The Last Noel by Michael Malone

Author:Michael Malone
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Published: 2010-04-30T04:00:00+00:00

In the old rebuilt Thunderbird, Kaye and Noni were bringing Parker along with them to Glade Lake, the affluent neighborhood where Bunny's parents, the Breckenridges, lived, and where (home for the holidays) she was having her party. Parker hadn’t been invited, but Noni (who had called ahead to ask if he might come) told him that Bunny had wanted to invite him, just hadn’t been sure if he’d be in Moors for Christmas.

Parker laughed. “If Allah's into white chicks in heaven, He's sure gonna make you one of them. ’Cause, Lady Disco, you are lying like a rug on a rich man's floor.”

“No, it's true!” Noni turned around in the cracked red-leather bucket seat to protest.

“Oh sure,” said Kaye in her father's voice of soft skepticism.

When the three arrived at the huge modern glass and redwood house, the party was a loud crush of people, mostly, like them, in their twenties. The Breckenridge parents had abandoned their home and fled to relatives in Raleigh. Many of Bunny's guests were old high school classmates who hadn’t seen much of each other in the last five years and had in common little but that shared past. The boys who’d had long hair in high school mostly had short hair now; the ones who’d had short hair then mostly had long hair now. Fewer of them smoked.

In large part the group was welcoming to Parker, although most awkwardly avoided questions about what he’d been up to since the old Moors High days.

Parker, who had a shaved head and a Kung Fu moustache, told Bunny he remembered her in the junior talent show, playing the guitar and singing. “You were whapping on the side of that gittar, doing this big voice Odetta/Georgia chain gang shit. ‘Huh. Huh. Huh! Oh Rosie oh Lawd gal, the Man done killed my convict pal. Huh. Huh. Huh!’”

Bunny laughed. “Was I awful?”

“Oh Lawd, gal.” He ate the Brie-filled mushroom she handed him. “But I gotta say, you had guts, those crackers guffawing at you.” Parker told Bunny he had converted to Islam in prison and was getting ready to change his name to Kareem Aked.

Bunny, who had wild frizzy long mousy-brown hair and wore loose black caftans to hide her weight told Parker she was working on her Ph.D. in economics at the University of Chicago, and that she was keeping the name “Bunny” although it made her sound like someone who worked in a Playboy Club, because every time she heard it, it was a battle cry to war against the patriarchy.

Parker said, “Kick ass, Sister!” but declined her offered glass of chardonnay. He was a teetotaler now.

Bunny's older sister Mindy (the one who so long ago had asked Noni's brother Gordon to help escort the first black students into Gordon Junior High) was here from Atlanta with her husband; they manufactured something called “software” for computers and were doing quite well. She told Noni that sometimes she dreamt about Gordon.

From speakers embedded in the ceiling, music pulsed loudly: Elton John, the Pointer Sisters, Blondie, Carly Simon.

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