Now, there were two possessions of the Judson McKay Harts in which they both took a mighty pride. One was Judson's brushed steel-bodied laptop that when new had been the envy of his father’s and his grandfather's. The other was Jan’s iPod touch. Had the queen of Rock herself lived in the flat above the airshaft, Jan would have let her share an earbud some day just to depreciate Her Majesty's platinum records hanging on the wall and self-aggrandizing iTunes library. Had Bill Gates been their neighbor, with all his tech treasures piled up in the next basement, Judson would have pulled out his computer every time he passed, just to see him wipe at his eyeglasses in envy.
So now the thin chords of Jan’s earbuds fell about her rippling and spinning like the silver strings of a spider web. They reached below her knee before looping back to her pocket which enclosed the music man as she called it. And then she pulled them out nervously and quickly. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or two splashed on the worn red carpet.
On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out the door and up the stairs to the street.
Where she stopped the sign read: "Big Macs. Tech Goods of All Kinds Buy and Sell." One flight up Jan ran, and collected herself, panting. Mac, large, too white and puffy, heartily looked the part of the popular sandwich.
"Will you buy my iPod Touch 16G 3rd generation?" asked Jan.
"I buy ipods," said Mac. "Take its cover off and let's have a sight at the looks of it."
Off was peeled the silicon case.
"One hundred and fifty dollars," said Mac, lifting the mass with a practised hand.
"Give it to me quick," said Jan.
Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Judson’s present.
She found it at last. It surely had been made for Judson and no one else. There was no other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside out. It was a calf hide executive hand-crafted briefcase simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meretricious ornamentation--as all good things should do. It was even worthy of The Notepad. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be Judson’s. It was like him. Softness and strength--the description applied to both. One hundred and 94 dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried home with the 8 cents.
With his laptop in that case Judson might be properly anxious about checking his inbox in any company. Grand as the computer was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old worn backpack that he used in place of a proper case.
When Jan reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her old discman and cracked the cases of discs collecting dust on the top shelf of a bookcase and went to work replacing the sound void made by generosity added to love. Which is always a tremendous task, dear friends--a mammoth task.
Within fourteen minutes the room was filled with Christmas carols being piped through the speakers attached to that spinning discman like it was Christmas 1998 all over. She looked at her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically.
"If Judson doesn't kill me," she said to herself, "before he takes a second look at that discman, he'll say we look like we belong either in a rest home or on Fullhouse . But what could I do--oh! what could I do with forty four dollars and eight cents?"
1 comment:
Every bit as good as the first Gift of the Magi I dare say.
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