Michael gave the cabbie a hundred dollar tip. “I know it’s too late to do any shopping, but . . . ”

“Hey, that’s okay,” the cabbie replied, fat flakes of snow collecting in the creased bill he held. “My kids’ll love the story. And the T-shirts.”

“I hope they do.”

The cabbie hesitated. “Do, uh, Satanists say merry Christmas?”

Michael laughed. “Merry Christmas.”

“Haha. Merry Christmas!” The cabbie drove off. Michael turned and looked at the house.

It was a brick house, two stories, with dormers looking out of a half attic. An electric lamp post, styled to look like a gaslight, threw light on the front yard and the pine wreath on the door.

He was such an outrage to the idyllic scene that he expected cops in quilted blue uniform jackets to burst out of hiding and wrestle him down into the snow. That’d make a video Christmas card, he thought. He heaved his flight bag higher on to his shoulder and approached the house.

He groped wetly under the right-hand hedge, picked up one rock that felt like a rock and put it back down, picked up another that was too light for its size, and had the artificial slickness of an imposter. A brass key was revealed when he twisted the bottom of the faux stone; it fit in the door’s keyhole.

He pushed the door gently open. The stairs were just inside the door — he heard nothing when he listened. It was so quiet in the house that he could hear the wind of his bundled passage into the foyer, his German greatcoat and trailing scarf displacing such a mass of air as to be audible.

He closed the door quietly behind him. His reflection passed like an oily black streak across the hall mirror. He went by the stairs, past the living room — where the dog on the rug huffed at him. He said, “Shush, Longstreet,” and the dog laid its yellow head back down on the floor.

He took off his coat and laid it across a chair in the kitchen. He ran his hands through his hair, long and two days unwashed, with gunk still in it from the shoot. Short hair was the fashion in the industry again, so he wore his long. Then, because it was hot in the house, he took off his sweatshirt and laid it on top of his greatcoat before making breakfast out of things he found in the refrigerator — bacon and eggs, orange juice from concentrate — the bracelets on his tattooed arms tinkling together.

Once he had the orange juice made he set the plastic pitcher in the refrigerator to chill. He noticed for the first time that there was already a pitcher of orange juice in the fridge, behind a two-liter of Mountain Dew. He said, “Oops.”

He turned around, and saw his father peeking around the corner.

“Michael!” his dad beamed. “You made it!”

“When did I ever miss Christmas?” They came together and embraced; they thumped each other’s backs.

“Last year you missed Christ — ”

“I was here at four thirty!”

“You missed Christmas morning.”

“I was here for Christmas dinner.”

“But all the gifts were from you.”

They stood back from each other. They looked at each other, silent. Michael’s dad was wearing a dark blue bathrobe over his white and blue pinstriped pajamas. He was a little grayer than Michael remembered.

“I knew you weren’t a burglar. Burglars don’t say ‘oops’,” Michael’s dad said.

“Or fry bacon, I’d imagine.”

“You look like a burglar. Why didn’t Longstreet let me know you were here?”

“Hell, Longstreet recognizes me.”

“I hardly recognize you. Is that a new thing there on your arm?”

“Tiger. Got it in Chiba, Japan.”

“Nobody hires a man with tattoos, son.”

Michael smiled. “I’m finished after I get out of rock and roll. Where’s Mom?”

“Sleeping. I’ll go get her, she’ll want to know that you’re here.”

Minutes later his mother was in the kitchen in a bathrobe that matched his dad’s. “There you are, Michael!” She said as they hugged. “Honey, why are you cooking? Are you too big to let your mother cook for you?”

“I was starving! I’ve eaten nothing but road food and Chinese takeout for two weeks.”

“You should have woken me up!”

“Mom, it’s 6:45.”

“I remember Christmases when you got me up at — ”

“I’m twenty-five now, Mom.”

“Honey,” his mother frowned, “when’s the last time you washed that hair?”

“They wouldn’t let me wash it for the video shoot for two days, and then I got straight on the plane, so I’m thinking I might use your shower.”

His dad had spooned the steaming eggs and bacon on to three plates and laid them on the table. “Ezra’s going to be here at ten,” his dad said, “with his wife and David.”

“Did my packages arrive okay?” Michael asked, forking up heaps of egg.

“Sure, safe and sound,” his dad nodded. “What is that, a dinette set?”

Michael grinned. “Just a few things, you know.”

“A few boxes, a few crates. They had to send two UPS men to carry the packages to the house.”

“Edward, they did not!” His mother admonished. “I’m sure they’re lovely, Mike.”

“Well, I have a confession to make.” Michael pulled a long black hair out of his mouth when he felt it tickle his lip. “I sent my assistant Adrian to do some of the buying, I’ve been so damn busy. I gave a list of what to get — you know, gave certain parameters — but I didn’t do all the shopping.”

His father was eating the bacon. “What happened with that problem you had with the record company?”

“Oh, the bullshit never really stops, Dad. But whenever you put out a new album, right away it’s video shoots and promos. And the tour starts in two weeks, of course.”

“Geraldine said the kids are all talking about that Emulator album,” his mom told him. Geraldine was a friend of hers who taught ninth grade. The name of the album was actually Emasculator, but Michael didn’t correct her.

Instead he said, “Cool.”

“Is Adrienne someone you’ve known a long time?” His mother asked, and Michael could hear the way she pronounced it as a woman’s name.

“I’ve know him about a year, Mom. He’s great. I wouldn’t know my ass from a teacup without him. Course, he works for the record company, so he’s also my watchdog. In that capacity he can be a pain.”

There was a lull as they chewed. Michael looked out the sliding door. The snow was thinning out; Ezra wouldn’t have any trouble getting there.

Michael leaned over to rummage in his overnight bag, which he’d put in one of the two empty chairs. He fished his cell phone out of it and checked to make sure the ringer was on, and that there was a good battery charge.

“I see that same Buick’s still in the front yard, Dad,” Michael said suddenly.

“Runs like a Swiss watch, too,” his Dad declared proudly. “It’s run like a Swiss watch for twelve years.”

“You know, I could — ”

“Won’t hear of it. That’s a damn loyal car. I might as well trade your mother in, as that car.”

“Yeah! Michael speaking.”

“Mike?”

“Uh huh. Adrian, hi. Merry Christmas.” Michael became consciously aware that he was holding this conversation on the “Christmas.” He opened his eyes and sat up.

“How’s the family? You holding up okay?”

“Yeah, fine. They’re fine. Got in around six. I was just taking a nap on the couch here. With my cell phone in my hand.”

“Mike — you’ve got to understand, the company won’t have an official say on the video till the 27th or so, but Rimbaud . . . the whisper is Rimbaud really likes it.”

“Rimbaud can get down on his knees and put a smile on my face.”

“He’s an influential— ”

“Fuck his influence. Amnesia sold three and a half million copies. He needs me more than I need him, and it’s time somebody lit the bulbs in sequence for him.”

“Well, he likes the video. Speaking of sales, Emasculator’s moving briskly this Christmas season . . . ”

“Rimbaud wanted big changes in Emasculator . . . ”

“Well, you were right on this one. You should hit your first quarter million units by the first of the year, if the post-Christmas slump isn’t too bad.”

“Great.”

“Oh, and there aren’t going to be any charges with Ben’s statutory rape thing in Ohio.”

“Right, like we figured. Not enough difference; Ben was barely twenty-one and the girl was . . . what the hell was it, a month short of eighteen?”

“Three weeks short of eighteen. This kind of shit happens every time in Cincinnati.”

The conversation paused. Michael’s heart thumped in his chest; he took a deep breath. Static crackled on the line. Michael didn’t even ask the question Adrian answered.

“Mike, there’s been a delay. They said they’d have it today, but with the holiday and everything . . . ”

”What do you mean, a delay? Why are there HIV test delays?”

“They said they’d call me back. Either it’ll be later today or before the end of the week.

Mike, look, what can I say? They come highly recommended. Highly. Geffen runs some of their big people through this place, okay?”

“Look, Adrian — it’s not your fault. Don’t sweat it.” Michael slumped on the couch and closed his eyes for a moment. He was so exhausted, he thought he’d fall back asleep. “I’m glad they like the video.” I almost missed Christmas making it, he thought silently. “Start with the medical news next time, okay? I give a fuck about Rimbaud.”

“Sorry.” It was Adrian’s automatic professional tone. Michael knew exactly what to do about that. He hung up.

Michael always wanted to apologize to Adrian’s professional tone, but when he apologized Adrian stiffened up more, which made Michael apologize more, which led nowhere.

The packages he’d sent were stacked under and around the tree. They looked like a small dinette set. No, they don’t, Michael thought. The shipping crates had looked a little like a dinette set for dolls, or children — four cardboard boxes, each with a twelve cubic foot capacity. But his parents had unpacked the shipping crates (without looking he knew they were in the garage) and tried to fit the fifty-one wrapped packages under the tree. But the gifts from his parents were already there, so Michael’s marched out like suburbs from the tannenbaum. Michael, Adrian and some others had wrapped them in a seven-hour smacked-up dream frenzy, and all things considered they’d come out pretty nicely. There was a color scheme of red and green for the larger ones, with the smaller ones in silver and gold. They’d skipped ribbons because ribbons would have become hopelessly squashed in the packing crates, but now Michael noticed that his mother had put red ribbons on all but the silver packages, to which she had affixed white.

The doorbell rang and Michael heard the front door open. Ezra’s voice: “Hello! Mom? Dad? Hello?” More quietly his wife Shauna: “Go find grandma.” In a draft of cold air, David’s little feet came running down the hall and Michael’s six-year old nephew peeked into the living room.

The cell phone slipped out of Michael’s limp hand and landed on his overnight bag. “Hi, David! It’s your uncle Michael.” Michael smiled, as much at his vision of himself, the notorious rock ‘n’ roll fiend, growling, “Hi, David, it’s your uncle Michael!” from the Christmas tree suburbs, as because of seeing his nephew. In his vision, he stuck out his tongue and thrashed his head obscenely while David quailed in terror.

In life, he held his arms out and David ran into them. “Whoa! You must be a foot taller!” Michael told him. David’s father followed him into the living room. Michael and Ezra greeted each other. His parents repeated their earlier scene, coming down in their bathrobes from where they’d been watching the TV in their bedroom. Michael slumped on the couch and watched the embracing and cheek kissing and thought with amusement what a pity Norman Rockwell was dead. Two older people in deep plush bathrobes and pinstriped pajamas, red-cheeked adult son in his Carhart jacket, the slender daughter-in-law in a red wool overcoat the color of her hair, and six-year old David in an oatmeal cable knit fisherman’s sweater, once his little red ski parka had been stripped off (Grandma: “Let’s get this cold jacket off you, honey.”).

Michael witnessed this little tableau, and felt the heroine craving drag at him like a hook through his cheek. He was reluctant to shoot up at home, and he’d known ahead of time that he was going to be reluctant to shoot up at home. Which would have been all right, except that shooting had run late and everybody had scattered for Christmas without any time for a wrap party. Michael had run for the plane with so little time to spare that his plan B, to shoot up before the flight and fly on the plane, fell apart when he found a cop taking a leak in the airport men’s room. With only ten minutes to takeoff, he had no choice but to board. His stash and needles were in his shaving kit, made to look like a prescription. But he didn’t want to do it on the plane. He knew what they did to you if you smoked in there; for getting high they probably shot you and dumped you out over Youngstown. So now he’d been a week without.

“Are we going to open presents?” David was asking.

“Presents? Are there presents this year?” Michael’s dad feigned surprise.

Ezra still had to bring the presents from his family in from the truck, and now there was a real situation in the living room, trying to arrange the presents and the people and still have places to put the coffee cups and get good camera angles, especially on David. Ezra quickly took charge, deftly directing Michael and their dad in maneuvering gifts and furniture while simultaneously letting their dad think it was all his idea. Ezra had a lot of professional experience doing the same thing in his landscaping-and-swimming-pools in the summer and snowplowing-in-the-winter business.

“How were the roads, Ezra?” their dad asked while he stacked what Michael knew was a DVD system for Ezra on top of something for David wrapped in cheerful cartoon reindeer paper.

“Fine. Truck got through, no problem. How about your flight, Mike?”

“I wasn’t driving the plane, you know, but we got in on time. So I guess everything went okay.”

“Weather report for tomorrow says eight inches,” their dad announced. “Might be a good idea to save some leftovers.”

“Are we ready?” David sang.

“We’re ready!” Michael declared. The faster they started, the faster they’d finish. “You’re first, little man. Before you pop.” He handed David the first present.

“Wait! Wait!” Michael’s mother yelled from another part of the house. “I’m not there yet!”

Then it was a profusion of flashbulbs and the rip-pop of packages being sliced open. Ezra deputized Michael to keep the spent wrapping paper and the appearing-like-faerie-mushrooms stacks of shirt boxes out from under foot and coffee cup. Shauna volunteered to assemble David’s toys as they were revealed.

“I assembled you, I can assemble this jet fighter,” she told David’s doubting face.

Michael smiled secretly; he knew there was an evil jet fighter under the tree as well, the better to stage dogfights with.

Michael’s mom noticed that he hadn’t opened a gift yet and handed him one. “One for me?” Michael asked, opening it.

“There’s more than one for you,” his dad said.

“Oh, a Discman! Cool!” Michael searched the paper for the tag. “Thanks, Ezra and Shauna. And it’s got the kind of earphones I like.”

“I remember you told me the last one got killed on the tour bus...” Ezra shrugged in completion.

“Yeah, yeah . . . ” Michael pretended to study the CD player. He knew perfectly well what one looked like, but he’d accidentally kicked the last one to death fucking a groupie in Austin. He couldn’t remember with what fate exactly he’d told Ezra the little unit had met, so he avoided the issue by appearing fascinated with its successor. He was relieved to see Shauna hand Ezra the DVD system.

“That’s a heavy one,” she remarked.

“From Michael,” Ezra noted. Their dad made a little noise meant to convey the idea that the origin of the package was no surprise.

“Mom,” Michael asked suddenly, “where’s the candy?”

“Oh, I forgot,” his mom realized. “In the kitchen cupboard. Would you go get it?”

In the kitchen, Michael heard from the living room Shauna and Ezra’s delight in the DVD system — they took their entertainment electronics seriously. Michael smiled as he poured peanut M&Ms and Hershey’s Kisses into a steel mixing bowl.

He thought with regret that his bag was in the living room. Under the couch.

But a big bowl of blood-sugar additives would limp along as a substitute.

With childish delight, Ezra had already unboxed the DVD player, and had it in his lap when Michael returned to the living room and found a place to put down the candy dish. Michael’s cell phone rang just as he was putting a handful of M&Ms in his mouth.

Ezra looked quizzically at the machine in his lap and his dad laughed uproariously.

“My phone, my phone,” Michael slurred around the chocolates. “Excuse me. Go ahead, I’ll be right back.” He went back into the kitchen as the next package was taken up.

He opened the phone up. “Michael speaking.”

“Hi, Mike. It’s Sammi.”

“Hi, Sammi,” Michael said, to fill up the icy fear-space around his heart. “Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas,” she replied faintly. Michael waited silently, his lips pressed together. But ten seconds passed without Sammi speaking, so Michael again filled the gap.

“Did you get your test results?”

She mumbled something that Michael couldn’t hear. He asked her to repeat.

“They were inconclusive.” She said.

“Inconclusive?” Michael was incredulous. She mistook it for annoyance.

“Some kind of lab error or something,” she said defensively. “They want me to come back in the twenty-seventh.”

“I’m not saying it wasn’t a lab error, I’m just saying these tests are goddamned important and maybe they should be careful with them.”

“I’m sorry, Mike. I don’t know what to do.”

“Don’t be sorry, I’m not mad at you. It was a lab error. You’re doing what you can do, by going back in. Besides, my results are due today, so I’ll know one way or the other, and you’ll have at least an idea.” His confidence was genuine, because what he said was true. But he designed his tone to override the literal message of “Nobody knows nothing,” with one of “Everything’s fine!”

Sammi had called him at the video shoot in Vancouver to tell him that a production assistant sometimes-boyfriend of hers had tested HIV positive ten days before. This was problematical for Michael because Sammi was a girl-guitarist he knew from his slumming days on the L.A. club scene. He hadn’t seen her in almost a year when serendipity had tossed her in his path while he was planning a Mexican vacation in order to rest and relax before Emasculator’s release and the attendant frenzy. In the L.A. club days, Michael and Sammi had just been friends. But when Michael ran into her in a guitar shop on the Sunset Strip, all he could think about was flying this girl to Mexico and fucking her for two sweaty weeks. As it turned out, Sammi had been thinking just about the same thing. Her only addition was her San Diego girlfriend Taffy. Taffy was occasionally employed as a lot of things, and had turned Sammi on to bisexuality since Michael had last seen her.

When Michael went back in the living room, David was strafing the good fighter jet, in his mother’s lap in the last stages of assembly, with the evil fighter jet, still in the box. He alternated the tone and frequency of his machine-gun noises, which Michael intuitively understood to mean that the good jet was firing back.

“Okay!” Michael said, rubbing the back of his hand across his face, “is there one for me?”

Michael could tell by the shape and firmness of the package he was handed that it was a sweater. “Are you okay, Mike?” his mother asked.

“What? Sure, fine. ‘From Mom.’ Hmm . . . Looks like a sweater,” he said cheerfully. “You can never have too many good sweaters.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Shauna asked. “You look a little pale.”

“Oh, a little tired. It’s been a busy week, but its nothing a shower won’t improve.” He tore the package open and praised the sweater, making his mother smile.

Another round of presents began. Michael realized that his lips were pressed together and his brows were knitted. He made a conscious effort to relax his face. He laughed inappropriately: Ezra and David looked at him, their heads turning like mirrors of each other.

He blankly watched Ezra unwrap a coffee cup. Sammi’s boyfriend is positive. Did they use condoms? They might have. “So I’m getting checked,” is all Sammi said. “You should, too.” Did that mean condoms or not? In Mexico, he hadn’t been entirely scrupulous in practicing safe sex. He always was, normally, but two weeks fucking and you got sloppy. What were the rates? What were the rates? He’d heard that if you fucked an infected person you had something like a one in ten chance of being — or was it one in one hundred (suddenly one in fifty sounded right)? But if you fucked an infected person twenty times, what happened then?

Shauna was thanking his mother for a pair of chinos. “You should see this ham I got on sale,” his dad was saying to Ezra. “A preChristmas sale on ham! I couldn’t believe it.”

He tried to remember how many times he’d done it with Sammi in Mexico. He couldn’t. He remembered Sammi and Taffy and he had found a beach . . . twice with . . . no, once with each on the beach.

He put more M&M’s in his mouth. What kind of Christmas parties did they have at these HIV clinics to be fucking everything up like this?

“Hey, Michael, here’s one for you.”

“Huh? Oh, thanks, Ezra.” Michael had to raise himself up out of his chair and fully extend his arms, bracelets tingling, to take the present from his brother.

“A girl at the credit union just got a tattoo,” remarked Shauna. “A little heart surrounded with ivy vines. Do they hurt much?”

“They always hurt a little,” Michael replied. “You get used to it. You can put antiseptic skin cream on it to make it heal faster.” He pointed at the new tiger on his forearm. “I had this done in Japan, in Chiba, outside Tokyo. It’s six colors, so it took about five hours.”

“Can I get a tattoo?” David asked.

Shauna asked, “Can’t you catch hepatitis getting a tattoo?”

“No, baby,” David’s grandmother shook her head at the boy.

“I’m very particular about clean needles,” said Michael, and tore open the present in his lap. He was just remarking on how nice a pair of jeans it was when the kitchen phone rang. His mother got up to answer it and entreated everyone to open nothing further until she returned.

“I’ve got to use the bathroom,” Michael said. “Here, Dad,” he offered, “let me get that out from under your feet.” He picked his way across the room, dodging David and his plane as they flew by, and pulled his bag out from under the couch. He left his cell phone on the coffee table and went up the stairs two at a time.

There wasn’t room to set his bag down on the sink, so he set it down on the floor. He pulled his dopkit out of the bag and undid the long zipper with one medically efficient pull.

He had his solution already prepared, so he wouldn’t have to cook. He fitted a new syringe together and started groping in the dopkit for the vial of smack. Michael used a new needle and a new syringe absolutely every time he shot up. His habit only amounted to twice a week or so, but absolutely every time it was a new needle. AIDS was an awful new x in the “algebra of need,” a beast that was prepared to eat you slowly, and from the inside out. Michael was very careful about his needles.

He was having his AIDS scare the old-fashioned way: dick first.
His dad’s tread started coming up the stairs. His eyes flicked up to watch the door. Unaware of it, he held his lower lip in his teeth. His dad’s feet came closer but Michael’s fingers never stopped. He found the vial. He took it out, he uncapped it and sucked a small amount of the solution into the syringe. His dad passed by in the hall.

To hide the needle tracks he never shot up in the arm. Instead, he injected himself either between the toes or in the femoral artery in his leg, high enough up so that his pubic hair disguised it. He sat down and unlaced his boots. They had seven eyelets on each side.
His dad went by again on the way back down the stairs.

The tedium of it made Michael want to scream.

If you had sex with an infected person, what was your chance of becoming infected? He’d used up a considerable number of condoms in Mexico . . . but let’s admit it, he thought to himself. You didn’t use as many condoms as hard-ons.

He yanked his boots off. Two quick pulls and he was sockless. He lined the needle up between the first and second toes on his right foot because he was right handed and he sat Indian fashion.

He made out his mother’s voice downstairs saying, “Merry Christmas,” then the noise of her hanging up the phone.

One more minute for the first rush of it, and then I’ll go back downstairs without anything seeming weird, Michael thought to himself with satisfaction. The ball of his thumb was on the plunger. But then he heard the chirruping beep of his cell phone ringing. On the coffee table, where he’d left it. Downstairs.

“There’s your DVD again!” His dad laughed in the living room.

Michael yanked the needle out from between his toes. Chirrreepeepeepeepeep. He slapped the needle into his flight bag, along with the vial and extra syringes. His teeth were grinding together and he felt like he was burying his brother.

“Michael, your phone’s ringing!” His mom called up the stairs.

“Yeah, I can hear it!” He flushed the john, zipped up his bag. “I’m coming!”

Chirrreepeepeepeepeep.

He left his dopkit on the bathroom sink and trotted down the stairs. He popped into the living room. His dad had answered the phone.

“He’ll be available in just a couple of minutes, if you can wait. Who’s calling, please?” Pause. “Is that a man or a woman’s name?”

“Thanks, Dad,” Michael smiled broadly to disguise the fact that he was snatching the phone out of his father’s hand. “Hello?”

“Michael?” the phone said.

“Adrian! Merry Christmas! Yes, yes, here with the family.” He asked his family to excuse him by grinning at them. “It’ll just be a minute,” he said sotto voce. He stepped into the kitchen.

“Adrian?”

“Negative, Michael. You’re results are negative.”

Michael loved Adrian because he was the kind of guy who would start a conversation with, “Negative.” Some rock stars had assistants who would have said, “Michael, your results have come in.” Then they would have paused.

Michael was very glad not to be one of those rock stars.

“Meaning they did not find the virus?”

“Meaning the blood test did not detect evidence of the virus. These results indicate that you don’t have HIV.”

In the living room, they heard Michael say, “That’s terrific! Excellent! Merry Christmas to you, too, Adrian!”

“Can we open some more presents, now?” David asked his mother; he had sensed the change in psychic climate. Shauna shook her head. “Wait until your uncle comes back,” she whispered.

“Now, these tests are very, very reliable,” Adrian said, “but to be absolutely certain the record company would like you to be retested in two weeks — ”

More quietly, Michael said, “Sure, yeah, of course. Whatever you say. Wait, won’t

that — ”

“ — right before the tour.” Adrian finished.

“Oh! Fine, fine.” Michael had completely forgotten that he’d asked Adrian not to tell the record company, to handle it privately.

There was a silence. “Okay!” Michael broke into it. “Merry Christmas, Adrian! Catch you on the flip side!”

“Merry Christmas, Michael. See you in the New Year.”

Michael rubbed his hands together as he re-entered the living room. “Alright, who’s next?” David lunged for a present to hand to his grandma.

“Oh, shit!” Exclaimed Michael. Everyone froze. “I’m sorry, I’ve got to make a phone call. Just be a minute.” He waved one hand around briskly to emphasize the intended speediness. David looked tortured.

“Well, you must have got some good news over the phone,” his mother said.

Michael’s wild grin froze in place. The whole room was looking at him expectantly, their own smiles growing because they though he was being theatrical in his pause.

“Emulator is going to break a quarter million by New Year’s!” He cried.

“Cool!” Ezra said in spite of his grown up self — his voice sounded for that moment just as it had when he was eighteen.