December 22nd- Yule Be Sorry by Glow and Kath Moonshine

Hutch has been cooling his jets on the sidewalk in front of his building thirty minutes, sitting on top of an old Admiral television set that someone put out with the trash, displaced—no doubt—by the arrival of this season’s latest model, a bit of deduction aided by the presence of an empty General Electric box that proudly proclaims This is a GE Performance Television! It’s Christmas Eve and Starsky is a half an hour late picking up Hutch for dinner at the Dobey house.

“Someone who spends as much money on watches as you should be able to tell time better,” Hutch complains as he gets into the car.

“Relax, Scrooge.” Starsky shifts the car into gear and peels out. “I was talking to my mother. You know it’s three hours later there. By the time I get home, she’ll be in bed.”

Even though they are Jewish, Starsky’s family always manages to celebrate Christmas in their own way, and he knows they are missing each other tonight. “How is she?”

“We didn’t get to talk too much. Ma didn’t want to miss the log. Can you believe that? My own mother cut me off to go watch The Yule Log.”

“The what?”

“The Yule Log. On the television. Oh, that’s right. Bay City Christmas. Sixty-five degrees, not a snowball in sight, palm trees instead of evergreens, and no Yule Log.”

“So, what is this? A TV show? A Christmas special? About a log?”

“Not a show. I mean, it isn’t Log the Red-Nosed Reindeer. But it is kind of a Christmas special. There’s a real fireplace, you know? The old-fashioned kind—like where you’d hang your stockings for Santa. And the wood is burning and crackling.” A smile curls the corner Starsky’s lip. “It’s like having a fireplace in your living room when the log is burning on the television.”

Sometimes Hutch just doesn’t know how to process some of the stuff that flows from his partner’s lips, and this is one of those times. “You mean to tell me that in New York, people tune in to stare at a fake fireplace—”

“Who said it was fake? It’s a real fireplace! Just not really in your living room. And they play nice Christmas music.”

The more Starsky explains, the less Hutch understands. “Who does?”

“Who does what?”

“Play the Christmas music!”

“I don’t know. The log people.”

“The log people?”

“The ones who make the show.”

“You mean whatever corporation had the brilliant idea to film a fireplace and get people to sit in front of their television sets to stare at it? And I thought television was mindless drivel before.” Hutch makes a dismissive gesture in the direction of the dashboard, as if dispelling a phantom television set.

“You don’t get it, Hutch. It’s a tradition. You put the log on. You hear the music. And then you open presents in front of the fireplace.”

“The televised fireplace.”

Starsky sighs. “If you look at it just right, you can forget, for a minute, it’s the television. Seems kind of real . . . you know?”

Hutch is about to launch into a discourse about how ridiculous the whole concept of staring at a fake log burning on television for hours was when he notices the smile on Starsky’s face has been replaced by hang-dog expression. His partner always gets a little weird around Christmas time, the mood somewhere between childlike exuberance and downhearted nostalgia, as if he had gotten his hopes up and had them dashed all in the same night. Hutch would have preferred to pretend the whole commercialized, over-hyped excuse for a holiday didn’t exist, but that was never an option around Starsky. Still, he hopes that having a big dinner with all the trimmings and watching the kids open presents at the captain’s house is going to be enough candy-cane colored sentiment for one night, but now Starsky is flat out pouting—and over what? A fake log? Of course, the fake log only symbolizes all the things that are wrong with a Bay City Christmas, a list of complaints that seems to get longer each year for Starsky, one which Hutch has listened to the entire month of December.

To his credit, Starsky bucks up and plays the jolly elf at the Dobeys’, complete with goofy red hat trimmed in white fur and a dangling pom-pom. He ate, drank, and was merry, and there wasn’t any way to tell his Christmas Eve was anything but perfect.

Unless you were his partner and read him like a book.

And right now, his partner is a very sad book.

I’ve got to do something to fix this, Hutch thinks. But what . . . ?

The drive back to Venice Place is mostly quiet, only the strains of the local rock station endlessly playing a recorded loop of Jingle Bell Rock filling the space between them. Starsky turns the last corner and announces, “Well, here’s our Christmas miracle on Hutchinson Street,” and smoothly pulls into the sole empty parking spot on the entire block, right in front of Hutch’s building.

Hutch is fumbling for the bag at his feet that holds his gifts from the Dobeys—a bottle of wine and a dozen homemade sugar cookies—when he notices that Starsky hasn’t turned off the Torino. “Kill the ignition, Starsk. What are you waiting for, Christmas?”

“I’m tired,” Starsky mumbles, his eyes taking in the bright lights of the Baptist church’s nativity across the street. “Gonna head back to my place. Call it an early night.”

“Don’t you want to come up? Have a nightcap? Play a few hands of cards?”

“Nah. M’tired.”

“Well, you have to come up long enough to get your Christmas gift,” Hutch says desperately, no closer to figuring out how to cheer Starsky up.

“You got me a present?” If it weren’t for the fact that he really was lying, Hutch would resent his partner’s suspicious tone.

“Sure.”

“A real present? Not a piece of paper that says I saved a dodo-bird or got a star named for me?”

“Nope. And dodos are extinct.”

“Whatever. Not another museum membership?”

“Hey, you liked the George C. Page Museum!”

“I’da liked it better if they had called it the La Brea Tar Pits Museum, cause then I woulda wanted to go instead of being dragged there by you on the last day of my membership.”

“Point,” Hutch says agreeably. “And you did fill out the comment card, so there’s still hope they can get it right for future generations.” Hutch finds himself scrutinized by a pair of the brightest blues eyes he’s ever seen, eyes that routinely inspire hardened criminals to sing like birds, and old ladies to bake him cakes and tamales.

“You really want me to come up?”

“Yeah, Gordo. I really want you to come up.”

For a moment, Hutch thinks that his partner is going to blow him off, but he has his answer when, with a flick of his wrist, Starsky pulls the keys from the ignition.

“I can’t wait to see what you got me,” Starsky says.

Yeah . . . me too.

Hutch believes he should be forgiven for what happens next, because—admittedly—he’d been deep in his head for a good cause, thinking of every possible thing in his apartment that could be repurposed into a gift for his man-child buddy. It’s only the loud crash-tinkle that pulls him from his thoughts.

“What the hell are you doing to my car!”

He looks down just as Starsky races around the front fender, just in time for Hutch to step out of the car and onto the carpet of broken glass—glass which came from the old TV screen he’s just shattered with the Torino’s door.

“You better not have messed with my paint job,” Starsky mutters, hunkering down, careful of the glass, to examine the Torino’s paint job. “Huh. You’re lucky. Don’t see any scratches.”

“Our second Christmas miracle,” Hutch says, a moment before he realizes that he really has experienced a miracle—of inspiration.

“This has got to be the weirdest Christmas present ever,” Starsky announces. His arms are extended protectively in front of his chest, making him look rather like a curly-haired Frankenstein’s monster.

“Why do you say that,” Hutch asks, backing carefully up the stairs, making sure to spot his partner despite his own excruciating pain. Hutch hates to admit it, but thoughts of Frankenstein have put him in mind of who he most resembles and—right now—he looks a lot like Quasimodo. And why is that, questions Hutch’s inner smartass, the part of him that despises commercial Christmas with every fiber of his being. It sure wasn’t from shopping on Rodeo Drive! Hutch snaps back internally.

“Funny thing you ask. First, my partner takes me into his apartment, then he pushes me down on the couch, and tells me to tie a bandanna around my eyes so I can’t see nothing. Then said partner proceeds to bang up and down the stairs, grunting like a pig the whole time, as if he’s carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders—”

Not the world. Just a fucking heavy TV that blew out my back!

“Then there’s more rattling around, and doors slamming, and then it sounds like Quick Draw McGraw’s El Kabong lands in the apartment—”

That would be me dropping my guitar halfway down the rooftop steps when my back spasmed.

“And now said partner is leading me,” Starsky pauses for a moment to savor the warm breeze wafting across Venice Place’s rooftop, “up onto his roof. Hey, you’re not planning on pushing me off, are you?” The last is followed by a laugh, but it’s not a hearty one.

How much easier my life would be if only. . . .

“No, Starsk. I just want you to take a few steps to the left and, yeah—right there—is a lawn chair. Now sit down and give me a minute—”

“It’s gonna be New Year’s before I get my Christmas present.”

“Just stuff a sock in it!”

“All right, all right! I’m sitting.”

For all of the ability Hutch has to straighten up, his forearms might as well be super-glued to his shins. Nevertheless, he shuffles over to his pièce de résistance, and perches on the lawn chair he’s set up for himself. Giving only a small groan, Hutch pulls his guitar into his lap, and settles the strap around his neck.

Now only one more detail.

Hutch picks up a matchbook blazoned with Huggy’s moniker, THE PITS, strikes one, and flicks the tiny, fiery brand into the center of his vodka-soaked masterpiece. A minor whoosh signals that it’s time to let Starsky see his present.

“You can remove your blindfold, Starsk.”

The fire of rolled-up newspaper logs starts to catch in the base of the old TV. Smoke boils out of the glassless area that used to be the television screen, and the flames, initially blue-white, quickly changeover to red as the vodka is consumed and the fire begins to eat away at the Bay City Times. Hutch drinks in his partner’s craggy, beloved face, illumed by his labor of love, and he begins to sing:

Feliz Navidad
Feliz Navidad
Feliz Navidad
Prospero año y Felicidad.

Feliz Navidad
Feliz Navidad
Feliz Navidad
Prospero año y Felicidad.

I wanna wish you a Merry Christmas!
I wanna wish you a Merry Christmas!
I wanna wish you a Merry Christmas,
From the bottom of my heart.

Starsky lights up from within, and Hutch can almost imagine what the Grinch must have felt when his heart grew three sizes (yes, Starsky makes him watch the damned thing every year).

“You made me The Yule Log!”

Hutch can feel his own face split by a wide grin, as he continues to strum his guitar, almost idly running through his repertoire of holiday tunes, a medley of White Christmas, Marshmallow World, and a funked-out guitar version of Little Drummer Boy.

“This is the best Christmas gift ever!” And there it is, what Hutch had been hoping to see, that inner three-year-old part of his partner, that little piece of Brooklyn that still believes in flying reindeer and that good boys get toys.

They sit companionably, watching the fire burn and the TV melt into the metal wastepaper basket that Hutch had placed under it, and Hutch is grateful the wind is to their backs, because he’s sure the fumes coming off the TV are carcinogenic, but Starsky just stares and stares until his eyes begin to water and his face to crumple. Fearing a soapy scene, Hutch switches to a snappier tune—Jingle Bells—in an effort to distract Starsky from his melancholy.

“Hey, buddy,” Hutch calls gently when Starsky’s shoulders start to shake, and his chin drops to his chest. “Don’t cry. It’s just a fire in a TV.”

Starsky looks up, and Hutch can immediately tell that he’s read the scene wrong. “I’m not crying, Hutch. I’m laughing.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” Hutch answers, pissed. “Why?”

“Do you hear that?”

Hutch’s fingers fall nerveless from the strings, and he hears what sounds like two black and whites and at least three fire engines, lights and sirens blasting, pulling onto his block.

“I’m gonna guess that the troops are here for a suspected 10-52,” Starsky adds sheepishly. “And I figure whoever started this suspected arson incident on Christmas is gonna get a whole stack of citations from the fire marshal, ‘cause we all know how much the fire department loves the police department, right?”

“Riiiight,” Hutch growls. “So what are you finding so funny, Gordo?”

“All these sirens make me feel like I’m back home—a real Brooklyn Christmas!”