Santa Claus washed down the little red pill with a shot of Kentucky Bourbon, 100-Proof. He rubbed his left thigh, still a little wet with urine from the snot-nosed kid who peed on him as his mother yanked the child up by its pudgy arms and carried him down the street. Damn kid, thought Santa, pulling a crumb from his thick white beard, still damp with sweat from the Houston heat. “I’m gonna shave this thing off next year,” he said aloud.

He sat alone at the bar, still wearing the piss-stained Santa suit, unwilling or unable to quick-change into his own rags--a tight-fitting work shirt he’d worn the last four days, and an old pair of Levi jeans he’d picked up at a Salvation Army for just $5.50. Don’t want them to smell like piss, he thought.
     He’d frequented the bar four nights in a row, since the Santa business was pretty good this year, people having heavy consciences and all, and since they kept filling his pot with loose change, a dime here, a quarter there, even sometimes a wadded buck. His sign didn’t actually say Salvation Army. It said Feed the Hungry. Since folks assumed “the hungry” meant faceless children in the netherworld and not he himself, who was, in fact, actually very hungry most of the time, they were more than willing to clunk some change into his big, fat pot.
He’d collected $128.32 this afternoon, all of which he kept in the Santa Pot next to him on the bar. Well, all of it except the $50.00 he’d blown to get the little red pills. But the rest of it was still there, mostly in quarters. Bartender better not mistake this for his tip jar, he thought. It was pretty good money for a day’s work. And the other guys stand on corner with Will Work for Food, and Hungry, God Bless signs. Look where it got them. All begging took was a Santa suit and a little ingenuity.
     “Gimme another drink,” told the bartender.
     “You think you could change out of that?” the bartender asked.
     “What?”
     “That shitty suit. You’re driving the customers away.”
     “People like Santa Claus,” Santa said.
     “The hell they do. You smell like a latrine.”
     “Just shut up and give me another.”

The bartender raised his eyebrow but poured him another bourbon. Santa felt his ears humming a little. Damn, these pills were good.
     “You alone?”
     It was a woman--not even a woman--a girl. Sixteen. Seventeen. Her tits peeked out of her top and her skirt worked hard to stretch a half inch below the crotch. She brushed her ashen hair from her face and winked.
     “What about it?” Santa asked.
     “I’m alone, too,” she said.
     How about that, thought Santa. Sit out on the freaking sidewalk to drink and nobody ever says shit to me. He waltzed in here dressed like a costume party and gotten all the ladies.
     He’d have to do this more often.
     “What do you want?” said Santa Claus.
     “That’s funny,” said the girl. “I was about to ask you the same question.”
     “You were?”
     “Yeah,” she said.
     “I don’t want shit.”
     “Surely you want something.” He felt the touch of her hand against his arm. “Everybody has needs,” she whispered. “Don’t you need something? Something?”
      Damn, I got a live one here, thought Santa Claus.
      “What did you have in mind?” he asked.
      “Oh,” said the girl. “Something to make you feel good. You do like to feel good, don’t you?”
     
Santa had read about this. How whores came into bars and offered their services to the patrons. It never actually happened to him. Nobody offered their services much, him living on the streets now and all, except for old Mabel, who gave him hand jobs for free from time to time, and Louisa, who he’d fucked a lot, but everybody fucked Louisa, it was as natural as breathing, and she wasn’t around now anyway, not since July or so, when somebody smacked her across the face a few times and Santa saw her lying in a ditch bleeding and tried to help her up but she told him to fuck off, she’d be just fine, and he did, and that was the last time he’d seen or heard from her and who needed the bitch, anyway.
      But now? What was happening now?
      “What’s your name?” Santa asked.
      “Jade,” she said. “What’s yours?”
      “Santa Claus.”
      “Are you really Santa?”
      “Yes.”
      “Really?”
      “Yes.”
      “Then you must want to know if I’ve been naughty or nice.”
      “Well?”
      “I’ve been naughty. Very, very naughty.”
      Santa smirked. Okay, bitch, he thought. “How naughty?”
      “Extremely naughty.”
      “What have you done?”
      “I don’t think I can put it into words,” said Jade.
      “You can’t?”
      “No. Maybe I should just show you.”
      Santa’s eyes fell on Jade’s tits. I deserve a Christmas gift, he thought. Then, swigging the last of his whiskey, he looked back at her face. “How much?”
      “That depends on the degree of naughtiness,” said Jade.
      “Uh huh. How about just a little naughty?”
      “Fifty bucks.”
      Santa twisted his mouth into a half-smile. “Do you take change?”

* * *

“You’ll get that fag disease,” Mabel told him as they sat under the bridge where Highway 59 crossed Westheimer. She stood by the feeder road and held a sign that said, Hungry. God Bless.
      It was unusually hot for December, and the Santa suit made him itch. The beard made him itch. Hell, just breathing made him itch. He wanted to strip buck-naked and jump in the fountain at the Med Center, so he’d get a bath and then a couple of nights in the pokey and a free meal. But he didn’t do it. He wore the Santa suit. He had to make the bucks while he could, and he didn’t get to wear the suit when it wasn’t Christmas, and it was Christmas, for God’s sake, even though it was so fucking hot.
      “You gonna wash that thing?” Mabel asked, sniffing.
      “What fag disease?”
      “You know. The one all the fags get.”
      “AIDS?”
      “Yeah.”
      “That’s not a fag disease. Everyone gets AIDS.”
      “Everyone that puts their choo choos down stranger’s tunnels,” said Mabel.
      “She wasn’t a stranger.”
      “You met her before?”
      “No.”
      “So she’s a stranger.”
      “She was a kid.”
      “A kid can still be a stranger.”
      “Besides,” Santa added. “I didn’t stick it down her tunnel.”
      “I don’t want to hear the details,” said Mabel
      “You asked.”
      “I didn’t ask. I just said you’d get the fag disease.”
      He sneered. It had better fucking cool down, he thought.

* * *

The K-mart customers stared at Santa Claus as he trudged through the store to the men’s room.
      “Look, Dad,” said a little boy as Santa stood in front of a washbasin. “It’s Santa Claus.”
      “Yes, son,” said his father.
      “Can I sit in your lap?” the little boy asked.
      Santa didn’t answer. Instead, he unzipped his piss-stained pants and let them fall to the ground.
      “Get out of here, buddy,” said the security guard when he arrived. Santa scrubbed his pants around in the basin full of water.
      “I’ll be done in a minute,” he said
      “I said now.”
      “You want me to walk out in my boxers?”
      “I could run you in,” the security guard said.
      “For what?”
      “Indecent exposure.”
      “Was I in the store?”
      “No.”
      “Did the kid see anything except a pair of boxers?”
      “No.”
      “Then bite me. Everybody pulls down their pants in here. It’s a pisser.”
      The security guard walked behind him as Santa Claus, his pants soaking wet, trumped back through the K-mart, hissing at any child who glanced his way.

* * *

“Back again?” asked Jade. “I always wondered what Santa Claus did in the days leading up to Christmas.”
      “Is that right?”
      “Is it true Santa only comes once a year, and when he does, it’s down a chimney?”
      Santa grinned. “You’ll have to ask him.”
      “I’m asking him.”
      “I don’t know, then.”
      “Guess we’d better find out.”
     
He liked her, Santa decided. Liked the way she felt against his skin when she touched him. Liked her touching him without complaining, the way Mabel always complained. “You want it again,” Mabel would say. “Is that all you ever think about?” He especially liked the way she looked at him when they were talking in the bar. Like a little girl. Like his little girl, if he’d had a little girl, and God knows there was probably one out there somewhere. He’d done a few women besides Mabel and Louisa during his fifty-three years. Back when he worked as a handyman and traveled.
      “Your pot looks full again,” said Jade.
      “I’m not complaining,” said Santa.
      “So you want something different this time? Something better?”
      “What could possibly be better than what you did?”
      “I’ll show you,” Jade smiled.

* * *

Santa comes more than once a year.
      He hadn’t quite been sure, though, when Jade asked.
      He watched her after he’d finished, the way she leaned against the brick wall in the alley and breathed--wheezed--then smiled at him. He actually felt a shimmer of something. She’d pulled down her skirt and stuffed her tits back in her dress when the words came out of his mouth, almost surprising him.
      “Think you’d like to walk around a few minutes or something?”
     
Do I really mean that, he thought? Sure. What the hell?
      Jade paused. “Well,” she said. “There’s still a lot of night left. I’ve got to earn a living.”
      “Oh,” said Santa.
      “But. Um. I wouldn’t mind talking to you when I get off work,” she said.
      Jade joined him under the support beams of the 59 Bridge, just before the sun’s first rays. She squeezed under his arm and was asleep before he spoke. Santa enjoyed the warmth of her head against his shoulder as he listened to her breath. And for a moment he wondered if he heard her cry.

* * *

“You’re gonna get it.”
      “Get what?”
      “The fag disease.”
      Mabel pitched a tin can into her shopping cart. She’d found the can last night, still half full of beans. The cart was filled with rags and newspapers, metal cans and blankets, a box of Premium Crackers. Mabel pushed the cart wherever she went. Sometimes she even slept in it.
      “So where is the little tramp?” Mabel asked.
      “She ain’t no tramp.”
      “Where is she?”
     
“Dunno,” said Santa. “Maybe she went home.”
      He scratched at his upper torso. The Santa suit felt like wool this morning, even though it was actually polyester and cotton. That’s what the label said. But it was fucking wool today. He sweated like a pig.
      “How long you gonna wear that thing?” asked Mabel.
      “Maybe I’ll wear it all year round.”
      “Like hell you will. You’ll be lucky to get to Christmas in that thing.”
      Five more days, thought Santa. Five more days and then the Christmas season is over. No use in wearing this fucking suit after that. People don’t give handouts for the Salvation Army after Christmas day. That’s when they forget the Salvation Army’s even around.
      Maybe he’d find an Easter Bunny suit for early April.

* * *

“Are you really Santa Claus?” giggled Jade, after they’d washed the little red pills down with Kentucky Bourbon.
      “What do you think?” asked Santa.
      “I think you are,” said Jade. “I think you’re Santa Claus, and you’ve been waiting all these years for me.”
     
“That’s right,” said Santa, feeling the room swim around him. He put his hand on the bar to steady himself.
      “Take me to the North Pole with you,” said Jade.
      “I don’t live in the North Pole.”
      “Where do you live?”
      “Under the 59 Bridge at Westheimer.”
      “You don’t live there.”
      “Yes, I do.”
      “You live in the North Pole. You’re only staying there until Christmas, and then you’ll go back to the North Pole.” She leaned over and kissed him on the forehead. “Take me to the North Pole,” she whispered.
      “Why you wanna go there?”
      “Cuz it’s not here,” she said.

* * *

“How long have you been on the streets?” asked Santa Claus.
      “None of your business.”
      “The street’s no place for a girl like you. How old are you? Sixteen? Seventeen? Where’s your old man and old lady?”
      She didn’t answer. Instead, she yanked down the front of her dress and exposed a tit. “Do you want to talk or do you want to fuck?”
     
Jade entertained a rich kid later that night. Santa watched from the shadows as she went down on him in the alley where she and Santa had made love. She wasn’t all eager and excited now, the way she had been with Santa. She was only doing it now for the cash. Santa saw tension in the way she held her back, stiff, straight. The kid dripped with money—his gold watch, his brandy loafers, the gold chain around his neck. It looked solid gold, too—could draw three hundred, easy.
      “Ow!” screamed the rich kid. “Look what you did, you little bitch!”
      “I’m sorry—”
      “I’ll show you sorry!”
      Santa found himself standing over the rich kid. He couldn’t remember what he’d done, didn’t recall snatching the beer bottle from the street and slamming it over the kid’s head. Didn’t recall kicking the kid in the ribs a couple of times before Jade could stop him. Couldn’t remember the curses flying from his lips. All he knew was standing over the kid and Jade was crying.
      “Did you kill him?” she whispered.
      “I dunno,” said Santa.
      “We gotta get out of here.”
     
“Wait.” He’d been eying the gold chain all night. If the kid was out or dead (for God’s sake, he wasn’t dead. He’d been conked over the head with a beer bottle—they did that in cowboy movies all the time, didn’t they?), then anybody could take the chain. Anybody who came along. So why not me, Santa thought.
      “What are you doing?”
      “Here,” Santa handed her the chain. “Let’s see if he’s got any money.”
      “You’re gonna rob him?”
      “Why not?”
      “It’s not moral, that’s why not.”
      “He ain’t awake, is he? And since he ain’t awake, anybody that comes along is gonna rob him. So I’ll do it first.” He snatched the kid’s wallet. Bingo. Three crisp hundred dollar bills.
      “Holy shit,” said Jade.
      “And just think,” said Santa. “You don’t gotta share them with your pimp, neither.”
      They made $1,500 that week. Jade had two clients with less than fifty, but they made up for it later when Jade picked up three young businessmen one by one and Santa smacked them neatly across the heads.
      She didn’t mean to pick up the burley construction worker in the bar that night at 2:15 AM, but he kept eyeballing her. Santa watched them slip out the back. He found them in the alley with the guy’s pants pulled down to his ankles and Jade kneeling in front of him, as if in prayer. She’d carefully arranged it so they guy faced the other way. Santa chose his weapon carefully—a stray glass bottle of Miller Light.
      “Son of a bitch,” the guy stammered after Santa hit him. Blood trickled down his neck and onto his blue maroon and black patterned work shirt as he staggered forward a bit, refusing to hit the ground.
      “Hit him again,” said Jade.
      The bottle had shattered in Santa’s hand. He tossed it away and looked for another weapon.
      “What the fuck?” growled the burley guy at Santa. “Who the hell are you?”
      “I’m Santa Claus,” Santa said. “Ho, ho, ho.” He smacked the guy in the face with a board this time, and cracked the bridge of his nose. The guy swung his iron fist and cracked Santa across the jaw.
      “Think you’re funny, huh?” The burley guy advanced on Santa, and snatched the jagged beer bottle from the ground. “I’ll kill you, you son of a bitch.”
      Santa waved at the beer bottle with his board, then stumbled and fell in the mud. Oh, shit, he thought. Oh, shit. The ground shifted and his ears hummed with the force of the little red pills.
     
He waited for death to snatch him as he watched the jagged beer bottle advance, whispering what he could remember of the prayers he’d learned as a little boy in Sunday School. God heard the prayers and sent an angel—Jade—still on her knees as she snatched a new beer bottle from the ground and plunged it right into the burley guy’s groin. He screamed.
      “Hit him with the board!” she shouted to Santa Claus. He stood and smacked the guy once in the forehead, knocking him, his bleeding crotch still exposed, backward into the mud.
      “Son of a bitch,” groaned Santa Claus.
      “Damn,” Jade groaned as she shuffled through his wallet. “He didn’t even have the cash to pay for the blow job.”
      Santa peered inside. There were four crumpled dollar bills. Bastard deserved to get cracked in the skull.
      “Are you alright,” she asked him once they’d gotten around the corner.
      “Yeah,” said Santa.
      “Need me to kiss it and make it better?”
      It hurt when she kissed him, but Santa closed his eyes and delighted in the pain.
      “How’s that,” she asked.
      “I think I need some more,” said Santa.
      “Another kiss?”
      “Yeah. But not on the jaw.”
      “Where?”
      “Why don’t you start kissing different places and I’ll tell you when to stop?”

* * *

“They’re looking for a guy in a Santa Claus suit,” Mabel told Santa the next morning when he crawled out of his secret home under the 59 bridge. Jade remained behind, asleep.
      “Who?” asked Santa.
      “The cops,” said Mabel. “Said there was a mugging last night. Guy in a Santa suit. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
      He’d chosen not to wake Jade. Instead, he shoved the Santa suit into a cardboard box and replaced it with his old work shirt and blue jeans. He walked across the feeder to the K-mart to shave. Not even the security guard recognized him.
      “What happened?” asked Jade, her eyes wide with terror.
      “The guy woke up,” said Santa. “He could identify me.”
      She reached up and touched the side of his clean-shaven face. “You’re not Santa Claus,” she said, her smile disappearing.
      “It’s okay,” he said. “I’m still me.”
      “You told me you were Santa Claus,” she whispered.

* * *

Santa and Jade gripped the sides of the table as the room spun. She didn’t giggle this time--she’d hardly made a sound all day, except when she cried herself back to sleep after seeing Santa without his beard. He’d tried to make her talk when they went to the bar but she refused, staring straight into her Kentucky Bourbon, then taking the red pill like a good little girl and waiting quietly for their effect. Santa stopped talking, too.
      Hell, there were only two more days to Christmas. Maybe he should’ve waited to change the duds. Cops be damned.
      “Excuse me, sir,” said a voice. “Would you come with me, please?”
      Santa opened his eyes and tried to make the room stop spinning. He thought he saw someone in front of him but couldn’t be sure since the shadows wouldn’t stay still.
      “What?”
      “We’d like to take you downtown and ask you a few questions, sir,” said the man.
      “Who?”
      “Come on.”
      “Fuck you.”
      “Look, you want to do this civilized, or do we have to get rough?”
      “Fuck off!”
      Santa found himself on the floor, his hands cuffed behind him.
      “Be careful with the girl,” he heard a voice say.

* * *

They put him in a Santa Claus suit and stood him in a lineup. Fake beard and everything. He stared into a dark widow and snickered at the men lined up next to him.
      “Number four. Would you step forward please?”
      He stepped forward, glared into the dark window, then pulled down his fake beard and gave his captors a raspberry.
      “That’s enough, sir.”
      “Bite me.”
      “Enough, sir!”
      He stepped back in line and snickered.

* * *

Jade didn’t say a word. They’d sat in the cell for hours--Santa in a cell with men, Jade in a separate cell across from him with women. She kept tugging at the straps of her dress, trying to pull the top over her tits.
     Santa lay half asleep when the guard opened the door to Jade’s cell. “Michelle Lewis,” he barked. Jade sat for a moment, glaring at the guard, then stood slowly and walked toward the door. Santa Claus opened his eyes and sat up.
     “Who’s here?” Jade breathed.
      “Your father,” said the guard. “All the way from Nacogdoches.”
       Santa saw a tear escape Jade’s left eye. She sniffled and then quickly wiped it away.
      “Jade?” he said.
      Her eyes darted to his, then she lowered them to the floor and did not look up again. Santa stood by the cell door and watched Jade walk into the night.

* * *

The Santa suit was gone when he returned home. All his things were gone, and he had to chase a bum with a Hungry, God Bless sign out of his secret home under the 59 Bridge.
      “I told you that bitch was no good,” said Mabel.
      “She wasn’t a bitch,” said Santa Claus. “She was just a girl.”
      “You’re not getting nookie off me no more,” Mabel continued. “You could have the fag disease. Going around screwing a whore like that. You could have the fag disease for sure. Don’t you know nothing? Nothing at all?”
     
      Santa Claus crawled into his home and ripped up the sign the intruder had left behind. Time for a new gig, he thought. Fuck the Santa suit. It was too hot anyway. He’d check the dumpsters around the costume shop next to K-mart throughout the spring. Somebody was bound to throw out something else. The bunny suit would look stupid. To hell with that. But a Zorro costume. That might bring in some money. Or a military uniform. That’s good. Dress up in the military uniform and use a sign that says Vietnam Vet. Need Food. He’d seen that done. That’s what he’d do. He could go to a military surplus store one day. Hell, all it took was a military jacket or shirt. He wouldn’t even have to buy anything else. Or maybe a hat. Yes, he’d try that. A great big Air Force hat, like the one his father had worn years ago, in the pictures Santa stored in his mind. That’s all he remembered about his father was that big Air Force hat, with the eagle spread over the front. That would make him some money for sure. More money than he’d made with Jade--if they hadn’t taken it all, those damned bastards. He didn’t need the girl as baggage anyway. She was no better than Louisa, and he’d lived without Louisa, God knows, so he could live without Jade. To hell with her. Go back with her old man to wherever the hell she’d come from. He didn’t care. And Mabel would come around eventually. She’d threatened to become a virgin when he screwed Louisa, and look how long that lasted. She’d come around.
      He closed his eyes and imagined Jade’s soft breathing next to him before he fell into a deep, sorrowful sleep.