December 22nd- Branching Out by Lilibet

It was the week after Christ­mas and Hutch had spent the day at the Mar­shall Cen­ter for Excep­tion­al Chil­dren help­ing to take down dec­o­ra­tions and clean­ing up some flower beds. He was tired and ful­filled. As he turned his car onto their street, he could see Starsky’s mid­night blue Charg­er in the dri­ve­way. Long ago, he’d resigned him­self to the fact that he’d nev­er be able to park his car in their garage. His beloved’s beloved Tori­no had a per­ma­nent space on one side, while Starsky’s cur­rent vehi­cle got the oth­er space. Starsky had long argued that any car of Hutch’s did­n’t need to be pro­tect­ed from the ele­ments.

Thus, the Charg­er in the dri­ve­way could only mean one thing. Starsky had been shop­ping and bought some­thing too big to fit in the house.

As he pulled in and pushed the but­ton on the remote door open­er (Starsky had acqui­esced and let him have one) he cat­a­loged what they need­ed that Starsky could­n’t have got­ten in the house by him­self. A new TV? No, he’d just giv­en Starsky a larg­er one for Christ­mas. A lawn mow­er? No, Starsky left the yard to Hutch, and that would­n’t take up that much room. The fridge had been mak­ing some odd nois­es, but Starsky would­n’t have got­ten a new one with­out Hutch’s input.

The door had rolled all the way up and he had to pon­der no more. Through the dirty wind­shield he could clear­ly see the long box­es of vary­ing lengths stacked neat­ly next to the Tori­no. The stick­ers on the ends left no doubt as to what they were.

“Oh, for God’s sake, what the fuck is all of that!”

Hutch got out of the car and slammed the door so hard the loose win­dow in the back rat­tled; for a sec­ond, he thought he’d bro­ken it. His calm demeanor from his day’s work had van­ished and been instant­ly replaced with fury. “I’m going to stran­gle him,” he mut­tered as he stomped into the garage. He kicked one of the box­es on his way to the back door. He turned the knob and pushed the door open so hard it bounced off the wall and came back with just as much force. The only thing that stopped it from hit­ting him in the face was his foot in the door­way.

“STARSKY!”

Starsky had had a fab­u­lous morn­ing. He could­n’t believe the deals he’d got­ten at the after-Christ­mas sales. Since the card table was still set up in the spare bed­room, and the wrap­ping paper all over the bed, he thought it’d be a great idea to go ahead and wrap the things he’d got­ten for Hutch, just in case his blond bud­dy got it in his head to snoop around next Christ­mas. And while he was at it, he decid­ed to go ahead and wrap the things he’d bought for him­self. In his weird Starsky log­ic, he thought he might for­get what he’d bought then be sur­prised in a year’s time when he tore the paper off.

With the CD play­er blar­ing Christ­mas music he was in his post-hol­i­day ele­ment and lost all track of the time. So, when he heard Hutch bel­low his name from the garage, he knew he was doomed.

“SHIT! SHIT! SHIT!” I knew I should have tak­en all those box­es to the attic first! Maybe I can pre­tend I did­n’t hear him. The music is kin­da loud.

“STARSKY! Get your ass out here!”

Nope. Heard that. Buck­le up, but­ter­cup. It’s gonna take some fast talk­ing to get out of this one.

Starsky peered through the open back door into the garage to try to gauge Hutch’s demeanor. As if the yelling had­n’t clued him in. Maybe he could still dif­fuse this. Hutch was pac­ing around the box­es, wav­ing his hands and mut­ter­ing to him­self, his face turn­ing red­der by the sec­ond. An image of Yosemite Sam try­ing to make hasenpf­ef­fer popped into Starsky’s mind and he had to sti­fle his laugh­ter. He put on his best “I have no idea why you’re mad, I love you so much” smile, and stepped into the garage.

“Oh, hey, babe. I did­n’t hear you come in. How was your day at the school?”

Hutch whipped around at the sound of Starsky’s voice. “Starsky! What the hell is all this?”

“What?”

Hutch waved his arms around the garage. “This!”

“What? The garage? Did you spend too much time in the sun this morn­ing or some­thin’? Your face is kin­da all red.”

Hutch final­ly stopped cir­cling the box­es. “It looks like Christ­mas trees.”

Starsky decid­ed to go with the obvi­ous. “Oh. Those. You’re right. They are.”

“Care to explain why there are five arti­fi­cial Christ­mas trees of var­i­ous sizes sit­ting in my garage?”

“Because you’re aller­gic to real Christ­mas trees? And it’s our garage.”

“Not good enough! Try again!”

“But, Hutch,” Starsky whined. “It was a great after Christ­mas sale. They were sev­en­ty-five per­cent off.”

“I thought we agreed to only one addi­tion­al tree last year. But now we have five more? That’s sev­en trees, Starsky. SEVEN!”

“Okay, Archimedes, you don’t have to show off your supe­ri­or math skills. And we also agreed a long time ago that you’d quit pul­ver­iz­ing veg­eta­bles and hid­ing them in the lasagna and look how that turned out!”

A moment of sheep­ish­ness crept into Hutch’s face at being called out.

Starsky con­tin­ued with his best and most used argu­ment tactic—diversion. “That’s right, bud­dy boy. It’s the car­rots that give you away. You just can’t get ’em small enough to be out­ta sight.”

The tac­tic nev­er worked. “Don’t change the sub­ject! What are we going to do with SEVEN trees, Starsky?”

Starsky gave up and went with his orig­i­nal plan. “Well, for starters, we can have one tree in near­ly every room of the house.”

“Oh, God,” Hutch mum­bled as he sat on the end of the stacked box­es. He looked up into Starsky’s bright and excit­ed eyes and the slight­est bit of his ire dis­si­pat­ed. He soft­ened his tone mar­gin­al­ly. “This sounds like a slip­pery slope, pal. Next you’ll be putting a tree in every win­dow instead of those god­for­sak­en can­dles I have to plug in every night.” Hutch bit his tongue when Starsky’s face lit up at the sug­ges­tion.

Sens­ing his open­ing, Starsky ignored the eye roll and car­ried on, unper­turbed. “And they can be themed trees!”

“Have you lost what’s left of your mind? Themed trees? Where the hell would we get enough orna­ments for SEVEN themed trees?”

It was Starsky’s turn to look sheep­ish. “I guess you did­n’t make it as far as the kitchen table.”

Hutch stared at Starsky slow­ly blink­ing his eyes over and over again.

“Orna­ments were eighty per­cent off.”

“Oh, for God’s sake!”

“No real­ly, Hutch, you’re gonna love it! Look­it, that small­est box? It’s only a four-foot­er and I got it espe­cial­ly for your library. Your very own tree. I even got you some orna­ments to get start­ed. Wait right there.”

Hutch was left star­ing at the garage wall while Starsky ran into the house. He could hear the rat­tle of bags from the kitchen, then Starsky reap­peared with a small box.

“See, it’s a Hall­mark. You know, when you care enough to send the very best?” With his eye­brows raised to match his ques­tion, he hand­ed the box to Hutch like a peace offer­ing.

Hutch tried to regain some calm­ness. He reached out for the box and rotat­ed it to see the image. The calm did­n’t last.

“Starsky! That’s the Grinch!”

“If the shoe fits, babe!”

The End

Until next year when Starsky dis­cov­ers out­door lights synched to music!

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