Holiday Cheer from Andrew Grey and Amy Lane

Chapter 6 City People Are Soft

Chapter 6: City People Are Soft

ELI GOT the panicked text from Leon, one of the supervisors who stayed over four nights a week, when he was still asleep on the couch. Leon’s job wasn’t easy. Part counselor, part troubleshooter, part repair man, Leon was the guy who fixed leaky roofs, repaired windows, and made emergency grocery orders when something went wrong with their stores, because he was the guy who was there when shit went wrong.

In this case, shit had gone very wrong.

“It froze last night,” Leon said without preamble. “The pipes burst in the basement. Eli, the water’s rising and all the Christmas stuff is getting soaked.”

Oh God.

They had such a limited budget. They scrimped, they saved, they got stuff on sale, they hit up charities and overstocks; getting up to sixty kids, aged ten to eighteen, Christmas presents that were both practical and desirable was no easy feat. Scrupulous planning and a whole lot of forethought—not to mention money they didn’t have—went into having the gifts ready to open on Christmas Day. And while some of the gifts were things like socks, underwear, and personalized sheets, some of them were favorite books, a coveted sweater or phone case, makeup for an emerging young woman, or shaving supplies for a vulnerable young man.

All of which had been wrapped and decorated the week before. It had been Andy and Eli’s last weekend together, hunched in the basement of the aging duchess of a building, wrapping presents and pretending they weren’t there. None of the kids even saw them, although plenty of Andy’s coworkers saw the bump on his head from where he ran into one of the water pipes set in the too-low ceiling.

“Get it out of there,” Eli said through a constricted throat. “Wake the others up and get the presents up and out of there. Save everything you can, and for God’s sakes, fix the pipe. Get a move on. I’ll call in reinforcements on my way.”

He’d fallen asleep in the Henley tee he’d worn under his sweater the day before and a pair of Andy’s old sweats that he had to double knot and haul up over his narrow hips, and that’s what he walked out of the apartment wearing, the warm wool coat Andy had bought him for their first Christmas holding his phone, his keys, and his hat and gloves in the pockets. He’d barely managed to lace his boots he’d been so panicked, and he’d been doing everything one-handed while he called up employee after employee and had them descend upon Rainbow House in what would become known as the Great Christmas Rescue.

In the end, they only managed to save about half the gifts, and the basement was still flooded while Eli tried to find a serviceman at six in the morning three days before Christmas.

They’d managed to wrap duct tape around the pipe, so at least it wasn’t spewing water all over the basement, and Leon had found the water main to shut off. Half the presents were in a room upstairs drying off, and the other half were submerged and unusable. They had someone who was supposed to arrive around lunch with a sump to at least empty the basement out.

Eli was sopping wet, filthy, and freezing right down to his toes when Andy texted, but that’s not what he was most concerned about.

Despondently he sent the picture of the presents floating in the dirty, hip-height water as he stood at the top of the alley stairs and aimed the camera into the basement.

God. What was he going to do?

When the phone rang in his hand, he noted Andy’s number dully, not sure what Andy could do, and was surprised when someone not Andy was on the other end of the line.

“Eli?” said the pleasant, rumbly older voice. “This is Andy’s father, Matt. He’s panicking over here about your basement. I don’t know what to do about the presents, son, but I ran a string of hardware stores up here for forty years. I’ve got some contacts down there that will do you folks right. Give me half an hour and somebody—I swear to you— somebody will show up to fix your pipe, turn your water back on, and pump out your basement.”

“We have a guy with a sump on the way,” Eli replied weakly, wanting to cry out of sheer blessed relief. “So you don’t have to worry about—”

“Two will do twice as well,” Matt Chambers said. “Now I know this is a setback. Andy’s been trying to tell me what a big deal this is, and I had kids. Christmas for three was hard enough, and you’re trying to pull off Christmas for sixty. And believe me, I get it. These kids need the best Christmas you can manage. So you do what you can on your end—maybe get an inventory together of what you lost and what you need—and I’ll see what we can do on our end, okay? Don’t worry, son. You’ve got some help, okay?”

“Yessir,” Eli breathed, trying to ignore the burning eyes. “You can’t know how much I appreciate this. We had a cold snap last night.”

He heard a note of humor enter Matt Chambers’s voice. “I can tell, kid. Your teeth are chattering.”

Oh no. “I’ve been wet for an hour,” he confessed.

“Dear Lord,” Matt muttered. “Andy, talk your boyfriend into going to put on some warm clothes. I’ll hit the horn and see what I can do from up here, okay?

“Yeah, Dad. Thanks. Seriously, thank you.” Andy’s voice grew clearer as he took back the phone. “Baby, you there?”

“Yeah,” Eli mumbled. “Can he really help us?”

“Of course he can,” Andy said, and his faith in his father took Eli’s breath away. How did somebody simply believe like that? “But the gifts are another matter. You know, I could be back by tonight to help you—”

“No,” Eli muttered. “No, Andy, you’re with your family. Seriously, just stay. I’ll deal with—” He had to stop to shiver, and Marge’s voice penetrated his misery.

“Eli Engle, your boyfriend just texted me to get you out of the damned cold. Now come next door. They’ve got hot coffee and blankets for you and Leon, and you can let the next shift go to work.”

“That’s Margie, right?” Andy asked. “She’s getting you warm, right?”

Eli nodded and then managed a “Y-y-y-y-esss….”

“Good. I’ll text some backers, get ahold of the old roommates and some of the volunteers who moved out of state. Lots of people have good memories of Rainbow House. Let’s see if we can spread some Christmas spirit, okay?”

“Andy—” He was trying to say “Don’t worry.” He was trying to say “Stay home.” But his throat and his ears were tight with cold, even as Margie moved him to the coffee shop next door, which had apparently opened its doors to help the people in Rainbow House out of the goodness of their hearts.

“I love you, baby,” Andy said. “Let me talk to someone and see if and when I can get a ride to St. Albans, and maybe I can get home early, okay?”

“I’m not taking you away from your family,” Eli said, finally pulling himself together. It helped that Margie had led him away from the basement stairs and the heat from the restaurant across the alleyway was starting to permeate his wet clothes. “Your dad is finding me a plumber. Please, Andy. Just stay there and have fun and do Christmas, and next year I’ll come with you—”

“Next year we’re going to Martinique,” Andy said darkly. “Merry Christmas to us! I want someplace I can feel sun on my toes.”

Eli chuckled weakly. Andy was always the first person in the park to take his shoes off in the spring. “Next year you’re going to Vermont,” he said fondly. “Stay. Be with your family.”

“Eli!” Leon came trotting up quickly in the alley. “Eli, you’ve got to move. Apparently we’ve got two guys with pumps coming, and I’m fielding calls from a company that wants to come fix our pipes. Man, this is above my paygrade. I need you!”

“I gotta go,” Eli mumbled.

“I love you. I’ll see what I can do from here,” Andy replied, resigned.

“Love you too,” Eli said, but Andy had already signed off.

Grimly, Eli turned to Leon. “Can they meet with me next door?” he all but pleaded. “Leon, I’ve got to get warm.”

“Yeah, I’ll go talk to them.” Leon stood six foot six if he stood an inch. An enormous Black man with midnight skin and graying braids, he had a rumbly voice and shoulders as wide as a barn. Eli had known him as a teenager because Leon had been at Rainbow House for over ten years, and Eli would trust him with his life, but Leon tended to lose his temper with idiots and was not always the most reasonable voice of the organization.

“Tell them where I am,” Eli said, shuddering again.

“Come on, Eli,” Margie said. “Let’s get you warm.”

“Wh-wh-what about the kids?” Eli asked. “Is the heat out all over the building?”

“The furnace and radiators are out,” Margie said, “but you know most of the rooms use space heaters in addition. It’s not Florida, but they’re all huddled in blankets while they do their schoolwork. They should be fine.”

Eli let out a small breath. “Better if we get this fixed,” he murmured. Then, only loud enough for Margie to hear: “The presents, Margie. Half the presents are toast.”

She sighed. “Yeah. Yeah, I know. I’ve got the volunteers making piles to see which kids lost the most stuff. It’s… it’s going to be hard to make that loss up.”

Eli swallowed and nodded, remembering Andy’s pledge to see what he could do from all the way up in Vermont. Part of him wanted to scoff and simply assume he was on his own, like he’d been since he was seventeen.

But part of him remembered the first holiday disaster he and Andy had weathered with Rainbow House… and he hoped.

Back Then

HOLIDAYS WERE always high pressure for organizations like Rainbow House, particularly because kids were involved. Kids had such high hopes for holidays, especially if they’d celebrated with their families before they’d been displaced or disowned and left to fend for themselves on the streets. They equated that happy holiday with being secure and cared for and loved, and they wondered if they’d ever feel that way again.

Rainbow House couldn’t heal all the wounds—they couldn’t even come close—but they could try to let kids know that they were secure and cared for on this day, whatever day it was, with the people they were with.

So getting the kids costumes so they could go trick-or-treating at a local shopping center was a big deal. The merchants did it for the entire neighborhood, giving candy and coupons for merchandise and decorating their storefronts, even the ones inside the building. The kids weren’t required to go, but the older kids got points toward chores for helping to supervise younger kids, and Eli had noticed that the older kids enjoyed dressing up too.

They had the best time.

Dorms would plan themes—often from anime or popular cartoons—and the shopping center had costume contests that judged individual and group costumes.

In general it was a fun way to celebrate the holiday—but the possibility for disappointment was always there, hanging just out of sight, like a beam just above eye level ready to take out an unwary walker.

In this case, the beam took the form of a bolt of rainbow-colored gauze that was rerouted in shipping, leaving a dorm of four boys who’d been planning to dress as fairies (Get it? ’Cause they were gay!) without material for wings or robes or tunics or whatever they’d been planning to sew with it when it should have arrived two weeks before Halloween.

The week before Halloween, the boys were despondent.

Now that he was no longer an adolescent, Eli recognized the distress that kids could put on themselves over something like this. He liked to think of the emotional support kids got from mostly functional families as “padding.” People with “padding” could bounce back better from setbacks. They could think through a problem because the pain from falling on their asses wasn’t as acute. They could cope with hard emotional dilemmas, secure in the knowledge that they could recover because their “padding” gave them resilience and strength.

His kids didn’t have any of that.

He spent a day running around trying to drum up a bolt of cloth to get into that boys’ dorm or to find a seamstress willing to donate some time since the boys didn’t have enough time left or… or… or….

Eli’s brain shorted out at this point because this had been his first year in charge of holidays of any sort and the same year he and Andy had moved in together. He spent a lot of time trying to get his mental and emotional feet underneath him and combating the terrible, gut-wrenching fear that somehow, something was going to rip this entire life of cobwebs and daydreams down around his ears.

So the kids were panicking, the staff was panicking, he was panicking, and Andy came home from work to find him chewing out some poor fabric-store owner for not having rainbow gauze by the bolt.

“Hey, hey, hey….” Andy laughed as he pulled the phone from his hand before Eli chucked it across the kitchen. “What’s up? I thought this was your night off.” He gave a winsome smile. “You, me, Chinese food… remember?”

Eli had stared at him for an absolutely fraught moment, not sure if he should grab his phone back and run out the door, never to return again, or simply beg off as having a work emergency and go back to the shelter to pace the floor and try to come up with something… anything… to help fix the situation.

He opened his mouth and closed it, brain still caught between the two extremes. Until this moment he’d done his best to keep any work problems he might have had to himself. Andy had helped on the weekends when they’d been dating—and even now after they’d moved in, to tell the truth—but Eli had sworn to himself, up and down and back and forth, that he was not going to make Andy’s life all about Eli’s job. It wasn’t fair. Eli was more than that, wasn’t he? He saw the occasional movie, right? Read a book once in a while? Held a political opinion? He didn’t have to begin and end with Rainbow House, right? Shouldn’t Andy get more than that in his life?

So he opened his mouth to say, “I’ve got to go take care of something. I’m sorry.” What happened instead was half an hour of emotional word vomit involving padding and wings and fairy boys and twenty-five yards of missing rainbow gauze.

Andy stood through the whole thing, hands on Eli’s shoulders, before he said, “Here. This sounds involved. How about let’s go eat some Chinese food, get some gelato, and we’ll think of a solution while we talk.”

Eli gaped at him. “But isn’t that date night?”

Andy grinned. “Yes. Because I can think much better over Chinese food and gelato than I can standing here in the kitchen wondering when we’re going to eat. Let’s go!”

Andy had asked questions on the way there, and Eli had pulled up some photos on his phone of sketches the kids had drawn for their costumes. Andy looked at the sketches and hemmed and hawed and then had asked if he could take the four boys to the local craft store the next day after school.

“We have a budget,” Eli had told him, hopefully and also proudly. Andy didn’t have to give up all his disposable income to Eli’s job.

“That’s fine,” Andy said. “Let me know how much we have to spend. I think we have some options.”

In the end, they had gone with T-shirts in neon colors, opalescent ribbon, florist wire, and brightly colored cellophane wrapping paper—and black hair dye. They’d called themselves “punk fairies,” and their costumes cost half what the bolt of wayward cloth had been going to cost.

And they’d won the group costume contest.

Andy had stayed up for two nights running on his weekend helping the boys with their costumes, telling them about how he’d come out to his hometown by wearing his sister’s fairy wings with his football uniform and making them laugh about the story of his ex-boyfriend who had come out to his own mother by borrowing the wings himself. Eli had wandered into the dorm between his other duties and listened as Andy spoke, warmly and with patience, to the excited adolescent boys.

God, he was such a good man. The kind of man with “padding” who enjoyed sharing that emotional stability, that kindness.

And it hit Eli suddenly—this man was his . His man. His boyfriend. His partner. Andy had patiently and tenderly pulled Eli into his arms, into his home, into his life, until they were so completely intertwined Eli wasn’t sure where he stopped and Andy started.

His heart beating in his ears was the first sign of panic.

Margie had found him hyperventilating under the staircase to the dorms, and she had needed to give him coffee and cookies and calm him down in order to ferret out the reason why.

“He’s perfect!” Eli managed to gasp out. “Just… perfect!”

“His eyes are a little crossed,” Margie said practically. “And, you know, he broke his nose, I think, playing football. And I don’t think he’ll ever be president of the company. I see him as a happy cog in that machine for the rest of his life.”

Eli squinted at her. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“A perfectly ordinary, perfectly decent man with a really wonderful heart. Why does this scare you?”

Eli scrubbed at his face, understanding what she was saying but not sure she could ever get what he was saying. “My whole life,” he rasped. “My whole life I wanted somebody in my life that good. And I thought I had it, and then my parents found my copy of Magic Mike in my room and figured out what it meant.”

Margie gave him a sympathetic look. “Joe Manganiello?” she asked.

“Channing Tatum!” he retorted, and she chuckled.

“Who bears a striking resemblance to the man making fairy costumes upstairs, because he’s terribly in love with you.”

Eli blinked and then found a reluctant smile teasing his mouth. “They do sort of have the same mouth,” he admitted. “But you see what I mean.”

She nodded. “Padding,” she said softly. “Your parents kicked you out, and all of that protection you had in your heart against the bad stuff that could happen in the world, all of that disappeared. So now you have something—someone—really wonderful in your life, and you’re barely holding it together because you’re afraid it’s going to get ripped out of your arms again.”

Eli swallowed, ready to panic over again. “Yeah,” he said.

“Honey, all I can tell—besides the fact that even a blind woman could see how much that kid loves you and thinks what you’ve got going is forever—is to let the relationship strengthen you while you have it. You’re right. No one relationship can be counted on forever. Even if his heart is forever—and I think it is—fate and general cockup could screw you both over. But he’s willing to pour all this love into you, so take it. Take it and return it and let it make you stronger. Believe in it, even if it’s only for today or tomorrow or this month or this year. If things go wrong and somehow you lose him, be strong enough to tell yourself, ‘I was loved once for who I am, and I will be again.’ And value the time you spent with a really lovely human being. And maybe someday you’ll believe that it will last forever.” She gave a small smile. “Like I do. But I’m just a silly old woman and a hopeless romantic. Who cares what I think?”

He took a shuddery breath, feeling like maybe he could go back to his job and pull his shit together. “I do,” he said, standing up to kiss her on the cheek.

And he did. He did care. He didn’t start to believe he’d have Andy forever that night, but he started to treasure every moment they did have together.

When Andy’s mother started calling after Thanksgiving, begging her son to come home for Christmas, he’d started to repeat Margie’s mantra over and over again.

“I was loved once for who I am, and I will be again.”

Because he figured his time was up with Andy. Nothing as good as Andy Chambers was meant to last forever.

And Now

ELI STARTLED up from the chair in his office, where he’d nodded off after the sumps had cleared out the basement and the heat had been restored. The plumber had gotten started and planned to finish up in the morning, and he’d hit up the city to make sure they at least had potable water being delivered over the next few days. And he had a neatly inventoried list of how many gifts each kid had left in the piles—with a rating for what the gift might be. Socks and underwear were a one-star gift. A small stuffed animal was a two-star gift. A necessary smartphone for a kid going back to public school or starting a job search was a five-star gift, and so on.

Eli still had the original lists of what the kids had been going to get—he didn’t throw that away until February!—and the number of three-star and higher gifts that were littering the floor of the basement in a sodden heap was truly staggering.

He’d been formulating strategies and calling in favors to try to replace what they were missing for Christmas when his body had remembered that he’d gotten about four hours of sleep the night before and spent the morning freezing his ass off as he worked to unload the basement.

When he tried to place what had interrupted his sleep, he reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone, and saw texts from Andy.

I’ve got lots of gifts wrapped and ready to deliver tomorrow. Send me your finalized lists so we can see what else you need.

Eli blinked hard, and for the first time since he’d gotten jolted awake at 5:00 a.m., a little warmth started to creep into his chest.

You shouldn’t have to do this, he texted back. YOU’RE ON VACATION.

Whatever. Margie says you need to wake up, eat something warm, and go home and sleep. She told me you’d only listen to me, but I think she just didn’t want to hear your backtalk.

Eli chuckled, the humor surprising him. You lie—I’m an angel.

You are. You’re MY angel. Take good care of my angel, okay? Margie will tell me if you haven’t eaten and left in an hour. We’re a conspiracy, Margie and me. Listen to her.

“Eli!” Margie called as she walked down the hallway. “I’ve got a hot sandwich and coffee for you to get you home. Now move it!”

When he turned to Margie, he had a tired smile on his face, but it was a real one, and that was something. “You and Andy are tag-teaming me.”

“We are,” she agreed. “Is it working? Are you ready to—aw, baby.” She bustled in, a bag of takeout dangling from her hand. “You fell asleep at your desk, didn’t you?”

He nodded and yawned and looked at the clock. Oh Lord, 8:00 p.m. already? His phone buzzed again.

Eli? Are you eating?

Damn. Yes, I’m eating now. I’ll text you when I get home.

Okay. Promise?

I do. He paused because he wanted so much to say more, to tell Andy how much his support had meant during this miserable day. I love you, he texted instead. You’ve been so much help already. Your father’s a lifesaver.

You say that and I haven’t even told you about the plasterer that’s going to arrive the day after tomorrow. I’m sorry I couldn’t make it sooner.

Eli’s eyes burned. Are you kidding? The earliest we had for a plumber was December 28th. Your dad’s the BEST.

Yeah. But then, so are you. Love you back. EAT!!!!

Eli did, Margie briefing him on the kids and their day with the cold and the knowledge—running like wildfire gossip through the school—that Santa might be a little short on gifts this year.

“Oh no,” he groaned, mouth full of pastrami on rye. “I was hoping they wouldn’t find out!”

Margie grimaced, and she must have been really tired too, because her eyes grew bright and shiny. “You know what Lola said to me today?”

Eli girded himself. “What?”

“That if it was a choice between presents for her or presents for Josie, we needed to make sure Josie had her presents first. She said she knew that Santa didn’t always show up, but Josie still believed.”

Eli suddenly found it hard to swallow. “Wow,” he said after the bite finally went down.

“I’m saying,” Margie murmured softly.

“We’ve got to get those kids some presents,” he said with renewed fervor. He was wondering how many Andy could actually have. He’d promised a delivery the next day. How would he do that?

“Yeah.” She gave a bedraggled smile. “But first, you and me have to go catch our train and get home so we can come back tomorrow and fight some more.”

Eli nodded. The night before, Margie’s son had come to get her—he had a car and had known the night was going to be late. Most nights, Eli and Margie walked to the subway together, because they both lived in Williamsburg. Margie got off the stop after Eli, where her husband would be waiting to walk her home.

“Which we can do,” he said. “Thanks to my boyfriend.”

“He’s a keeper,” she said with emphasis.

“He is indeed.”

Together they finished up and left the night watch in charge of the house so they could go back to their homes and drop, exhausted, into their beds.

The next morning, Eli was awakened at 6:00 a.m. with a text telling him that the water had seeped through the walls in the kitchen and shorted out the freezer. Everything from Christmas cookies to the five turkeys they’d had stored in the giant freezer was inedible, and it’s not like the kids stopped eating.