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“Whassup?” Ray asked as he valiantly tried to swim up from the depths of sleep. He wasn’t consciously trying to imitate ancient beer ad campaigns (although, after the infamous “less filling/tastes great” wars of 2008, no one, including Ray was really sure about that). All Ray was really thinking, though, was that it was fucking freezing and also fucking seven thirty in the morning and also a fucking Saturday that both members of the Kowalski/Vecchio household had off.
And yet Vecchio was up, showered, shaved, dressed and….
“Holy shit, do I smell cologne?” Ray perked up a little. “And coffee?”
Vecchio handed over a mug that celebrated a CPD and FBI team-building exercise from a couple of summers back. Vecchio had won the mug by being the fastest guy up the cargo netting on the side of what may have been a towering cliff or simply a gentle bluff (a matter of endless debate in both home and office). He rarely allowed anyone else to use it, which was a crying shame because that sucker held sixteen ounces. And here he was, handing it over freely.
“Thanks,” Ray said warily. Clearly, there were ulterior motives. “You wear that cologne, you’re getting a morning blow job regardless, so what’s with the coffee?”
Vecchio sat down next to Ray, allowing him one gulp of coffee before confiscating the cup, carefully setting it on the nightstand, and swooping in for a full-on Vecchio kiss. It lasted a (very) good two minutes and had everything Ray had come to expect from a full-on Vecchio kiss: tenderness, affection, strength and passion. And surprisingly little saliva.
“Better than coffee,” Ray gasped.
“Not like you have to choose,” Vecchio said, pulling back so he could hand the mug back.
“You want something,” Ray said after taking another manly gulp.
“Only you, sweet patootie,” Vecchio said with patent insincerity.
“Did I say blow job? I musta got awhatsits from Frannie, cause I meant to say ‘cold shoulder’.”
Vecchio leaned forward to nibble at Ray’s bare shoulder. “It is a little cold,” he conceded. “But so, so tasty,” he added as he licked his way down to Ray’s tattoo.
“You keep that up, there’s gonna be coffee on the sheets,” Ray gasped out in warning. Vecchio deftly rescued the coffee, and the two got down to some serious action. In mere moments, the wrongness that was Vecchio being dressed before nine o’clock on a day off was corrected, Ray made good on the blow job promise, and a very relaxed Vecchio started doing things to Ray that were startlingly inventive and immensely pleasurable.
Then Vecchio ruined the afterglow by jumping up to get dressed. Again. “I repeat, from before,” Ray said from the bed, “Whassup?”
“Christmas shopping,” Vecchio said cheerfully. “Wanna be my elf helper?”
Ray’s eyes narrowed. “You making fun of my ears again, Vecchio?” he asked. “Because I’ve got a stockpile of nose jokes with your name on them.”
“I have no interest in negating the Sheboygan Protocol of 2003,” Vecchio said seriously. That was an agreement they’d arrived at in a diner in said city in said year, in which a tense negotiation resulted in promises to leave certain physical characteristics off the table in future arguments, good natured or otherwise.
“Okay then,” Ray said, reaching for the last of the now-cold coffee.
“I just meant I could use a little help getting presents. If you felt like it.”
“Sure,” Ray said, finishing the coffee. Vecchio had put some serious effort into recruiting (or was that seducing?) Ray into his project. Plus, what else was Ray gonna do with his Saturday morning? Health Inspectors marathon on the Food Network? That shit was gross beyond gross.
“Just one store today,” Vecchio promised.
***
“Oh, you are fucking kidding me,” Ray moaned when Vecchio pulled the Riv into the parking lot.
“Just the one store,” Vecchio said again.
“But…but…but….” Ray indicated the store. “It’s Lucky Dollar, Vecchio! Haven’t you heard their radio ads? ‘We’re not just one store but a whole lot more’,” Ray sang the jingle as flatly as he possibly could.
Vecchio looked alarmed rather than shifty. “Really?”
“It’s all over the radio. Pandora, even. I can’t believe you haven’t heard it.”
“I brought you here believing Lucky Dollar to be one store, which I think we will find that it technically is. It was a good faith promise,” Vecchio said.
“You owe me some kind of muffin,” Ray said as he got out of the car. “Lucky Dollar. Jesus!”
Unfortunately, a sweet little old lady who reminded Ray vaguely of Gladys overheard his imprecation. Fortunately, she chose to put a good face on it.
“He is the reason for the season,” she told Ray cheerfully.
“That he is, ma’am,” Vecchio agreed with equal cheerfulness as he locked the driver’s side door. “Say, would you mind taking our picture in front of Lucky Dollar?” Vecchio waved his smart phone at her.
“Not at all,” she said affably, taking the phone.
Vecchio and Ray posed in front of Lucky Dollar.
“Oh, my,” said the lady. “You two look a bit grim,” she said. “Do you want to say cheese or something?”
“It’s for our ex-wife,” Ray explained. “We don’t want to look too happy.”
“How thoughtful of you,” she said as she clicked the button. “Hold it,” she said as they started to pull away from each other. She squinted at the screen. “It will look much better if you switch places,” she said. They shrugged at each other, switched places and she took another picture.
“Much better,” she said, handing the phone over to Vecchio. “I wrote Governor Quinn an e-mail, telling him to stick to his guns and push for the marriage equality bill,” she told them.
“That’s more than we’ve done,” Ray said honestly.
“Well, I’m sure you’re very busy what with the law enforcement and all,” she said. They looked at her in surprise. “I was married to a bank robber for ten years,” she said. “I can still smell bacon at five hundred yards. Happy holidays!” She went on her merry way.
“Wow,” Ray said. “How much you wanna put down that Fraser would chase after her to see if she could clear up cold theft cases from the seventies or whenever?”
“No bet,” Vecchio said absently. “Hey, she was totally right,” he said, showing Ray the pictures. They looked much better in the second photo. They even had the right expressions, both looking somewhat exasperated as well as having that “I settled for second best” mix of disgruntled and contented they always strove for when posing for the annual joint photo that was Stella’s Christmas present. She’d probably print this one out and frame it.
“Okay, that’s Stella taken care of,” Vecchio said cheerfully. “Now for my family.”
“We’re shopping for your family?” Ray demanded. “At Lucky Dollar?”
“We agreed to a dollar limit on gifts for the grown-ups,” Vecchio said.
“Wow, the Vecchios collectively made a reasonable decision?” Ray asked in wonder.
“Well, we're actually doing this so we have more money to totally lose our shit buying stuff for the kids,” Vecchio admitted. “No need to worry about a sudden outbreak of sanity there.”
The store was nice and warm inside, and the clerks, despite being totally run off their asses, were full of good cheer. Ray figured that if they could make the effort, so could he. “Aha!” he exclaimed, holding a paperback aloft.
Vecchio looked at it. “Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters?” he asked, reading the cover. It was dolled up to look like a Penguin classic, with a man embracing a woman in a high-waisted dress, tentacles dancing at her sides. “Is that a Pride and Prejudice and Zombies ripoff?”
“I have to assume,” Ray said happily. “But my new partner? Rosalie? She’s totally into that Japanese tentacle porn thing.”
Vecchio blinked. “I’m not sure which fact I wanted to know less,” he said carefully. “That there’s a ‘Japanese tentacle porn thing’ or that Rosalie is into it or that you know both these facts."
“Gambrelli stakeout,” Ray said, chucking the book into their cart.
“Oh, God, that thing,” Vecchio said. “I didn’t get any for like two weeks because your schedule was so fu…messed up.” Ray watched as Vecchio caught himself before he could drop the F-bomb in a store crowded with families. Little kids didn’t need their profanity shrapnel.
“Yeah, I’m thinking Rosalie also knows a lot more about me than she really wanted to.”
“I’ll never see her in the same light again,” Vecchio moaned.
“You’re such a good boyfriend,” Ray said consolingly. “Sharing my pain and sh…stuff.” Ray self-corrected.
“Oh, this is a good one,” Vecchio said, swooping toward the floor to scoop up a….
“What the…in the world?” Ray asked. “Who in your family needs a…what is that, a rock and a brush attached to a cheese grater?”
“It’s for pedicures,” Vecchio said, tossing it into the cart. Ray squinted at the object in question. “Ma can’t reach her feet so good these days, so Maria’s been doing her feet for her.” Ray shuddered. “Nah, it’s good,” Vecchio told him. “Maria does her own at the same time. They bond or whatever. But Maria says Ma’s got more dead skin cells on her feet than Mort has in his lab, so maybe this will help.”
“Who’s it for, Maria or Ma?” Ray asked.
Vecchio frowned. “Good question. It might actually be long enough that Ma can scrape her own feet, so I’ll give it to her.” Ray picked up a couple. Just as his parents didn’t inquire into the intimate details of his relationship with Vecchio, neither did he ask about theirs, but it was a safe bet that if Ma Vecchio couldn’t tend to her own feet, neither could Mom and Dad.
Ray then held up a set of nail polish that included lurid purple and metallic green. “For Maria?” he suggested.
Vecchio’s eyes lit up and Ray’s stomach did that little flippy thing he’d never gotten used to. “Yeah, that’s perfect!”
They roamed the aisles of Lucky Dollar, finding odds and ends. A snack-pack that included crackers and canned tuna salad for Tony. Hand sanitizer for Aunt Paula who made her own sausage. Several rolls of wrapping paper.
“Perfect for Frannie!” Ray exclaimed, holding up a CD. “Stars of Christmas,” he told Vecchio. “Gladys Knight and the Pips singing ‘Away in a Manger’! Doris Day decking the halls! Holy sh…wow! Air Supply with ‘The First Noel’!”
“You have got to be kidding me,” Vecchio said.
“Have a look. It’s even got a couple by…what do you guys call that mobbed-up crooner? ‘Mr. Frank Sinatra’?”
“Frank Sinatra was extremely important in shaping the national identity of Italian-Americans,” Vecchio said defensively as he grabbed six more copies of the CD and placed them carefully in the cart.
“As being mobbed-up,” Ray said.
“Nobody realized it at the time. Plus, more Italian-Americans got victimized by the mob than were in it. Sister Anne’s granddad used to have pay extortion money on his fruit stand. She can’t stand Sinatra.”
“Sister Anne,” Ray sighed happily.
“Are you fantasizing about my teenage sex life again?” Vecchio demanded suspiciously.
Ray glared at him. “Like you never think about me and Stella.”
“Oh, wow, Infant of Prague candles,” Vecchio said desperately, pointing past Ray’s shoulder. Ray decided to let himself be distracted. For now.
In the end, they spent over a hundred dollars at Lucky Dollar, not including taxes.
“No wonder you guys set a limit,” Ray said as Vecchio handed over the cash.
“Well, you did get like thirty Festive Flashers,” Vecchio pointed out. It was true. Necklaces made up of mardi gras beads culminating in a flashing Christmas tree pendant…there was no way to resist such bling. Ray already had plans for sneaking them into Dewey’s desk. Dewey would hand them out with seventy-eleven horrible jokes and happily accept the blame, which, being Dewey, he would interpret as credit.
“On the thirteenth day of Christmas, will my true love give to me a festive flash?” Ray asked.
“Do that in the Riv, in the parking lot, right now,” Vecchio said as they hauled their bags out of the store.
Ray wasn’t sure if it was a threat or a promise, but he was good with it either way.