A Yule Retrieved

Santa Claus from Sinterklaas, and that originally was Sint-Nicolaas. I've taken on a lot of names here and there, from Père Noël to Joulupukki. They're just names. It's somewhat like the red thing. I'll tell you a secret: it's not my favorite color. But a company needed an advertising campaign, and their color is red, so now that image is everywhere. That's okay. It's how people think of me, not who I am.

I'm a trifle more disapproving of that 1823 poem that called me a "jolly old elf." That isn't always the way to heal the world's hurts. Ask any parent about spoiled children.

The thing I want to say is that what matters is making things better. Sometimes that comes from a Lionel Red Rocket Express under the Christmas tree. Other times it has nothing to do with anything involving wrapping paper.

Either way, don't be naughty. And, if that's a little too soft for you, don't be a damn asshole either. I paid a high price to drink from the well of knowing, and I keep track.

—S. Claus

Far away, almost too far to see what was going on except that he'd always had good vision, he watched the figures. On one hand, what they were doing was nonsense. On the other ... endings were as interesting as beginnings, and this was a little of both.

"Stop making such a damn racket!"

"How 'bout you shut the fuck up, Gramps?"

"How about I kick your ass up one stairwell and down the other?" The threat might have seemed ridiculous coming from an octogenarian if it weren't for the hand that came out from behind the doorframe with a baseball bat ... that and the glacial eyes under shaggy white brows that didn't flinch from a young man's glare.

Ferg turned his back on Old Man 1D and pushed his way out of the lobby door, music still blaring. His attitude reflected how he saw the day shaping up.

It had started with the sounds coming through the paper-thin walls as Amber made sure January's rent would get handled. Those made sleep pretty difficult, not that Amber gave two shits about whether her son, Ferg, could sleep.

If he hung around, he knew it would get ugly. It was bad enough Dipshit—real name Tom or something, but Ferg didn't pay much attention anymore—had shown up unexpectedly last night. If Ferg was around this morning when they emerged, Amber's mood would be no bueno; she didn't like to remind guys that she had a son.

Plus, Ferg had gotten a bead on Dipshit the previous night in that brief moment before he responded to his mother's glare and took off. In Ferg's experience, there were two types: the embarrassed-I-just-fucked-your-mother Dipshit and the contemptuous-I-just-fucked-your-mother Dipshit.

The first type tended to disappear once they bumped into him, turning Amber into a screaming basket case of resentment days later when she realized they weren't calling. But Ferg's guess on this one was the second type. Then he'd want to wipe the smirk off Dipshit's face, giving Amber leverage to express her displeasure at his presence. She counted on the fact that, whatever he might want to do to Dipshit, he always held back with her.

"How 'bout you make Tom and I some bacon and eggs?" she'd say. If they had any, she'd take malicious pleasure in watching Ferg acquiesce under their contemptuous gazes. If they didn't, normally fine for her coffee-and-a-cig breakfast habit, it would be cause for a scathing, "Grocery shopping. One simple job, that's all you've got, and you fuck that up."

This despite the fact that he did pretty much everything, and she knew damn well he shopped Wednesday evenings when the market started its markdowns. She'd give a huge sigh, one calculated to draw Dipshit's attention toward her chest and the assets the father Ferg had never met had paid for before he abandoned ship at the word "preggers." Then she'd wheedle Dipshit for breakfast out. Excluding Ferg.

He knew her game and wasn't in the mood for it this morning because ... well, just because.

But, if he didn't hang around, there was a chance he'd run into Anthony or some of the other guys, and that wasn't so hot either. He needed time without distraction to get his head clear.

He didn't get it. The blacked-out window, as ridiculous on a Pontiac G6 as the glued-on spoiler, rolled down.

"Yo, Ferg. Come on. We need you for some two-on-two."

"Pass." Ferg didn't budge from his perch on the bus stop bench.

"Come on. Shut your hole and get in."

"Fuck off, Donnie."

"What crawled up your ass and died?" Ferg ignored the question, and Donnie's face closed in irritation. Donnie didn't take a lot of things very well, and he and Ferg were never the best of buddies.

The car's driver leaned down so he was in view through the passenger window. "Cut Ferg-boy some slack. He got business to take care of, you know." Anthony's words were to Donnie, but his grin was for Ferg. His expression turned conspiratorial. "Tonight, man?" he asked Ferg.

Resigned to the fact they weren't going to go away, Ferg shook his head. "No."

"You pussying out?"

"I'm not—" He didn't get to finish.

"You teach that cocksucker a lesson he don't forget, and then you teach her a lesson. Me and Reaper will—" It was Ferg's turn to interrupt.

"No. It's between Leo and me."

"He got buddies there every night."

"Who said anythin' about night?" He ignored the questions. No bus in sight, he got up and hop-stepped his way down the subway entrance for a long ride to nowhere in particular.

He had trouble retrieving even vestiges of the calm and resolve he'd started to find earlier. In their stead reappeared the incomprehension and impotence ... feelings that still had no haven in a male not yet twenty. Feelings that, inevitably, could only transform into a more-acceptable fury.

As he approached his building hours later, he wondered if Dipshit was gone. Prepared to beat a retreat, he listened at the door, slid in his key, and opened it a crack. No conversation; no unintelligible-but-purposeful urgings. Relieved, he went in.

Relieved, that is, until the faint trace of vinegar and acid hit his nose. It was one of many odors familiar to those in the neighborhood, at least those who hadn't destroyed their sense of smell with cigarettes. The fury erupted.

His charge through the tiny apartment stopped at the sight of Amber sprawled on her bed, the square of tinfoil and rolled-up tube fallen to the floor, fortunately no longer alight.

Ferg shook her, slapped her, searched frantically for her phone; he couldn't afford his own. Dead battery. Of course it was; Amber had other things on her mind the evening before. He wrenched open the apartment door.

"Someone call 911." The bellow echoed down the linoleum-clad hallway even as he stepped across to 2A and hammered on the door. It took only a second of pounding for the improbably red hair of Ms. Horvath—known as "The Ghoul" to the residents of South Building—to pop out.

"What?"

"Call 911. Amber's flipped out on smack."

And of course ... because, Ghoul ... Ms. Horvath wheezed her frame along behind him as he raced back into 2B, though she did pull her phone from the pocket of her cardigan. That's all she did with it, launching into cries of "She looks bad" and "Bože môj!" and "A junkie, who knew?" as Ferg tried to wake his mother.

"Iveta!" The voice was like a whipcrack. "Dial the damn number."

Ferg looked up to see Old Man 1D, who had somehow heard his yell. A hand reached out and snagged Ms. Horvath's wrist, forcing the device in front of her face. "Dial!"

Amber's limp form was unceremoniously pulled to the floor, Ferg's protests notwithstanding. The whiskered cheek went down to Amber's mouth, the old man gazing intently at the chest covered in only a worn T-shirt.

Ordinarily, that would have irritated Ferg; the tendency of various Dipshits to check out his mother's body was one of the things that pissed him off no end. But he knew that heroin ODs stopped breathing sometimes; he just wasn't sure what to do about it. And the sight of a foot of white beard infinitesimally rising and falling as if it had a life of its own because of where it was draped was kind of funny ... or maybe that was just the stress talking.

"Breathing seems okay. Get her left leg bent up," Ferg was instructed, while the old man lifted her left arm and tucked it under her right jaw. "Up on her side now. Keep her there."

Faded eyes the blue-gray of river ice met Ferg's cornflower blue. "Recovery position. Keeps the airway clear." The gaze shifted to the standing woman who was starting the second round of babble to the operator about how Amber looked. "Iveta. Just shut up and let them do their job."

It was long hours later when the nurse told Ferg, "The naloxone did its job. You can take her home." Care instructions followed, delivered brusquely by someone whose attention was already shifting toward the day's next crisis. "And keep her away from that stuff."

"No problem."

It wasn't a problem, at least in the short term. The first thing Ferg did was flush the remaining powder down the toilet.

An act that, slightly too late to stop it, did not go unnoticed.

"You fuckin' little piece of shit! That was Tim's."

Ferg idly acknowledged he'd gotten Dipshit's name wrong. Like, who cared? The tirade got louder; the venom dripped faster. Whines of "not gettin' any younger" interwove with screeches about an "ass-kickin' once Tim came back."

The first was true. The stripper body no longer commanded the better clubs ... or so Ferg was told with a leer by those in the know who didn't particularly like him.

The second was laughably not true. Ferg shrugged off Amber's slaps and occasional punches, but if dad-bod Dipshit raised even a finger, well, Amber would lose her latest sugar daddy via the emergency room. Might still happen if Dipshit said one word about his drugs.

At "I should have listened to my fuckin' father and never had you," Ferg knew it was time to leave before the anger that roiled, making his stomach clench into a bile-suffused knot, spilled over. He bit down on words burning to escape and stalked out, trying to close his ears to the stream of invective that followed him.

Pale eyes tracked him as he crossed the lobby. A momentary spike of conscience cut through the anger. "Thank you ... uh ... I don't know your name."

"I'm just Gramps, huh?" The disdain was obvious.

"I call you Old Man 1D."

That brought a snort of something almost like laughter. "Jolnir." When Ferg repeated it, "Mr. Jolnir to you. Kids don't have any respect these days."

"What kind of name is Jolnir?"

"It's just a name."

"Sounds kind of, I dunno, eastern European."

A pause, eyes going skyward in exasperation. "Maybe it was anglicized from Czollner, and I'm Hungarian."

"Like the Ghou— Like Ms. Horvath?"

"She's Slovak."

"Zolner"—Ferg's pronunciation was slightly different—"That sounds sorta German."

"Nah, Hungarian. Trust me on that."

"Hungarian's cool. Maybe you're related to Attila."

"I'm not Hungarian."

"But you—"

"I told you it was just a name the first time you asked. You kept on with your stupid question, so I made up a stupid answer. My name's Mr. Jolnir. End of story."

The old man glanced up at him with eyes that, for a single second, seemed more amused than sarcastic or judging.

"What's a name? If I call you Martin or Marty"—the flash of emotion at Marty took a moment to shove down—"you're still just the guy with the ridiculous nickname." Another flash of anger over the disrespect. "Who gives a damn? What people call you is just who you are to them. What matters is who you are."

Ferg's brain struggled as he tried to untangle that knot.

"I need to feed Sleepy." As the door started to shut, Ferg saw the slate-gray form slink into view, the ugliest cat he'd ever seen, and give a typical feline glare at the humans.

Ferg stepped outside. Turning right, he found his favorite bench and dropped into it.

It wasn't much of a park.

"Four one-hundredths of an acre!" Mr. Banyas would crow. "Not the smallest in the city, but close!"

It was flanked by the brick apartment buildings on either side, and the wall and fence of a raised sidewalk at the back. The fourth side was a wrought-iron fence. The Parks Department barely paid it any attention, other than Mr. Banyas who lived in the far building and worked for them. He locked and unlocked the gate each day.

"Nine in the morning until five at night," he'd tell anyone who asked.

This wasn't a big deal for Ferg's building or Mr. Banyas's; each had a fire door that went out there. Residents on both sides jointly considered it "their" park ... screw the public. Not that there was much public for ivy-choked walls, one spot persistently and mysteriously of the poison variety; a scrawny ginkgo tree in the corner, bare-branched this time of year; some scrawnier evergreens along the back wall; five weather-beaten benches; and a brick pavement so frost-heaved that it was guaranteed to turn the ankle of any woman not in flats.

Ferg found it a useful place to avoid the apartment. Now he sat and contemplated the one thing that truly did have some eye appeal. Centered in a raised bed was a small evergreen, different from the others.

"Fraser fir," Mr. Banyas had pronounced. The residents had adopted it as a Christmas tree years ago. Lights were elaborately entwined with the branches to make theft difficult. Ornaments and a star on top would come out on the twenty-fourth for the buildings' party. An extension cord ran out of a fire door. Ferg found its warm glow quieting in the fading twilight.

He sat. He strove to replace the hot anger at ... at everything, with cold resolve.

He ignored it when Fourth Floor Italian Lady and Old Ma— Mr. Jolnir came out and checked for plastic bottles and other garbage tossed from the sidewalk above. He ignored Mr. Banyas ceremoniously turning the large key and ignored the short conversation between the two men.

"Coming to the Christmas Eve party for once?"

"I go drinking with friends that night. You know."

"We keep hoping." A sly glance. "Especially Iveta."

A snort. "My whiskers were white before that woman was out of diapers."

"She's got enough hair dye for the two of you."

Laughter. Ferg ignored that too. Feeling happy wasn't in the cards. The only question was what replaced it, and grim satisfaction was sure as fuck better than the alternative.

As Ferg loitered in the unfamiliar hall, he was glad it wasn't the kind of building where people asked questions of a stranger. Sidelong glances and shut doors were the norm from the one or two who noticed him at that hour of the morning.

Five twenty-five. Right on schedule for leaving to catch a subway for work at six o'clock. The door beside him swung open, and Ferg was through it, left hand up under an unexpecting jaw, pushing back into the room, right delivering a vicious jab to the solar plexus.

Ferg kicked the door shut behind him. "Call her out here," he told the pained face. Ferg's quiet voice would have sounded calm if you couldn't see his expression.

"What the fuc—"

The knee driving upward put Leo on the floor. "Call her out here," Ferg repeated when he judged Leo had some breath back.

"There's no one—"

A foot applying weight on a throat cut off the protest. "If she hears my voice, she'll be out the fire escape and gone. Call and wake her." Ferg had known Leo a long time. He knew that Leo was chickenshit, through and through, despite his large size. Ferg waited, foot pressing.

"Why the fuck are you at me, man?"

The stupidity sent a flare of hot anger that threatened to disrupt Ferg's tight control of himself. "What did I say last time we talked?"

"What? What has that got to—" Again, Leo's non-responsiveness brought him pain.

"What. Did. I. Say?"

"Please, man!" Leo begged. His face was wet with tears. "You said to stay the fuck away from Mar—"

"No!" Ferg turned Leo's protest into a gargle while he fought to bury the anguish under contempt for the man. "I didn't say that." He dropped down, knee replacing foot.

"I said if María wanted to get back with you, she could show me some respect and tell me to my face. I'd walk away. But you layin' your fuckin' paws on her before I heard those words was disrespect. Isn't that what I said?"

Leo tried to respond, whether to agree or protest further was unknown because the knee prevented him from saying anything.

"And then what do I hear? I'll tell you. I heard you spouted off to the guys that disrespect was the least of what I'd be feelin'. I heard you bragged that, if you wanted, you'd snap your fingers and she'd be moanin' on your dick. This thing?" A heavy hand landed, bringing another muffled cry from Leo.

Ferg leaned in close. "I ignored those things I heard. You know why? Because you're a punk-bitch and punk-bitches run their mouths. It's what they do. But then things changed, and now you're goin' to call your girlfriend out here because you're a punk-bitch."

"There's—uhh!"

The knee retreated, just a trifle.

"Please!"

Ferg said nothing.

"It's been months, man." Leo's eyes were frantic. "Yeah, I said that shit. But I was just ..." The pleading voice trailed off, unable to claim it wasn't what it was.

"Yeah, it's been months. But things changed. They changed because two of the girls told me they saw you with her at the pizza place a while ago, and you had your arm around her." Leo did the impossible and got paler. "The last straw was Reaper told me about seein' you with her last week, and your hand was on her ass. But I didn't hear the words I needed to hear first, shithead."

Leo's face twisted in disbelief. "But that—"

Ferg lost patience. "Get out here," he roared toward the bedroom door. "If she ducks out the fire escape, you'll pay," he promised.

"Don't hurt us," Leo whined.

"Hurt her?" Ferg's eyes bored into Leo's. Suddenly he wanted nothing more than to smash the face in front of him into ruin at the incredible stupidity of the man wearing it. His knee cut off all talk while he practically spat in Leo's face.

"Hurt her?" he repeated. "I wouldn't hurt her in a million years. But she's goin' to watch her punk-bitch boyfriend choke on every boast he made while he snivels on the floor. She'll hear how he called her a slut moanin' on his dick, maybe watch him get his ass beat like he claimed he—"

The door opened. Ferg's eyes rose involuntarily. They traced upward over familiar curves. They took in the beloved mass of ebony hair hanging down far below her shoulders, the midnight eyes, the salted caramel of skin. They traced the contours of a face that was ... so almost-but-not-quite-right.

In shock, he half-rose.

"No, please," she said, flinching back.

"Run!" Leo shouted at the woman. When she didn't move. "Gloria, get out!"

Ferg and the woman stared at each other, he unbelieving how much she looked like María, she apprehensive of the agitated man.

When Ferg didn't make a move toward her, she straightened. She looked down at Leo, her face hardening slightly. "A slut moaning on your dick?"

"I wasn't talking about y—" It wasn't Leo's day to talk. The knee cut him off.

"Who are you?" Ferg asked.

"Gloria. Who are you?"

"Ferg. Is there a woman named María here?"

"No. But I've heard I look very much like her." The tone was oddly brittle.

"You're with Leo?"

"Three weeks, a bit more."

"So, when Reaper saw him last week with his hand on a woman's butt, it was you?"