Grumble Monkey and the Department Store Elf

“When in doubt, twirl.”

~ James Broughton

Grumble Monkey and the Department Store Elf

“B
ABY
,
IT
’
S
cold outside,” declared the famous old song from the speakers of the car radio.

No kidding
, thought Nick. It
was
cold. It was colder than a well-digger’s butt in the Klondike, is what it was. Colder than a nun’s buns in a steel chastity belt.

In other words, it was
damned
cold.

The windshield wipers were icing up bad
again
, and Nick knew he was going to have to try to pull over and clean them—a prospect he didn’t relish, with its very real possibility of being struck by a passing motorist. The shoulder of the road was piled high with snow, and in most places there was nowhere to stop the car. In front of him was nothing but snow and ice and a gray and ugly sky. And sleet. It was the scariest driving he’d ever done in his life.

And that’s when he saw the sign. “Rest Area One Mile,” it read, along with the information that it was twenty miles to the next stop. A distance that would take another hour at the speed he was being forced to drive. Nick hadn’t dared go over thirty-five miles an hour since he’d left the motel.

At this speed, I won’t get there on time
.

When Nick woke up that morning in the tiny, crappy motel room and turned on the TV with its strangely yellow-tinted screen, the first thing he’d seen was the weather advisory. Sleet, sleet, and more sleet, and cautions to drive only if it was absolutely necessary. But wasn’t it? Hadn’t he made up his mind (finally) that it was completely necessary?

Despite that, Nick thought about staying another night. But for what? Certainly not the scenic locale. Not the luxurious accommodations. Undoubtedly, not the cuisine. Dinner last night had been a bag of Lay’s potato chips, some trail mix, and an ancient Snickers bar for dessert (via the vending machine in the motel office). The little hole-in-the-wall restaurant across the street had been closed—as in permanently—and the local pizza place, several miles away and the only option for hot food, was closing as he called. The bastards had refused to deliver even when he offered them an extra twenty bucks. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t afford it.

That’s what you get for driving so late last night.

B
UT
HE
wanted to get to San Francisco. He wanted to get there by Christmas Day, and that certainly wasn’t going to happen now, was it? Not if this ice storm didn’t clear up soon, or unless he drove far enough to move out of it. He’d already driven for sixteen hours straight.

Why does it
have
to be Christmas Day?

It was that internal question again, and he squashed it down and made the split-second decision to pull off the road. But even driving at only thirty-five miles an hour, it was too fast, and for one brief alarming instant (which seemed to last about a week), he thought he was going to go into a ditch as the car swerved first one way and then another. Somehow, through the grace of Who-knew-what (if there was any “What,” and Nick had stopped believing in fairy tales long ago), he got the car under control, just barely missing a red-and-brown Jeep at the bottom of the off-ramp. A moment later he sat—panting, heart racing, knuckles white from his grip on the steering wheel—in a parking space in front of the nondescript building in the middle of nowhere.

This is ridiculous
, he told himself.

He should have stayed at that motel, hellacious as it had been, with its musty, moldy smell (except for the office, which had reeked of curry so strongly he’d hardly been able to breathe,) and its nasty-smelling towels and the dripping faucet and the dead pill bug by the drain (and where had
it
come from, he’d wondered). Not to mention the pair of panties he’d found behind the bed when he’d tossed his glasses next to the lamp, and they’d skidded across the surface of the end table and onto the floor.

That morning, as he sat on the edge of that uncomfortable bed, watching the crappy television, he had known, ice storm or not, there was no way he was staying at that motel another day. So despite the weatherman’s frantic misgivings, Nick had hit the road—only to discover how bad it really was. Now he was sitting in a rest-area parking lot, hundreds of miles from his goal, his only shelter either his Bentley or a small building that most probably reeked of piss.

Why should any of this be a surprise? Whatever could go wrong, would go wrong, were the words of the famous prophet and sage. Those words, and the equally well-known “if it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all,” were his themes. It had always been that way. Why should things change?

Well
, Nick thought as he sat there, his wipers still slapping noisily across the windshield.
Might as well make do
. Take advantage of the situation. He turned off the engine, along with the duetting voices of Barry Manilow and K.T. Oslin, pulled on his knit cap, turned up the collar on his Eddie Bauer coat, and got out of the car. He glanced at those ice-encrusted windshield wipers, shrugged and decided they would wait, and without another look, headed into the brick building.

Nick was surprised when he walked into the lobby. For what it was, the word “nice” might almost have applied. The room was well lit, with nary a burnt-out bulb, and there was a pleasant smell, manufactured though it may have been, of lavender and disinfectant. The walls were clean, if not the floor (but that was due to the wet feet of travelers escaping sleety weather, not neglect). Nice photographs had been hung—a few nature scenes, as well as neighboring cityscapes—and there was a kiosk of maps and pamphlets for local attractions in one corner. Two nearly comfortable-looking couches were along one side of the room, as well as (of course) the ever-present soda and snack vending machines. At least these had packaging that looked new, and not from a previous century (he shuddered at the thought of last night’s petrified candy bar).

Not too bad.

Color me surprised
.

Of course, he hadn’t gone into the actual bathroom itself, had he?

Nick braced himself.

Once more into the breach
.

And surprise, surprise. Clean! Spick-and-span. The bathroom was all tile and stainless steel and mirrors that might have been cleaned in the last few hours, although the weather surely would have prevented that. The smell of the room deodorizer that was being used wasn’t so strong that it made him want to gag, nor was there the heavy piss smell he’d imagined. The dividing walls separating the toilets went all the way to the floor—no hanky-panky underneath the partitions here!

Or was there?

Just as Nick stepped up to one of the urinals to relieve himself, he heard a noise. A crying out. A gasp. It sounded like sex. Were two men actually doing it in here? His stomach clenched in distaste. Could anything be so cliché?
Don’t we have a bad enough reputation without proving our base nature?

Nick finished his business quickly, washed, and then fled from the building and into the waiting car.

Only to remember he hadn’t cleaned his wipers. Already, in the short time he’d been gone, the windows had glazed over and the wipers were worse—they looked glued to the windshield.

“I hate this,” he said aloud.

Then he geared himself up and stepped back into the cold. It was still sleeting, and he had to stand in the miserable stuff to clean things up.

There’ll be no sleet in California. There’ll be no sleet in California. There’ll be no sleet in California.

To Nick’s relief, scraping the glass wasn’t too bad since the car was still quite warm from the blasting heater—thank Who-knew-what for that because Nick was never warm enough—and he did away with the ice in no time. The wipers though took some whacking and smacking before the chunks broke off. But he wanted—needed—to be careful, because he had no replacements on hand. What a bitch that would be if he had to drive without one. It would be… well, impossible. He would have to stay in this miserable place, and that was the last thing he wanted to do.

“Let me help” came a voice that so startled Nick, he jerked and then began to pinwheel his arms as he started to slip on the ice.

When he fell, it was right into the long arms of a man who was almost a head taller than him. He looked up into a smiling face that would have looked happy, had not his large-framed glasses magnified eyes that had obviously been crying. Nick jumped back and might have fallen again if the stranger hadn’t reached out and given him a steadying hand. He looked again and saw his rescuer was probably about ten years younger than Nick’s own thirty-two. That, and the fact that he was so obviously gay that Nick’s naïve and senile old grandmother would have spotted the kid as a big old fag. Why, just his hat was ridiculous. It was a red-and-green striped pointed hat that was so long it was being used as the dual purpose of a scarf, wrapped several times around his throat. It was embarrassing. Who would be caught dead in such a getup? Did the kid have no sense of decorum?

“Sorry,” said the stranger in a slightly lilting voice that further confirmed Nick’s suspicion that he was gay. This guy could not have passed for heterosexual if he went down on a woman. He probably had a gay pride sticker on his car, maybe even one shaped like a dog or Mickey Mouse. As if being gay was something to toot your horn about.

This is exactly the kind of gay who feeds the hatred against us
, Nick thought. Nick had never been to a pride event in his life—although he’d had a boyfriend for a little over a year, once upon a time, who’d tried to drag him to one or two. Nick didn’t see the point. Straight people didn’t have “pride” events. Why did so many gay people feel a need to make a spectacle of themselves? One’s sexuality was no one’s business but one’s own.

“So do you go back to being ashamed the other three hundred and sixty-four days of the year?” he’d asked his then boyfriend (although he hated the word “boyfriend”—it was so high school!). Their relationship had been framed by two such “gay pride” celebrations, and it was Nick’s refusal to go to the second one (and the sarcastic comment he had made) that sent Spencer packing. Nick had come home to an empty apartment and a note.

Dear Nick,
it had said, and his stomach had dropped as it had so many times in his life, through so many disappointments. He had known before noticing anything was missing that this was a break-up letter.
I’m proud of us. I’m sorry that you’re not. I can’t live with that, Baby. I wish you all the luck and love and pride in the world. Love, Spin.

Baby.
Imagine a man calling another man “Baby.” And Spencer’s preferred nickname for himself was just as silly. Spin. It put Nick in mind of someone whirling and spinning about. What was wrong with Spencer? It was a grand name. Or Spence, if he had
really
needed a nickname.

Ridiculous.

And all this reminiscing was going on as Nick was standing in the cold sleet, the ice beginning to melt down the back of his neck, staring at a tall, slim young man in a ridiculous elf hat.

Said “elf” bit his lip, chewed, then apologized again. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“Butcha did,” Nick snapped, then shook his head. No need to be rude. And certainly no reason to do an imitation of Miss Baby Jane Hudson. That’s something Spencer would have done in a heartbeat.

The stranger grinned a dazzling smile. “That’s from
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane
!”

Nick barely stifled a groan. Of course the kid had caught the reference. What card-carrying, proud-to-be-gay boy wouldn’t?

You did
, his inner self reminded him.

That’s only because of Spencer. He infected me with his gay trivia
.

“I really am sorry,” Elf said for a third time.

Nick held up his hands. “Apology accepted. Have a nice day.” He turned and began to climb into his car.

“Mister! Wait!”

Nick stopped.

“A-are you going west by any chance?” Elf bit his lip again.

It was harder to fight the groan this time, but ten years dealing with indecisive and wishy-washy clients and collectors had taught Nick to control his emotions. At least outwardly.

Hell. What did this fairy want from him?
Please not a ride. Please, please
. “Yes,” he answered stiffly, and managed
not
to say, “What the hell do you think? You can only
go
west from here.” He wanted to say it. He’d been asked a stupid question. The exit from the rest area only went west. And oh, how Nick abhorred stupid questions.

“Oh!” Elf rolled his eyes. At least it looked that way. It was hard to tell since his cheap-looking glasses were getting wet from the sleet. “That was a really dumb question, huh?” Elf shuddered. “It has been a
baaaaad
day, what can I say? First this crap-o weather and then my car.”