Chapter Three

Bobby

The woman waved at me from her open door and bent down to grab her Chinese food. It was my last delivery of the afternoon, and I needed to get home and get ready for my next gig.

When I moved into my studio apartment, I told myself I wasn’t going to keep delivering food for much longer, that I was going to relax and slow down for a while. I’d worked nonstop trying to save the house for so long, and it was time to relax.

Unfortunately, that didn’t work out. The first year I was here, I spent tons of extra shifts just keeping up with the credit card payments. But as I paid them down and got rid of one then two then a third, it had become a habit. And now, I was trying to save up enough to get a one-bedroom apartment.

Funny how dreams changed. Once upon a time, my dream had been about building that garden with the little gnomes and the covered swing. Now, it was hoping that I could sleep in a different room from where I cooked my food, ate my food, and watched television.

My place wasn’t awful, just small.

I didn’t mind working all the time either. Delivery was kind of fun. Most of the people were like the lady I just delivered to—big smiles on their faces, grateful for the food I brought. And while the money was sometimes better than others, it was always worth doing.

Two years later after my big move, I was pretty close to debt-free and had most of a down payment for a new place saved up. I called that pretty good. By the end of this season, I was going to be financially solid. That was, if “solid” didn’t include having a savings account because once I moved, that would be gone too. But I was better off than I had been since Daddy died, and I was proud of it. He would be too.

Daddy made me promise that I would be okay without him, that I would find my place in this world, would accept the help of others, and wouldn’t stay alone. I’d managed to do most of those and maybe one day, I’d meet someone to make my promise of not being alone come to fruition. I hadn’t been ready for years, but lately I’d been thinking it was time.

I went home, showered, and got into my costume for the new part-time gig I’d picked up. I was a Drummer Boy at the mall’s Christmas-with-Santa pavilion—well, one of them. I looked more like a toy soldier with a drum in the getup they gave me than a drummer, but the money was pretty good and, while I still wasn’t a huge fan of Christmas, I was having a great time. Christmas wasn’t ever going to be my favorite season, but this year I didn’t mind it so much. That was pretty huge, if you asked me.

Would I rather be whisked off to a cabin in the woods, sitting by the fireplace, wearing my little clothes, playing with my blocks with Rooney, and drinking hot cocoa while eating copious numbers of cookies and candy canes? Absolutely. But I was doing okay.

I arrived at the mall for my shift, taking over for Ron, the daytime Drummer Boy. He looked exhausted—he always did by the time I got there. He wasn’t good with the kids and found them very stressful. If a child tugged on my drum, wanting to give it a whack with the stick, I’d just kneel to their level, give the drumsticks to them, let them hear how bad the fake drum was, and they’d be on their way. Easy peasy.

Ron felt this unnecessary need to protect the drum—a fake drum at that—and would try to talk kids out of doing it. That didn’t make him a fan favorite and made it more far more stressful for him than it needed to be. I tried to explain that to him numerous times but eventually gave up. If he wanted to work extra hard for the same money, let him.

I made the motions of hitting my drum— boom, boom, boom, boom —as the kids lined up, ready to see Santa and tell him all their wishes and dreams. From where I was, I could hear a lot of the lists. Most kids wanted a toy—not always one that existed but a toy. A few wanted electronics, like a computer “like my dad’s” or a video game “like my brother Stan’s.” All of those were expected, par for the season.

Santa would tell them he had to check his naughty-and-nice list and that he wasn’t sure if he had enough of those items in stock, but he’d see what he could do. It was a nice way to let the kids down easy if those weren’t things their parents wanted them to have—or if budgets decided they were out.

But today had been particularly difficult. I heard one little boy ask Santa for a kidney for his grandma. Another asked if Santa could bring his mommy back from deployment. Yet another asked for an apartment instead of sleeping in their car.

How I longed to be the one to grant them any of those wishes. But I couldn’t. All I could do was give them smiles and let them beat my very off-sounding drum.

“Hey, soldier man!”

I looked down to see a young girl, maybe five, looking up at me with big blue eyes. I didn’t correct her that I wasn’t supposed to be a soldier—it didn’t matter. This was all pretend, not a school lesson.

“Yes, honey?”

“I see drum?” Maybe she was less than five, given her question. I was really bad at guessing ages.

I squatted to be more at her eye level. “Did you want to give it a hit?”

She looked at her mom, who nodded, and then grabbed the offered sticks and banged away on it for a few seconds.

“That is beautiful music.” I was lying. It was more thud than any drum should be. If I did this next year, I needed to find a secondhand real drum to use, one that didn’t sound like a kid banging a plastic bowl on their high chair.

She twirled around. “I a princess drummer!”

“Yes, you are, sweet girl.”

The elf to my left cleared his voice and tilted his head to the line to show me she was up next.

“And I think it’s your time to see Santa,” I told her.

That had her dropping the sticks and running up to her spot in line.

“You like your job, don’t you?”

I turned to see a woman standing there, one without a child. In one hand, she held a shopping bag, in the other, a cup of coffee.

“Yeah, I don’t mind it.”

“Do you ever do any side gigs?”

That caught me off guard. I had a feeling she didn’t mean food delivery, but still, the offer was unclear.

“It depends on what you mean.” I was careful with my words. If she meant something Christmas-related, I was possibly interested. If she meant something adult-related, odds were not so good. I hated to be so jaded, but I’d been propositioned by enough people while wearing this outfit here to know it could be either.

“We’re looking for people to dress up for a Christmas party. We have Santa already and a couple of elves too, but I’ve never seen a Little Drummer Boy before.”

I wasn’t sure if, technically, I was allowed to use my costume off-hours, but I was intrigued enough to worry about that later. “I could probably do that, if my schedule works.”

She took out a card and stuck it in my front pocket. “Now, do me a favor and don’t let the name of my job make you think it’s something it’s not.”

Now I was really curious.

“We just want people to be ready for our ‘little’”—she put it in air quotes—“Christmas party.”

And off she went. I didn’t know what the event was, but I sure knew what she meant by little. The odds were good she was talking about Chained, the local club Daddy and I talked about checking out years ago when we had enough money.

Later that night, I reached out to her. The gig was offering great money, a free pass to come back whenever I wanted, and lunch. There was no way I was turning this one down. I’d been little alone for so long that just the day pass was worth doing it for.

Maybe playing with some other littles was exactly what I needed for Christmas. One thing for sure; I was about to find out.