Page 61 of The Holiday Whoopie
What happens is that I switch keys altogether and—without consultation with the laws of music—enter a brave new place none of my fellow carolers care to visit.
“Fiiiiiive gold riiiiiiings…” I go long on the vowel like it owes me money.
Silence peels off the crowd in a flapping wave. Even the piano hesitates, likesir?
I look to Skippy, my lone male companion in this town, and he gives me a long-suffering head tilt.
Embarrassment pricks the back of my neck. I see myself as they must: a man in a very nice coat thinking he can croon his way through a tradition he didn’t grow up with. Because community and caroling is not me.
They see me as a power tie. A closer. The guy who finds loopholes in contracts, not high notes in a hymn.
And I am—but I can be more.
Yet just as I’m about to prove them right and invoke a caroling loophole—plead the Fifth by lip-syncing—I notice Audrey’s shoulders begin to shake.
Her earlier distance cracks like sugar glass under a spoon.
If my options are her silence or her laughter at my expense—give me the guillotine and call it festive. Aggressively so.
I lean all the way in.
“On the sixth day of Christmas…” I croon, sliding a hand out of my pocket to mime an invisible microphone. The town perks up the way crowds do when a man commits publicly to a bit that might go to hell.
On “lords a-leaping” I put height under it, my loafers hovering just an inch off the ground, and the kids howl. “Maids a-milking,” I pantomime, and a retiree in a tartan scarf wheezes into his cocoa.
Amanda covers her face, peeking through her fingers. Portia leans into her, shoulders shaking.
“Do the rings,” a ten-year-old commands, elbowing his buddy.
I hold up a finger: one moment. Build the suspense.
He beams, front tooth missing.
The carolers vocalize about geese and swans while I vandalize the melody with good faith and poor aim. Somewhere around drummers drumming, the alchemy happens—the one I’ve seen in rooms where someone risks looking ridiculous without flinching. You can’t boo a person offering you their whole self with nothing guarded.
By the time I unholster “five gold rings” again, a group has rotated to circle me like a cheap spotlight.
I give them everything: chin lift, shoulder roll, a slide into the note so brazen I can feel my tailor back in LA telepathically begging me not to crack a seam. “Fiiiiiive goooold riiiiings…” I belt until even those with an ironclad grip on carol tradition are hooting in amusement.
“Again!” my young tooth-gap challenger yells as a man appears with a cowbell from nowhere, raising his brows at Audrey in question.
Audrey, shaking her head in disbelief, takes a step toward me. Her nose is red and a bit shiny underneath, and her smile is half amusement, half I-can’t-look-away-from-this-train-wreck.
She’s adorable.
The crowd launches into another chorus, the man clanging his cowbell on “rings” like we rehearsed it. Everyone—including Audrey—roars. The volunteer pianist gives up steering me with tempo and lets me hydroplane. A teenager starts beatboxing badly; I shoot him a grateful thumbs-up.
We—the townsfolk and I—slaughter Christmas with consent.
And when the final line is sung and there are no more choruses to butcher, the crowd shifts, the volume dropping to something like reverence when the piano player begins “Silent Night.”
Couples link arms. Parents gather small bodies close and sway. Warmth stacks on warmth until I can feel it through scarf and coat. I find my way to Audrey, who holds my gaze, her eyes no longer distracted by anything.
“Well,” she whispers, eyes bright as she looks up at me, “that was by far the worst singing I’ve ever heard.”
I huff out a laugh. “I cannot object.”
Her lips quirk. “I loved it.”
