(The following is fiction. It is written with apologies to O. Henry, the all-time short story master, and is a feeble attempt at localized Yuletide story-telling, based upon the magical plot line of "The Gift of the Magi" which O. Henry wrote in 1905.)
Kurt and Heather sat at the weathered oaken table in their drafty LaSalle apartment kitchen. The coffee was strong. The checkbook wasn't. It showed a balance of $14.83 -- with few prospects of growing before Christmas 2002, just a few days away.
Heather went over the card list. Gifts were out of the question. Even the card list was bad news: More than three dozen relatives and friends, and even 10 cheap but presentable Christmas cards would blow the balance in the checkbook.
It wasn't like this a year ago. Both had decent jobs then, especially for young marrieds in their late 20s. But Kurt's production-line supervisor spot had vanished as the last vestige of another once-healthy Buffalo Avenue plant evaporated into the rarefied ether of globalization. Kurt idly wondered -- without bitterness -- if young husbands in Mexico or Malaysia were doing the same thing he was, despite being employed and making the same products he used to, at one-nineteenth of his old salary.
The new millennium's harsh corporate dawn had blown away Heather's secretarial position in Buffalo, too. She tried to look at the bright side. No more spending for fuel on a boring commute in her wheezing gas-guzzler.The husband and wife looked at each other. They still smiled.
There was a tiny crack of hope in the imminent morning sky. The new Seneca Niagara Falls Casino was just about ready to open on New Year's Eve -- a miraculous and frenetic transformation from the leaky old Cosmic Quonset Hut that had been foisted off on desperate municipal officials a quarter century before as state of the art architecture. At least the inside was now attractive -- and brimming with million-dollar promises. They might be able to get jobs there.
Kurt and Heather had talked about this. Kurt, in the fall, had scored an amazing coup by plunking down his last 600 bucks at a sparsely-attended federal auction in Buffalo to purchase a creaky, decade-old Caddy Eldorado stretch limousine that had been confiscated from a convicted drug dealer. Kurt was handy with cars. He put a lot of work into the Caddy Stretch, pounding out dings, repairing a crumpled fender with cheap patch, clicking up the engine with new plugs and a rebuilt distributor. It still ran, sort of, and surprised the young couple by polishing up to a nice black gloss -- outside on the metal, inside on the Corinthian leather.
The old Caddy was still crap under the hood, and the transmission was drinking cover-up fluid by the quart each time out, but hurried casino officials had told Kurt at the start of December he might be able to hire on as a sub-contractor ferrying gamblers from the Buffalo airport to Niagara Falls. Heather was skeptical at the start, and scolding over her husband's blowing of the last skimpy savings on a dusty old tub of a limo. But now she sort of fancied the chauffeur fantasy. She even liked the little brimmed hat Kurt had bought as a halfway joke at the Salvation Army store.
Driving gamblers to and fro meant good money in the offing, but there was a hitch. The new casino lords told Kurt he had to show a state safety inspection certificate for carriage work, and that meant replacing the bald and tattered tires on the Caddy, and the ancient limo had a double rear axle, which meant four new tires in the back and two up front, all over-sized. The Seneca Casino officials wouldn't budge. Kurt, as a sub-contractor, would have to buy the rubber himself. If he and Heather couldn't even scratch out Christmas card money, he certainly couldn't come up with the $85 a tire he would need to raise -- even at a discount shop or online. The credit cards were long gone, and who would lend him the $500 if neither of them had jobs?
Heather's dreams also involved the new casino. She had always had a great set of pipes, and had even taken voice lessons during high school. It seemed so long ago. She sang around the house, of course, and at friends' parties, and in the shower, and had once made a few bucks doing national anthems at service clubs and minor league baseball games, but little to speak of.
At the beginning of December, however, after reading of the fledgling casino's fast progress in the Niagara Falls Reporter, Heather had fired up the old Plymouth Arrow she could hardly keep on the road, mustered her courage, and drove downtown to the casino. The entire gambling operation was being cobbled together on the fly, and the entertainment portion was no exception. The deadlined casino lords, with no booking agent hired, had decided to start with local talent for what meager showbiz trappings would be provided. A wrinkled entertainment director, exiled from Atlantic City jobs once her own voice succumbed to years of smoking and bourbon, was watching auditions while Heather timidly filled out her form and handed it in.
The auditions were not going well. The singers so far resembled old Gong Show rejects. The entertainment director took to grasping her ears instead of hollering, "Next." Casino officials shook their heads. When Heather stepped up, she blew them away. Her Streisand stylings were just right, and the astoundingly good acoustics in the refurbished convention center offered kind reception to her voice. Heather was offered the opening night gig. But again, a terrible hitch.
No money had been budgeted by casino functionaries for costuming. Heather would need her own evening dress and her own jewelry, which -- she reflected sadly -- had all been pawned already. The stern old entertainment crone had been quite clear about that: Your own topline evening dress, and it better be glamorous; your own flashy earrings, and the stones better be real, whatever the tone and color. Gamblers can tell. And you have to have both dress and jewelry, she croaked at Heather.
The dress was no problem. Heather had kept her late and once-prosperous parents' treasured gift for her community college commencement -- a spiffy Bill Blass number -- cleaned and stored in the closet. It still fit and she could haul that out. The dress even had good karma. The late Bill Blass had been a judge at the Miss USA contest held in the Niagara Falls convention center during its opening year, and her admiring mother had obtained his autograph, which the sentimental Heather had taped to the hemline in storage. There had been no other inheritance. Western New York's hard times had afflicted her parents in retirement, too.
So here sat Kurt and Heather at the kitchen table, a few days before Christmas, tapped out but with prospects that each fell tantalizingly short. Heather needed jewelry for a job. Kurt needed new tires. Each described the other's dilemma. The young couple was in pain. The husband and wife looked at each other wistfully. Four eyes glistened. Without giving voice to thought, each knew drastic action was necessary.
That afternoon, using the excuse of visiting a second-day bakery for the next day's bread, Kurt the loving husband drove the venerable Cadillac limo to a second-hand dealer in North Tonawanda and sold it for $750. Not bad, he thought, a small profit.
Kurt then hitch-hiked back to the Falls, splurged on a steak-and-cheese sub, found a small jewelry shop, and bought a simple but attractive sapphire pendant for $500 and a pair of gorgeous, dangling lapis lazuli earrings for $240. He had them gift-wrapped and stuck them in the side pockets of his worn overcoat.
That afternoon, using the excuse of buying at least a half-dozen Christmas cards, Heather the loving wife drove the clattering Plymouth Arrow to an obscure tailor shop in Kenmore that made a specialty of reworking designer evening gowns and cocktail dresses into "new" sellable knockoffs that sold for a fortune. Heather -- who asked for $900 for the Bill Blass -- was full of trepidation, but her intuition about new interest in the recently-deceased designer had been correct.
"Oooo," muttered the tailor shop appraiser. "A vintage Bill Blass. We'll give you five hundred for it."
When she got back to the Falls, Heather drove to Military Road, found a tire shop, showed the manager a picture of Kurt's Cadillac limo, and bought six new heavyweight radials from the old gentleman -- who told her the price would be $540, but came down when the young lady started to cry softly. He even crammed the heavy tires into the rear of the hatchback Plymouth Arrow for her. She stopped on the way home to buy 15 copies of the Niagara Gazette, with which to wrap the tires. It was just enough.
On Christmas Eve, 2002, Heather, grinning broadly, took Kurt by the hand and led him downstairs into the cramped and tiny garage that came with the cramped and tiny apartment in LaSalle. She figured the Caddy was parked in its usual spot on the street. When she flicked the lights, the staring Kurt blinked, sucked in his breath, and bit his lip. It was obvious under the pile of oddly-shaped newspapers were six new tires.
From his pocket, Kurt pulled the two tiny packages and gave them to Heather. She tore away the wrappings and her mouth flew open upon opening each. Kurt, she told her husband, the dress is gone. For not the first time that week, she cried.
But when both glanced up and locked eyes, Kurt and Heather began to laugh -- softly at first, and then in rising giggles, and finally in great, loving gales of the warmest mirth they had ever known.
"We don't need no stinkin' jobs," said Kurt, imitating lines from an old western movie of which he was fond.
"No," Heather responded in the low, gentle voice he loved. "Not with each other, we don't. We'll get them later."
The glowing young couple, arms around waists, walked back up the stairs. Neither partner thought about the coincidence that a couple years more than two millennia ago, three very wise men had inspired the same sort of warmth after an arduous journey by leaving gifts for a Baby in a crude manger in the Middle East.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | December 23 2002 |