were eyes which did not speak; they sang, melodies arcane littered with timeless truths and ancient secrets. By some clumsy quirk, she had managed to put the music on repeat mode and the track began again, subdued sitars twirling sensations of glory and ecstasy around her tired, tortured mind. A long finger touched itself to her parted, quivering lips.

  “That was entrancing,” Anaïs said. “I don’t need any more.”

  Reluctantly, the dancer pulled herself away and switched off the boom box. The other woman had migrated to the doorway, without making any noise in doing so.

  “Wait for me.” she said. “Please. I know you’re hurting. We are all cursed, in our own way. But it is only through great acts of discipline, sacrifice, and personal strength that we may lift those curses that lie upon us, and bask in true happiness.”

  The dancer was still confused. She scratched at that damn zit and it flared up. She would pop it that night in the bath. It was home time – she’d already earned her right to catch a cab and soak up sandalwood-scented bubbles.

  “What, outside?”

  Anaïs smiled broadly, a smile so enchanting that the dancer longed to see more of it. She wanted to meet Anaïs later; no, sooner; to share that smile again, drift through those eyes, feel that once-forbidden touch everywhere, for ever.

  But Anaïs shook her head. “Not tonight. I can’t. I must not. I’ll be back, someday – someday, I’ll take you away. Far away from here, and all the hurt and all the fears will fade, forever.”

  She stooped to pick up the G-string, hung it from her finger. “When?”

  “That would be telling.”

  “Well, yes it would. What’s wrong with telling? Thought you were named after the goddess of love. Not tease.”

  “No, dear. That’s your job, isn’t it? And you do it very well. All you have to do is keep on doing it, as best as you can. And I’ll be back to partake of your delights again, and more besides. I promise.”

  “I’ll wait for you. I promise too.”

  And with that, Anaïs was gone. The wait had begun.

  Act II

  A year had passed, almost exactly to the day, since the goddess of love had visited the Desert Fox.

  She dreamed of Anaïs every night, dreams of wavy platinum hair that shone like gunmetal, dreams of gray-green eyes which spoke of untold and silent longings. She dreamed of long hands which reached out to caress, to have, to hold and to keep. She dreamed of that one sharing her bed, sharing her laughter, and promenades on Parisienne walkways. And in her deeper sleeps, she dreamed of dancing all night for Anaïs until she fell back exhausted, and welcomed Anaïs and her hungry tongue.

  And so the dancer ground her way through endless nights of neon, dry ice, itchy eyes and sore feet, waiting for the woman who had carved her name into her heart, and her left arm. The tattoo had been done in a hurry across the road one afternoon and hadn’t been inked properly, and instead of being red the heart was purple. It was speared through not with a Cupid arrow but a female biological symbol. She had never considered her own sexuality to be so elastic, but now it all made perfect sense. Anaïs had unlocked what she really was, what she had always been. It was all so simple, it was magnificent.

  And so she danced and she stripped for the lonely, the bored, the hysterical and the crude, but Anaïs did not return. The nights became weeks, mentally ticked off like 5-bar gates on a prison wall until they melted and dimmed – like her eyes when she raised them to the peering spotlights above her, staring into her, through her, miniature suns which turned supernova inside her head and bounced around on her retinae like fiery pinballs.

  She asked the bar staff, she asked the management; she asked the regulars and she asked the passers-through, but none had seen the platinum blonde, and few could even understand the name; such a strange name, a foreign name, an unusual name. No, they shook their heads as one; they would have remembered that name had they ever heard it before. And no, they would definitely remember a platinum blonde fitting that description.

  The last night, she had decided to wear black leather and her favourite tight crop top, not so tight now as it had once been, slack and lazy much like her silicone implants which barely stirred beneath it now, stern and hard where everything else had begun to wobble a little more than it ought to.

  She knew Anaïs would not come as she twisted idly around the corner pole, but she had to play the game to the end nonetheless, showing her best moves in case she was being watched from a distance, in the crowd disguised, or lurking behind a two-way mirror. After all, it had been exactly a year now, again the run-up to another religious festival she would stubbornly abstain from. In her heart, she knew she wouldn’t make it that far, even if she wanted to. Anaïs had killed her; it was that simple, though far from magnificent. Better to have loved and lost etcetera didn’t even enter into it. Her life was still a broken-down, rusted heap. All Anaïs had done was scrape off one square inch of tarnished blackness and show her a glimmer of gold peeking out from beneath. The love had not died, though it had festered; it had withered, shrunk; it still lingered but skeletal now, stripped bare and teased by its own memories, tormented by its endless thoughts of if only, and forced to watch the midwinter sun recede again over the black horizon.

  The empty shift over, she walked out, out into the night. Snow had come earlier than predicted, a thin carpet which sparkled like an inverted starscape under her feet as the freeze set in. It felt much like the moment, the moment so long ago now, that had led to this – debating how to end it all that night: razor blades or the full contents of the paracetamol jar? She had spent so long waiting, longing, hungering – it had to end, it had to, now. There was no point, no purpose any more. The one flash of light she had seen in the darkness had long since flickered out. Not even a candle – a burnt-out 99 cent cigarette lighter on its last drop of fuel. She had hung on, she had waited. She had kept her promise, she had done her bit. Anaïs had cursed her – she had been right about that.

  After all, Anaïs could be dead for all she knew, killed by a car on her way to the club the night after they had first met. Who would know? A stranger in town – who would care? Just a Jane Doe on a slab downtown, and another one walking, cavorting, in the bar half a mile back. Dead woman dancing. Heh.

  Then a shape burst out of the sidestreet in front of her, steel-tipped heels ringing out on stone. The shadows unfurled under flickering neon and she staggered to a halt, terrified, disbelieving, ecstatic all at once. A wave of gunmetal hair broke over the black leather coat and the gray-green eyes of Anaïs stared down into her own.

  “Oh…my God. Anaïs? Jesus…You scared the life out of me.”

  Anaïs didn’t move, hands deep in coat pockets. “I thought you said you would wait.”

  “I did…hell, I did, Anaïs, I waited a year. I asked about you every night…I looked for you everywhere. I couldn’t take it any longer. All I want
ed was to see you again. That was all. Do you hear me? I waited.”

  Gloved fingers stretched over her head, smoothing back hair, thumb caressing her forehead.

  “You gave up.”

  “No, no I didn’t. I waited. Listen to me.”

  “You ungrateful bitch. I rescued you that night. You were hours away from leaving this world forever. Beer bottle, razor blades, pills – what’s it gonna be?”

  She shook her head, fear gnawing at her nerves, at her gut.

  “How can you know that?”

  “I gave you life.” The tears in Anaïs’ eyes screamed in their pain. “And you – you threw it away. Don’t you understand? The minute you surrendered – you gave up your soul. Your life. Everything.”

  “But I had nothing. All I had was you. All I wanted was you – again – and forever.”

  “So you say. Yet, you couldn’t wait. You promised.”

  “Yeah…okay. But how long was I supposed to wait for you, Anaïs? Ten years? ’til I was forty, fifty?” Scarred with wrinkles and everything sagging, propped up by silicone and surgery – was that really how Anaïs wanted her?

  “That last year you spent in there – I gave you that year. That time was whatever you wanted to make of it. A year to live – or a year to die. The choice was yours. I told you we’re all cursed. Did I place so dreadful a burden upon you in order to break that curse – that twisted thread that brought us together – to just live?

  “That was all I asked for – one year of your time alone, for an eternity together. Was it really such a big – god-damned – commitment?” Her voice wavered with the threat of tears, but the striking woman with the platinum hair was stronger than that. She straightened herself, stood accusing, still seeking answers. “You tasted heaven – and you spat it out.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “That year I gave you – I’m taking it back. With interest.” The long open razor unfolded in Anaïs’ hand. “I’m sorry.”

  The steel flashed faster than stunned senses could follow, cutting a jagged crescent of crimson across the dancer’s throat. Spots of red rain dappled the other woman’s coat and dropped to make pink petals on the white ground. Clawing hands grabbed at Anaïs’ collar as she sank toward the sparkling white pockmarks of the pavement, snapping fingernails in the thick black leather. As she fell, sucking shocked squeaks of air through the widening, bubbling gap in her neck, she saw Anaïs’ eyes shift colour from gray-green to black, a trick of the light surely. She didn’t understand, she had done nothing wrong. She had waited. She had done what she had been told.

  Anaïs stooped by the body and dragged it off the pavement into the alleyway. She shook the blood from the blade and folded it back out of sight. In the distance, bells rang out to celebrate Christmas Eve, a clamour which sent a shudder through her body.

  She hated this time of year.

  How much longer would she be cursed to walk, seeking just one who could devote herself to her – just one – one who could wait, one who was worthy of her? Once, a nation had bowed its head before her, had sacrificed in her name, held rituals and festivals to appease her. The goddess of love and rebirth was also the goddess of death, and where one was lost, she would find the other. It was simply that love – true, unconditional, undying love – had proved impossible to find again since the good ancient days, and death so easy. And in these strange days, nobody wanted to be reborn any more, as though oblivion had itself become a new god, a new paradise to be sought by the weak and terminally unmotivated.

  She wondered, as she wandered, how many more of the old gods – similarly banished to earthly obscurity by the coming of the new – stalked the streets as she did, looking for love, scratching their stubble in front of daytime soaps, seeking disciples in cheap bars. Forgotten, or relegated to the realm of comic books and fantasy films in garish caricatures. Or names stolen for days of the week, months, military aircraft or venomous spiders.

  And as she walked, a dark smile broke on her lips.

  One day, those bells would be silent for ever. And He too would join the ranks of the divinely unemployed.

  One day. If she waited long enough.

  Barry Gifford

  SAD STORIES OF THE DEATH OF KINGS

  ROY’S FRIEND MAGIC Frank had a job cleaning up the Tip Top Burlesque House on Saturday and Sunday nights, which, because he began work at three-thirty of the following days, were actually Sunday and Monday mornings. According to the law, during business hours patrons and workers at the Tip Top had to be at least eighteen years old and Magic Frank was only sixteen, but since the girlie shows stopped at three the city ordinance did not apply to him. He’d gotten the job through his older brother, Moose, who played poker on Thursday nights with the Tip Top’s owner, Herman “Lights Out” Trugen. Moose told Frank that Trugen’s nickname derived from his habit of turning out lights to save money on electricity. Trugen, who was in his sixties, supposedly had been pals with the comedic actor W.C. Fields, another famous miser who kept padlocks on his telephones to which only he had the keys. In Berlin, Moose said, Herman Trugen had operated a whorehouse favored by the Nazis, several of whom helped him escape Germany during the Holocaust. Trugen’s two sisters and a brother had died in Auschwitz.

  Magic Frank did not like to go alone to State and Congress, so on Christmas Eve he asked Roy to accompany him, promising Roy to buy breakfast after he’d finished mopping the theater and taking out the trash. It was already officially Christmas on Sunday night when the boys got to the Tip Top early, at two-thirty, in order to catch the last show.

  “I thought you couldn’t get in until the place was closed,” Roy said.

  “I got a key to the back door,” said Magic Frank, “and Trugen don’t come in Sundays. The other guys don’t care, they just nod or wave and let me sit and watch if I want.”

  “What about the strippers?”

  “What about ’em?”

  “You know any?”

  “Not really. By the time I come in, they’re dog tired. They mostly just get dressed and leave.”

  A cold, sporadic rain pelted the boys as they walked down Dearborn past Van Buren, then turned left on Congress Parkway, where a gust of wind hit them flush in the face.

  “Jesus H. Christ!” Frank cried. “As soon as I can, I’m movin’ to Miami.”

  Magic Frank led Roy down an alley just west of State Street to the rear of the Tip Top and unlocked the back door. Roy followed him through the offices into the theater. The show was on so the boys snuck up a side aisle to the very last row and took seats. Two middle-aged, red-nosed men were onstage.

  “Where was you last night, Al?” one asked the other.

  “Inna cemetery.”

  “A cemetery?”

  “That’s right, Joe.”

  “What were you doin’ inna cemetery at night?”

  “Buryin’ a stiff.”

  The dozen or so members of the audience barely acknowledged this stale joke despite an urgent roll on a snare drum and a cymbal crash that punctuated it. To Roy, the comedians looked as beat as the pit band sounded once they began an overture to the last stripper of the night.

  “And now, for the delectation not to mention play-zeer of you germs out there,” announced Joe, the fellow who performed the apocryphal interment, “direct from Paris—that’s a burg in southern Illinois—guaranteed to raise your spirits if nothin’ else, the proud proprietor of the best breasts in the Middle West, Miss May Flowers!”

  May Flowers entered stage left as the duo departed stage right. Draped in a bodice-hugging, floor-length, bright yellow gown, she sashayed around out of sync to the pit band’s dull rendering of “Night Train.” Her high-piled hair was fiery red.

  “Sonny Liston uses this tune to jump rope by,” Roy whispered to Magic Frank.

  Before she stripped, Miss Flowers looked to be about forty years old. After her act was finished, Roy thought, she looked even older. Her breasts were long and narrow and set wide apart, the
nipples sporting silver pasties; once released from imprisonment, they depended almost to her hips. During May’s flounce and inevitable divestiture, the few witnesses who had paid to get in out of the cold expressed no particular emotions that Roy could easily discern. Most of them remained passive, if not in fact comatose, undisturbed by this jactitative offering. Those individuals deep in slumber went undetected by the performer, their snores rendered inaudible by the unenthusiastic strains of Jimmy Forrest’s signature composition. May Flowers completed her act without much of a flourish. Once having shed all but a strategically positioned gold lamé triangle, she strode quickly out of sight and for all anyone knew directly out of the building.

  Miss Flowers was not in evidence once Roy and Magic Frank went backstage. The musicians beat a hasty retreat as well, and two cadaverous-complexioned ushers hustled the patrons into the inhospitable night. It was part of Frank’s job to turn off the lights and make sure the doors were locked, so the ushers took off as soon as they were certain all of the customers had gone.

  Roy asked Magic Frank if there was anything he could do to help him, and Frank said he could empty the wastebaskets from the office and dump them into a garbage can in the alley. Roy consolidated the contents of the several baskets into one and carried it outside, careful to prop open the door with a chair so as not to lock himself out. As he was emptying the trash, May Flowers walked out of the theater into the alley, carrying a bag and a box with a handle. She was wearing a big beaver coat with a small matching hat. Roy shivered in the icy rain.

  “Nasty night, ain’t it?” she said.

  Roy looked at her and asked, “How do you get all of your hair under that little hat?”

  “You mean the wig I wear durin’ my act? It’s in here,” said May Flowers, lifting the box. “There’s a pack of cigs and a lighter in the left side pocket of my coat. Could you be a good egg and take ’em out and light one up for me?”