by E. F. Mulder
“Dad said to come get you.”
“He did, did he?” Rudy bear hugged his brother and spun him around. “Come on, let’s get you dressed in something fugly first.”
“The girls always win,” Dash said with a frown as Rudy set him down.
It was true. Girls’ clothes seemed to have a plethora of patterns and colors that were way more easily mismatched. “Well, maybe not this year,” Rudy said. “We’ll see what we can do.” He picked his little brother up again, then glanced back at Dondre before heading for the door. It might very well be their last school vacation sleepover together. The desperation to kiss his cousin was strong. Rudy did it with his eyes. The look in Dondre’s—when he locked them on Rudy before glancing away—said he understood.
“We’ll have to come back up here later and…fold all this stuff Ru.”
“Yeah,” Rudy said. “Later.”
The TV was on in the kitchen. The morning show host was chirping away about how much money The Pursuit of Happyness, Eragon, Charlotte’s Web, and Happy Feet—which Rudy had already taken Dash to see twice—had brought in at the box office over the holiday.
“Dashiell Winner! You march right back upstairs and put on something hideous.” Rudy’s mom folded her hands over her chest, but her smile gave her away.
Dash giggled.
Rudy smirked. “I used the blow dryer.” He’d colored his brother—his brother’s long johns, more accurately—using every jar of paint and magic marker he could find. Dash looked like a psychedelic zebra. Having stripes that went in every direction next to each other was more dizzying than the color pallet. Several shades of vomit brown created by mixing colors willy-nilly put next to red, purple, and pink didn’t hurt, though. “But be careful. He still might be wet.”
“It’s very original, Root Beer. You’re a great big brother.”
One who was old enough to outgrow his mother’s nickname, he thought—all the nicknames. Each family member seemed to prefer a different one.
“You look busted, Dashy,” Dondre said between sips of coffee. “And today, that’s a good thing.”
Rudy’s father flapped the back of his hand at his family as if shooing a fly. He was on the phone. “It’s my pleasure. I’m always glad when we can make a difference, especially this time of year.”
Russ Winner was a politician through and through. He was using his Town Councilman cadence, his elected official tone.
“Of course, it’s not just a holiday situation, so let’s make sure we keep it up after the New Year, as well.”
“If there is a New Year,” Rudy thought, rolling his eyes. His father was not a dumb man. Sometimes it seemed as if he chose to be ignorant.
“We’ll have a campaign ahead of us. Reelection is right around the corner, so we’ll want to get that into full gear January second. Family values…the constitution…America first…that’s what we’ll concentrate on.”
Their district was pretty conservative.
“Talk to you soon, Billy.” Rudy’s father hung up the phone. His sneer turned to half a smile quickly enough, as his children and his wife stood across from him clashing with the cabinetry and each other. The girls would be tough to beat. Cousin Vicky had on leopard leggings with a floral top in fuchsia and gold, plus a scarf the same shade as Rudy’s sweater. His sister, Connie, had chosen to stay in the same color family.
“Who knew there were so many yellows?” she asked.
“Or that they could look so nauseating all put together? I guess that’s why people don’t put mustard on a banana,” Rudy said.
“I wanted Dash to win,” Connie whispered as their little brother headed for the cereal cupboard. “Good job.”
Rudy didn’t take time to bask in the compliment. His ears perked up when he heard the TV anchor mention Sydney Morrison.
“You’ll recall he played little Skippy Funn on The Funn Family sitcom back in the nineties,” she said. “Well, now make-believe father and son have been reunited. When Morrison came out of the closet last month, it seems not everyone was supportive.”
“A lot of people tore me down,” Sydney Morrison said, his handsome ginger baby face taking up the whole screen. “But it was important for me to live in my truth. Brock was really there for me. My TV dad was more supportive than my real one, actually. ‘I’m gay,’ I said to Brock, and just like something out of the last act in our show, where everything turns out okay, Frank…Brock…he took my hands and—”
Rudy’s father flicked off the TV. “Hollywood fags.”
“Russ…” Rudy’s mom wrung the dishtowel in her hand.
“First Doogie Howser ruins How I Met Your Mother and now this fruit thinks we care who he unzips for.”
“Russ…”
Rudy’s heart twisted. He looked to Dondre. It wasn’t a shock, his father’s feelings on the matter. Still, the way he expressed them so freely, it really hurt.
“Let’s have breakfast.” Rudy’s mom smiled as she brushed by.
“It’s disgusting, and I don’t care what any liberal says, no father wants to hear those words coming from his kid.”
So, Rudy never spoke them.
* * * *
Nine years and almost a thousand miles away from that time and place, Rudy had replaced real love with other things.
“Suck it, StarlightStarbright!” He wallowed in his $147 victory, sitting at the desk in his huge master bedroom in his Bullhead Arizona home, reading his email from BuyBay.com on the latest Apple iPhone.
December 10, 2016
8:07 P.M. PST
Congratulations 90sFandemonium! With a bid of $147, you are the winner of item 348-91B, costume shoes worn by Brock Adamson on The Funn Family TV sitcom.
“I’ll resell them for a grand or more to some pathetic moron who believes all that fake TV crap is real.”
Some people liked reading. Some watched sports. Rudy Winner was into buying and selling. Granted, the online auction playing field might not have been level. He’d truly lived up to his name, though he wasn’t always thrilled with where it came from. The wealth Rudy had amassed surely gave him an unfair advantage on BuyBay. Whether the turnover was ten bucks or hundreds of thousands, however, as it was in Rudy’s everyday business ventures these days, there was a feeling he got from profiting on a flip, an adrenaline rush—a bump. Better to get it in a legal, non-addictive way, he figured, because he knew firsthand that drugs could fuck a person up.
“Maybe that Starman…Starwoman…whatever…will want them even more when I get Mr. Funn to autograph them.” Rudy had connections. “Or maybe I’ll just chuck ‘em into a wood chipper and stand there watching gleefully as they’re spit out in little pieces like chunky vomit.”
“You talking to me?” The guy Rudy had just fucked was dressing to leave.
“I was,” Rudy said, somewhat disappointed his repulsive metaphor had fallen on deaf ears.
“What’d you say?”
“Never mind. Not important.” Rudy didn’t even glance back to catch one last glimpse of his one night stand naked. That was how much he cared, even when he heard a small crash.
“Shit. I knocked over your lamp.” The dude had apparently stumbled while putting on underpants. “Sorry. The shade’s bent, but the bottom part’s okay.”
“Whatever.”
“Take it out of my check.”
Rudy stayed focused on his iPhone screen. “They’re just things.”
Rudy had a lot of things—artwork, designer clothes, expensive electronics, and antiques he kept in storage because they didn’t go with his modern décor. Some would call his home a mansion. The grounds were well manicured, all decorated with fresh pine boughs that would need spritzed daily, plus velvety red ribbon, and twinkling white lights for the holidays. The guy in his bedroom had put it all up.
“Okay. Well…see ya around, Rudy.”
“Maybe.” Rudy tossed an extra fifty on the bed for Tommy? Toby? Todd. That was it! Todd. “Someone has to water the greenery.”
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Once alone again, Rudy finished the transaction for Frank Funn’s shoes, and then checked the rest of his emails. There was one from his assistant. It was Melinda’s first Christmas working for Rudy. She wasn’t quite familiar with the process.
Thank you, Melinda, Rudy replied to her note. It’s not necessary to tell me what gift you got each person, just as long as everyone listed gets something.
Between his siblings, the cousins, and the rest of the family, business associates, and the Toys for Tots donations that made him feel good inside, there was a great deal of shopping to do. Rudy didn’t pick out a single item.
Cash bonuses for the postman, the UPS guy, etc. will be $250 this year. A hundred times their hourly wage will be the rate for the women who decorated inside the house today and the extra help we bring on for the quarterly functions. Same for the regular staff plus an extra $500. It’s been a good year and I want them to enjoy the holidays. Everyone is granted time off from Christmas Eve until January 3rd. I am greatly appreciative for those who help me throughout the year, which includes you, of course. Be sure to pick up something you like for yourself now or closer to the holidays up to $500 to go along with your stipend. Merry Christmas!
Rudy
Reading down the list of eight more emails—”Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Dash”—Rudy decided he could wait and look at them later. The ones from his mother were likely positive affirmations or maybe some song she’d stumbled upon that she really liked. Dash’s would just make him sad.
Rudy took a shower, read the Wall Street Journal front to back, and then tried to decide whether or not to head out for a nightcap. “Already been fucked, is there any point?”
Looking around the empty living room, noticing the tree for the first time, done by the professional decorator in all crystal and blue this year, and at the fireplace with blue stockings, Rudy recalled years of decorating with the family back in Utah. It was always an event. Each person had a job. Rudy was in charge of untangling the lights when he was little, back before Dash was even born, because he was the only one of the brood with the patience to do it, a real “never quit” attitude. Every decoration had meaning back then, a story or a memory. He remembered the year his mother announced one more Winner would soon be on the way.
“My sisters and I always wanted nine,” she’d said, standing in front of the tree holding up a red baby sock with fur around the top against her big belly. “It’s going to be a boy. We need a Dashiell.”
She hadn’t even had an amniocentesis. She’d set her mind on what she’d wanted, and sure enough, just after New Year’s 2001, she’d delivered Dash.
“He’s so little.”
“You were that little once,” Rudy’s mother had told him as he’d sat on the edge of her hospital bed at age eleven, holding the tiny bundle in his arms.
“The world didn’t end, and I got a baby brother. The new century is starting off pretty good.”
“Don’t mind your father.”
“Hmm, hmm, hmm…” Rudy had started humming. “What Child Is This?” was one of his favorite Christmas songs, so he sang it full out, even though the holiday season had come to an end several days earlier. His mother had closed her eyes and gently moved her head side to side on the hospital pillow. Then Rudy’s father had returned, and the look he’d shot Rudy’s way, it all came to make sense a couple years later on that car ride home from the holiday concert.
Dash hadn’t stayed little for long. By the time he was five, he was taller than all the other kids in kindergarten. When puberty hit, he’d shot up about a foot overnight. The last time Rudy had been home, three Christmases ago, at not even thirteen, Dash was nearly as tall as he was.
Rudy picked up a cow from the brass nativity scene on the sofa table. “I wonder how much this cost,” he thought. It had been a gift from one of his business associates the year before, which reminded him, he had to check with Melinda concerning the menu for the Christmas Eve soiree, and also for a head count. “Hopefully I can cut out early.”
The chime from Rudy’s iPhone cut into his thoughts.
“Hey, bro.”
“Dash. I was just thinking about you. How you doing?”
“You shouldn’t have to ask that. Brothers should know how brothers are.”
“Seven words in, you’re giving me shit?”
Dash laughed. “I’m good. So, I was thinking of coming over that way for Christmas…Mismatch Day, actually. Maybe we can—”
“I won’t be around.” Rudy pressed at his gut. “I have business out of town.”
“Dang it! We haven’t seen you since…2013.”
“I know.”
“Like, hardly at all since you went to college.”
“That’s not true.”
“It feels like it.”
Rudy was at the window, looking east, as if he could see his brother across the miles. “We skyped on your birthday.”
“That was eleven months ago.”
“Well, I found a gray hair since then, otherwise, nothing else has changed.”
“Premature graying comes from stress, dude. You’re not even thirty! How many screens are you looking at for business purposes while we’re talking?”
The answer was four, but Rudy lied some more. “None.”
“Yeah, right. Have you told Mom and Dad you’re not coming?”
“Haven’t been invited.”
“You’ve become so important you need an invitation now?”
“Ha-ha. I’ll talk to them soon. I’m busy, Dash.” Rudy looked at the family portrait on the grand piano, the whole bunch of them, Mom, Dad, brother, sisters, aunts, uncles, and cousins. How many Christmases ago was it taken? More than three, obviously. “Foreign markets don’t close for Christian holidays. I’m doing some stuff with a guy in Japan.”
“Cool…I guess. We need a baritone, though…and someone to be the racecar.”
Rudy smiled. “We haven’t played Monopoly on Christmas for years.” He didn’t mention the fact he hadn’t sung on Christmas for a while either.
“Maybe we oughta start again, now that I can compete.”
“Maybe.” Rudy had asked Santa for the game back when he was eight. It was his favorite “toy” of all time, though his sister and cousins debated whether or not it actually counted as one. Never overly thrilled with the endless board game, they became even less so over time, because Rudy always trounced them.
“I’d imagine Monopoly pales in comparison to being a real-life tycoon, huh?”
“Real life and board games have very little in common, baby bro. Board games come with a rule book.”
“You singing to anyone else these days?”
“Not lately, Dash.”
“I remember you singing to me all the time.”
“You do?”
“Of course.”
“You have a good voice, too, Dash. Ever thought of trying out for the school play or something?”
Dash snorted. “That’s gay stuff. No girl would come near me.”
Rudy twisted his window curtain in his fist. “Hugh Jackman does okay.”
“Wolverine?”
“Never mind.”
“Maybe I can come down for my birthday,” Dash said. “When do you get back from your business trip?”
“Not sure.”
“By summer?” The sarcasm was thick. “Maybe I can come when school gets out…or spring break.”
“We’ll see.” Rudy was pacing. The living room was so big he quit half way across it and turned around.
“I gotta figure New Year’s Eve in Vegas is something else.”
“Vegas is an hour away from me.”
“You trying to talk me out of visiting? You don’t want to see me?”
Rudy bit his cheek. His heart hurt. “Of course, I want to see you.” He had a whole other life now. The Rudy his relatives knew only showed up when he visited, which was less and less frequently as the years went on. “But I gotta go, Dash. Sorry. See ya s
oon.”
“I hope so.”
Rudy took a deep breath. “Me, too. Love ya.”
“Back atcha.”
The moment Rudy clicked off, he grabbed a light jacket and headed out the door. He drove about an hour, into Nevada, and then another thirty minutes. He was still in Vegas, technically, but it was the rundown seedier part. Rudy kept going. Where? He had no idea, not until he came to stop in front of a tacky little bar with those big old-fashioned Christmas lights around the entrance.
Elvis’s Vegas Sing-Along Bar the place was called. Sing with the king a red and green sandwich board outside the establishment read.
“Me, me, me, me.” Rudy shut off the car. “Not bad.” He got out and went inside.
Chapter 3: Gideon and Rudy
Gideon noticed the stranger’s shoes immediately. “Nice. Expensive.”
“What’s that?” Brett the bartender should have been used to Gideon talking to himself by now.
“Nothing.”
Gideon had a thing for shoes, and not just those worn on television. There were 117 on his handcrafted shelf, most of them singles. He imagined slipping the ones off the feet of the guy who’d just walked in to add to his collection. A lime green flip flop Gideon had snatched at the beach when he was fifteen started it all. It was the first time he had given into the temptation that had gnawed at him for years. Once he’d experienced the rush that followed, he knew he would never need drugs. The flip flop’s rightful owner had amazing feet. They were average size, a nine or a ten, and really sexy when wet, with the little thatches of hair on each toe dotted with water droplets. Gideon liked a hairy man. He loved hairy toes, though not so much in the prison showers.
Gideon had spent four days in jail for attempting to lift a single sneaker from a local gym locker room a couple years after that very first flip flop.
“You were trying to steal my shoe?” the angry owner had asked when he’d caught him in the act.
Guilty as charged, Gideon had thought, then said to a judge. The gym rat had been hell bent on pressing charges. He was muscular, with jet black hair and piercing brown eyes. The cop asked if he and Gideon were related. “You look a lot alike.”