By noon, Arvo felt restless. He drove down to Ocean, found a parking spot without any trouble and walked along the clifftop by the palisades, with his collar turned up and his hands shoved deep in his pockets. The rain and mist felt like cool silk brushing against his face. The Christmas lights strung across Wilshire, where it ended at Ocean, looked eerie, hanging there disembodied, blurred and smudged by the wet gray light.
All the horizons were lost in misty rain. From the top of the cliffs, he could hear the waves as they crashed on the shore below, and could just about make out the sloshing gray mass of the ocean. Gulls swooped in and out of the fog, squawking and squabbling, seemingly oblivious to both the weather and the birth of Christ. Even the traffic on the Coast Highway, way down at the bottom of the sheer cliffs, was quiet today.
A bundle of rags stirred at the base of a palm tree and a grubby hand shot out, accompanied by a mumbled request for money. Arvo gave him a buck. Sometimes he seemed to hand over half his salary to bums. Why, he didn’t know.
As he crossed the road to get back to his car, a police cruiser slowed to a halt beside him. He realized that, apart from the bums, he was the only person on the street. Everyone else was at home with the family eating turkey and watching It’s a Wonderful Life or A Christmas Carol, and the only places open were video stores and minimarts.
“What’s your destination, sir?” asked the young officer on the passenger side.
Arvo flipped his shield. “Just walking.”
“Sorry, sir,” the officer said. “Routine. Merry Christmas.”
His partner nodded and drove off.
“Merry Christmas,” Arvo said after the car. He supposed he did look suspicious out there alone with the bums on the street. Bums were vulnerable, like prostitutes. Sometimes people killed them for pleasure, the way people killed boys like John Heimar. The two cops — poor bastards pulling the Christmas Day shift — were only doing their jobs.
Arvo remembered pulling Christmas shifts as a uniform cop in Detroit. Christmas Eve was pretty bad, a lot of domestic violence and shit like that. But some of the real stuff that took longer to build up exploded on Christmas Day, usually in the afternoon.
Nobody who hasn’t done it can ever understand the feeling you get driving to work around dawn, seeing the Christmas lights all lit up on the porches and watching the bedroom lights flick on inside the houses and apartments as you drive by, maybe remembering the anticipation you used to feel when you were a kid, the excitement that this was the day you’d been waiting for, the day you were going to get that mountain bike you’d been longing for all year, or that new Sega Genesis game everyone else at school seemed to have but you. But this year, you aren’t going to be part of it at all.
And that was the best part of the day.
So you’d arrive feeling a little nostalgic, maybe, and the early part of the shift you’d be bored to tears, just wishing you were at home with your family like everyone else. By afternoon, though, things started to change. The calls started coming in, and by the time your shift was over you never wanted to work a holiday again.
The first one might be a dangler, been hanging there in the middle of the living room since he woke up and found himself all alone on Christmas Day and accepted at last that there really was no future for him. By the time you get there, his neck is two feet long and his shoes are full of shit.
Because holidays like Christmas are when really bad things happen. On Christmas Day, the husband who has been feeling depressed over being laid off for a couple of months has too much to drink, decides he doesn’t like the tie his wife bought him and shoots his children, his wife and then himself. And who cleans up? The cops and the ambulance guys.
On Christmas Day, the wife who has been holding back her feelings about her husband’s affair ever since she found out about it in November has too many glasses of wine with the turkey, which she spent all morning preparing, and when he says he just has to go out for a while after dinner, she feels the edge of the carving knife and looks at his throat.
On holidays like Christmas, people get together, drink too much and kill one another. Or they get depressed all alone and they kill themselves. Either way, it makes a busy time for the emergency services. You want a good argument against the family, Arvo thought, then you should spend a Christmas Eve in the police station or in the emergency ward of your local hospital.
Arvo had no sooner got home than the phone rang. His chest tightened when he heard Nyreen’s voice. “Merry Christmas, honey,” she said. “How did you like the present?”
“It’s fine,” said Arvo. “You made it yourself?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Look, I’m sorry I didn’t send you—”
“Hey, it’s okay. No problem. The pleasure’s in the giving, right? Arvo, I’m not stupid. I realize I’ve hurt you and you’re probably still pissed at me and all, but you know I still care a lot about you. I hope we can be friends?”
“I don’t know if that’s possible, Nyreen.”
“Well, okay, maybe not right now. I understand that. Maybe it’ll take time. But what I’m saying, honey, is don’t cut me out of your life completely. Things just didn’t work out for you and me, but I still love you, you know. Okay?”
“I don’t know. I need some time.”
“Are you okay?”
“Sure. I’m fine.”
“Are you enjoying Christmas?”
“Yeah. Look, I’ve got to go. You know Mike Glover? He and his wife invited me over for dinner.” He had been invited, but he wasn’t going. The last thing he wanted on Christmas Day was someone else’s family being solicitous about his well-being.
“Great. Have a good time. And give Mike and Rosie my love. Oh, and before I forget, Arvo, I’ve got some real good news.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m pregnant. Isn’t it a rush? Vern is absolutely thrilled. So am I, of course. Aren’t you just a teeny-weeny bit happy for me?”
“Sure I’m happy for you, Nyreen. I wish you all the best. Gotta run now.”
Arvo hung up with a lump in his throat. Pregnant. Now there was a surprise. When he and Nyreen had discussed children, she had made it quite clear that she didn’t want any, not for a few years at least. Arvo had gone along with her, though he had wanted to start a family sooner. She said she needed time to pursue her career in public relations, which she had now given up to go live with Vern in Palo Alto and blow glass. Life. Go figure.
Now, all of a sudden, she was pregnant and just thrilled to pieces about it. Well, that little bit of news had just shunted Nyreen at least another million miles away from Arvo. Now she was having Vern’s child, she was less his problem than she had ever been. At least that was his view. Somehow, he had a feeling that she would see things differently. She always did. Maybe she’d want him to be godfather. And that would probably be after she’d claimed half the house.
Arvo realized he was hungry. So okay, he told himself, getting up and stretching, the hell with Nyreen. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and get Christmas on the road.
In the four years after his parents’ death, Arvo had got into the habit of spending Christmas alone. In fact, now he thought about it, he and Nyreen had only been together for one Christmas.