"Oh, who cares?" the Reptile said.
"I care," I shot back. "We've got to convince these people or I swear they're gonna call the cops."
"She's right."
I looked over my shoulder, shocked to hear Diesel's low rumble of a voice.
"Hell, man," he said, "'Frosty the Snowman' ain't even about Christmas."
"Okay, okay," the Reptile said, his voice starting to lose its smarmy calm. We were getting close to the house now, and he was obviously anxious to settle on something fast. "If not 'Frosty the Snowman,' then what?"
"'Here Comes Santa Claus'?" Arlo suggested.
"What's religious about that?" Diesel wanted to know.
"Isn't Santa, like, a saint or something?"
"I don't know," Diesel replied, sounding unconvinced. "Santa Claus seems pretty sexular to me."
Even if I'd wanted to correct him, I wouldn't have been able to. The Reptile spat out a curse before the debate could go any further.
"We're gonna sing 'We Three Kings,' O.K.? That's got baby Jesus and the three wise guys and all that Christmasy crap. So get ready. If our man answers the door, you give the signal-" He pointed a glove-covered finger at me. "-and Diesel will pop him in the face. Then we're in. Right?"
"Right," Diesel said.
"Right," Arlo mumbled, obviously wishing he was curled up somewhere cozy cuddling a warm bong.
I didn't say anything. I was too freaked.
Pop him in the face? What did that mean? "Pop" as in "punch"? Or "pop" as in "pull out a gun and kill the poor jerk?"?
As we stepped up onto the veranda and the Reptile rang the doorbell, I went from freaked to super-freaked. I was thinking about something else the Reptile had said. I was supposed to "give the signal" for Diesel to start popping. But what signal? We hadn't discussed any signal. What if I blinked or sneezed or scratched my nose and Diesel thought "It's go time" and some innocent old man ended up taking a special holiday trip to the morgue?
And then I went from super-freaked to super-super-super-freaked, because when the door opened, I found myself face to face with our prey. It was Naughty Boy.
He had a snifter of amber liquid in his hand-it must've been cognac or brandy or one of those other nasty things "mature" guys drink to prove they're sophisticated and worldly. When he saw our little ski-masked gang on his front porch, he smiled his icky smile and took a quick sip.
"What is this? A stick-up?" he joked.
The Reptile, Diesel, even Arlo-they all turned to me. If I so much as shivered the wrong way, the man standing before us might be killed. He was a vile, disgusting, lying turd, yeah. But he deserved a pie in the face, not a bullet through the brain.
We stood there, all five us frozen in place, for what seemed like an hour. I refused to move, afraid anything I did would be interpreted as "Let him have it!" From the corner of my eye, I could see the Reptile's gaze moving from me to Naughty Boy, Naughty Boy to me, as he tried to gauge my reaction.
"Hey, guys," our victim said. "It's freezing out here. What do you want?"
He started to swing the door closed. Not to shut it all the way, maybe. Probably just to cut off some of the frigid air flowing into his house. But the Reptile couldn't take any chances. He looked at Diesel.
Diesel took a step forward.
"Weeeeee three kings of O-rie-ent arrrrrrre," I blurted out.
Diesel stopped.
"Bear-ring gifts. We tra-verse a-farrrrrr," I continued. I locked eyes with Arlo and did my best to plead through my mask.
Sing, you zonked-out jackass. Sing!
"Fieeee-ld and founnn-tain, mooooorrr and mou-oun-tain," Arlo crooned, making my solo an off-key duet.
"Foll-o-wing yon-der star," Diesel belted out. Amazingly, he had a beautiful baritone voice, and he sang with the passion of an opera diva.
The Reptile joined in for the "Ohhh-ohhh star of wonder, star of might" part. He had the worst voice of all of us. It was the hoarse, strangled gurgle of a three-pack-a-day smoker. He really did sound like a reptile-an iguana doing an Elvis imitation. It threw the whole chorus off, and by the time we were into the second verse it was obvious none of us knew the lyrics. We were trying to fake it by garbling the words and throwing in some wheezy ooo-ooos and mmm-mmms, and finally the whole thing came crashing to halt when I sucked in a particularly deep breath of frigid air that flash-froze my vocal chords. My singing exploded into hacking coughs, and Arlo began thumping me on the back saying, "You alright?"
"Wait right here," Naughty Boy said, and he turned and disappeared into the house, closing the door behind him.
"Oh, crap, man. Hannah was right," Arlo said. "He's calling the cops."
The Reptile stepped around him to get in my face. "That's not the guy?"
"No… I've never… seen him before," I managed to lie between coughs.
"Middle-aged man alone in the house near the corner of Knob Hill and Knopfler, and it's not him?"
"That's right," I said, my voice starting to gain strength again. "For all we know he's off rounding up the wife and kids so they can hear us."
"No, man, I'm tellin' ya'. He's calling the cops," Arlo said, panic beginning to cut through the hempish haze that usually hangs around him.
The Reptile leaned in so close to me our polyester-covered noses almost bumped, and I could smell his stale, smoky breath even through my mask.
"If you're lying…," he began.
The door opened again, and the Reptile turned around. Naughty Boy was coming out of the house straight toward him. The Reptile took a step back, bumping into me.
Naughty Boy reached out toward him. There was something clenched in his fist.
"Here," he said, and he stuffed a couple wadded-up bills into the donation bucket cradled in the Reptile's hands. He peered over the Reptile's shoulder, pausing to give me a long, steady look.
"Hey… I remember you," I thought he was about to say. But it wasn't recognition I saw in his eyes. It was pity.
"You're very brave," he said. Then, with a perfunctory "Merry Christmas," he spun around, stepped back into the house and shut the door.
Diesel bent over to look into the jar.
"Two stinkin' bucks," he said.
I looked at the jar, too-and the flyer taped to it.
"GIVE THE GIFT OF BREATH."
And then I got it. We were such crappy singers, Naughty Boy assumed we had emphysema.
It was so pathetic it should've been funny, but I wasn't in the mood to laugh. Neither was the Reptile.
"Listen, babe. I want that merchandise and I'm not leaving this neighborhood till I get it. You understand? So if that was him, you'd better just-"
"How many times do I have to say it? No. That was not him."
The lie was sounding weaker with each repetition, but the Reptile seemed to accept it… for the time being.
"Alright, let's go then," he said. "But the next time we come to a place with a cheesy-lookin' guy home all by himself, I might just send Diesel in whether you give the signal or not."
Which reminded me that I still didn't know what "the signal" was. But it did a lot more than that. It told me what I had to do.
I had to give the Reptile what he wanted… sort of.
As we walked up the long gravel drive toward Knopfler, Diesel began campaigning for a program change. He wanted us to switch to "Jingle Bells" because, "sexular" or not, everybody knew the lyrics. He also wanted us to sing it in four-part harmony. The Reptile rattled the change-filled bucket at him.
"Don't forget, D-we've got em-pha-ma-zema," he said, a freshly lit cigarette dangling from one corner of his mouth. "Sing like you're about to hack up a lung."
Diesel responded with a pouty "O.K.," which made him seem a little less scary. He still had his hand buried in his jacket pocket, though, and whatever that hand held was still pointed at me and Arlo, so he was scary enough.
We skipped the next two houses. I told the Reptile I knew who lived there, which was half true. The Strassmans were in one. Back in high school, I'd briefly dated their son Josh. Given how that had turned out, I almost hoped Josh was home for the holidays-so I could sic Diesel on the grabby, stalker-in-training ass-hat. The other house was a big Frank Lloyd Wright-type pagoda-style monstrosity that drove out anyone who bought it within three years. I had no idea who lived there now.