Dec. 14: One lonely Christmas

The office was cold.

Glen stood by the picture window that looked out on Main Street, watching as the Christmas Eve blizzard blanketed everything in snow, listening as the shrieking wind blew garbage cans across the street and made the ice caked telephone wires dance overhead. The  taxicab directly outside was already buried. It had been more than an hour since his last run. Some college girl had called from the city airport, desperate for a ride back to the small town where the taxi stand was located. Her parents were rich, she said, and would give him a healthy tip. They didn't.

-

He'd been working at Small Town Taxi for two months. October had been shit. Between Thanksgiving and Halloween he got laid off from the factory and then Lydia left him, taking their daughter to the city to start a new life with a real estate agent she'd met in the summer. He didn't blame her. He'd exhausted their savings to pay for his mother's cancer treatment and then, just as the last dollar had jumped out of the account, mama died, almost as if on cue. The universe playing some macabre practical joke. Ha ha. Isn't bankruptcy funny?

-

There was a television in the office, a small black and white job with tin foil wrapped rabbit ears on top. Out in this small town, the TV could only receive three channels, but on this snowy night, those channels came with a lot of static. The TV was showing A Christmas Carol and Alastair Sim, who had only died in August, was weeping at the feet of the Ghost of Christmas Future. He flipped through to the other channels and found a rerun of MASH and a rerun of the Tonight Show where a foggy looking Joan Rivers was interviewing Vincent Price.

-

He lost the apartment after Lydia moved away. Joe, the owner of Small Town Taxi, told him he could stay at the office for the time being. Joe didn't know if that was exactly legal; there was probably some small town bylaw that prevented people from living in workspaces, but he doubted anyone would look into it too seriously. There were conditions though. Joe didn't want Glen cluttering up the place.

That was a promise that was easy to keep. In moving out, Joe found a great unknown liberty in decluttering, in ridding himself of all the non-essentials. He threw out hundreds of books - books he knew he'd never read - and discarded 90 per cent of his wardrobe. In the end, all of his belongings could fit into a small cardboard box. Three changes of clothes. A plate, cup, and utensils. Toothbrush, razor blade, deodorant, and a little blue ball. His daughter gave him that ball. They went to the grocery store and he put a quarter in the vending machine outside. The machine dispensed two balls, one blue and one red. "Here daddy," she said. "Blue is your favorite color."

And now his daughter was in the city.

-

The front room where the TV sat was also the office. There was a desk there and on the desk was a telephone. Glen was expected to answer it and provide taxi services to anyone who wanted them, no matter what time of day. There was no bed to sleep on. No couch either but there was an old bench that had been ripped from the back of a school bus. The drab green naugahyde surface was ripped in several spots, letting the ugly black stuffing beneath bleed through. It was on that bench that Glen had slept these past eight weeks, pulling a dirty quilt around him to keep warm on the cold nights. The thermostat barely worked and Glen was not about to complain to Joe about it. Beggars can't be choosers.

-

There was a bathroom. One filthy toilet, the porcelain beneath the water line as yellow as the teeth of a five pack a day smoker. The sink was a cracked and old thing. Only one tap worked and would allow only a trickle of water. A sliver of soap stuck to the bottom of the basin like a barnacle. The toilet paper roll was empty.

And there was a kitchen. A waist high fridge with a Mr. Coffee on top. Mr. Coffee was on, the glass pot half full. He dug a smiley face cup out of the cabinet and filled it. He opened the fridge, saw the remains of a loaf of bread and a full pack of balogna. No butter. No salt and pepper. Nothing to make it taste better. Just raw nutrients. He slapped a slice of balogna between two slices of bread and took his sandwich and coffee back into the office.

"God bless us, every one," Tiny Tim said on TV.

He sat down at the desk while the credits for the movie began to roll and took a bite of his cold sandwich.

The phone rang.

"Small Town Taxi," Glen said. "Do you need a ride?"

"On a night like this?" Joe asked. "You gotta be crazy."

Glen had no idea what to say. He took a sip of his coffee.

"It's midnight," Joe said. "Just calling to say Merry Christmas."

"Thanks," Glen said. "Merry Christmas to you too."

Joe hung up and went back to his family. Shortly after that, the TV began broadcasting a steady high pitched hum. He looked at the TV and saw a test pattern in black and white. The station had ended its broadcasting for the day.

Resigned, he stood and went over to the TV, flipping through the dials. Static. Static. Another test pattern. Static. Another episode of MASH.

"Suicide is painless," he said to no one at all. He knew that was the name of the theme song to MASH. He watched the opening credits, watched those helicopter medics run into the field to save some faceless bastard.

"Save me," he said to no one at all.

He looked at the phone and wondered if Lydia and his daughter were having a Merry Christmas.

Glen turned off the TV and then he turned off the lights. He sat behind the desk, shivering, eating his sandwich, drinking his coffee, the only illumination coming from the Christmas lights outside.

The phone didn't ring that night and when Glen woke up on Christmas morning, he found a little blue ball gripped tightly in his hand.