Anthology - The Night Before Christmas

by Foster, Mccarthy, Shalvis, Love, Garbera, Adams

  "Peri, I'm sorry about your engagement. I know that's gotta suck," Louie said. He tied his black smock and stepped out of the way.

  "Thanks. And it does. But life goes on." Peri punched the clock with her time card. Shit. She was just late enough for Owen to dock her a quarter-hour's pay.

  "Sometimes the best medicine when you find out your guy's been cheating is to go out there and nail somebody yourself," Louie went on. "And I'm here for you if that's what you need. I'll be that guy."

  Peri looked at him.

  Louie stared back earnestly, as if he'd just offered a place to crash for relatives in town for a funeral.

  Peri grinned. The boy was speaking from the depths of his twenty-two-year-old, party animal heart. "I appreciate that so much. It's very thoughtful. But I think I'm going to pass."

  "Am I on crack, or was there supposed to be a fucking shift change ten minutes ago?" Owen bellowed to no one in particular from some place unseen.

  Peri and Louie darted out of the office to take their positions behind the counter as baristas at Rush Hour, an anti-Starbucks coffeehouse on Thompson Street in New York's trendy SoHo.

  "Sorry I'm late," Peri said, moving fast to relieve Sabrina, who'd just come off the graveyard midnight-to-eight gauntlet.

  "Please take over before I throw something in that bitch's face," Sabrina half-begged, half-threatened in a low whisper. "She acts like I've never made a cappuccino before."

  Peri glanced up to see one of Rush Hour's like-clockwork regulars—a high-strung assistant fashion editor for Vogue. The impression always lingered that if her Guatemalan Huehuetenango cappuccino wasn't prepared just so, then furniture would go flying.

  "I've got this," Peri assured Sabrina with an amused laugh. "Go. Leave this place. Sleep." She finished up and sent the fashionista with the Obsessive Coffee Disorder on her way. And then he approached the counter.

  Chase McCloud.

  Almost instantly, Peri's heart began beating as fast as a little bird's. It seemed impossible. But each time she saw him in person, he appeared to be even more handsome. Like today, in his distressed brown leather bomber jacket, vintage Lynyrd Skynyrd rocker tee, destroyed-wash denim jeans, and motorcycle boots, Chase McCloud was dressed to torture women. And for that matter, certain men, too. The black cashmere skull cap that covered his forehead and ears only added to his appeal, because it accentuated his piercing blue eyes.

  Chase smiled at Peri. "Caramel Frappuccino," he said.

  Peri smiled right back. "You're breaking my heart."

  And he was. And he did. Every time she saw him. In person. Or on television.

  Chase shrugged, grinning, showing perfect teeth, displaying even more perfect dimples. "Okay, okay. I'll take the usual."

  It was their little joke. After all, Rush Horn was the choice for coffee hardliners. Skinny latte drinkers were encouraged to queue up at one of the corporate chains where the Java slaves wouldn't know a well-brewed coffee from a cup of week-old Sanka.

  Peri moved like lightning to prep Chase's ritual request—a Nicaraguan ristretto. Definitely a morning hit for the serious-minded, as it was like an espresso but with half the amount of water.

  "Any luck on the acting front?" Chase asked.

  "I got a part in a play," Peri answered modestly, casting her eyes downward. "Off, off, off Broadway." She laughed a little.

  He nodded and laughed along with her. "I've been in some of those. But that's okay. Work is work."

  Oh, God, was he hot. For a millisecond, Peri indulged in the exquisite art of just drinking him in. "When it lasts. In the middle of our first cast reading, we found out that the financing fell through. So…"

  Chase glanced around for a moment, searching for the right words. "Oh … well, I've been in some of those, too, actually." Now he laughed a little.

  And this time Peri joined in.

  "Have you ever auditioned for Physical Evidence?" Chase asked.

  Peri shook her head. Physical Evidence was only one of the hottest shows on television, running a close second to C.S.I. in the ratings race, thanks to the viewing public's insatiable desire for gory forensic crime dramas.

  Chase had a supporting role in the series. He played Bingo Grant, a cooler-than-cool junior investigator with a penchant for mouthing off to superiors. As far as Peri was concerned, he never got enough screen time.

  "The show needs at least fifteen guest actors for each episode. Pick up a copy of Back Stage and give it a shot." Chase leaned forward confidentially, giving her the full benefit of his aftershave.

  Peri recognized it as Dior Higher. Hints of pear, basil, and frosted citrus were strong in her nostrils as she hung on every syllable tripping off his spectacular lips.

  "A single-day walk-on pays about seven hundred bucks. A speaking part could take a week to shoot. That pays a little over two grand."

  Peri's eyes widened. "I had no idea."

  Chase gave her a severe nod. "Before I lucked out with this Physical Evidence gig, I survived on the Law & Order franchise." He chuckled. "Once I was a lawyer on the original Law & Order, a prison inmate on Special Victims Unit, and the boyfriend of a murder victim on Criminal Intent. All in the same week. But I paid my rent that month. And I had more for dinner than Ramen noodles, too."

  Peri could feel her central nervous system adjusting to the current reality. This marked the longest conversation she'd ever had with Chase McCloud. Why did he have to be nice, funny, helpful, empathetic, encouraging, and self-deprecating? Now her fan-girl crush was morphing into something much more.

  In a nervous gesture, she played with her brunette hair, moving it behind her ear. "I auditioned for a TV show once, and the casting director told me I was 'bland and way too half-hour.' God, I was so embarrassed. Since then, I've pretty much been sticking to theater."

  Chase paid for his caffeine fix and dropped a ten-dollar bill into the tip jar. "That's one guy. You can't listen to him. I had a woman tell me once that I'd be lucky to get cast as a fraternity extra in a National Lampoon movie. I kept at it and got lucky." He winked. "You will, too."

  The man in line behind Chase cleared his throat impatiently.

  Chase patted the counter with a gloved hand. "Take it easy." He started out, and she wondered if he was aware of her eyes burning into his back, because he stopped at the door, spun quickly, and hollered out, "Get Back Stage today! I want to see you on my set!" He paused a beat, smiling at her, realizing that he was causing a mini-commotion. "What's your last name, Peri?"

  "Knight," she called out.

  "Peri Knight," Chase repeated thoughtfully. "Now that's a name for television!" And then he was gone.

  Peri could feel the blush staining her cheeks.

  "A double espresso with hot milk on the side would be nice," the next customer barked. "Any time you feel like it, honey. I was only supposed to be at work five minutes ago."

  "Coming right up," Peri chirped, practically floating and feeling no irritation whatsoever. Nobody could get under her skin today.

  Nobody except her mother, of course.

  "Tina's a troublemaker," Suzanne Knight was saying. "I've never liked that girl. She wants to spoil things for you. Just so she can have Mike for herself."

  "Mom, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard you say," Peri argued, struggling to fish cash out of her coin purse without taking off her gloves.

  The newsstand guy, gloveless and unaffected by the bitter cold, just stood there like a statue in the park until she produced the necessary funds to claim a copy of Back Stage as her own.

  "Anyway, Peri, you're overreacting to this situation. How can you be one hundred percent sure that it's Mike on that video?"

  "Okay, that's the dumbest thing you've ever said. The bit about Tina comes in second." Peri stuffed the casting weekly into her tote bag and started down the frozen sidewalk, cellular clamped to ear.

  "It could be anybody on that tape. Think of all the things they can do with trick photography."

 
Peri sighed. "Mom, the distinctive birthmark on Mike's ass is clearly visible. And at one point in the video, you can distinctly hear him yelling, 'Mike Mason rules! Fuckin' A,' while he's having sex with the stripper." One beat. "So there's really no room for conspiracy theories. It's him."

  "What am I supposed to tell his mother? Since you broke off the engagement, Caroline Mason has left me two messages. I can't avoid her forever."

  "I don't know. Tell her that she raised a pig. See where the conversation goes from there."

  "Peri, I can't believe you're willing to throw away an entire future over this … incident. At the end of the day, it's a meaningless encounter."

  "Meaningless to him maybe. Not to me." Peri charged on, even as the bitter winter wind sliced into her, chilling her to the very marrow of her bones. This thrift-shop coat was for shit. But the train station was just a few blocks away. She could make it. And driving her mother insane would be just the entertainment to keep her mind focused on something besides the cold.

  "The Masons are a strong family, Peri. Mike is a fifth-generation banker at Manhattan National. His future is secure. You'll live in a fine apartment. You'll summer in the Hamptons. Your kids will have access to the best schools. You could build a great life with him."

  "It's not the life I want," Peri said. "In all honesty, this breakup hasn't been that devastating. I'm relieved. God, I'm even grateful … that Mike gave me this out. I've known for a long time that he wasn't the right guy for me. But I accepted his proposal, and part of me just didn't want to admit that I was wrong to do that. So I stuck with it, and I interpreted things to support the idea that I loved him. But I don't. And I don't think I ever did. He just doesn't thrill me."

  "He just doesn't thrill you," Suzanne Knight echoed, her voice weary with impatience. "Sometimes you have to grow up, Peri. There's more to life than thrills. Look at your situation. You make an hourly wage behind a coffee counter, so you can pursue this acting thing, and you couldn't buy a cup of coffee from all the money you've earned from your so-called craft. You don't have any health insurance. You had to take in a crazy roommate to stay in that horrible apartment, and you still need me and your father to subsidize the rent every month. That kind of vagabond lifestyle is only cute when you're twenty. After that, it's pathetic and irresponsible."

  Peri's blood began to boil a little. It always came down to money. If her parents handed it out, then they thought that it put them in the captain's chair to control her life.

  "There's a meeting I want you to attend tonight," Suzanne announced.

  Peri was instantly suspicious. Right away she thought it might be some kind of intervention involving the Masons. "What kind of meeting?"

  "The American Promise Makers."

  Peri groaned. "You can't be serious."

  "Oh, I'm very serious. It's just an introductory seminar, but I already paid the two-hundred-dollar registration fee, and you are going. It's being held in the auditorium of a Brooklyn high school. Check your e-mail when you get home for the details."

  "Mom, I'm not schlepping out to Brooklyn in this weather to listen to some wack job tell me that feminists are evil and that The Surrendered Wife should be required reading."

  "See, you're already judging the information before you've had a chance to hear it."

  "I know about this group," Peri persisted. "It's just a bunch of crazy women who want to pretend that it's the fifties again. Tell them to send me a pamphlet. I'm not going."

  "Yes, you are," Suzanne said sharply.

  "No, I'm not," Peri shot back, her tone equally sharp. Thank God. There, right across the street, was the subway. "Listen, I'm about to go into a train station, so I'm probably going to lose you…"

  "Wait just a minute."

  "I have to—"

  "Patricia Perriman Knight! You don't have to do anything but listen to your mother!"

  The use of her full name combined with the primal scream stopped Peri in her tracks.

  "For years, your father and I have indulged you with this dream of becoming an actress. We've paid for training and head shots and God knows what else. All I'm asking you to do is attend one Promise Makers meeting with an open mind. Is that so much to ask?"

  Yes, it was.

  "The reason why women are unhappy and unfulfilled in marriage today is a simple one: They try to do too much." Paige McCoy stopped talking, looked out at the sea of attentive listeners in the auditorium of Brooklyn's Cobble Hill School of American Studies, and smiled in quiet acknowledgment of the hundred or so female heads bobbing up and down in unified agreement.

  But Peri's head did not move.

  Paige McCoy walked to the lip of the stage, her smug, listen-to-me-because-I-know-the-secret voice carried by one of those wireless, headset microphones, the kind Britney Spears uses even when she lip-synchs in concert. But Paige McCoy was no Britney. In her pink-and-black boucle jacket, black wool crepe ruffle-hem skirt, and wedge-heeled Mary Janes by Taryn Rose, she was oh-so Charlotte from Sex and the City.

  In fact, as Peri swept an assessing gaze over the crowd, she discovered that the auditorium was chock-ablock full of Charlotte types—attractive, fashionable, yet with a conservative touch, and palpably yearning for the Modern Bride fantasy of marriage and family to come true.

  And here sat Peri Knight, the definitive odd-girl-out in her youth-hostel-chic ensemble of ethnic headwrap, thrift-shop coat, baggy cargo pants, and lace-up shearling boots, fresh from a self-imposed engagement bust-up and unable to wipe the mystified expression off her face as Paige McCoy blathered on.

  "Don't listen to the feminists, ladies. They tell us that the key to happiness is equality. But I've been there, sisters. Once upon a time, I crashed through the glass ceiling. I earned the kind of income that made my husband's salary look like lunch money. I had a say in everything that went on in our household, from how we approached finances to when or if we would make love. And you know what? I'd never felt more miserable. Seek relationship equality, sisters, and you will only get emotional inequity."

  Peri knew that her mouth had dropped open, that her eyes were wide with shock, that her chest was tight with the fury of silent protest. And yet, as she looked around, it seemed as if every other woman in the room was just smiling in lockstep agreement.

  "Sisters, you are here today because you want to make a promise. A promise to yourselves. And most importantly, a promise to your husbands, present or future." Paige McCoy walked back and forth across the stage, making eye contact with the first few rows of disciples, beaming gotcha looks to each and every one. "A true Promise Maker surrenders to her husband's leadership in all aspects of marriage. A true Promise Maker knows that her best talents are utilized in avoiding boredom in the bedroom."

  "This Stepford bullshit is un-fucking-believable," Peri muttered under her breath.

  The objection was loud enough to incur scowls and hisses from the women in her immediate orbit.

  "It's like I always say," Paige McCoy went on, "a true Promise Maker is something of a Wonder Woman. She's Betty Crocker in the kitchen and Jenna Jameson in the bedroom."

  A cacophony of chuckles filled the auditorium.

  "But a true Promise Maker is not indulgent to fantasy. She's not one of those 'desperate housewives' who covets young, virile men or the mysterious neighbor next door. She doesn't harbor erotic thoughts about celebrities, either. Her husband is her king. And she is there to make him feel like one. Especially in the bedroom. Do this, sisters, and you will never have to worry about your husband's wandering eye. And if he does stray, then that's your cue to double up your efforts at making his bedroom a more exciting place to play."

  By now, Peri was beyond disgusted. She began gathering her things to leave and made no attempt to be quiet about it.

  "Sisters, I challenge you to write down five erotic fantasies involving a man other than your king," Paige McCoy said.

  A ripple of shock moved through the crowd. Uncertain glances were shared. Some titters, too
.

  Peri hesitated.

  "Go ahead," Paige McCoy encouraged them. "Give voice to these desires. State them for the record."

  Peri watched as shameful pens went to work on shameful legal pads. Suddenly intrigued by the assignment, she joined in and began to write.

  1. Have sex with Chase McCloud.

  2. Have sex with Chase McCloud while he's wearing his Bingo Grant costume.

  3. Have sex with Chase McCloud after waking up with Chase McCloud and eating a breakfast that Chase McCloud prepared.

  4. Have sex with Chase McCloud again.

  Repeat items 1-4 with Chase McCloud.

  "And now, sisters," Paige McCoy instructed, "I implore you to renounce these thoughts as psychic garbage and symbolically rip them to shreds!"

  The sound of paper being torn echoed through the auditorium.

  But Peri Knight merely slipped her private page into her tote bag and walked out. Somewhere between the frigid walk on Baltic Street and the takedown of a cab to whisk her to the train station, she decided what to do with her secret fantasy list. Peri was going to post it on the door of her refrigerator.

  The thought of how horrified Paige McCoy would be about that conjured up a secret joy in Peri that triggered a spell of uncontrollable laughter.

  How's that for a promise, bitch?

  BACK STAGE

  Open Casting: Film & Television

  Project Type: Television

  Full Project Name: PHYSICAL EVIDENCE

  Union: SAG

  Rate: Scale

  Location: New York

  Shooting Date: Not Set

  Casting Studio: Silver Screen Studios

  Audition Date: December 16, 9:00 A.M.

  Production Co.: Fingerprints & Fibers, Inc.

  Address: Chelsea Piers, Pier 62

  Seeking

  Attractive actress to believably play assistant district attorney between ages mid-20s and early 30s. Sexy, intelligent, confident, take-no-prisoners attitude, fast talker.

  Performers of all ethnic and racial backgrounds are encouraged to attend.