The Last Noel by Michael Malone Read Free Book Online Page B

thing you can be at that university. They pay everything for you.”
    â€œWho, your dad?”
    â€œNo, Doctor Jack. My dad played basketball. That's the real best thing you can be. You’re not tall, or you could try it.”
    â€œI’m planning to be tall, lot taller than you,” he told her. “But not so I can jump around swatting at orange rubber balls.” Kaye took a handful of peanuts from a silver bowl. “I’m not gonna sing, I’m not gonna jump, run, grin, Watusi, I’m not gonna jive.”
    A girl near them said, “Right on. Me either.”
    Noni introduced Kaye to the girl, her school friend Bunny Breckenridge, plump and colorful in a yellow muumuu with six strings of bright beads around her neck and ostrich feathers hanging awkwardly from her wild frizzy light brown hair. Bunny felt the braid on Kaye's embroidered vest. “Holy shit, Jimi Hendrix, hunh? Cool.”
    â€œYou too,” Kaye pointed at the girl's feathers, thinking she looked a little like Mama Cass and that she had smart eyes andthat she at least had recognized a Jimi Hendrix record cover when she met one. “Bunny, hunh? Is that your real name?”
    â€œI know, isn’t it stupid? But my real name is Bernice and that's not any better. So, Kaye, Noni talks about you all the time.”
    â€œI do not!’
    While the three stood there, Kaye saw his Aunt Yolanda in a white uniform making her way through the room, holding out to guests her tray of deviled eggs with their tiny Christmasy bits of red and green peppers on top. Yolanda noticed but did not acknowledge Kaye. Embarrassed for them both, he led Noni away from Bunny, across the room toward the blazing lights of the extravagant tree.
    Some of the guests, he saw, were looking askance at a black youngster moving through the crowd with his Afro and red embroidered vest, arm in arm with Noni Tilden. But most were too busy trying to talk to each other over the noise to pay much attention. Their conversations floated past him.
    â€”Who is that boy with Noni? —
    â€”His folks work here. You know, Judy's Aunt Ma?—
    â€”The one that does those pretty things with the sunflowers? I love those.—
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    â€”Don’t let Bud Tilden tell you anything except how to make a good martini.—
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    â€”God rest you merry, gentlemen!—
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    Talk on the silk couches and brocaded chairs drifted by:
    â€”Judy's doing it. It's called aerobics.—
    â€”Well, that little Bunny Breckenridge ought totry it. How can her mother let her eat those eclairs, look at her! Is it the same as jogging?—
    â€”Sort of, but you don’t go anywhere.—
    â€”Oh, with this Weight Watchers you go to meetings and they clap for you.—
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    â€”Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme.—
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    And around the Sheraton breakfront:
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    â€”Well, if Judy doesn’t hide that bourbon bottle from her husband, he’ll be headfirst into whatever's next to him and I hope it's me.—
    â€”Becky!—
    â€”Frankly, Bud Tilden, you just be my guest!—
    â€”Becky! You are bad! Isn’t Bud your cousin?!—
    â€”Oh good lord no. Judy's my cousin.—
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    â€”Here come the judge, here come the judge.—
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    â€”Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme.—
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    Kaye stood listening as Noni showed him her favorite ornaments from her childhood on the huge twinkling tree. “So what’d you get for Christmas? A Thunderbird?”
    â€œNo, I got that for my birthday,” she grinned, looking at him. “For Christmas I got my own private jet.”
    â€œHo ho.”
    â€œHa ha.” She held up the gold watch that she’d received “from Santa,” and noticed that he still wore the flat black plastic watch he’d proudly displayed that night in her room back when they were seven.
    Kaye examined her new watch dismissively. But she held onto his hand to study the