me where we’re going, I decided we could at least match.”
“Good choice,” he says, voice soft and smooth as we head toward the door.
“Am I dressed appropriately?” I ask, fishing for Hint # 2,009.
He winks, opening the door for me. “You certainly are,” he says, noncommittally as ever.
I slap him playfully on the chest and follow him into the chill night air. Noel, North Carolina is Christmas card perfect as darkness falls on December 24th.
He’s parked on the street side of Holly Day’s and as we walk to his car I admire the Christmas lights winking in every storefront and around every light pole all the way up Mott Street.
Traffic is light this time of night, everyone either already home by now or stuck where they are, working the holiday away.
“You played beautifully tonight,” I tell him as he opens my door for me. “You always do.”
“I try really hard,” he says, merrily, neither accepting the compliment, nor disputing it. “Especially this time of year.”
He shuts my door, walks around and opens his own, sliding his guitar in the backseat. It’s an old car, something sporty a decade or so earlier, but slightly bruised and battered now, like Rafe himself.
I watch his profile as we pull away from the restaurant. He’s a few years older than me, in his early 30s, dark hair cut close to his head, quiet brown eyes and a lean body. But there’s a sadness about him, a quietness, that pulls his full lips down into a permanent frown full of mystery and pain.
He smiles when he turns to me, catching me watching him. “Hungry?” he asks.
“I could eat,” I hedge, still wondering where he’s taking me.
“Great,” he says. “This place has super food.”
“Really?” I ask, imagining a romantic candlelight dinner for two.
“The best,” he adds, switching lanes and using his blinker to turn down Maple Drive. “Especially tonight.”
“You go there often?” I ask, still playing detective.
“My third Christmas in a row,” he says, eyes on the road. They moisten, like Holly Day’s in her office, though his crooked smile is firm, resolute, fixed. “It’s… kind of a tradition for me, now.”
I nod, thinking about my Dad back home, entertaining his new wife Melanie – only slightly older than myself – while Mom enjoys a Caribbean cruise with the rest of the single ladies from her Country Club.
“Sounds nice,” I sigh, troubling the hem of my sweater nervously.
We drive in silence for awhile, more smooth jazz oozing from his car radio, something Christmassy, but not too much. It’s soft, more like background music, as we pass by Noel’s quaint store fronts and strip malls, all decked out for the season.
The car slows and turns down a side street, then another, until we’re drifting away from Noel’s main drag, where all the normal restaurants, clubs and cafés linger.
He slows some more and I see a sign for something called the Seasons Senior Center. It, too, is festooned for the holidays, with giant waving snowmen on the lawn and big colored lights blinking around the sign.
When he parks, he turns to me, a bashful smile on his face. “Alex, you have to trust me,” he says, a hand on mine. “This will be fun.”
I pull mine away, gently. For weeks I’ve been looking forward to this night. Rafe, the mysterious guitar man, who can make me cry with “Silent Night,” every night. Our mysterious date, his sad eyes and downturned smile and mysterious air. I thought he’d be bringing me someplace funky, fresh, a downtown jazz club, maybe, or a quiet bistro with a table just for two in the corner.
Not the local nursing home. “What… will be fun?” I ask, voice a little tighter than I wanted it to sound, unable to control my disappointment.
He looks hurt and soon his hand, too, drifts away from mine. “I know it’s not what you might have expected,” he says, looking away, reaching for his door. “But… I think… if you’ll just give it a chance, it might just change your life.”
I chuckle. “I was hoping for a romantic evening,” I cluck, opening my own door and standing abruptly from his ancient sports car. “Not a life changing one.”
I follow him inside, at a distance, listening to the creak of his old guitar case swing to and fro in his hand. There are old people on the portico, bundled up in garish red Christmas sweaters and warm wool blankets with red and green checks.
“Merry Christmas!” they shout, waving wrinkled hands. Rafe shakes each one, gently.
“Merry Christmas,” he says, brightly, before disappearing inside.
A middle-aged woman behind the reception desk just inside beams at Rafe, rushing out to hug him as her plastic poinsettia pin crinkles against his chest.
“Thanks so much for coming,” she says, leaving a lipstick smear on his chiseled cheekbone. “And you brought a guest this time?”
The woman turns to me and I see a flash of nametag just below her poinsettia pin. It reads “Gerty” and it’s the last thing I see before I’m swallowed up in a blur of double chins and cheap perfume and an itchy Christmas sweater.
“This is my date, Alex Baker,” Rafe says, and my face flushes a little to hear him call me his date.
Gerty clasps her hands together in front of her chest the way some women do and says, “Great, then you can keep me company while Rafe wows the crowd with those magic fingers of his.”
With that she grabs my hand and drags me down a long hall as we follow Rafe and his creaking guitar case. There are blinking lights strung along the walls, and handmade art that looks more like it belongs on a kindergarten bulletin board.
The air smells like gravy and coffee and pee and I can’t believe this is where I’m spending my Christmas Eve with, like, the sexiest guy in all of Noel.
Gerty holds my hand so long it feels like it’s stuck in a piece of warm bread dough. I start to hear coughing, and chuckling, and wheezing and as we reach the end of one hall and turn down another, I see a large room crowded with people. Old people. In wheelchairs and walkers and sweaters and white shoes and white hair.
A sign screwed to the wall says, “Event Room” and, above that, a handmade sign reads, “Welcome, Guitar Man Rafe!”
I smile a little and when the people see Rafe, they light up, cheering and waving. Nurses in blue scrub pants and tops covered in snowmen rush him and crowd him and he smiles and waves and hugs and kisses and is kissed and Gerty and I stand in the doorway, admiring him being admired.
“It’s always like this,” Gerty says, tears in her eyes. Literally; there are tears in her eyes. Her glasses fog in their red frames.
“Every Christmas?” I ask.
She turns to me, producing a tissue from the folds of her pleated khaki pants. “Every weekend,” she says, cocking her head. “Rafe plays for us every weekend. I thought… thought you might know that.”
I shake my head, turning back to the Event Room where Rafe has stepped onto a rickety stage, plugging his guitar into a small, square amp in the corner. The room has grown quiet, the nurses back behind their respective wheelchairs, the residents watching Rafe’s every move as he holds the guitar gently, lovingly in his hands and begins to play.
“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” oozes from his instrument, sweet and low and soft. The room kind of… settles. I don’t know any other word for it. It’s like a fuzzy, warm blanket of love and goodwill just suddenly covered the whole room all at once.
The old folks lean back in their chairs, smiling, turning to one another, nodding in some secret, wordless old people language that only they can understand. Some clap silently, grizzled hands like baseball gloves tapping quietly together. The nurses bend and sway, beaming like groupies at a rock concert.
I hear Gerty singing along, quietly, under her breath, so as not to disturb anyone and look over at her, giving her a gentle smile of encouragement. She nods, briefly, and returns to her singing.
I lean against the wall, watching Rafe calm the crowd with his
aching, tender, strumming guitar. His eyes are closed, as they are when he plays at Holly Day’s Diner five nights a week. To think he finishes there after a long Sunday shift and then comes here, every week, boggles the mind.
And he’s not just phoning it in, either. He’s working that guitar like a magician works the stage. No sheet music, no stand, no frills, just the man and his guitar and his fingers and a whole lot of soul.
From there he blends into “White Christmas” and another wave of joy, hope, happiness and recognition ripples through the crowd. He doesn’t see it, his eyes still closed, but I can sense he feels it in the way his lips curl into a rare smile as he hunches over his guitar.
I smile, too, when suddenly my stomach rumbles. Gerty nudges me, chuckling, and leans in to whisper, “There’s food, if you’re hungry?”
I go to say “no,” already shaking my head, when my stomach rumbles again; louder, this time. She chuckles and grabs my hand and gently tugs me from the doorway. “But you should listen,” I say, resisting her.
“I listen every week, Alex,” she reminds me. “Besides, this place has great acoustics, and that amp is no joke. We’ll still be able to hear