The Twelve Days of Dash & Lily(45)
“Merry Christmas,” I told him.
We barely had time for another kiss and to skate the loop of the rink before the talent arrived. They were there earlier than I’d originally planned, because the weather had turned from very cold to freezing, and drizzling, which meant freezing rain might be next, so I’d texted the entertainers to start immediately after Dash’s arrival.
Edgar Thibaud skated to the middle of the rink like a pro hockey player. I’d hired him to emcee. He held up celebratory sparklers in each of his hands and announced, “Ladies, gentlemen, distinguished librarians. Please join me in welcoming…the Rawkettes!”
The Rawkettes are a punk rock dance troupe started by my great-uncle Carmine’s dancer granddaughter, who decided to take all the experience from her failed Rockette auditions and use it to turn her stage act into a sideline more commensurate with her talent. The dancers in her group are also sci-fi fangirls, so for a while they were called the Spockettes and wore blue Rockette costumes designed like Starfleet uniforms, but after a lack of bookings, they recently changed their name to the Rawkettes, to try a new direction. This skate party was their first booking in their latest incarnation. Possibly their first booking ever.
“Is that Kerry-cousin?” Dash asked me as she took center stage with her troupe, all of them wearing “punk” outfits that looked more Ziggy Stardust than Sid Vicious. Lots of bright face glitter and gold-lamé 1970s-era pantsuits. I couldn’t wait to commend Mrs. Basil E. Dash was indeed so worthy of receiving the List! He recognized and also knew to call Great-Uncle Carmine’s granddaughter “Kerry-cousin,” to distinguish her in our family language from “Carrie-aunt” and “Kharie-neighbor,” and Cary Grant, whose name needs no quotations, and whose movies everyone adores.
“It is!” I said.
Edgar cued the music, and Kerry-cousin and her troupe began their dance interpretation of one of Dash’s favorite songs—“Calamity Song” by the Decemberists. Not a band I particularly like, except during the month of December, but I do like how their lyrics make no sense. Hetty Green / Queen of supply-side bonhomie bone-drab.
Dash looked at me like, No! and I looked at him like, Oh, heck yes!
It was amazing. All of Dash’s favorite things in one place. The High Line! Librarians! Hot chocolate! The Decemberists!
And then the rain really started to fall—in mean, icy pellets. “Now!” I beseeched Kerry-cousin. I wanted the Rawkettes to hurry the night’s grand finale before the rain did it for them. And so, holding Santa-present satchels, the Rawkettes skated around the rink, weaving in and out of librarians, and me and Dash, and Sofia and Boomer, and Edgar, throwing glitter into the air from inside their satchels. I’d wanted the night to end with an explosion of crystal color on the ice.
And for a moment, it was indeed a magical world of color, just like at Disneyland. The ice twinkled in pinks, greens, purples, golds, and silvers. But too quickly, I realized: The glitter shouldn’t have been twinkling. The sprays of glitter should have been more iridescent, like soft snow flurries.
Why was everyone suddenly falling down? Was it the freezing rain, or the glitter?
“What kind of glitter is this?” I shouted to Kerry-cousin as she weaved between Dash and me. Glitter, glitter, glitter—everywhere there was glitter as the Rawkettes tossed handfuls on the rink like fairy dust.
“Craft store glitter!” she said. “You said to spare no expense, so I didn’t!”
I picked up a handful of glitter from the ice. It was not the cosmetic kind of glitter, like Kerry-cousin had on her face. This glitter was on a Martha Stewart level of fancy, made of finely ground glass, the size and shape of small pebbles. This craft store glitter was not fairy dust at all, but thousands of tiny, sharp, lethal weapons strewn across ice. And it was causing a free fall of skaters on the rink, taking hard knocks down onto the ice.
Boomer flew by us—“Whee!”—and then took a nasty fall on the glitter. Dash leaned over to help him up just as another librarian took a fall, and the blade of her skate made a direct slice on Dash’s face. “My eye!” Dash cried out.
“My knee!” someone else shouted.
“I think I broke my wrist,” said another voice.
It all happened so fast. One minute the Rawkettes were performing while librarians happily skated around them, and the next, there was a triage scene on the rink and emergency medics trying to maneuver stretchers across the ice, passing over streaks of blood from so many blade wounds. It was Chaos on Glitter Ice. A massacre of librarians.
As Dash was wheeled away to the ambulance, his wounded eye covered in bloody gauze, his hands already bruised and sliced from all the other skaters that had fallen on him, I told him, “I’m so sorry, Dash! I’ll call your dad and let him know you’re on the way to the hospital.”
“Don’t throw glitter in the wound, Lily,” said Dash.
Kerry-cousin handed me an invoice. “You still owe me a hundred bucks.”
I couldn’t have felt worse. I was responsible for a small army of librarians—the nicest people in the world—being taken away in ambulances from a party designed to celebrate them. I’d mortally wounded my boyfriend.
The Lily who loved Christmas had just ruined it.
Monday, December 22nd
’Twas three nights before Christmas and all through the hospital, not a creature was stirring…except for a half dozen librarians on painkillers.