Diesel (a.k.a. Kenneth Patrick McIntyre) kept his gaze glued to the TV, answering only with a "whatever" grunt that stirred some extra foam into the bottle of Bud Lite perched atop the round mound of his belly. There'd been three DVDs to choose from that evening-A Charlie Brown Christmas, Frosty the Snowman and (excavated from its hiding place at the bottom of a drawer of socks) Girls Gone Wild: Dormroom Fantasies Volume 2. They'd already watched the Girls Gone Wild DVD. Twice. After that, Diesel had voted for Frosty. But the Reptile cast his vote for Charlie Brown, which meant Frosty lost by a landslide. In the tiny, two-man democracy Diesel and the Reptile had founded six years before, "one man, one vote" was not the law of the land.
Necessity had first bonded the men together. They met in the Knox County Jaiclass="underline" Diesel a fumble-fingered would-be beer thief, the Reptile a pot dealer so far down on the drug cartel totem pole he wasn't really on the pole at all but merely part of the dirt on which it stood. They were the pettiest of petty criminals, together in a holding cell the very night the River City Police Department took down the town's biggest crack house and the crew of swaggering gangbangers who ran it. This being Indiana, these were Hoosier gangbangers, and therefore lacking the serious street cred of their New York or Los Angeles counterparts. Which only meant they had something to prove. And there'd be no better way to prove it than grinding a couple crackers into crumbs.
The Reptile managed to keep himself and his new-found friend from the bottom of their cellmates' Reeboks by orchestrating a brilliant campaign of bluster and bravado (for the super-sized Diesel) and butt-kissing and bootlicking (for himself). Ever since then, Diesel had let the Reptile call all the shots.
Many of which had been misfires. Though he aspired to be a Napoleon of Crime, the Reptile was, in sad reality, closer to a Custer. But despite a long parade of bad ideas and worse luck-the foiled highjacking of an ice cream truck, the successful (though ultimately unprofitable) highjacking of an Oscar Meyer Weinermobile, the oh-so-critical typo on the counterfeit "Ben Jovi" T-shirts they tried to unload at a concert in Indianapolis-the Reptile somehow managed to keep them alive and out of jail. Which had kept Diesel loyal. Up to now.
And now was looking pretty good. It was Christmas Eve, and they were enjoying a quiet night at home.
Not that it was their home. It actually belonged to Mr. and Mrs. Wallace Hettle, whose eldest son Arlo was one of the Reptile's most reliable (and, being perpetually baked, easy to short-change) clients. The day before, Arlo had dropped by the Reptile's dark, dank basement-apartment lair to purchase an especially large bag of weed.
"I'm gonna be stuck at my grandma's in Jasper for four days with, like, my entire family," the stoner moaned, his droopy eyelids, wispy kid mustache and predilection for mouth-breathing making him look, as always, like a sleepy catfish. "Bro, if I run out of ganja down there I'm gonna, like, totally lose my mind."
"Don't worry, my man. The Reptile won't let you down," the Reptile replied, offering his customer an encouraging wink. "So… when do you leave, anyway?"
And Arlo told him, thus ensuring that his home would soon receive a late-night holiday visitation that involved not reindeer on the rooftop and a shimmy down the chimney but a spluttering Plymouth Reliant parked around the corner and a back-door jimmied with a crowbar.
"Oh, Lucy Lucy Lucy," the Reptile sighed, sinking back into the La-Z-Boy's marshmallow embrace. "Now that's the Reptile's kinda woman." A box of cigarettes rested in his lap, and he shook out and lit up his fifteenth Kool of the day. "Saucy little wench."
"Do you think Peppermint Patty's a dyke?" Diesel mumbled, still unable to tear his eyes from the screen. Anything he saw on television other than static and C-SPAN utterly mesmerized him, and only hunger, thirst and their related urges could pry him away when a TV was on. In fact, just a few weeks before he'd botched the Reptile's scheme for a snatch-and-grab jewelry heist at Target because he forgot to provide the pre-planned distraction-a bogus vet-off-his-meds freakout in Housewares-after he became hypnotized by a demonstration video for the George Foreman Grill.
The Reptile shot him a venomous (and completely unnoticed) glare. "Peppermint Patty's not in this one," he snapped. "And anyway, you're missing the point. That Lucy-she tells it like it is. That's why I love this damn cartoon. Christmas is a racket. The stores, the guys who make the toys and cards and all that garbage, the bums they round up to play Santa. They all make money off it. They may as well call it…" The Reptile racked his brain for something clever, but after a few seconds he decided that Diesel wasn't worth the effort. "Oh, I don't know. Cashmas. Cuz that's what it's all about, D. Everybody's just making a buck."
Diesel squirmed, looking uneasy in his easy chair, as if some weight deep in his gut had suddenly shifted. A concrete burrito. A chocolate brick. A soul.
"Not everybody," he said. "I mean, it means something to some folks, right? You got people giving gifts, giving money to the Salivation Army, going to church-"
"Oh, my man! You are so naïve!" The Reptile sucked in a deep lungful of hot carcinogenic goodness, then blew the smoke out in a cloud that drifted between Diesel and the TV screen he was still staring at. "Churches are the worst of all. Tonight's the night they bankroll their whole year. They get people coming in on Christmas Eve all full of that 'season of giving' crap, throwing big ol' wads of money on the donation plate to make up for the fact that they haven't been to church the last 364 days. It's just oil for the gears, D." The Reptile nodded and took a sip of Chivas Regal, pleased with his metaphor though he would've been hard-pressed to explain it. "Oil for the god damn gears."
"Well," Diesel grunted. The word just floated there for nearly a minute, a bridge to nowhere. "Well," he finally said again. "You don't see me making any money off Christmas."
The Reptile misinterpreted this as a criticism of his leadership abilities.
"Hey, you got nothing to complain about. Free beer, free food, free Girls Gone Wild. We'll take the DVD player, the TV, the stereo-whatever we can fit in the car. We'll make out alright."
Diesel just shook his head, seemingly unconvinced. Independent thinking wasn't something the Reptile witnessed in his friend very often, and it threw him. He thought about his plan for the night, the Napoleon in him clamoring atop a tall steed to survey the field of battle. And he had to admit it. It didn't look very impressive.
They'd never had much luck with hot goods. The most valuable item they'd ever had their hands on (aside from the Weinermobile) was a mint-condition copy of Amazing Spider-Man #5, which was supposedly worth nearly $3,000. When they took it to the owner of a local comic book shop, he told them he knew exactly where they'd stolen it from and he wouldn't call the cops if they sold the comic to him for twenty bucks… in store credit. Their track record with electronics wasn't much better, and there was a very real chance that they wouldn't make enough from the loot in Arlo's house to order a decent pizza.
Diesel was right, the Reptile thought. Stealing stuff was hardly worth the trouble. They needed to give themselves the gift that keeps on giving.