The Ghost of Christmas Present (11 page)

Patrick shook his head with exasperation. “Ask her to marry you in private.”

The next week, Kent came up to the beggar with a buoyant gait. “She accepted my proposal! But afterward, when I told her what the original plan had been . . .” Kent handed Patrick a fifty. “Thanks for the safety tip.”

And then there was George, the stockbroker with whom he'd had the Charlie Brown exchange. Patrick had taken to memorizing Psalms just for George, who relished the biblical passages spoken with a trained tongue. “Consider and hear me, O Lord my God: Lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death.”

“Psalm 13, verse 3.” George had never yet been stumped.

“A man well-schooled in both the King James Bible and its benevolence.”

George dropped his customary bill into the cup. “Here's a fiver for a man well-schooled in the art of malarkey.” George studied Patrick for a long moment. “I can't figure you out. What's your story?”

It was a question that people had begun to ask, and Patrick had wasted no time in looking to the Bard for a comeback: “I am a true laborer. I earn that I eat, get that I wear, owe no man hate, envy no man's happiness . . .”

“All right, all right,” George said as he stuffed another bill into the cup. “I'll pay you to put that story out of its misery. See you tomorrow.”

All the questions he'd begun to get about his life story he'd been able to keep at bay with the
As You Like It
comeback. But again, there was this thug in the Santa getup. Would he come back? And would he come after Patrick again?

If he did, Patrick would just reveal him to the police as a fraud. Even a couple of the cops who worked that beat had taken a small shine to the harmless robed nut whose only trespass was filling a corner with clapping laughter.

“Yo! Jolly Green Joker!” the cop riding shotgun would always yell to him from the open patrol-car window. Patrick could think of wittier nicknames, but any officers deciding to leave him alone were as clever as he needed them to be.

“How's business today?” the cop driving would add.

“Booming, just like the Jets' chances to make the playoffs,” Patrick would reply.

Patrick knew as much about football as they likely did about Shakespeare. But he'd decided early on to lay off the Bard when it came to the cops, and stick to sports. As he had learned in the past, just one misinterpreted line could threaten their easy communication.

“We're going all the way!” the first cop always shouted.

“Super Bowl bound, baby!” said the driver.

“Cry ‘Havoc' and let slip the dogs of war!” Patrick had once cried out with hearty exuberance.

“Huh?” said the first cop as his partner pulled the car to a stop.

“I only meant to say . . . We're going all the way, baby!” Patrick answered.

The passenger cop finally nodded. “You said it, Joker.”

The patrol car had continued on its way and Patrick vowed to keep to the plain English sports script in the future.

Now he sat in his son's hospital room having decided that he had earned the right to work that corner. Indeed, he was a true laborer. And tomorrow he would be back on the job.

Chapter 15

IF WE SHADOWS HAVE OFFENDED

“I
will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year!” Patrick held court on the sidewalk corner in as kingly a manner as he had the entire two weeks he'd claimed that patch of concrete for himself. Four whole days had passed with no sign of the false Santa. Patrick's back-alley boys had scared him off, or maybe it was just that the thug didn't want any trouble and found himself another street on which to thieve.

And now Patrick performed to the largest crowd he'd collected yet. This December Friday evening the commuters were more than in the mood to stop and listen to the beloved beggar recite from
A Christmas Carol
. They were expectant.

“I will live in the past, the present, and all the future.”

Mila smiled wide, and even Ted grinned over at his assistant's face and then back to the panhandler, the initial suspicion of the costumed man now transformed into a genuine affection.

“The spirits of all three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.” Patrick's strong, theatrical voice carried over the dense crowd, past Mindy, who'd stopped even though there hadn't been the chance for their usual exchange; past Kent, who stood with his new fiancée holding a department store bag of Christmas packages; past George, who nodded his head with admiration at the beggar, who was the most tireless spirit that the stockbroker had ever witnessed.

And the voice finally landed in the crowd's far back row, where there stood the thug. Still stubble-faced, but minus the yuletide getup, the thug looked from Patrick over to where his cohort stood on the other side of the crowd. The two men met eyes as the thug put a finger to his nose, but it wasn't because he was about to fly up a chimney.

“Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!” Patrick called out across the circle to Mila, who smiled.

“Put a pineapple ring on your head and call you a Christmas ham!” the young woman yelled, as the crowd laughed and Patrick bowed with his trademark flourishing wave of the hand.

“I am a banquet who seeks not to feed the stomach, but only the ears.”

Ted nudged Mila to move on, but not before he reached through the crowd to drop a one-hundred-dollar bill into the beggar's cup. Mila caught Ted's arm as they made their way back to the office, “Did I just see what I think I saw? A Benjamin sailing through the air into a panhandler's jar?”

“Well, he gives good value. And besides, times are hard all over these days. I admire anyone who isn't afraid of looking foolish to take care of his child. Now stop wasting my time—you're on the clock.”

Mila smiled to herself and followed.

“What a character,” George said as he dropped a large bill into the paper cup now circling its way around the crowd.

“He's our very own Cupid,” said the young woman who held onto Kent's arm as he tucked in another bill and passed the cup.

“I got a letter from my son, who's been given last-minute leave to come home for Christmas,” said Mindy happily to no one in particular. “And he predicted it. I don't know. Maybe he even made it happen.”

She dropped her own bill into the cup. The crowd didn't disperse, but just stood and watched in wonder as Mindy, the lady from the café who was always short on time and temper, walked up to the green-robed Ghost and embraced him.

Patrick stood still. He was entirely unaccustomed to being touched by the strangers from whom he begged. After all, generosity and compassion for a fellow human only went so far. No one actually touched a street person. In fact, he had come to believe that people gave money precisely in order to avoid personal contact. But then he became Patrick Guthrie again, school drama teacher, father to Braden, and the kind of man who could return a hug to a nice lady who just needed to bridge the gap till her own son was in her arms once more. The crowd broke out in a street-corner ovation.

Mindy stepped back and joined in the spontaneous applause, which slowly died down to silence. Patrick stood alone like an actor on a stage whose rapt audience waited for a final soliloquy. “If we shadows have offended, think but this and all is mended. That you have but slumbered here while these visions did appear, and this weak and idle theme no more yielding but a dream.”

The evening crowd listened intently as Patrick offered the weekend farewell. Even the traffic noise seemed to die away as he continued his parting words. “Gentles do not reprehend. If you pardon, we will mend. And as I am an honest Puck—”

“Somebody stole my wallet!” Mindy yelled.

The thug traded nods with his cohort, who moved through the crowd as people began checking their jackets and pants.

“Mine's gone, too!” cried Kent's fiancée.

“And mine!” reverberated through the crowd as the thug's cohort brushed up against Patrick, whose incredulous gaze saw more people finding empty pockets and purses.

“It's the beggar!” shouted the thug.

The cohort grabbed Patrick, who fought to pull away, but the moment he broke free from his grip, a shower of leather dropped from his green robe and rained on the sidewalk. Patrick stood inside the ring of wallets and change purses surrounding his legs and looked up at the eyes that stared back in disbelief.

Patrick picked up what he recognized to be ­Mindy's wallet and tried to hand it to her. “It wasn't me. I've taken nothing from anyone.”

Mindy shook her head and grabbed the wallet away from him. “And my son's service pin was in there.”

Helpless, Patrick looked out as the crowd rapidly descended into a mob. “It wasn't me. I p-promise all of you,” he stammered. “Someone has done this to me!” he yelled just before he caught the eyes of the thug. “It was him! He's a fake Santa Claus who works this street with a fake charity badge—”

“Call the cops!” cried Kent.

But there was no need. The patrol car was already being waved down by the cohort, who wasted no time in spinning his lie.

Patrick saw the flashing lights go on as the two policemen jumped out onto the street, and he turned and hurried toward the far end of the crowd. But a couple of men stepped up to block his way. “Not a chance, buddy.”

Patrick swerved in another direction, but again the crowd cut him off from any avenue of hope. There was only one possible way out of the crowd: in the grip of the two cops, who grabbed him and dragged him to the waiting car. “All right, let's go!” One of the policemen slammed Patrick up against one of the back doors and cuffed his hands hard.

“I get it now, Jolly Green Joker,” said the shotgun cop. “You stage your own little Christmas pageant just waiting to pickpocket everyone's candy canes.”

“I swear—” was all Patrick could get out before the driver cop shoved him in the backseat.

“Save it for your new cellmates. I know some boys inside our cages who love a good bedtime story.” The two cops climbed into the cruiser's front seat, which was separated from the back by thick steel meshing.

Patrick put his hands and face to the wire. “But you don't understand. You have to listen to me.”

The driver started the engine as the shotgun cop addressed Patrick. “When you join the NYPD, they tell you that you don't have to listen to bums who pickpocket people at Christmas. It's like a regulation or something.”

The patrol car pulled away from the curb. Patrick turned to the back window and watched the crowd disperse. He couldn't find Mindy or Kent or even George. But he did find someone. It was Mila standing there with Ted. Her eyes and Patrick's met as she watched him being driven away.

“I didn't do it,” Patrick mouthed, but before he could finish his sentence, Ted had already turned the young woman around to lead her away.

Chapter 16

WANDERERS OF THE DARK

M
idnight Manhattan splashed itself across the horizon in a blurry Milky Way of traffic signals and blinking neon. Here and there, wandering cabs trolled the streets for stray merrymakers looking for a dry ride home from their holiday cheer. One taxi driver gave up searching for a new fare and peeled off the East River Parkway to head across the Brooklyn Bridge.

Ted sat in his cashmere dressing gown and watched the lone taxi from his apartment window as it drove over the river and wound its way around an off-ramp before disappearing into the wet backstreets of Brooklyn Heights. “The wrathful skies gallow the very wanderers of the dark and make them keep their caves.”

“What did you say, Uncle Ted?”

Ted looked up to see Mila standing behind him, having just let herself into the apartment.

“Nothing,” he said and pulled his gown tightly around him. “What are you doing here so late?”

“I came to drop off these papers. I worked overtime to get them done. I've got a lot of packing to do before I leave. Why are you talking to yourself in the dark?”