The Ghost of Christmas Present (12 page)

“I don't answer to my employees. They answer to me.”

Mila set down the stack of papers.

“This is the last of my work. I'm no longer an employee.”

Mila came over and curled herself up on the far end of the leather couch.

“Poof, I'm once again your niece.”

“Who taught you how to talk?” Ted asked with a wry grin.

“The one who was always there for me while Mom was off memorizing the beaches at Costa Del Sol . . . you.”

“My sister's a good person. But it's a fact she often forgets.”

Ted reached out and gripped his niece's hand.

“What were you saying when I came in?”

Ted exhaled. “I was reciting a line from a play.
King Lear
.”

“I've heard the title. What's it about?”

Ted looked out the window at the dark downpour splashing across the glass. “It's about an old man with a long white beard who talks to himself in the night rain.”

“You're behind on your beard.”

“I don't think the shareholders would care for an unshaven CEO. I knew a corporate president once whose two-day stubble sparked rumors of a no-­confidence vote.”

“So why are you reciting a play to yourself in the night rain?”

“Because, like Lear, I'm going crazy. Isn't it obvious?”

“You're going to miss him.”

Ted offered her a quizzical glance.

“Please don't pretend to not know who I'm talking about,” Mila said.

“I am going to miss him,” Ted conceded. “Nothing but a con man, as it turns out.”

“We don't know that. Not for sure,” Mila said. “But even if he is, there's a child involved. His child, I'm sure of it.”

“Because of a Band-Aid. That again? He's a con man simply out for himself,” Ted said as his face darkened and he looked at his pictures of his beloved Linda. “All actors are con men.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I didn't say that. My father did . . . when I announced that I wanted to be an actor.” Ted rose and walked over to the wide glass window.

“You? An actor?”

“Is it so hard to believe?”

“No. Well, maybe a little. It's just that I never knew. Were you any good?”

“Good?” Ted said as he turned and spread his arms out, the wet, smeary lights of Manhattan behind him, the folds of the cashmere dressing gown draping him in the guise of an ageless lord from some lost kingdom. “All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances and one man in his time plays many parts.”

Mila's face betrayed what Ted hoped it would. He was good.

“So what parts did you play?” Mila asked.

Ted dropped his arms. “Just one. The role of junior medical administrator. Only to be elevated after several thousand performances to the role of senior medical administrator.”

“That's why you approached the beggar last week. You studied the theater. That's how you knew what he was quoting.”

Ted sat down and stared straight ahead. “I hadn't seen a Shakespeare production in forty years. But the moment I heard that panhandler's voice, it was like the sound of a dream I'd purposely misplaced somehow finding me anyway.”

“What happened to make you misplace your dream?”

“Eustace Cake happened. Our venerable old ancestor, Colonel Eustace Cake, the hero of the Battle of Antietam.” Ted walked over to a near wall, where a carefully preserved reproduction of a Civil War daguerreotype hung in the shrine of a solid silver frame. “The inventor of the Mobile Surgical Hospital, founder of the family medical supply company, and all-around inescapable family legend.”

“But
he's
been dead over two hundred years.”

“That's the funny thing about legends, young lady. You'd think they'd fade over time, but they only grow larger. And there was no chance the great-great-grandson of Eustace was going to tramp off to follow the path of a thespian.”

“A ‘thespian'?”

“It was not to be an actor's life for me.” Ted pulled his robe tighter around himself and retied its knot. “But that beggar. I believed in him,” Ted said to Mila as he continued with uncharacteristic candor. “I could see no real purpose for him to be on that corner, no constructive economic upside, no supply and demand that was realized or fulfilled. But I believed in his presence. Now he's gone, just another con man overcrowding another jail. A thing of the past.”

Ted headed up the spiral staircase to his bedroom before calling down to her, “I'm suddenly very tired. I'll call the car service to take you home. Good night, my dear.”

Mila shivered and looked out the rainy night window. “Where are you tonight, our Ghost of Christmas Present? And are you now a Ghost of Christmas Past?”

Chapter 17

THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS PAST

P
atrick rested closed-eyed on a gray metal cot, his green velvet robe draping over its frame and brushing the cement floor, his head-wreath hung from an iron hook. It was only just past one
A.M
. according to the NYPD clock on the cell-block wall, and it had already been the longest night of his life.

Visions of being dragged out of the patrol car and thrust before the desk sergeant played out in Patrick's mind in a parade of half-dreams: the passing faces of the precinct guffawing at his costume, the cackles at his makeup, beard, and wig, the laughter as he was hauled down hallway after hallway only to be tossed in lockup.

“If you're gonna bring a clown in here, he'd better be able to juggle!”

Patrick had forgotten what it was like to feel the ridicule that first greeted him when he'd established his corner. In the two weeks since he'd begun begging, not only had he collected enough to pay off the electricity, heat, and one month's rent, he'd also collected a small crowd of hearts whom he'd touched.

He hadn't set out to do so, but it had happened, and its happening had made him think that this whole panhandling endeavor was imbued with some kind of magic. But it hadn't really been magic. It had been theater, living, breathing theater right out there in the streets, just the kind that modern American playwrights had dreamt of staging in dockyards and warehouses and places where people actually worked and lived out the drama of their daily lives.

And he had done it. He had taken his own brand of dramaturgy out of the theater and staged it during the morning commute, then lunch hour, and finally the five o'clock rush hour. Three shows a day, with intermittent repartee and pedestrian requests to fill in the pre-lunch and mid-afternoon lull. He was a medieval troubadour romancing the minutes of an ordinary day for coin.

But now it had come collapsing around his green robe in a ring of stolen wallets. He hadn't even felt them planted on him, it had all happened so fast and with such frenzy. He'd panicked and completely shut down on the police who'd demanded to know who he was.

Patrick had told them nothing—not his name, or why he was there on Broadway, or even that he'd been framed. He hadn't carried a wallet for fear of anyone knowing his real identity. Heaven forbid he should be found out. If it got back to Rebecca and then Ted, it would be over. Braden would not only be taken from him for financial reasons, but the board would make a Christmas feast out of his mental state. Any visitation he might be afforded would be in jeopardy as well.

He would be supervised in Braden's presence, perhaps never again having the boy to himself. So Patrick simply stayed silent at the cops' questions and decided to wait until things had calmed down before figuring out how to proceed. Even the one phone call he was allowed he made to Braden, keeping his voice low, cupping his hands over the mouthpiece for privacy.

“What time you gonna get here, Dad?” Braden's voice was soft but cheerful.

“I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to make it tonight, buddy,” Patrick whispered.

“Late shift at the pizza place?”

“Yeah. Late shift. I'll see you tomorrow, okay?” He clenched his eyes shut, willing it to be true.

“Okay, tomorrow. I'll save my dessert cup for you.”

“You don't have to do that.”

“It's French vanilla, Mom's favorite. We always clink our spoons together and share it.”

Patrick opened his eyes and for the first time in as long a time as he could remember, water collected in their two near corners. “Right.” Pause. “We'll clink our spoons together.” He swallowed.

“You okay, Dad?”

“Let's go, Jolly Green!” The shotgun cop leaned over the cubicle.

“I've got to hang up, buddy. Deep-dish pizza calls. I love you,” Patrick said as he hurriedly replaced the receiver before Braden could respond.

And so now here he was, lying in this cell in his green robe and rouged cheeks with several other detainees, mostly drunks.

“Hey, freaky,” said a voice from across the way.

Patrick opened his eyes to see a thin jackrabbit of a fellow standing at the bars of the cell opposite. He wore a black leather biker jacket punctuated all over with silver studs and racing pins.

“Yeah, you, freaky,” the wiry biker said as he smiled. His sharp teeth looked as if they'd been purposely filed down to points. “You're the freakiest thing I've ever seen. In fact, you're freakier than freak. You're freakidiculous.”

Patrick again closed his eyes, shutting out the sight of the black-leather lug-head.

“Did you hear what I said? That's freaky plus ridiculous.”

Terrific
, Patrick thought. Of all the bikers with whom to be incarcerated, he gets the one who's a budding linguist.

“Freakidiculous. That's what you are.”

Patrick opened his eyes to offer an observation. “Is that the best you can do?” Patrick sat up, the day's disappointments having caught up to him, the fear for his son overtaking any sense of self-preservation. “Not ‘curious,' ‘odd,' ‘idiosyncratic,' ‘eccentric,' ‘unorthodox,' or even ‘weirdly peculiar'? Are you so stupid that you have to get two words wrong just to try and say one?”

“You better watch your mouth, man,” the thin biker warned.

Patrick leaped up and grabbed his own bars and stared him down. “I better watch my mouth, man? How about ‘Methinks you stinks, thou craven, addlepated foot-licker'?”

“You're talking some kind of trash. I'd shut my mouth if I was you.”

“Scullion!” Patrick spit out.

Two more bikers grabbed the bars next to their friend. “What's going on, Breeze?”

Breeze pointed to Patrick and shook a greasy fingernail. “Green velvet dude called me an onion!”

Patrick laughed. He felt so full of fear he was fearless. “
Scullion
, thou clay-brained guts, thou knotty-pated fool.”

“You don't be talking to Breeze like that.”

“Silence, rampallian,” Patrick hissed.

The third biker looked to the second. “You hear what he called you, High Ride?”

“Quiet yourself, fustilarian,” Patrick turned on the third.

“You're a dead man!” yelled the third.

But Patrick just let it all out—the pain of standing accused of thievery by the very people whose affection he'd come to earn, the anguish of hearing Braden ask for a promised visit tomorrow, his dead wife's favorite dessert sitting on his son's tray and two spoons lying there instead of clinking together in her memory.

“You trunk of humours!” He gripped the bars and assailed the three bikers with the ancient insults. “You bolting hutch of beastliness, swollen parcel of dropsies!” The three bikers stood dumbfounded as Patrick continued, “You huge bombard of sack! You stuffed cloak-bag of guts!”

“Shut up!” boomed out from behind the bikers.

“Shut up yourself, you . . . roasted Manningtree ox with pudding in his belly!”

The three bikers slowly looked behind them and then spread apart to reveal a cot in the cell's rear, from which a figure arose from its fraying mattress. It was a mountain of a man, clad in black leather like the rest, but unlike the rest, he wore a metal machine bolt dangling from each of his pierced ears like a fuel-injected Frankenstein.

“What'd you say to me, Meat?” the huge man said, his voice hushed in a vapor of menace that made Patrick forget the protective steel bars and shrink back.

“I was not addressing you, good sir.”

“He called you an ox that likes to eat pudding,” the jackrabbit Breeze quickly said.

The huge Goliath biker stepped up to the bars himself and grabbed three with each hand. He kept silent for a small second, gathered his breath, and then bellowed a roar that thundered throughout the whole cell block. Inmates down the row began to shake their bars and shout. The place erupted into a chaos of howling mayhem as the two cops burst in, beating the cell bars with their batons, sending the inmates flying back into the rear of their cells.