It was Christmas Eve babe,
In the drunk tank,
A lingering sludge drips down a cement block, resembling the arms of a clock ticking time away, and an old man said to me,
Won’t see another one.
And the gray of the eve was mirrored in the cell’s perpetual state of gloaming.
Is it worse to be here on the holiday of holidays? One could easily
gather images of flickering fire light reflecting into dark wood floors, or the memory of being lost in the brilliance of the season armed with jeweled prizes that bob and weave their magic to bring back the light.
Watching the mansion burn under the glow of a sinister chandelier. I would sip sherry in an alabaster robe. And when I hadn’t been the spark of ignition, could I know the cause? Or is it always me? Did I leave the iron on? I am here now; I belong in this prison of my own creation.
Slumped on the bench, the old man sighs and looks at me with eyes that have been bleached by sorrow or time, now almost void of colour—once china blue, I imagine them to once be.
It wasn’t to be this way, he said.
I slip down beside him, taking in the aroma of death and whiskey.
Yes. I take his withered hand, cold and bony. It was to be—told more for my value than his. Amore fate, the gypsy intellect profoundly states.
He shows me a mouth devoid of teeth, and from somewhere afar; perhaps the precinct, perhaps from the depth of our empty hearts, the Viennese waltz begins to play.
Do you hear it? He seems to search for its source, but as though to conjure a monkey wrench to conduct the score, so painfully beautiful, I rise. And the wrench’s oddly distributed weight moves through thin air. Music reaches us from nowhere and everywhere, I sway in animation, my imaginary wrench capturing the light, the sound, Christmas as it is.
The old man sinks into his reflections of what was and what could have been, transported to the cold of Russia and the romance of Anna. I could have skated far beyond. I could have skated away.
Where is your love? He slurs the biting question that pierces my heart.
I promised that Broadway was waiting for her, I reply sadly, letting the monkey wrench fall from the melody.
And suddenly, gilded in gold waistcoats that glimmer with sparsely placed beads, we face each other, and the cell is a grand parlour, and the music our warmth. The sodium lights become candles and we see our reflections in regretful choices; crime and punishment. Cement becomes artistry and our visions are pure. We share this time hoisted onto the pedestal of Christmas miracles that holds court for those like us, in the good of misfortune, in the heart of the unloved.
There is more, he whispers, there is more.
No, this is it. This is the glory. To understand that it is what it will be. We are not made of this earth.
And he leans his head back and the stain on the cement block that is the ticking of time speaks the truth. And the cold cell turns to hallowed ground, a place of reverence. He closes his eyes, one time more, as the bells ring out for Christmas day, and the boys of the NYPD choir are singing Galway Bay, and the meaning of Christmas in this moment is more than it ever could be, with its sadness and poignant beauty.
I wait, pressing my forehead to the cold bars, before I alert anyone, watching red and green Christmas lights flash in dull succession across the dirty linoleum floor, emanating from the small tree positioned at the front desk that taunted me on my incarceration. I am fascinated at their muted depth; an attempt at something, anything but the grit of this place. And when I know for sure that his spirit has moved through the cement blocks, into the damp New York night, and beyond his world of suffering, I shake the bars, and face the direction where the lady of liberty stands, and in the peel of Christmas bells, I sense his grandeur, seeing a better time, when all his dreams come true.
