GIFT OF THE MAGI

                                       GIFT OF THE MAGI
                             
         Neil saw the irony of it all.
         All these happy magazines strategically placed about the clinic waiting room. 
         He looked down at the oversized edition of MODERN LIFE -half drooping off his lap. 
         There, between his vibrating legs, was the glossy representation of the American Dream.  The nuclear family-mom, dad, two young kids complete with photoshopped smiles and plastic poses ready to face the future.  And they were going to do it all in their brand new Toyota Prius bursting right off the page beside them in an explosion of pastel 72 point ROCKWELL EXTRA BOLD font.
                             
                             GOOD FOR THE FUTURE
                                   GOOD FOR YOU!

         The future…that was the last thing people were thinking about in this place.
         Turning the page, the capitalist propaganda was growing more obvious.  A two-page spread with a single image: a rather fat and healthy white baby sitting squat in the center - a brand new IPOD resting in between his plump Aryan legs.
         His face all smile.
         Really?
         Neil had enough.  He stood up-eyes straining to focus on the nearest exit.  He’d have to sprint past the depressed Latino girl and then practically leap over the genderless Emo couple (the only way he could tell which one was the female was the fact that she was crying) to make it out of here. 
         It was worth the risk.

         Outside the earth was still barren, frozen under a layer of sterile cold. Neil was starting to think that winter was never going to leave. It was here for good and the world was going to die for sure.  It was suffocating underneath the thick snow. Winter had arrived in September and probably wouldn't leave until May.
         He struggled to light a cigarette and felt that slight guilt he always got while smoking in front of a public place.  Actually, he was a month into a good quit, but fuck it, times like these rarely afflict a man, but when they do..they can kill you.
         Everything frozen.
         Everything dead.
         The sun shone fat overhead oblivious to the dying planet.  Business as usual. The light blinded but never seemed to thaw anything…ever. Your bones still shivered, your teeth still shook.
         Or maybe it was something else that was causing it.
         He zipped up his flight jacket and cursed the whole damn deal.
         He could’ve blamed God for this. He could’ve blamed his weak disposition. But most of all, he blamed the snow. 
         He had to be back to work in the morning. He had a four hour drive ahead of him.  If the weather held out he’d be okay.
         If she held out…
         They didn’t have how-to-feel manuals on these situations, no what-to-think -for -dummies on this one.  Didn’t matter, every thought he had made him feel guilty. 
         He found a rather untouched pile of snow in the middle of the parking lot and focused on it.  He absorbed his aching brain into it. Perhaps if he stared at it long enough he would go blind. Perhaps everything would die around him.
         Perhaps he could travel back in time…

         “Promise me something dear,” Kate appeared out of the kitchen  holding another round of fresh beers in her hands.
         “Yes?” Neil, cupped his arm around her hips as she stood next to him at the table.
         “Promise me we’re never going to be one of THOSE families.” She stumbled a bit, regaining her posture in cute professional fashion-handing him his beer.
         Kate, a tiny  package of joy and pain all wrapped up tight in layers of trendy clothes and sweet sickly perfume.  Her touch was warm, her skin tanned, and her face always pinched tight in serious contemplation.
         She plopped her small frame down on his lap and  struggled for words that were swimming around in an eighty proof cloud.
         “You know baby…those…those families you see at wal-mart all mean and ‘resentful’.” She had found her thought and looked down at Neil’s smiling face to effectively deliver it. “Fucking white-trash screaming at their kids ‘god damnit Billy get back here’..’Get the fuck out of the stupid cart Betty!’  God, they make me so fucking SICK!”
         Kate-language of a sailor, the heart of a nurse.  It seemed her hands were either drawn up tight in fists or outstretched to hold you.  Either way you were always on your guard around her. She saw the world through kid eyes, drunk kid eyes.
         “ I don’t…I don’t..”Her face clouded .” I don’t want to resent our babies.  I want to LOVE them. No yelling, honey, no yelling in our house…ever.”
         “I promise.” Neil whispered.
         “Good.” She chirped, planting one on his forehead, nearly falling off his lap."Question."
         Her tone changed to something almost playful.
         "Answer." Neil smiled.
         "If we...sorry, I mean if YOU ever had a kid what would you name it?" It was like being interrogated by a seven year old.
         "I'm not sure." He really wasn't.
         "WELL," she stood up, having rehearsed her answer since she was a child." I know for sure that if I ever have a boy I'm gonna name it CHRISTOPHER-after my REAL father, because I love that bastard!"
         Kate seemed to always be playing house.
         Christmas…that was how it was spent-in the warm orange glow of his shitty apartment.  Just the two of them, drunk and contemplating everything swirling about them
…snowed in.
         A glass of red wine spilled across the faded brown carpet.
         A roll of near empty wrapping paper.
         A missed text message.
         She had come to visit for a day or two.  But the winter, the winter had kept her there for an entire week. 
         A closed stretch of interstate.
         The constant brutal wind.
         She pulled him close, he caught her scent- vanilla blossom and Pabst Blue Ribbon.
         She might have meant the words she spoke to him, but it always came out the same way -distant.  Whether it was during one of their hours long phone calls or sitting hot on his lap it was all the same.
         She could’ve been speaking to anybody.
         “Take me to bed.”

         There was a knick knack store just across the strip mall.  Neil might as well have been trekking across Antarctica as he made his way along the parking lot.  It wasn’t until he was inside the faux antique riddled interior of the shop that he finally raised his head out of the puffy color of his coat.
         Good god, it was as if his grandmother's attic had taken a shit all over the place.
         Pricetags sprouted out of everything.
         Hands deep in his empty pockets he browsed the rows of overpriced hame-made craft projects gone wrong...hand painted carved bears holding WELCOME signs...farm tools transformed into sad little people...scriptures spelled out in springs and gears. 
         Neil ran his fingers slowly across a wooden plaque with the phrase GOD BLESS shaped out of barbed wire.  He felt the quick ping of pain as he caught his finger on the E.  He pulled it back and saw a tiny grain of blood blossom on the tip. More irony, he supposed and stuffed his wounded hand back into his coat pocket.
         More pioneer propaganda...more Husker blood red...more cutesy corny crap.  Then, something caught his interest.  It was a small wooden angel figurine with a metal bottle opener sprouting out from between her legs.  He picked it off its display and flipped it over in his hands, a tiny bit of blood from his wound smeared across it's bright purple wings.  It had a good feel to it. It was useful.          Kate would love it.
         She was an alcoholic after all.
         Neil made his way up to the front to pay for his trinket.  The old scarecrow working the cash register looked like she had just popped off the canvas of AMERICAN GOTHIC.  Her piercing eyes remained on Neil during the entire transaction.  She was looking him over -passing judgment. She had watched him walk over here from the clinic, he just knew it. 
         His stomach clenched, his skin sweated cold.  He wanted to vomit all over the wrinkled bat.  He waited for her to start screaming at him - to start proclaiming him a sinner - to call him out for the dirty dirty boy he was.
         But instead, all he got was a "that'll be eight dollars and 70 cents."
         He handed her his worn debit card and did the math in his head.
         Let's see I paid Kate the five hundred dollars...I need thirty dollars to fill up the tank for the way home...another ten for some jerky and soda..okay, I have enough.
         It's funny what five hundred dollars and a four hour road trip will get you these days.

         Kate was asleep.  Her breathe deep, caught up in Wild Turkey induced slumber.
         It  was still dark outside.  There was no sound, only Kate's breathing.  Neil was still awake.
         He was always awake. 
         His head still resting on her stomach-slowly softly running his fingers up and down her legs-comforting her from the nightmares she suffered from. 
If only such physical reassurance was enough for him.  Even now, in these intimate natural moments nothing felt right. 
         Neil was alone and Kate might as well have been a text message on his phone or a pornographic image on his computer screen. 
         He placed his hand flat against her warm stomach.  His evidence still working itself somewhere inside her.  Drama was unfolding on a microscopic level.  Biology-you could reduce everything down to it.  Love, desire, jealousy, death -nothing more than meat and electricity.  Cell A connects with Cell B and the whole world goes to shit.
         Moments like these were supposed to be beautiful. 
         In the sheer magnetism of the instant he had obliged her dangerous proposition.  The act completed while her eyes looked glazed off into space and the future spilled out from him.
         It was foolish of him to think that it would keep her with him.
         There was the distance.
         There was doubt.
         There was temptation.
         And now there was biology. 
         His body cooling down, his brain swelling with sinking doubt. His fingers running up her stomach, circling her breasts, coming back down the slope of her inner arm -scanning her neck-her thick square lips- her eyes still clenched in worry even as she slept.  He was making a physical memory to hold on to even after she was gone. 
         The death of a relationship comes in many subtle forms...a change in tone of voice, a drop in frequency.
         She was slipping away, and soon she would vanish altogether.

         The tears had frozen to his face and had already shattered clean off before he reached his car to throw his 'gift' onto the passenger seat.  One more cigarette for old time's sake and then he would head back into the clinic.
         He hoped he would get swallowed up by the snow before he had to go back in there.


         The angels swirled about her head. They had taken the forms of distorted blobs of bright lights and buzzing sounds.  Their fingers tugging and scraping away at her insides.  Numb, she was feeling a series of changes in pressure signifying that each critical step had been performed 'successfully'. 
         Kate- under water. 
         It seemed as if the world from her waste down was a completely different universe.  She could see them working, but there was a time delay somewhere between her vagina and her brain.
         The stinging sensation began to wash up over her knees and onto her stomach. Her head began to throb.  She felt another wave of naseau working its way out. 
         These were all signs that she was coming to.
         But what if she didn't want to?  What if she just wanted to stay here subdued with the angels?
         She thought of Christmas at her mother's house -all the sweet smelling warm rituals -all the comfort of it.  She thought of the simplicity of it all.  She desired it - a childhood quilt thrown around her shoulders on a winter's night - a cup of coffee first thing in the morning- the way her mother used to stay up late worrying about where her little angel was.
         Angel...
         She thought of Neil and how wonderful he was. How wonderfully frustrating he was.  Poor poor Neil- a victim of his own demise.  He had broke her heart on a daily basis. 
         She was tired of proving herself to him every time. 
         She had spent the past six months painting the perfect picture of their life together.  She had practically packed his car for him only so he could move up here with her.  They could've made it together.
         God knows, she wouldn't have lasted on her own.
         But fuck it, she had spent the last 33 years of her life this way.  One more insecure asshole wasn't going to change this - this was destined.
         Didn't he get it?! This had been the ultimate gift and she had built herself up for the moment.  Kate had been ready to take this step- so permanent in its execution.  Had he not sensed her fear? Had he not stayed up with her countless nights promising her security? 
         But even during that moment.. naked and connected he had turned into a little cowardly boy.  Wasn't it enough that she had promised him?  Guess not.  All that life got in the way..all that busy shit.  Fuck all the plans she had spent countless days making and all the prayers and dreams that she had cried herself to sleep with every night.
         It was just not good enough.
         Well, Neil, there's all the proof you ever needed.  The best present I could've ever given you now soaked up in gauze and discarded in a plastic biohazard bag. Our family.
         "Goodbye Christopher." was all she whispered.

         The drive back to Kate's apartment was heavy with silence.  Neil had turned the radio off and was focusing on the roads before him.  Kate sat clamped shut in the passenger seat-her knees drawn up tight to her chest.  Wrapped up and still freezing.  She doubted she would ever feel warmth again.
         She noticed the small paper sack now sitting loose on the dashboard.
         "What's that?" She asked quietly.
         "Oh, it's nothing." Neil made the turn into the parking lot of her apartment complex. "nothing at all."
         "Oh" Kate pinched her mouth shut and found relief only in the fact that they had finally reached their destination.
         Neil pulled the car up to the front doors, putting it into park, and feeling the car idle his hands let go of the steering wheel.
         Kate pushed open her door and remained still.  After a slow moment she turned to Neil.
         "If you want me to stay tonight I will." Neil spoke instead, looking her over for the last time.
         "No, it's ok." When she spoke it always sounded like an obligation."You should get on the road. You don't want to be caught in the storm."
         
Neil waited until she disappeared inside the building before putting the car in reverse and pulling out of the parking lot.  He followed the roads out of town and onto the highway. The world a blinding white around him.  Kate was long gone now.
         The city had swallowed her whole.
         Inside her kitchen, Kate found a bottle of  wine and cracked it open.  She poured a glass full of the deep red wine and swallowed full, letting it stain her cracked lips-letting it calm her ripped insides.
         Neil was gone.
         She stared through the kitchen window that had frosted over.

         Outside a fresh snow was starting to fall.