Moody Boy even more when I saw that he’d underlined my favorite part of the poem:
I am living. I remember you.
I had no idea how Marie Howe and Two Boots Pizza and The Godfather could possibly be connected. I tried calling Langston again. Still no answer.
I read and re-read the passage. I am living. I remember you. I don’t really get poetry, but I had to give the poetess credit: nice.
Two people sat in the booth next to me, setting down some rental videos on their table. That’s when I realized the connection: say the window of the corner video store. This particular Two Boots location also had a video store attached to it.
I dashed over to the video section like it was the bathroom after I’d accidentally ingested some Louisiana hot sauce on top of my calzone. I immediately went to where The Godfather was. The movie wasn’t there. I asked the clerk where I’d find it. “Checked out,” she said.
I returned to the G section anyway and found, mis-shelved, The Godfather III. I opened up the case and—yes!—another Post-it note, in Snarl’s scrawl:
Nobody ever checks out Godfather III. Especially when it’s misfiled. Do you want another clue? If so, find Clueless. Also misfiled, where sorrow meets pity.
I returned to the clerk’s counter. “Where does sorrow meet pity?” I asked, fully expecting an existential answer.
The clerk didn’t look up from the comic book she was reading under the counter. “Foreign documentaries.”
Oh.
I went to the foreign documentaries section. And yes, next to a film called The Sorrow and the Pity was a copy of Clueless! Inside the case for Clueless was another note:
I didn’t expect you to make it this far. Are you also a fan of depressing French films about mass murder? If so, I like you already. If not, why not? Do you also despise les films de Woody Allen? If you want your red Moleskine notebook back, I suggest you leave instructions in the film of your choice with Amanda at the front desk. Please, no Christmas movies.
I returned to the front desk. “Are you Amanda?” I asked the clerk girl.
She looked up, raising an eyebrow. “I am.”
“May I leave something for someone with you?” I asked. I almost added, Wink wink, but I couldn’t bring myself to be that obvious.
“You may,” she said.
“Do you have a copy of Miracle on 34th Street?” I asked her.
three
-Dash-
December 22nd
“Is this a joke?” I asked Amanda. And the way she looked at me, I knew that I was the joke.
Oh, the impertinence! I should have known better than to mention Christmas movies. Clearly, no invitation was too small for Lily’s sarcasm. And the note:
5. Look for the warm woolen mittens with the reindeer on them, please.
Could there be any doubt what my next destination was supposed to be?
Macy’s.
Two days before Christmas Eve.
She might as well have gift-wrapped my face and pumped the carbon dioxide in. Or hung me on a noose of credit card receipts. A department store two days before Christmas Eve is like a city in a state of siege—wild-eyed consumers battling in the aisles over who gets the last sea horse snow globe to give to their respective great-aunt Marys.
I couldn’t.
I wouldn’t.
I had to.
I tried to distract myself by debating the difference between wool and woolen, then expanding it to include wood vs. wooden and gold vs. golden. But this distraction only lasted the time it took to walk the stairs from the subway, since when I emerged on Herald Square, I was nearly capsized by the throngs and their shopping bags. The knell of a Salvation Army bell ringer added to the grimness, and I had no doubt that if I didn’t escape soon, a children’s choir would pop up and carol me to death.
I walked inside Macy’s and faced the pathetic spectacle of a department store full of shoppers, none of whom were shopping for themselves. Without the instant gratification of a self-aimed purchase, everyone walked around in the tactical stupor of the financially obligated. At this late date in the season, all the fallbacks were being used. Dad was getting a tie, Mom was getting a scarf, and the kids were getting sweaters, whether they liked it or not. I had done all of my shopping online from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. on the morning of December 3; the gifts now sat at their respective houses, to be opened in the new year. My mother had left me gifts to open in her house, while my father had slipped me a hundred-dollar bill and told me to go to town with it. In fact, his exact words were, “Don’t spend it all on booze and women”—the implication being, of course, that I should spend at least some of it on booze and women. Had there been a way to get a gift certificate for booze and women, I was sure he would have made his secretary run out and get me one over her lunch break.
The salespeople were so shell-shocked that a question like “Where do I find the warm woolen mittens with reindeer on them?” didn’t seem the least bit strange. Eventually, I found myself in Outer Garments, wondering what, short of an earplug, would count as an Inner Garment.
I had always felt that mittens were a few steps back on the evolutionary scale—why, I wondered, would we want to make ourselves into a less agile version of a lobster? But my disdain for mittens took on a new depth when looking at Macy’s (Macy’s’s?) holiday offerings. There were mittens shaped like gingerbread men and mittens decorated in tinsel. One pair of mittens simulated the thumb of a hitchhiker; the destination was, apparently, the North Pole. In front of my very eyes, a middle-aged woman took a pair off the rack and placed them in the pile she’d grown in her arms.
“Really?” I found myself saying aloud.
“Excuse me?” she said, irritated.
“Aesthetic and utilitarian considerations aside,” I said, “those mittens don’t particularly make sense. Why would you want to hitchhike to the North Pole? Isn’t the whole gimmick of Christmas that there’s home delivery? You get up there, all you’re going to find is a bunch of exhausted, grumpy elves. Assuming, of course, that you accept the mythical presence of a workshop up there, when we all know there isn’t even a pole at the North Pole, and if global warming continues, there won’t be any ice, either.”
“Why don’t you just fuck off?” the woman replied. Then she took her mittens and got out of there.
This was the miracle of the season, the way it put the fuck off so loud in our hearts. You could snap at strangers, or snap at the people closest to you. It could be a fuck off for a slight reason—You took my parking space or You questioned my choice of mittens or I spent sixteen hours tracking down the golf club you wanted and you gave me a McDonald’s gift certificate
