The Fat Man_ A Tale of North Pole Noir - Ken Harmon [31]
“Bonjour,” said one.
“Bonjour,” said another.
“Hiya, mac,” said the third.
I came up on them as I rounded a bend just before I went into the Forest of Mistletoe for good. They were sitting on a rock, surrounded by the remains of a picnic. Their feathers were puffed up to keep the cold out and all three were getting help with little capes that were draped over their tails. The two hens on the left were identical, white and real lookers. As I got closer, I could see that the third hen was clearly a duck. And a guy duck. He looked like he had just survived getting plucked by a blind man, but barely.
Since they were French, I gave them a deep bow and said, “Whose acquaintance do I have the pleasure of making?”
“Oh, I am Coco,” said the first, giggling.
“I am Luci,” said the second. She blushed three shades of red.
“I’m Fuzz,” said the duck with a burp. “We ate all the food. If you’re beggin’, keep hiking, piker.”
I gave Fuzz a tough gander. “Relax, Fuzz,” I said. “I’m well-chowed and I don’t go for chicken feed. Speaking of which, you are clearly not of the same feather as these ladies. What gives?”
“Oh, Antoinette,” squeaked Coco.
“Au revoir,” Luci said with a tear in her eye.
“Apparently, their big sister amscrayed,” Fuzz said. “They said she ran off with some colonel guy who promised her a bucket of fun.”
“Sounds like Antoinette lost her head,” I said.
“C’est la vie,” Fuzz said. “It’s like water off of my back.”
“And you’re here to give them a shoulder to cry on,” I said, sizing Fuzz up in a second.
“Oui!” Coco cooed.
“Oui!” Luci chirped.
“Hey, I don’t claim to be no Don Swan,” Fuzz said, getting a little ruffled. “But they are cute chicks and they are French. Do I have to draw you a picture?”
“No thanks,” I said. “I’ll wait and catch it on the late late show. How long have birds been hanging around here?”
“A couple of days,” Fuzz said. “It’s nice and quiet up here. You don’t get a lot of Nosey Parkers minding your beeswax in this neck of the woods. Good for the amour, you know?”
“Oui, oui,” Coco and Luci said with a kind of enthusiasm that would turn you off eggs for good.
“Seen anybody go into the forest?” I asked.
Fuzz gave me the once-over and, for a minute, I was afraid he had been reading the news and caught on as to who I was. But it ended up that Fuzz was just worried how much longer this chitchat was going to go on before he could return to getting henpecked. “There was another elf a couple of days ago,” he said, pointing his beak toward the trail. “He didn’t stop to talk. Seemed like he was in a hurry to move along. He didn’t look like he was made out for the outdoorsy stuff, though. He was a real dandy.”
“Well, Candy is dandy,” I said mostly to myself.
“What’s that, buster?” Fuzz asked. “I didn’t catch that.”
“Nothing, Fuzz. Anybody with this elf?”
“Yeah, some doll,” Fuzz said with a dirty grin. “I think that’s why he was in a hurry. Do I have to draw you a picture?”
Fuzz didn’t have to draw me a picture. The picture I had hit me in the gut like a jackhammer. She was with him, helping him. Of course, that poem that came to the paper was written at the paper, on her own little Royal typewriter. I was a schmuck. I tried to give myself a kick and tell my heart that it didn’t matter. I wasn’t really the type for whispering sweet nothings and slow dances. I wasn’t known for moonlight and mush. I’ve never dotted an “I” with a heart or lingered in the shadows saying “night-night” a million times. I told myself that the lump in my throat would pass probably about the time I got my third set of teeth. “What did this doll look like?” I asked it like I didn’t care, but the effort was like trying to do push-ups with an elephant on your back.
“She was cute,” Fuzz said with a shrug.