A Murray Christmas to All (Part 1)

by David Benjamin

Author’s Note: I’ve been writing Christmas stories — most of them the offbeat products of a hard-knock youth — since I was sixteen. Over the ensuing years, I’ve generated enough Benjie Christmas originals (and snatches of sliphorn verse) to constitute an entire anthology, which I plan to publish next year under the title Christmas in a Jugular Vein. Before that catharsis, I decided that I ought to compose a crowning Christmas travesty that seeks to capture the mixture of irony and exaltation, the hope and fear from all the year, that has always seemed to me the spirit — and the irritating, exhilarating ambiguity — of Christmas.

This is a long piece. So, I’ve broken it into two Weekly Screeds. Here’s the first. Part 2 will come along early next week.

# # #

It all started when Maureen O’Hara threw Murray off the Macy’s parade float for being drunk as a skunk.

Still in his soiled Santa suit, Murray Lefkowitz staggered into an alley off West 45th and polished off the last drops in his bottle of Old Polecat. He plopped down beside a dumpster and considered his options. The top choice was the same as it had been for the last six years. He sighed in surrender to his destiny. From a pocket, he drew the knife that served to protect himself from his fellow bums. He did his best to sharpen it on a chunk of cinder block.

Murray pushed up a sleeve, muttered a brief prayer in memory of himself and pressed the nicked blade to his left wrist. As he was looking down, contemplating the end of a wasted life, he saw a stained and filthy flyer on the greasy pavement. He peered more closely.

Help wanted

it read,

No experience necessary.

Room and board, low pay, long hours, no benefits, crappy weather

Apply K. Kringle, North Pole

followed by a phone number with a strange country code.

Murray Lefkowitz reconsidered his situation. He was an unemployable derelict with no talent, a squandered education, no marketable skills, an aborted job history, no resumé, no cash or credit, no future. He was on the verge of killing himself, an endeavor which, if previous experience was any guide, would fail. He envisioned himself bandaged up on a lumpy bed in the charity ward—surrounded by sick and dying old dipsos like himself—of the most infectious hospital in New York City.

Murray took another look at the flyer.

He grabbed the paper and struggled to his feet. What the hell? He was ready to call the number, but he didn’t have a phone.
Murray stumbled out of the alley, feeling ominous pangs of sobriety. He bumped into a girl. Well, possibly a girl. The creature had a moth-eaten stocking cap covering its head, tufts of yellowish-brown hair sticking out of several holes. Most of its face was hidden. Murray discerned a button nose and cracked lips. The possible girl was wrapped in a ragged baby-blue blanket which, judging by its range of stains, splotches and odors, had been salvaged from the lower depths of a dumpster. Below the fringe of the abominable duvet, there were dirty blue jeans with torn knees and two mismatched shoes, one a seam-spring Chuck Taylor sneaker, the other a fatally scuffed men’s wingtip without laces and evidently three or four sizes too large for the sockless foot inside.

“Er,” said Murray. “’Scuse me.”

“Oh no,” came a voice—almost certainly female— from the mouth. “My fault, Steve.”

“Don’ mention it,” replied Murray. “And it’s Murray.”

Murray was moving on, but the blanketed mound stopped in his path. “What’s Murray?” it asked.

“Me,” said Murray. “I’m Murray.”

Irrelevantly, for reasons he could not grasp, he added, “Lefkowitz.”

“Joy,” said the other.

“Well,” said Murray politely, “It’s a pleasure t’meet you, too.”

“No,” said the cracked lips.

Murray wrinkled a brow. “No, what?”

“That’s my name, not my attitude.”

“What’s your name?”

“Joy,” said Joy. “Tuddah.”

“Tuddah?”

“That’s my last name.”

Murray understood. He nodded. “Well,” he said, looking around, ready to depart this curious dialog, “so long.”

They began on their separate ways, when Murray was hit by a wild conjecture. “Hey,” he said.

Joy paused along her uncertain way. “Huh?”

“You wouldn’t, by any chance,” said Murray, “have a phone?”

Joy turned, shoved the stocking cap up to her forehead, revealing deep blue eyes and an even coat of grime on every inch of her face. “Yup,” she said, “’til the mark cancels the contract.”

Joy half-smiled at Murray, who looked harmless to her—and to pretty much everybody—because he was skinny and drunk with a permanently goofy look on his fuzzy old kisser.

“Mark?”

Joy said. “Yeah, I swiped it off a guy I gave a blow job over in the park. When he figures out it’s gone, well …”

Murray understood.

“I don’t suppose I could borrow it,” he asked, “just for one call.”

Joy shrank away but didn’t flee. “I dunno,” she muttered.

“I won’t take it,” said Murray. “I promise. Y’see, there’s a job.”

“A job?” Joy’s blue eyes gave off a flicker of curiosity.

“Yeah,” said Murray. He waved the crumpled flyer.

“What kinda job?”

“Crummy, from what I can tell,” said Murray. “But it’s, y’know, better’n nothin’.”

Murray handed over the flyer. Joy studied it for a while. “Hm,” she said.

“So?” said Murray.

“Y’can’t use the phone,” said Joy.

“Oh.”

“Don’ know ya, can’t trust ya.”

“I hear ya, Joy,” Murray conceded.

“But I’ll call for ya.”

“Okay.”

Laboriously, with cold fingers, Joy punched out the number on the flyer.

After several rings, there was an answer. “North Pole, Bippy speaking.”

“Bippy?” asked Joy.

“Yeah,” came the voice. “I’m an elf. We all have cute names.”

Joy nodded.

“So,” said Bippy. “Who’s calling?”

“Joy,” said Joy. “Joy Tuddah.”

“World?” asked Bippy, with a snicker.

“Huh?” said Joy.

“Forget it,” said Bippy. “So, what’s shakin’, Joy Tuddah?”

“I wanna talk to K. Kringle. About the job.”

“What job?”

Joy sighed impatiently. “Look, Bippy. I got this piece of paper from this drunken bum here (excuse me, Murray) that says you got a job, no experience necessary, room and board—”

“Wait a minute,” said Bippy. “You found that flyer?”

“Sort of,” said Joy.

“You want that job?”

“Well, no, I’m calling for …” She paused to think. “… a friend.”

“Aw,” said Murray.

“Far out!” exclaimed Bippy. “Hang on, kid. Lemme get the boss.”

While they waited, Joy stared at the phone. It could go dead any second.

“This is Nick,” said a deep, jolly voice suddenly. Joy put the phone on speaker so Murray could hear. “You’re calling about the want ad I put out?”

“Yeah, it’s right here. I’m lookin’ at it.”

“Ho ho ho,” said Nick.

“Whaddya mean by that?” asked Joy suspiciously.

“Well, nobody has ever answered one of those things,” said Nick. “It’s sort of a running joke around here.”

“What?” Murray broke in. “You mean there’s no job? The ad’s a joke. You’re just kiddin’?”

There was a moment of silence.

“Well, that’s just plain mean,” said Joy. “A fake job offer, at Christmas time?”

“Wait a minute,” said Nick. “Lemme think about this.”

More silence.

Finally, Nick said, “Y’know, actually, I could use another sleigh team.”

“Slay team,” asked Murray. “What? Like a murder squad?”

“No, no! Sleigh.” Nick spelled it out. “You know, like in ‘Jingle Bells.’ A one-horse open sleigh?”

“Uh huh,” said Murray, dubiously.

“Do you think,” asked Nick, “you could round up, say, five more folks? That’s the usual elf complement on a sleigh.”

“Elf complement?”

“Yes,” said Nick. “Me, your basic eight-reindeer team and five elves to do the chimney work. I’m way too fat to fit down your typical chimney.”

Murray and Joy were both puzzled.

“Elves? Chimneys? Reindeer?” said Joy. “What the hell are you, mister—Santa Claus?”

“Jesus,” muttered Nick. “It took you this long to figure it out?”

“Sorry, Kris … Nick, whatever,” said Joy apologetically. “But this guy with me here is a falling-down drunk and I’m a junkie whore comin’ down from a high. We ain’t neither of us real sharp at the moment.”

“Uh huh,” said Nick. “Well, nice talkin’ to ya. Merry Christmas.”

“Wait,” said Joy. “What if we could do it? Put together a sleigh team? I mean, this town is crawlin’ with people like us, need a job, need a place to sleep, need—Hullo? Hullo?”

The phone was silent. Joy stared at a blank screen. “Shit,” she said. “The cheap bastard cancelled his phone service.”

“Like you figured,” said Murray.

“Yeah,” said Joy joylessly.

They stood together in a chill wind blowing up 45th Street. Joy flung the dead phone away. She shuffled her mismatched feet, as though to continue her aimless progress.

“You got money?” asked Murray.

Joy looked suspicious.

“I mean,” said Murray, holding up his hands in a gesture of harmlessness, “the mark. he paid you, right? For … you know …”

“Yeah, he better pay, or I’d bite off his—”

“Well, look,” said Murray, preferring not to hear the end of that sentence, “if you could afford to buy me a cup of coffee, we could maybe come up with a plan.”

Joy sneered. “What kind of plan?”

Murray pointed toward a food truck on a distant corner. “I could use a cup of joe. Helps me sober up.”

Silently, Joy followed Murray to the food vendor. She bought two cups of black coffee and splurged on a couple of doughnuts, paying with a crumpled sawbuck and squirreling the change somewhere deep beneath her aromatic comforter.

They huddled against a building, sheltered from the November wind.

After a while, Joy said, “There’s this this kid I know. Named Fingers.”

“Fingers?”

“Yeah,” said Joy. “He hustles these business guys, who come to town, stay in the fancy hotels. He’s called that ’cause he’s, like, good with his hands.”

Murray demurred a description of Fingers’ technique. Joy smiled and said, “Anyway, he arranges his dates on the phone. He has, like, a regular account, with, like, Verizon.”

Murray brightened. “Do you know where to find him?”

Joy said, “I know his territory.”

“Let’s go,” said Murray, displaying more energy that he had shown in months.

Joy led Murray on a circuit of midtown luxury hotels. The quest ended at the Park Hyatt, where Joy spotted Fingers just emerging, hunched against the cold in a thin, satin jacket. He was bareheaded, his hair a mixture of lank brown locks and blue-dyed braids. His face was smooth, pale and almost pretty, with alert, gray eyes and plucked eyebrows.

“Hey, Fingers,” called Joy.

The young man, perhaps eighteen probably younger, halted and glared. “Don’t call me that,” he said. “That’s my professional name.”

Murray almost laughed. “What’s your amateur name?”

Fingers scowled as he moved in and glared down at Joy. “Who’s this?” he asked, nodding toward Murray without looking at him.

“Murray,” said Murray. “Lefkowitz. We wanna use your phone, Fingers.”

Fingers turned menacingly. “Don’t call me that.”

“So, whaddya want me t’call ya, dipshit?”

Murray and Fingers closed in, face-to-face, clenching their fists.

“Oh, c’mon, guys,” said Joy, shoving her way between them. “Murray, call ’im Rafael.”

“Okay, then, Rafael,” said Murray, backing down, “we know you have a phone and we need the use of it. Borrow it. For one little call. Please.”

Murray went on to explain to Fingers that he had the chance to get a straight job, off the streets. There might be, he said, a job for Joy and even for Rafael, if Fingers might choose to graduate from selling hotel-room hand jobs to transient junior executives. Rafael seemed doubtful about changing his career, but slipped the phone to Joy, who re-dialed the North Pole and got Nick on the line.

“Y’know, sweetheart,” said Nick. “This is my busy season.”

“Yeah, well, that’s why we’re callin’, fatso,” said Joy. “You said you want a team. I’m the girl who can get you a team. But we’re gonna need a little seed money, ya dig? And how the hell we gonna get up there t’the goddamn North Pole.”

Nick was quiet for a while.

Finally, he said, “Okay, here.”

“Okay, what?” asked Joy.

“Look in your pocket.”

Joy handed the phone to Murray and rummaged around under the blanket. She re-surfaced holding a plastic gift card bearing the logo of the First Avenue Army Navy Surplus Emporium.
Needless to say, the three street scavengers were surprised by Santa’s magical solicitude.

“How’d he do that?” said Fingers.

Ignoring this, Nick said, “So, Joy, how many ya got?”

“Two, so far — me and Murray,” said Joy. She peered at Rafael, who was visibly impressed by the appearance of the charge card. “Maybe three.”

“There’s enough money on the card,” said Nick, “to outfit five sleigh pilots with warm clothes, thermal long johns, golashes, ear-lappers and mittens. But the card expires at noon tomorrow. So, you need to find two more volunteers and you don’t have time to dick around. Ya got that, sweetie?”

“Yeah, lardass. I hear ya.”

“Yo, Murray!” said Santa.

Murray said, “What?”

“You’ve got to go cold turkey. There’s no drinking on my watch.”

“Yeah, okay,” Murray muttered.

“And Joy,” said Nick.

“Huh?”

“You think you need a fix,” said Nick, “eat a brownie.”

Joy looked crestfallen and a little twitchy.

“I’ll help the girl,” said Murray.

“The blind leading the blind,” said Nick. “Get to work. I’ll call you tomorrow. Noon sharp.”

Murray and Joy’s first challenge was talking Rafael into sticking with them for the next 24 hours. They needed his phone. Joy noticed that Rafael’s lips were turning blue and she won him over with the promise that Santa’s card was his ticket to a winter coat.

Next up: Finding two more apprentice elves among the burned-out dregs of the Big Apple demimonde. Their first candidate was Joy’s ex-boyfriend Muhammad, a former glue-sniffer whose previous professional niche was mugging tour-bus golden agers. After a second stretch in Sing Sing, Muhammad had switched his livelihood to gathering cans and bottles on the fringes of the city with a shopping cart and a hunting knife (for protection from poachers). Joy, Murray and Fingers tracked down Muhammad as he was scavenging the alleys in Hell’s Kitchen. They followed him along his route, then stood outside in the wind blowing off the Hudson while Muhammad redeemed 4,879 bottles and cans at a recycling center off the West Side Highway. Finally, Muhammad, who still carried a torch for Joy, said okay, for old times’ sake, he’d join the “team”—at least ’til their trip to the Army Navy Store. Prodded by Joy, Muhammad agreed to dip into his can-redemption stash and stand everyone to burgers and fries at the McDonald’s on Fulton Street.

By then, it was past 7 pm and Murray was sober as a night-court bailiff. Head-achey and sick to his stomach, he almost upchucked his Big Mac.

“You gonna be all right, oldtimer?” asked Muhammad.

“Don’t call me that,” said Murray, using a phrase that had become almost a motto for the motley crew.

Joy and Murray had sort of assembled a team of four, although Rafael and Muhammad might bolt any second. Finding a fifth volunteer seemed like an elf too far. The circles in which the Don’t Call Me That Gang traveled were disinclined toward entrepreneurial initiative and goodwill toward men, or women, or children. Approach the average street-dweller and he or she was prone to scurry into a shadow, assume a defensive crouch and brandish a box-cutter.

When the unwashed foursome entered the First Avenue Army Navy Store at opening time next morning, they were still short one sleigh jockey. Joy reminded the others not to even think about shoplifting because—if the song was true—Santa knew where they’d been sleeping, knew that they’re awake and knew if they’ve been bad or good.

“If he’s watching, he knows there’s only four of us,” said Joy. “He could cancel the card right at the cash register. That happens, we get nothin’. I got no job and I’m back in the park, on my knees.”

Aware of this likelihood, Joy, Murray, Rafael and Muhammad roamed the store’s vast selection of surplus dry goods in search of clothes heavy enough to shield the North Pole’s wintry blast. Murray was digging through a stack of flannel-lined blue jeans looking for a 34 waist with a 32 inseam, when he bumped into a tall, craggy stranger struggling to separate one set of pants from another. The man had only one arm.

“Can I help?” asked Murray.

The response was a curse, directed not at Murray. He recognized it as an indictment of the state of things in general. Murray had often expressed similar sentiments since the day—drunk, violent and out of control—he had lost his job, alienated his wife Sandra and abandoned his two kids, Elvira and Chadwick.

“I know where you’re comin’ from brother,” said Murray. “What happened to the arm?”

“Fuckin’ Iraq,” replied the man tersely, pronouncing the word “eye-rack.”

Murray was a little surprised. “You mean, you don’t have cover—”

“Fuckin’ VA,” growled the other, interrupting Murray. “I had a goddamn prosthesis. I lost it.”

“How?”

“Shit. How do ya lose a goddamn plastic arm? I’m at the bar at McSorley’s and all of a sudden I get one of my post-traumatic flashbacks and I think the guy next to me is Osama bin Fuckin’ Laden. I rip off my arm and start beating on the A-rab bastard’s head. Next thing y’know, ten, twelve guys jump me. And well, after that, I don’t remember a thing ’til I wake up the next day in a toilet stall at the Port Authority, and I got no fuckin’ arm.”

“And you can’t get a new one?”

“Fuckin’ VA!”

It came to Murray, in a sober epiphany, that this guy was just the sort of bitter dead-ender who could fill out their starting five.

“Murray,” he said. “Lefkowitz.”

“Jewish?” asked the man.

“Sort of,” said Murray.

The man nodded, looked Murray up and down, took in his besmirched Santa suit and grinned grimly. “Santa the Jew,” he said. “Fuckin’ A.”

They shook hands. “I’m Stan,” said the down-and-out veteran. “Seasons.”

Murray found his fellow aspiring elves among the aisles of military surplus and introduced Stan Seasons.

“Greetings,” said Stan, cheerlessly.

In a half-hour, the team had finished outfitting their wardrobes . They piled their selections on the counter.
Joy asked the cashier, a grizzled harridan with a blue-rinse coiffeur, “Is there a dressing room?”

The cashier snorted once and growled, “Does this joint look like Bloomingdale’s, dearie?”

The crew changed in the alley, consigning most of their old clothes and Joy’s abominable blanket to the nearest dumpster. Out of sentiment that he didn’t think he had left in his heart, Murray decided to hold onto his Santa suit, stuffing it into the Army Navy bag. The five derelicts hit the street in new duds.

They were shivering on a stone wall in Washington Square Park when, at the crack of noon, Fingers’ phone rang. Joy grabbed it. “We got your team,” she said. As she spoke, she stared sharply at Rafael and Muhammad, issuing an implicit warning that if they even thought of backing out at this point, she would sautée their balls in motor oil.

Nick insisted on taking a look at Murray’s new circle of friends. Joy engaged Facetime and scanned the group.

“Sweet Jesus on toast!” said Nick. “I knew printing that flyer was a mistake.”

Joy was instantly indignant. “You mean we’re not hired?”

Nick said, “Hey, look, if this bunch of losers think you can stand the cold and put in fourteen hours a day, wrapping your fingers to the bone (no offense, Rafael), I’ll take you on. Frankly, I don’t think any of you’ll last through your first day.”

Joy calmed. “Okay, how do we get there?”

“Just a minute,” said Nick.

In exactly one minute, a sleigh, twenty feet long, manned by apple-cheeked midgets wearing green doublets and curled-up shoes, drawn by eight somewhat scruffy ruminants with huge antlers, swept out of the leaden November sky.

“Hi,” shouted the shrimp with the reins. “I’m Bubbles. Climb on, folks. Time’s a-wastin’!”

True to their heritage, fifty other other New Yorkers in the park paid little heed to the sight of five people dressed in military garb climbing onto a sleigh, led by eight reindeer, lifting off from Lower Manhattan and flying north.

Murray, Joy and the others were shocked by the speed of the reindeer. The group had to scrunch down to keep from freezing their noses, and they saw little of the scenery below as they dashed, danced and pranced across Canada to frozen wastes beyond.

Suddenly, there it was, Santa’s Christmas complex, a hundred corrugated spec buildings painted red and green, stretching along the ice and snow like an immense military encampment.

“This all goes up in three days every year,” said Bubbles with a hint of pride. “And we take it down on the 26th of December, lock, stock and tinsel.”

“Really? Where does it go then?” asked Murray.

“We have a warehouse in the Brooklyn Navy Yard,” said Bubbles. “Everybody there thinks we’re in there secretly developing a new generation of nuclear submarines.”

“Where do the … er, elves, go?” asked Joy.

“Where else? Fort Myers.”

(TO BE CONTINUED)