Christmas, 1966

by Tighe Flatley

Padraig O’Toole and Connor Murphy were drunk. Not just a-couple-of-pints-drunk, but all-day-whiskey-beer-another-whiskey-eyes-fogged-over drunk.

For a Saturday in Manhattan in 1966, this wasn’t unusual for the two. Every paycheck and day off was spent at The Landmark Tavern on 46^th Street and 11^th Avenue, a spot on the west side where no one else wanted to go. Given that it was Christmas Eve, there was even more to celebrate. It had been snowing for a day straight and the bar was warm.

“It’s nearly 8 o’clock,” Padraig said. “We should have some grease, some chips.”

“You had some an hour ago,” Connor said.

“Was it now?”

Connor left Ireland for New York with his ma when he was three years old, meeting their father in America. The Murphys crashed into a two bedroom space on the west side of Manhattan, the O’Toole family two floors down, both boys the same age. They went to—and dropped out of—school together before starting work, Connor on construction sites and Padraig as a cop, because he knew a guy, American dollars shoved down into wool pockets.

Once Connor was making enough cash he moved into a two bedroom flat in the neighborhood—an apartment with its own bathroom, a twin-sized bed to call his own. He invited Padraig, who worked nights, to take the spare bedroom. The two men passed each other in shifts, seeing evidence of life in the home while the other was out. It was like a mouse claiming residency in your kitchen, Connor thought. You know it’s there, you just have to learn to live with it.

Now Connor and Padraig had known each other for nearly forty years, longer than anything.

“Shall we wrap it up?” Connor asked, pushing an empty glass toward the bartender, his knuckles cracked with cold slashes of red.

“Ach, one more,” Padraig said. “I haven’t got work for two days and neither do you. What’s keeping us?”

A few blocks east, shoppers scrambled in department stores for final Christmas gifts, grabbing whatever dolls and trains and candies they could to bring back to the Upper East Side or Connecticut, hoping the trains would outrun the snow and ice. Connor had gone one evening a few weeks prior, just to see the windows. There, he saw a wallet of fine leather, black as soot; he thought of Padraig. A gentleman deserves a nice wallet, he mumbled to himself, surprised at the thought of it.

He left the store without it, shoving his numb, ashen hands into worn jacket pockets. The wallet kept coming back to him, though; he’d come home at night, blurry from whiskey, adding up the bills in his dresser to see if he could afford it. It came to mind when he opened his can of beer after work, watching Padraig leave for a shift, his badge loose in his pocket.

Connor’s mother always said men drank to forget, but Connor was doomed to drink to remember. All summer and through the fall, whenever he drank, he considered what happened the night of the last snowstorm. With each sip, he’d further unlock a box that stayed clasped shut and silent, hidden away, in his sober hours.

It was last March, when a squall came screaming through New York. It dropped into the 20s, a freak storm, on a night the men stayed out until the early hours of the morning and the bartender pushed them home. Neither of them had brought their jackets. They ran to their apartment, where the heater had already been off for three weeks and the kitchen window was left open. A wool blanket, sent from back home three years prior, was large enough for Padraig’s twin bed, twice over.

“Ach, climb in before you freeze your arse to death,” Padraig had told him. Connor said nothing but went in, facing the wall, teeth chattering because of the cold or because of nerves or who could say what else. He felt a push against his thigh as he fell asleep. It was there again in the morning—nothing more, but a push nonetheless.

The men never discussed it. But it always came to Connor’s mind, sitting across from his friend, when the whiskey flowed, as it did this Christmas Eve.

“I’m calling it,” Connor said, turning his glass upside down.

“These ones are on me tonight,” Padraig said. “Happy Christmas.”

Connor noticed the wad of dollar bills, plucked from Padraig’s pocket in a wrinkled ball.

The snow continued to fall as they walked north, shuffling on blanketed sidewalks, and up the four flights of stairs to a cold apartment.

“I want to show you something,” Padraig said, leaning against the doorframe.

He stumbled into the tiny kitchen and opened the cabinet above the stove. He reached up toward the top and brought down a flat, rectangular box.

“This is for you,” he said, and left it on the counter.

Connor could practically hear the snow melting off of his boots and onto the floor. He moved toward the counter and grasped one end of the box, pulling the top off slowly, slowly. Inside were two gloves, a leather of warm brown, like Jameson in a glass.

“Your hands are cracked to hell, mate,” Padraig said. “You need something.”

Connor said nothing. He turned around to go to his room.

“Ach, don’t be a pisser about it,” Padraig said, before seeing Connor come back with a box of his own and handing it to him.

Padraig looked down silently, waiting a moment, swaying a bit back and forth before lifting the top off of the box. There, the wallet sat in tissue paper, delicately placed on top as if sitting in snowfall.

“Look at us,” Padraig finally said. There was no more to say out loud, and they weren’t sure where to go next. It didn’t matter. The boxes that had been hidden and stitched shut were finally opened. There was no putting them back now.

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Tighe Flatley spends his days directing marketing campaigns, his early mornings writing and his late evenings editing. He lives in San Francisco where he is a founding member of the Page Street Writers. If you need him, he's usually by the snack table.