Two by Two, or Walking with Beasts

Andreas Stackenwalter had sighted, further up the line of shivering holiday fun-seekers, another pair of fellows also waiting to pass the turnstile and take in the millions and millions of tiny holiday bulbs in riotous display.  Despite their hand-woven stocking caps and generous padding against the chill, by their profiles and poses Andreas was able to label them as Jay-Douglas "Doogle" Hanson and his perpetual appendage Anjay Shapurian.

Andreas half-nodded up the queue to signal Geoffrey.  "Should we enter, mein Herr?" he asked. "Perhaps the roof upon us will fall."

"Ah," Geoffrey said as he recognized the pair, "but this is an open-air event."

"Perhaps the small children will stampede."

"The Pied Piper would be proud.  What have you learned so far about this pair?"

"As much as I know about those two peoples there."  A second time Andreas gave a half-nod up the queue.  Geoffrey let his sight billow along like newly falling snow past the young families and the lovesick hipsters, all waiting in chilly anticipation to smile at millions and millions of small colored lights while sipping cider and cocoa.  His gaze finally settled first upon a man whose utterly bald head was indifferent to the cold and at his side an elderly woman, hunched and squinting, her jaw sealed by a well-knotted scarf in an ethnic rainbow of colors.

"I remember them from the wake for Marjorie," said Geoffrey, bringing his complimentary cruelty-free hot cocoa to his cold-chapped lips.  "Romanians.  Latter-day Phanariots.  Marthe Bibesco would not be proud.  Oh, didn't we visit her in Paris?"

"1964."  Andreas had a great memory for dates.

But interrupting this doctor-recommended power-walk through the past was the sight of Jay-Douglas "Doogle" Hanson and Anjay Shapurian arriving at the admissions booth.  Doogle Hanson, even when papoosed in high-end survivalist winterwear, moved with a pantherine grace--while Anjay Shapurian slid along in his shadow like a ray or skate just beneath the surface.  They slipped, one elegantly, one surreptitiously, past the turnstile.


A little bit after this transaction, the Romanians (Son and mother?, we might guess) had also contributed to the till to start enjoying the Yuletide light show within.  Finally, Geoffrey and Andreas had their turn at showing to the juvenile volunteer their state-issued identification as proof that they were senior citizens (the eager do-gooder did not take the word of these octogenarians that they could remember Eisenhower (never mind the Empress Zita, Marthe Bibesco, and frankly, Adolf Hitler--He had pinched Andreas' soft little cheek in 1943)).  So, they too were allowed within to partake in the Oh, Noel! Lightfest.

Within the scarcely hidden but festively decorated chain-link-fence enclosure, Geoffrey was admiring the aesthetic of a billion or so small colored lights and weighing whether "galactic" or "cosmic" was le mot just, while Andreas scanned for the movements of not only Jay-Douglas "Doogle" Hanson and Anjay Shapurian, but the two Romanians, as well.  Most of the people comprising the happy holiday masses moved about, staring and pointing, chatting with acquaintances and scrupulously avoiding the smiling eyes of strangers--no need to take the goodwill towards men business too far.

Sadly, ill-will towards men was to be found in the two Romanians.  Apparently the funnel cakes or the cotton candy or the deep-fried angel food cake on a stick was not up to par, because the bald Balkanite and his squat mother were making a noticeable fuss, not limited to critiquing the spun sugar or the proportion of nutmeg in the crunchy coating.

Now, Geoffrey, Andreas, and a few dozen others were treated to the old lady demanding a gluten-free funnel cake, not getting it, and then smashing the napkin dispensers with her cane.  The cowed volunteer started to whimper a few mollifying words, but the trollish granny wailed something and with one grand tsunamian gesture swept her walking stick across the counter, casting the sugar-and-spice condiments, the donation can, and the brochures about the miraculous icon in the convent's chapel all on to frosty pavement.  Now the volunteer found voice and hurled a few jeremiads across the counter, at which the bald son yelled in thickly-accented English, "Elder abuser!  Elder abuser!"  And rotating about to the crowd about him summoned their indignation.  "You see!  Evil!  Evil!  Abusering!"

Well, to this, the reaction from the chilly holiday-makers ran the spectrum from ultra-apathetic to the infra-indignant--Really, that this could go on in Merryweather!  It just proved what cable television said about nuns was true.

At this, Geoffrey and Andreas, elderly people nonpareil, sidled up to the head of the funnel cake queue like a couple of ancient homeopaths to stifle this conniption.  Like the last exponents of chivalry both Gallic and Holy Roman (Perceval, Parzifal, all the same) who had left their palfreys at the prune-whip stand, they sauntered into the midst of the melee and played the ancient game of divide and conquer.

Geoffrey, as young people say, "got in the face" of the semi-reptilian bald son and announced with stern voice and unwavering gaze, "Milosh."  This name should do the trick, he thought, and it did.  The Romanian turned as pale and quivery as a blancmange and his declamatory mouth shriveled to a prunish pucker.

Meanwhile, Andreas was corralling the Bucharest matron with a protracted barrage of questions in violent German about the functioning of the snow cone machine.  This was a crude technique that ostensibly was not suited to a chevalier, but he was not rescuing a blushing maiden.  This blitzkrieg demanding technical minutiae about the ice-grinder derailed the lady from whatever scheme she and her spawn were concocting and both mother and son were now looking nervously around their respective attackers at each other to understand exactly what had transpired

And then the camel broke loose.