Three Cheers for Santa!
by NIH literary editor, St.Clair Carr
"Hey, little girl!" Santa sang at the top of his voice, "Sweeter than honey!/I'm about to give you!/All of my money!" 1The woman he was singing to on the other side of the street paid no attention to him, though, and continued hurrying through the slush – on her way to some Christmas Eve gathering, probably.
For it was seven o'clock on Christmas Eve. The streetlights and the neon failed to relieve the gloom and cold on an almost deserted Dundas Street West. Santa, who was standing at the curb looking across the street, started to turn round carefully, mindful of the large quantity of booze he had consumed.
"Not," he said (apparently to himself, there being no one else on the sidewalk), "that I have any money to give her." The collapse of tech stocks had pretty well eliminated Santa's personal fortune, as well as the elves' pension fund. Luckily the elves didn't know about that yet.
As he turned, one of Santa's big shiny black boots slipped in the dirty slush at the edge of the sidewalk. He stumbled into a lamp post and had enough reflexes left to hold on. He steadied himself and got moving towards the bus station again.
"Santa needs pussy!" Santa yelled, spreading his arms wide and raising his chin. "Santa needs some merry Christmas pussy!" No one was near enough to understand what he was yelling, though. The only impression he gave to people down the street was that of a drunken old man in a Santa suit. Which he was, but of course there was so much more to him than that.
In hindsight his decision to divorce his first wife and marry a much younger woman seemed pretty stupid. At the time, though, it had just seemed that the head of a giant multinational corporation should have an attractive young wife. He'd been at his peak, then, with Christmas becoming more widespread and more elaborate every year. He'd been looking good in those Armani Santa suits, too. But then Nasdaq collapsed and his wife was on the first sleigh out of town. Okay, maybe the drinking had had something to do with it.
He came to Elizabeth Street and lumbered up it to the entrance to the departures garage. It was full of buses and of long lineups of package-laden people waiting to get on the buses. "Merry Christmas!" he yelled again and again as he passed through the lines, gratified to see that everyone made way for him. They knew he had a lot of business to do that night and had to get to the North Pole as quickly as possible! His career wasn't over yet.
Inside the terminal the lineup for tickets snaked all around the floor. He didn't have time to wait, though, so he walked in through the exit from the ticket counter and went to the head of the line.
"Sorry, honey," he said with a merry wink to the sweet-looking older woman who was at the head of the line, "I got toys to deliver, eh?"
"And I'm the Virgin Mary," she snapped, "and I have to get to Bethlehem!"
"Oh, shit," Santa said, aghast. "Sorry. Didn't realize."
"And the rest of us have got this shepherd gig to get to," said the young man in the line behind her.
"Oh, man," Santa groaned, "Santa's fucked this one up royally." But then he straightened up and announced, as articulately as he could, "I'm sorry to have presumed upon your patience."
And so Santa wandered back through the departures terminal and the arrivals terminal to the taxi stand on Chestnut Street. He could have got a cab on Bay or on Edward, but Santa had had a lot of Christmas cheer, eh?
He crawled, more or less, into the back seat of a cab, managed to get into a sitting position, and asked to be taken to the North Pole. "Out of town's a flat rate, Santa," the driver said, looking back at him over the front seat, "and the North Pole's a long way away. I need like twenty grand in front, eh?"
"My comptroller'll pay you when we get there," Santa said with some dignity.
"Uh uh. No can do." the driver said. "You know," he continued, "I think maybe a better idea would be to get you some place you can have a nap before you set out tonight. What do you think?"
Santa took a few seconds to figure out what he thought. "An excellent idea," he said finally. "I can call someone at the Pole to come get me."
"Now you're talking," the driver said, and Santa gave him an address on Lascelles Boulevard. "You know," Santa said as the cab started moving, "I always said it was a good idea to let you people into the country."
"For sure," the driver said cheerily. He took the cab over to University and turned north towards the Legislature and the big menorah.
"I'm telling you," Santa said, looking out the window at the empty street, "Christmas is a bag of shit."
"Not for me, Santa. This is one of my best days of the year."
Santa thought about this, thought about all his problems, then said, "Well, that's as may be, eh? For me, though, Christmas is a bag of shit. One giant fucking bag of shit."
"Santa," the driver said patiently, "just think about the looks of joy you're soon going to be bringing to millions of tiny faces all over the world."
"Easy for you to say," Santa replied. "Easy for you to say."
1 © East Time-Redwal Back to the story
Three Cheers for Santa! © Coolth, 2000
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