Skipping Christmas (6 page)

Across the way, he saw a new sporting goods store. He strolled over, noticing through the window that there was a crowd inside and certainly not enough cashiers. He was just browsing, though. He found the snorkel gear in the back, a rather slim selection, but it was December. The
swimsuits were of the Speedo variety, breathtakingly narrow all the way around and designed solely for Olympic swimmers under the age of twenty. More of a pouch than a garment. He was afraid to touch them. He’d get himself a catalog and shop from the safety of his home.

As he left the store an argument was raging at a checkout, something about a layaway that got lost. What fools.

He bought himself a fat-free yogurt and killed time strolling along the upper concourse, smiling smugly at the harried souls burning their way through their paychecks. He stopped and gawked at a life-sized poster of a gorgeous young thing in a string bikini, her skin perfectly tanned. She was inviting him to step inside a small salon called Tans Forever. Luther glanced around as if it were an adult bookstore, then ducked inside where Daisy was waiting behind a magazine. Her brown face forced a smile and seemed to crack along the forehead and around the eyes. Her teeth had been whitened, her hair lightened, her skin darkened, and for a second Luther wondered what she looked like before the project.

Not surprisingly, Daisy said it was the best time of the year to purchase a package. Their
Christmas special was twelve sessions for $60. Only one session every other day, fifteen minutes at first, but working up to a max of twenty-five. When the package was over, Luther would be superbly tanned and certainly prepared for anything the Caribbean sun could throw at him.

He followed her a few steps to a row of booths—flimsy little rooms with a tanning bed each and not much else. They were now featuring state-of-the-art FX-2000 BronzeMats, straight from Sweden, as if the Swedes knew everything about sunbathing. At first glance, the BronzeMat horrified Luther. Daisy explained that you simply undressed, yes, everything, she purred, slid into the unit, and pulled the top down in a manner that reminded Luther of a waffle iron. Cook for fifteen or twenty minutes, a timer goes off, get up, get dressed. Nothing to it.

“How much do you sweat?” Luther asked, struggling with the image of himself lying completely exposed while eighty lamps baked all parts of his body.

She explained that things got warm. Once done, you simply wiped off your BronzeMat with a spray and paper towels, and things were suitable for the next guy.

Skin cancer? he inquired. She offered a phony laugh. No way. Perhaps with the older units before they perfected the technology to virtually eliminate ultraviolet rays and such. The new BronzeMats were actually safer than the sun itself. She’d been tanning for eleven years.

And your skin looks like burnt cowhide, Luther mused to himself.

He signed up for two packages for $120. He left the salon with the determination to get himself tanned, however uncomfortable it would be. And he chuckled at the thought of Nora stripping down behind paper-thin walls and inserting herself into the BronzeMat.

      Seven      

The officer’s name was Salino, and he came around every year. He was portly, wore no gun or vest, no Mace or nightstick, no flashlight or silver bullets, no handcuffs or radio, none of the mandatory gadgetry that his brethren loved to affix to their belts and bodies. Salino looked bad in his uniform, but he’d been looking bad for so long that no one cared. He patrolled the southeast, the neighborhoods around Hemlock, the affluent suburbs where the only crime was an occasional stolen bike or a speeding car.

Salino’s partner for the evening was a beefy, lockjawed young lad with a roll of muscle bulging from the collar of his navy shirt. Treen was his name, and Treen wore every device and doohickey that Salino did not.

When Luther saw them through the blinds on his front door, standing there pressing his doorbell, he instantly thought of Frohmeyer. Frohmeyer could summon the police to Hemlock faster than the Chief himself.

He opened the door, made the obligatory hellos and good evenings, then asked them to step inside. He didn’t want them inside, but he knew they would not leave until they completed the ritual. Treen was grasping a plain white tube that held the calendar.

Nora, who just seconds ago had been watching television with her husband, had suddenly vanished, though Luther knew she was just beyond the French doors, hiding in the kitchen, missing not a word.

Salino did all the talking. Luther figured this was because his hulking partner probably possessed a limited vocabulary. The Police Benevolent Association was once again working at full throttle to do all sorts of wonderful things for the
community. Toys for tots. Christmas baskets for the less fortunate. Visits by Santa. Ice skating adventures. Trips to the zoo. And they were delivering gifts to the old folks in the nursing homes and to the veterans tucked away in wards. Salino had perfected his presentation. Luther had heard it before.

To help defray the costs of their worthy projects this year, the Police Benevolent Association had once again put together a handsome calendar for next year, one that again featured some of its members in action shots as they served the people. Treen on cue whipped out Luther’s calendar, unrolled it, and flipped the rather large sheets as Salino did the play-by-play. For January it was a traffic cop with a warm smile waving little kindergartners across the street. For February, it was a cop even beefier than Treen helping a stranded motorist change a tire. Somehow in the midst of the effort the policeman had managed a smile. For March it was a rather tense scene at a nighttime accident with lights flashing all around and three men in blue conferring with frowns.

Luther admired the photos and artwork without a word as the months marched along.

What about the leopard print briefs? he
wanted to ask. Or the steam room? Or the lifeguard with just a towel around his waist? Three years earlier, the PBA had succumbed to trendier tastes and published a calendar filled with photos of its leaner and younger members, all clad in virtually nothing, half grinning goofily at the camera, the other half straining with the tortured I-hate-modeling veneer of contemporary fashion. Practically R-rated, a big story about it made the front page.

Quite a brouhaha erupted overnight. The Mayor was incensed as complaints flooded city hall. The director of the PBA got fired. The undistributed calendars were pulled and burned while the local TV station recorded it Live!

Nora kept theirs in the basement, where she secretly enjoyed it all year.

The beefcake calendar was a financial disaster for all concerned, but it created more interest the following Christmas. Sales almost doubled.

Luther bought one every year, but only because it was expected. Oddly, there was no price attached to the calendars, at least not to the ones delivered personally by the likes of Salino and Treen. Their personal touch cost something more, an additional layer of goodwill that people like Luther
were expected to fork over simply because that was the way it was done. It was this coerced, above-the-table bribery that Luther hated. Last year he’d written a check for a hundred bucks to the PBA, but not this year.

When the presentation was over, Luther stood tall and said, “I don’t need one.” Salino cocked his head to one side as if he’d misunderstood. Treen’s neck puffed out another inch.

Salino’s face turned into a smirk. You may not need one, the smirk said, but you’ll buy it anyway. “Why’s that?” he said.

“I already have calendars for next year.” That was news to Nora, who was biting a fingernail and holding her breath.

“But not like this,” Treen managed to grunt. Salino shot him a look that said, “Be quiet!”

“I have two calendars in my office and two on my desk,” Luther said. “We have one by the phone in the kitchen. My watch tells me precisely what day it is, as does my computer. Haven’t missed a day in years.”

“We’re raising money for crippled children, Mr. Krank,” Salino said, his voice suddenly soft and scratchy. Nora felt a tear coming.

“We give to crippled children, Officer,” Luther
shot back. “Through the United Way and our church and our taxes we give to every needy group you can possibly name.”

“You’re not proud of your policemen?” Treen said roughly, no doubt repeating a line he’d heard Salino use on others.

Luther caught himself for a second and allowed his anger to settle in. As if buying a calendar was the only measure of his pride in the local police force. As if forking over a bribe in the middle of his living room was proof that he, Luther Krank, stood solidly behind the boys in blue.

“I paid thirteen hundred bucks in city taxes last year,” Luther said, his eyes flashing hot and settling on young Treen. “A portion of which went to pay your salary. Another portion went to pay the firemen, the ambulance drivers, the schoolteachers, the sanitation workers, the street cleaners, the Mayor and his rather comprehensive staff, the judges, the bailiffs, the jailers, all those clerks down at city hall, all those folks down at Mercy Hospital. They do a great job. You, sir, do a great job. I’m proud of all our city employees. But what’s a calendar got to do with anything?”

Of course Treen had never had it put to him in
such a logical manner, and he had no response. Salino either, for that matter. A tense pause followed.

Since Treen could think of no intelligent retort, he grew hot too and decided he would get Krank’s license plate number and lie in ambush somewhere, maybe catch him speeding or sneaking through a stop sign. Pull him over, wait for a sarcastic comment, yank him out, sprawl him across the hood while cars eased by, slap the handcuffs on him, haul him to jail.

Such pleasant thoughts made Treen smile. Salino, however, was not smiling. He’d heard the rumors about Luther Krank and his goofy plans for Christmas. Frohmeyer’d told him. He’d driven by the night before and seen the handsome undecorated house with no Frosty, just sitting alone, peacefully yet oddly so different.

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Salino said, sadly. “We’re just trying to raise a little extra to help needy kids.”

Nora wanted to burst through the door and say, “Here’s a check! Give me the calendar!” But she didn’t, because the aftermath would not be pleasant.

Luther nodded with jaws clenched, eyes
unflinching, and Treen began a rather dramatic rerolling of the calendar that would now be hawked to someone else. Under the weight of his large paws it popped and crinkled as it became smaller and smaller. Finally, it was as narrow as a broomstick and Treen slid it back into its tube and stuck a cap on the end. Ceremony over, it was time for them to leave.

“Merry Christmas,” Salino said.

“Do the police still sponsor that softball team for orphans?” Luther asked.

“We certainly do,” Treen replied.

“Then come back in the spring and I’ll give you a hundred bucks for uniforms.”

This did nothing to appease the officers. They couldn’t bring themselves to say, “Thanks.” Instead, they nodded and looked at each other.

Things were stiff as Luther got them out the door, nothing said, just the irritating sound of Treen tapping the tube against his leg, like a bored cop with a nightstick looking for a head to bash.

“It was only a hundred dollars,” Nora said sharply as she reentered the room. Luther was peeking around the curtains, making sure they were indeed leaving.

“No, dear, it was much more,” he said smugly, as if the situation had been complex and only he had the full grasp of it. “How about some yogurt?”

To the starving, the prospect of food erased all other thoughts. Each night they rewarded themselves with a small container of bland, fat-free, imitation fruit yogurt, which they savored like a last meal. Luther was down seven pounds and Nora six.

They were touring the neighborhood in a pickup truck, looking for targets. Ten of them were in the back, resting on bales of hay, singing as they rolled along. Under the quilts hands were being held and thighs groped, but harmless fun, at least for the moment. They were, after all, from the Lutheran church. Their leader was behind the wheel, and next to her was the minister’s wife, who also played the organ on Sunday mornings.

The truck turned onto Hemlock, and the target quickly became obvious. They slowed as they neared the unadorned home of the Kranks. Luckily, Walt Scheel was outside wrestling with an extension cord that lacked about eight feet in
connecting the electricity from his garage to his boxwoods, around which he had carefully woven four hundred new green lights. Since Krank wasn’t decorating, he, Scheel, had decided to do so with extra gusto.

“Are those folks home?” the driver asked Walt as the truck came to a stop. She was nodding at the Kranks’ place.

“Yes. Why?”

“Oh, we’re out caroling. We got a youth group here from the Lutheran church, St. Mark’s.”

Walt suddenly smiled and dropped the extension cord. How lovely, he thought. Krank just thinks he can run from Christmas.

“Are they Jewish?” she asked.

“No.”

“Buddhist or anything like that?”

“No, not at all. Methodist actually. They’re trying to avoid Christmas this year.”

“Do what?”

“You heard me.” Walt was standing next to the driver’s door, all smiles. “He’s kind of a weird one. Skipping Christmas so he can save his money for a cruise.”

The driver and the minister’s wife looked long and hard at the Krank home across the street. The
kids in the back had stopped singing and were listening to every word. Wheels were turning.

“I think some Christmas carolers would do them good,” Scheel added helpfully. “Go on.”

The truck emptied as the choir rushed onto the sidewalk. They stopped near the Kranks’ mailbox. “Closer,” Scheel yelled. “They won’t mind.”

They lined up near the house, next to Luther’s favorite flower bed. Scheel ran to his front door and told Bev to call Frohmeyer.

Luther was scraping the sides of his yogurt container when a racket commenced very close to him. The carolers struck quick and loud with the opening stanza of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” and the Kranks ducked for cover. Then they darted from the kitchen, staying low, Luther in the lead with Nora on his back, into the living room and close to the front window, where, thankfully, the curtains were closed.