By an hour before the party’s scheduled beginning, the Registry’s been feathered, nested, transformed into an extravagant indoor aviary: birds are flying around the heights, swooping from wings of rafter to loops wrought of iron, shrinkydink droppings sacs attached by strap around their bodies, pinching, hanging weighted from cloaca: peacocks strut across the floor, garbed in festive sweaters and similar sacs to hold their turd from the rugs; they parade regally, stately as if the only guests and as such, the most honored, through the interminable passages connecting the wings of the Hall, their plumage held open with cruel metal struts, resembling elaborate, undoubtedly sadistic orthodontia. Toward decumbent dusk, a staff of nine equipped with monogrammed books of matches flit from room to sill, to light the oil votives in all the windows shining, despite having been naturally frosted, and then to light them, too, in the interior windows, which have been frosted over with soap; all doors inside and out have been ordered wreathed in a host of evergreen voids that resemble zeros, or immature bagels, crusted in holly, adorned with leis of popped maize, strung cranberries dredged from the deepest bogs of Joysey. In the square fronting the Great Hall, aside the landing reserved for arrivals never again to depart, atop its manicure of ice over the fake green and real manure, a magi troupe of underemployed, off-off-Broadway actors are rehearsing a Nativity pageant, their requisite shvartze, a reformed Ethiopian, reciting his lines to the applause of the wind; he’ll make a passable Balthazar, though he might lack a visa…the other two kings petting then illicitly feeding handfuls of moldy lump sugar stolen from the condemned Commissary to the herd of animals linedup for the casting of tomorrow’s Manger Scene: Moo for me, thanks, we’ll be in touch, and the poor mensch leads his starving cow back across the ice to Nutley; their progress lanternlit, to search by night for a better talent agent. Abulafia II never came through with the camels. A staff hired away secrectly if only temporarily from Mitteltown’s most famous department store, Wiltinghill’s, sets to work wrapping presents, which are little more than bribes, on the salvaged tables of the Commissary set end to end down the network of tunnels, underground: off the artery leading to the Treasury, wellstocked shelters linked by citybound passages recently excavated to allow for emergency disappearance, in case of contingency, better not to think of it, best not to ask or even know of their existence; giftwrap (Seasonal Red #3, Fluseason Green), tissue, ribbons, and swatches of scotch, sticklosing tape hang like impurely rendered hides tanned from the overhead heating ducts; three secretaries previously attached to Mada’s office demoted to noel assistants, present facilitators, papercutup and harried, they mock gambol up and down these hallways of tunnels with their scissors freshly sharpened they dash through the passages, go blindly around corners shoutingout their orders, kickingup skirts past piles of torn tags, hangers, and shrinkwrap, almost trippedup on lengths of string, on the twines flapping in front of the gratings to which they’ve been tied for momentary snipping, the women’s steps syncopating with the whirr of the exhaustfans allied to the heating system above, servicing nothing down below, it’s disastrous they’re coughing, sicknesses sounding along with new Hanukah songs harmonized by the wrappers surrounding, undertaken to keep their ribboning apace, their ideally threepart SA-T arrangement occasionally interrupted with the scream of an unfortunate accident, the thumb against razor or slicer, a pinkiefinger knotted down to the quick, to purple then pulse.
