A bouquet of roses and lots of thanks to Solo and SHaron for all their help scanning and proofing these classic stories of Constance Collins! This story originally appeared in the zine Wanna Share 3. 

Comments about this story can be sent to: VenicePlaceAngel@aol.com

Make the Yuletide Bright
by
Constance Collins

"Wouldn't mess with Hutchinson today," Colby muttered as he passed Starsky in the class room. Starsky looked at him questioningly, then went back to the book he was reading. A moment later Hutch came into the room, looking, Starsky thought, like he hadn't slept the entire weekend -- which was pretty likely. After a weekend at home with his wife, Hutch was invariably exhausted; either the constant sex wore him out, or the constant fighting dragged him down. And whichever it was, he never wanted to talk about it, a fact that drove Colby crazy, along with the fact that Hutch refused to introduce her to either of them. Starsky had seen her, though, and he had to admit she was a knock-out...

Hutch's fingers glanced across Starsky's shoulder as he walked past, and Starsky murmured a hello.

***

By the time the class was over, Starsky was sure Hutch was dragging; he hadn't volunteered a single answer the entire hour -- most un-Hutchinson-like behavior.

They headed for their next class.

"If she's causing you this much grief, maybe you should consider dumping her," Colby suggested.

Hutch gave him a took that should have dropped him on the spot, but unfortunately did not.

"Hey, you guys wanna skip the cafeteria an' try that diner I told you about?" He'd been trying to change the subject, but both Hutch and Colby looked at Starsky as if he'd begun speaking in tongues. "Well, I'm hungry."

"It's only nine a.m.," Colby told him. "You just had breakfast an hour and a half ago."

Hutch tuned them out, staring off into space, following the path to their next class on automatic.

"I can't help it, I'm hungry again."

Colby dismissed him. "You're always hungry. I think you've got a tapeworm. Look, Hutchinson, Suzy's having a Christmas party Friday night; I could fix you up with her roommate --"

Hutch stopped, grabbed Colby by the collar. "Just shut up!"

Starsky put his hand on Hutch's arm. "Hey, guys, if you don't wanna go to the diner, there's always --"

Hutch released Colby, who gave Starsky a look and walked away. Starsky stuck by Hutch's side, carrying on a one-sided conversation on where and what they should eat, while Hutch walked along silently, engrossed in his own bleak thoughts.

The rest of the morning was more of the same. Colby trod gingerly around Hutch, directing his comments mostly to Starsky. When Hutch's mood hadn't lightened by the end of their third class, Colby deserted them completely. After a subdued lunch together in the cafeteria, they headed off for an afternoon of target practice and driving skill training.

***

Starsky grabbed Hutch at the end of the day, pulling him along as he walked to his car. "Come on, I got somethin' I think'll pick you up."

Hutch resisted. "Thanks, Starsk, but no thanks, I don't want to go to the diner, and I don't feel like bowling; I just want to go back to the dorm --"

"Yeah, yeah, I know, an' stand in the hall an' dial the phone over an' over, hoping she's home to answer. And if she is, then you'll probably have a big fight, another one, an' you'll feel like shit the rest of the night. Or she won't answer -- either 'cause she's not there or because she knows it's you an' she wants to piss you off some more, an' it will piss you off some more, an' either way, your night's gonna suck."

"Thanks for trying to cheer me up," Hutch said sarcastically.

"I am tryin' to cheer you up, but you ain't cooperating. Now, you come with me, you'll have a better time than you would back at the dorm."

"Will we be back by curfew?"

"Of course we will," Starsky assured him.

Hutch looked at him closely, saw nothing in his face but guilelessness. He didn't trust him for a minute, but at that moment he also didn't really care that much. "Yeah, sure, why not?"

After several tries, Starsky got his '63 Ford Falcon started. He revved up the engine, waited until he was sure it would keep running, then flipped on the radio. Bing Crosby's White Christmas filled the car.

"Keep dreamin', Bing, you ain't gonna be seein' any white around here, just more'a this fucking rain. That's the one thing I truly hate about California."

"Christmases back home were always white," Hutch commented quietly. "Of course, some years so were Halloween and Easter..."

"Yeah, there's nothin' worse than havin' to wear a jacket over your Halloween costume. Ma was always big on that one."

Starsky was driving through a residential area at as near to a crawl as he could, glancing back and forth from one side of the street to the other. At first Hutch just watched him, trying to figure out exactly what Starsky was looking for, but could see nothing worth their attention. So finally he asked. "Starsk, what're we doing?"

Starsky glanced at him, clearly surprised by the question. ""We're lookin' at the houses."

Hutch glanced at the houses, then looked back at Starsky, still perplexed. "But why?"

Starsky stopped the car and just stared at him as if he couldn't believe the question. Then he answered quietly, "The lights, Hutch. The lights on the houses. Aren't they pretty?"

Hutch glanced around at all the brightly decorated houses. It was the last thing in the world he would have expected. "We're looking at the lights?" he repeated, just to be sure he'd gotten this right.

"Sure. Didn't you ever go riding around with your folks looking at the Christmas lights when you were a kid?" Hutch shook his head. "Well, we didn't either in New York, but that first Christmas we were out here, Aunt Rosie an' Uncle Al took Nicky an' Ma an' me out looking at the Christmas lights. Aunt Rosie an' Ma would go on an' on about how high these people's electric bills must be by the time January came, but you could tell they were real tickled too. And Nicky just acted like we were on a tour through CandyLand."

Starsky didn't say how he'd felt about it all, but he didn't have to; the tone of his voice told Hutch.

"I didn't know your mother and brother moved out to California, too; I thought you came out here by yourself."

"Nah. Ma bought this Studebaker an' we drove out here. Well, she drove; she only let me drive through places like Missouri an' Kansas, where it was all flat an' deserted an' nobody around for miles. I did a lot of driving, till I nearly hit that rabbit in Arizona, an' then she wouldn't let me behind the wheel again."

The car crawled along through the brightly lighted streets, Starsky swearing every time it stalled.

"Wait a minute. How old were you when you came to California?" Hutch demanded.

"Fourteen. Dammit! fucking stupid car..."

"And your mother let you drive?"

"I told you, only on the really deserted parts of 66. Goddammit, I'm takin' this lemon back to Uncle Al for a tune-up. Lemme tell you something Hutch -- never trust a used car salesman, even if he is married to your mother's only sister."

"I'll keep that in mind," Hutch agreed. He'd quit wondering how long this tour was going to take and had begun relaxing.

"So' if you didn't go out looking at the lights on the houses when you were kid, what did you do at Christmas time?"

"Well, we always had a freshly cut tree."

"Yeah, really?"

"My grandfather would take me with him to pick it out. I'd have to stand out of the way while he chopped it down, then he'd let me help him haul it to the truck and load it on and drag it into the house. Then my mother and grandmother and I would decorate it. But that all stopped when I was ten and my grandfather had a stroke... I tried to get my father to take me out to chop down a tree, but he bought a great big artificial one, and after that we never had another live tree."

"Yeah, live trees were terrific. Ours were always real scraggly, though, 'cause my pop'd get one real cheap on Christmas Eve. Ma would tell him to get rid of it, but Pop'd tell her that it'd followed him home an' please could he keep it? An' we'd make ornaments to hang on it...it was terrific."

Something about this struck Hutch as odd. "Starsky, aren't you Jewish?"

"Yeah. So?"

Hutch wasn't sure how to respond to this unconcern. "Never mind."

Starsky grinned, understanding Hutch's confusion. "Ma always said we shouldn't be celebrating Christian holidays an' Pop would tell her that decorating trees wasn't Christian, it was something the Christians had stolen from the Druids -- they worshipped trees, you know."

Hutch smiled at this display of knowledge. "Yeah, I know."

"And Pop said that if Christians could borrow tree decorating from Druids, we Jews could too, if we wanted to."

"Your father sounds pretty progressive. Did you also celebrate Chanukah?"

Starsky grinned. "Yeah. Hey, any holiday where you get presents an' you're not required to sacrifice virgins, I'm in favor of. And now, the piece de resistance." He swung the car around in a wide U-turn, and drove at what, after their former creeping pace, seemed like an excessive speed to a house several blocks away. The house was totally dark except for the white lights decorating the roof in an enormous Star of David.

They sat parked there for a while, just looking at the house, then Starsky got the car started again. "You wanna pick up somethin' to eat before we head back to the dorm?"

"Starsk -- look, could you do me a favor? Drive past my place."

"Hutch --"

"I just want to see if she's there."

Starsky shook his head, but he headed for Hutch and Vanessa's house without protest.

***

Starsky stopped the car in front of Hutch's house and killed the engine. There were no lights on, but Vanessa's Jaguar sat in the driveway. He thought, but did not say, that apparently she had returned. Hutch seemed to hear him anyway. "Yeah."

"I'll cover for you," Starsky offered quietly.

A long silence settled over them as they sat looking at this last, dark house. Starsky could almost feel Hutch struggling with himself, trying to decide if he should go inside or just have his friend keep driving. At last he opened the car door, turned to look at Starsky. "Thanks."

"What for?"

Hutch smiled, not very convincingly. "For not being a jerk like Colby."

Starsky shrugged, dismissing this. "If I'm gonna be a jerk, I at least wanna be original about it, have my own style."

Hutch's smile became less forced. "Believe me, buddy, if there's one thing you are for sure, it's original. See you in the morning."

"I better, or it's your ass."

He got out and closed the car door behind him, walked up the steps and into the house.

Starsky wondered what it was that drew him so, that even so unhappy, he still went back to her. And how much more unhappiness would it take before he wouldn't return, or would just get in his own car and start driving and not look back?

He tore his mind away from his beautiful blond friend's problems and turned the ignition. After three tries it finally caught.

"Wish I could afford a new fucking car."