The Twelve Days of Dash & Lily(51)
By the time we were done shopping, my eye was starting to ache, and Lily was due to walk some dogs. We split up—but only temporarily. I went off to my apartment and rested, and then at night Lily came over with pizza and some holiday movies to watch. She was shocked that I’d never seen Love Actually, and I was shocked that it wasn’t that bad, actually. And we may not have agreed upon whether The Nightmare Before Christmas was a Christmas movie or a Halloween movie, but we enjoyed it nonetheless.
At the end of the movie, we lay there for a few minutes, letting the TV screen fall silent and blue after the end credits.
“I like it like this,” I said. “When we can just be ourselves. Give or take an eye patch.”
Lily kissed my lips, kissed my eye patch, kissed the eyelid she could reach.
“I’ve got to go wrap some presents,” she said. Then she reached into her bag and pulled out the red Moleskine.
“Instructions for tomorrow,” she informed me.
I promised her I wouldn’t open it until morning.
The minute she left the apartment, I missed having her there. But as with all loves, I supposed, the consolation was in the fact that she’d be back.
Wednesday, December 24th
I didn’t mean to leave my boyfriend stranded at the Strand on the most frantic shopping day of the year. I hadn’t intended to strand him at each stop I’d planned for this day on this year’s Moleskine adventure tour.
The night of The Great Glitterskating Massacre, after all the commotion, I was late tending to the walking needs of my roster of dogs with owners away for the holidays. I hadn’t followed Dash to the emergency room because I knew he was in the safe (and bloodied—SO SORRY!) hands of many kind, wounded librarians. If those people could handle books so well, I knew they could handle Dash, despite my worry about not accompanying him to the hospital.
“Go,” Dash said when I insisted I could tend to my dogs later, after he was stitched up and made better. “I’ll be relieved not to worry about you worrying about your dogs who need to be relieved.”
I didn’t finish my dog-walking duties until late that night, and I was exhausted by the time I got home. I couldn’t fall asleep until I came up with a plan to right the situation. Feeling guilty—and cheated of my original grand plan to celebrate Dash—I stayed awake creating a makeup-fun-day plan for Christmas Eve. I organized the day and wrote the instructions in the red Moleskine notebook.
Instead of further drowning in apologies for causing Dash’s dear face to be maimed, I thought we could celebrate it. I was going to give him the best pirate day of his life. I was wrong.
Sorry.
10:00 a.m.
Yo ho ho
To Park Slope we go
We’ll meet at the Superhero store
We’ll scuttle a man-o’-war
Our first stop would be the Superhero Supply Co. store, with its secret back door leading to a room where the perils of after-school writing tutoring happened. As much as I loved my phone’s new lock-screen photo of Dash as Santa, I couldn’t wait to change it to Dash as full pirate, with legit-earned pirate patch over his eye, a tricorne hat, a swashbuckler’s white frilly shirt, and the sea captain’s galleon coat we could buy in the Superhero store. While we were there, we could inquire about putting in volunteer applications for literary goodness in the secret back room, which would be a much better celebration flourish than a glitter massacre. And good experience for my potential future librarian man.
The Moleskine directed Dash to meet me at the Superhero store at 11:30 a.m. on Christmas Eve day. Before I left for our adventure, I had to tend to Boris. My dog and I had spent the previous night at Mrs. Basil E.’s to visit with Grandpa, and I was about to take Boris for a quick morning walk around, and not in, Gramercy Park. He could do his business and I could think about all the presents I was going to unwrap tomorrow, and all the kisses I’d steal from my pirate boyfriend today.
I had Boris on the leash and was about to step outside Mrs. Basil E.’s townhouse for our loop around the park when I heard the refrains of a group of carolers performing outside the gated entrance to Gramercy Park. In faux hip-hop style, these middle-aged white guys were singing and beatboxing to the tune of “The Little Drummer Boy.” A huge crowd was gathered around them, applauding and grooving to the beat. I recognized the performers, and prayed that Grandpa, still eating his breakfast in the back of the house, could not hear them.
Grandpa didn’t hate the song. He hated the group.
They’d been a plague to the East Village and Lower East Side last year. They called themselves the Canarsie Crèche Crew, and they were a barbershop quartet of convicted Wall Street con men who’d met in prison and, once released, moved to South Brooklyn to resume their lives as bad guys. Now, instead of swindling investors, they performed for tourists while their non-singing member stole the tourists’ wallets, iPhones, shopping bags, and other valuables.
I didn’t close the front door to Mrs. Basil E.’s house fast enough. “NO!” I heard Grandpa shout from behind me in the hallway. He barreled outside with all the speed an octogenarian with a cane and a heart condition could muster. From the top of the stoop, he shook his cane in the direction of the singers and shouted, “Scum! You’re scum! Police! Police!”
Grandpa’s sudden appearance on the stoop was too hurried, causing the concerned Boris to bolt toward the street, his leash still attached to my hand, pulling me down the stairs with him. “Lily!” Grandpa cried out as I fell to the ground. I was totally fine, maybe I’d have a minor bruise or two, but Grandpa tried to reach down the steps to help me up.