December 1994


Billy Dose sat in the Brigitte Diner over his finished turkey dinner, wondering how long it would be until they asked him to leave. He ordered another cup of coffee. He couldn't order dessert, because dessert came as part of the prix-fixe "Joyeux Noel Platter" the Lebanese-pretending-to-be-French operator of the diner had already served him. It consisted of turkey, mashed potatoes, and a little apple tart, all on one plate.

He drank his coffee with a shaky hand. It was really low of them to fire him just before Christmas. If they had only waited until after the holiday, he would probably still be sitting on this counter stool in this same diner eating the same thing, but he would be a lot happier about it.

He'd done all right for a full month at this job, selling display ads for a local alternative newspaper, enough to pay back his ex-girlfriend nearly a hundred dollars. He would have done even better with all the after-Christmas sales coming up.

His mistake, he knew, had been sleeping with his biggest client, a fortyish woman with a prosperous knickknack business and an apartment full of little dogs. Things had gotten out of hand when she'd invited him there and opened a bottle of Christmas sherry. Why did women take it so damn seriously when you proposed marriage?

Those dogs should have tipped him off. Women only bought those little dogs when they'd lost all hope of finding a man. Here he'd given her hope, and after he'd tried to tactfully disappear she'd called him and called him. He would never forget her watery eyes when she tracked him down at the office.

Billy finished his coffee and put on his coat. He covered his head with a knit cap - which, he reasoned, put very little pressure on his tenuous hair follicles - and went out into the cold.
  

Veda Bierce's first Christmas in New York was gray and rainy. Instead of showing warmhearted goodwill towards their fellow men, people huddled beneath umbrellas and rushed from street corner to street corner, protecting showily-wrapped presents with their coats.

Veda got no presents, and gave none. She knew no one in New York except the oil traders she spoke to at work, and they certainly didn't know here as herself. Christmas morning she spent wandering up and down Seventh Avenue looking for a diner that was open. "Brella-um! Brella-um!" said one lone vendor on 14th Street.

She had an apartment now, on Seventh Avenue near Christopher Street. Actually, it was a room in an apartment. The leaseholder, a fashion accessories buyer for Macy's named Undine Spragg, had been through many roommates and had taken to labeling everything she owned in the apartment with her initials. With "U.S." written on the dishes, on the blender, on boxes of cereal and bags of flour in the cupboard, the apartment took on the look of a foreign disaster zone saved by an American relief effort. But it was hard to find a place in New York, and this one was close to the subway and upstairs from a Laundromat.
There were no diners open. Veda went back to her apartment. On the way in, she noticed that the Laundromat was open. Undine was gone for the holiday, so after making herself a sandwich she stuffed her clothes into a "U.S." laundry bag and dragged the bag downstairs.

"You're really open?" she asked, realizing as she said it they were the first words she had spoken all day.

A miserable-looking woman, who looked like hired help, nodded.

Veda stuffed her clothes into the machine. Her new business suits were made from the cheapest synthetic fabrics; wearing them was like wearing a plastic bag. She'd bought them from the kind of 34th Street stores that catered to aspirational secretaries.

Veda hated rainy weather: it reminded her of growing up in Oregon, where the constant rain made everything green. Oregon was a country of trees and clouds and trees and clouds, an endless palette of green and gray, unbearable to a girl whose tastes tended naturally towards silver and hot pink. Her father was still there, alone in a trailer since his retirement from the hotel where he'd been a handyman. It was a nice little hotel. She had spent much of her childhood there, trying to convince elderly patrons she was an abandoned princess or undercover detective.

Getting change for a dollar, she filled the machine's coin slots.

"Can I put my clothes in with yours?" asked someone behind her.

Over her shoulder, she saw a young man with the most spectacular dark eyelashes she had ever seen.

"You've got room in there, and I don't have any money at all."

She turned around. He was a thin boy, wearing a very well-cut, very faded jacket. He had noticeably excellent posture.

"Does that trick ever work?" she asked him.

"Usually," he said cheerfully. "If you ask enough people you usually get a yes, and you get money, too."

He was holding an armful of socks and underwear.

"I have another one for restaurants," he volunteered. "You ask people if they're really hungry enough to eat their entire meal, and say you'll eat whatever they have left over. Usually, they'll buy you a meal of your own."

She looked at him. It was Christmas, and she suddenly felt very lonely.

"Do you know any diners that are open?" Veda asked him.
 
  

The Cafe Brigitte, like thousands of New York City shops, was a hallway-size space that had been turned into an enterprise. The management had tried to make a virtue out of its limits. There was a sign out front saying "We Serve 200 People A Day, 11 at a Time."

Veda and Nicky Gautreau, who had introduced himself as they crossed Seventh Avenue, sat down on two stools at the counter. They ordered the Joyeux Noel platter, which was all the Cafe Brigitte was serving that day. Nicky asked for extra turkey.

"Why don't you get a job, if you're so hungry?" Veda asked as they waited.

Nicky poured a little mound of sugar on the table, and then hacked at it with a toothpick.

"Well, I'm basically lazy. I don't like to work," he said. "And I'm continuing my education. Have you noticed that no one who has a job in this city has time to read a book?"

He broke the toothpick into bits.

"I'm sure Manhattan Island sits at least a half-inch lower in the water under the weight of unread books on apartment shelves." He sighed. "I want to be the sort of guy that reads a book. A Renaissance Man."

"I think Renaissance men are supposed to do a lot of things, not nothing at all," said Veda, as the counterman brought their food.

Nicky considered that, fork in hand.

"I like relaxing; I like having fun. I like doing nothing. Usually, people have fun when they're with me, so I do perform a service. I provide proximate life enjoyment for busy people."

They were both very hungry, so hungry that they exchanged almost no words in the first five minutes of their meal. For entertainment, they watched people come in and out of the diner; a blonde woman who looked full of herself took the place of a sullen man with a knit cap.

"So where is your family on Christmas?" Veda asked him.

"Boston. Only my father. He's one of the leading lights of Boston," said Nicky. "A Crowinshield. One of the top families." He salted his peas. "My mother was his French maid."

Veda looked at him closely. She could see the French in those remarkable eyelashes. The posture must have come from his father.

"I should call my father, for Christmas," Veda said. "But I don't want to get his expectations up. " She examined her plate. "Do you call yours?" she asked Nicky.

"Trust me," Nicky said. "He doesn't want to hear from me."

They ate in silence again, reflecting.

"You're not married?" Nicky asked suddenly. "No husband, no boyfriend?"

"No one," said Veda, pushing the remains of her turkey around her plate. "And I think it'll stay that way. Whenever I've made a mistake in life, a really mistake, it's because I thought I was in love with some man."

"I see what you mean," said Nicky.

"I'll bet you do," she said.

He looked at her and laughed, and she laughed, and after that they had an understanding. After that they were friends.

 

Library of Congress Copyright TXu 875-975