The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror(40)

 

"Molly, you okay?"

 

She came up holding a package the size of a shoe box wrapped in Christmas paper with a few dust bunnies clinging to it. She held it out to him. "Here. Take it and go. I don't want to see you, traitor. Go."

 

Theo was stunned. Was she leaving him? Asking him to leave her? How had this gone so wrong so fast?

 

"I don't want to go. I'm having a really bad day, Molly. I came home hoping to find a little sympathy."

 

"Yeah? Okay. Here you go. Aw, poor stoned Theo, I'm so sorry that you have to investigate my best friend the day before Christmas Eve when you could be out playing in an illegal pot patch that looks like the jungle plateau of the gibbon people." She held out his present and he took it.

 

What the hell was she talking about? "So it is about the victory garden?"

 

"Open it," she said.

 

She didn't say a word more. She put a hand on her hip and fixed him with that "I am so going to kick your ass or fuck your brains out" look that excited and terrified him, as he wasn't always sure which way she would go with it, only that she was going to get satisfaction one way or the other and he was going to be sore the next day because of it. It was a Warrior Babe look, and he realized fully, then, that she was having an episode. She probably really was off her meds. This had to be handled just right.

 

He backed away a few steps and tore the paper off the package. Inside was a white box with the silver seal of a very exclusive local glassblower, and inside that, wrapped in blue tissue, was the most beautiful bong he'd ever seen. It was like something out of the Art Nouveau era, only fashioned from modern materials, blue-green dichromatic glass with ornate silver branches running through it that gave it the appearance of walking through a forest as he turned it in his hand. The bowl and handle, which fit his hand perfectly, appeared to be cast of solid silver with the same organic tree-branch design seeming to leap right out of the glass. This had to have been made just for him, with his tastes in mind. He felt himself tearing up and blinked back the tears. "It's beautiful."

 

"Uh-huh," Molly said. "So you can see it's not your garden that bothers me. It's just you."

 

"Molly, I only want to talk to Lena. Her boyfriend threatened to blackmail me. I was only growing —»

 

"Take it and go," Molly said.

 

"Honey, you need to call Dr. Val, maybe see if she'll see you —»

 

"Get out, goddammit. You don't tell me to see the shrink. Get out!"

 

It was no use. Not now, anyway. Her voice had hit the Warrior Babe frenzy pitch — he recognized it from the times he'd taken her to the county hospital before they'd become involved as lovers. When she'd just been the town's crazy lady. She'd lose it if he pressed her any more. "Fine. I'll go. But I'll call you, okay?"

 

She just gave him that look.

 

"It's Christmas…" One last try maybe.

 

The look.

 

"Fine. Your present is on the top shelf in the closet. Merry Christmas."

 

He dug some underwear and socks out of the drawer, grabbed a few shirts out of the closet, and headed out the front door. She slammed it hard enough behind him to break one of the windows. The glass hitting the sidewalk sounded like a summary of his whole life.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 11

 

 

A SLUG TRAIL OF GOOD CHEER

 

 

 

 

He might have been made of polished mahogany except that when he moved, he moved like liquid. The stage lights reflected green and red off his bald head as he swayed on the stool and teased the strings of a blond Stratocaster with the severed neck of a beer bottle. His name was Catfish Jefferson, and he was seventy, or eighty, or one hundred years old, and not unlike Roberto the fruit bat, he wore sunglasses indoors. Catfish was a bluesman, and on the night before the night before Christmas, he was singing up a forlorn twelve-bar blues fog in the Head of the Slug saloon.

 

Caught my baby boning Santa,

 

Underneath the mistletoe (Lawd have mercy).

 

Caught my baby boning Santa,

 

Underneath the mistletoe.

 

Used to be my Christmas angel,

 

Now she just a Christmas ho.

 

 

 

 

 

"I hear dat!" shouted Gabe Fenton. "Sho-nufF, sho-nuff. True dat, my brutha."

 

Theophilus Crowe looked at his friend, just one in a whole line of awkward, heartbroken men at the bar, rocking almost in rhythm to the beat, and shook his head. "Could you possibly be any whiter?" Theo asked.

 

"I gots the blues up in me," Gabe said. "She sho-nuff did me wrong."

 

Gabe had been drinking. Theo, while not quite sober, had not.