Kinder Nights

Written by: Elliot (25-U1)

Designed by: Athens (25-I1)

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There was no more money to be had. Evidently, the evening crowds were bled dry; that, or they were more partial shilling out a dollar for second-hand mugs than for a scruffy old man. Something about the mugs had an allure he didn’t. Maybe they looked more festive.

Not that you could be festive in a windbreaker and scarf. The night had bled onto his parka, reeking of booze-scent and smoke, and he had to take the thing off around lunchtime. Drunkards and smokers received less donations than a sober, self-deprecatory vagrant. Third-hand smoke made his throat dry, too. By the fairy-lit avenue he shook the biscuit tin in hand again, arms outstretched as if mid-liturgy.

Across the street the market was filled with tourists. Among the stalls, the heads of a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand, counting fairy lights and dollars, watching for children between their bodies. He was outside this, watching. He thought about heading in, tasting the static in the air.

***

At about this same time, four boys had fled their latest crime scene. On the ground of a long-forgotten parking lot, overtaken by patches of moss, lay a smaller boy. Possibly he was no taller than the switchgrass in the cracks of the asphalt — no skinnier, either. A policeman stood by him, unspooling some bandages.

“Kid.”

A length of gauze was handed to him. Clutching the bleeding arm with his free hand he took it, wrapped his elbow with it. Then the bandages were given. Around the parking lot the lone sound of a wrapping, a slight tear of the cloth — on occasion the boy would wince or clear his throat — echoed. The policeman, most likely, felt like conversation was necessary; how he was to start, though, was unclear. He didn’t know this little boy.

“Celebrating with Mom and Pop tonight?”

“My mom’s dead, sir.”

Maybe he’s just not good with kids. He turned around, letting the boy dress his elbow. The silence ached.

“Sorry, kid,” he said.

“Sometimes an airbag ain’t gonna blow. Happens.” The kid shrugged. The elbow was dressed, and the snow was beginning to fall again. Over the reeds and moss was a fragile white coating, lacing them with sleep. Over that, then, was the patrol car of the policeman stationed, lights turned out for the time being, now turning on again, red reflecting in the ruddy, flushed face of the boy, blue in the glasses of, the badge of the officer clambering into his driver’s seat.

“Not drivin’ me back, officer?”

“On the night shift, kid. We don’t go home ‘til Santa’s put out all his little presents for ya.” Something in his voice trembled, though: the quaver of a late-night father was in there, among the coffee pot he had just before leaving home, the candycane breath from a day out with someone else in that home. His breath came in mists. “So I, uh…”

The boy nodded.

“Hey. There’s a way back here, through there. Folks got a whole market up there, for when y’gotta get gifts, n’stuff, for ya kids. Through there and you’re at Columbus Circle, at Central. Y’gotta phone?”

“Yes, sir.” The boy held out a small flip-phone. Maybe he’d forgotten to make the switch to a cellular model.

“Yeah. Just call ya parents there, or somethin’. Y’need anyone, 911. My guys’re all open tonight.” The officer gestured to the car dashboard. The boy nodded again.

“Travel safe, kid.”

***

The officer was very kind, of course, and he was happy to receive the help, but this was not the time to be hurt and Pops would get angry. He’d be angry because he was out tussling with Malcolm and the bunch instead of coming home early, especially in Christmastime when everyone is out and about and he could get lost, and if he did need to get home he’d have to be quick before Pops found out and get angry. The way was through the market at Columbus Circle, Columbus Circle just around the corner. This was also the way to Tessa’s, though Pops was probably worried sick (or angry) and he wouldn’t want him running off, not at Christmastime, even if it was just to Tessa’s and her parents’.

This was the one crossing between the Circle and him, then, and it wasn’t hard to cross normally. But he’d get angry knowing he had to do it anyway, and Tessa and her parents wouldn’t know, and if Pops asked them they wouldn’t be able to tell him.  They wouldn’t know how to tell him. He didn’t know how to tell him. That’s a normal occurrence now. Nobody knew how to tell him, but he knew without the telling, and he was gotten angry, he was. Mom would’ve known how to tell him, but she was there and she isn’t here. The car was too fast for her to tell him and for him to know how, and he was still in the car probably on the way back from work now, and while he was there he was in the car on the road, waiting, waiting for 911. Y’need anyone, 911.

Maybe he’d like a present this time. No time like the present, anyway, and the market is here, and he is here at the market and not on the road or in the car. Anything to tell him and let him know, maybe a cup to replace the one they bought at Thanksgiving, or a laptop, because he uses that so often, finding jobs, he says. Check the wallet, though, and there’s only no more than ten dollars, ten because the eleventh was spent on a stupid lollipop that Malcolm and the bunch took in the tussle, something he never would’ve let happen if his hands weren’t numb from the December air in their capillaries. So ten dollars to get a laptop, maybe a really budgeted one, and that was it. Maybe he’d need food. There was a lot of food in the market, he smelled it. He’d get food, maybe. Ten was enough for that, and Pops wouldn’t get angry if it were food, that much he knew, because Mom always bought food and he never said a thing about that. Nobody does.

***

Nobody was looking his way. The rattling biscuit tin was too soft in the crowd, and even the children were milling by him like ghosts. The fairy lights overhead singed his hairs as he went, hoping for alms or a hand in the tin, watching the corn dog or hot dog — why did New Yorkers love dogs so much? — reach this and that new customer, sizzling in rhythm with the wires overhead. The market was too busy, then.

“Hello,” he called, “Merry Christmas to you, everyone! Merry Christmas!”

Nothing. Tough crowd.

Perhaps it did attract a few children, but nothing more. Here and there a daughter would point to the old man in a smelly beard, a son would blow a raspberry and run off, the imps they were. A kid asked him if a caramel would help. That was fine. He liked caramels, he said. (He didn’t. But the kid was young — maybe six or seven years old? — what’re you gonna do?) A caramel, two candy wrappers, a half-used pack of lip balm stolen from their mom’s purse: surely this would buy him dinner.

“Hm.” Nothing left there, then. Maybe he’d hit the wrong neighbourhood. The market was in the wrong spot in general, or maybe he was meant to go to the park to beg, like the others. In any case he seemed to have overstayed his welcome. The beanie, which was kept in his pocket, was fished out and put on; he adjusted his windbreaker and looked about for the way out.

“Yeah, two bagels and two coffees. Black.”

Kid sounds like he’s on overtime at the office. Maybe buying for a mom, or a dad. No kid drinks black coffee willingly. In any case, the man mused, that was thoughtful of him. It was nice to know children were doing things like that. He turned down the Circle, about to re-enter Central Park; the expanse was already visible from there, the lights stopping at the blue of another enormous night, picking the trees of their canopies with a sharp, serrated wind. Outside there he’d sleep it off, the hunger — maybe eat something like a pizza, if the other guys on the benches were nice enough to share. It’s Christmas.

“Hey, mister.”

That was odd. He was quite sure he was more of a ‘guy’ or a ‘you there’, as most call him, but as he turned around to correct the error a boy was before him, bagel outstretched.

Neither knew what to say for a moment. The boy tried.

“You seemed hungry.” His hands were pale and not a little trembling; but he gestured to the bagel anyway. “Eastsiders, huh? Nothin’ in that tin but a buncha junk. I saw ya there, mister.”

He stared at the boy again. The same tired eyes were there; the same slouch; the same messy brown hair, like two mice in the blue, blue snow. Behind him was the bustling market again, electrifying itself on the fairy lights and snowy floor, sidestepping the bits of litter and cigarette butts about. Behind him was the city that couldn’t sleep: she was offering the bagel.

“I mean, I don’t got much time. I gotta beat it,” the boy added. “Home time was four hours ago.”

He took the bagel from him, tracing the edges of the bread, feeling it yield to each finger. The kid was nodding. “Y’welcome, mister.”

But there was no kid, and there was no tin left in his hands, but there was one on the ground. Somehow he had slipped his gaze and fled into the electricity, maybe, fitting in with the endless sea of heads and children and the milling, maddening crowds; and the man was standing there, bagel in hand, tin on the floor where the half-eaten sweets were spilt into Central Park, watching the chill of the world fall slower, slower, on the carolling roofs and running, laughing little joys of the world.