A Christmas story
"NOW one time it comes on Christmas, and in fact it is the evening before Christmas, and I am in Good Time Charley Bernstein's little speakeasy in West Forty-seventh Street, wishing Charley a Merry Christmas and having a few hot Tom and Jerrys with him."
So begins Damon Runyan's story, Dancing Dan's Christmas Gift.
The narrator and Good Time Charley are in New York, keeping out the cold with the Tom and Jerrys, when in comes a guy called Dancing Dan, carrying a large parcel which he throws into a corner. He joins them in the Tom and Jerrys.
"This Dancing Dan is a good-looking young guy, who always seems well-dressed, and he is called by the name of Dancing Dan because he is a great hand for dancing around and about with dolls in night clubs, and other spots where there is any dancing. In fact, Dan never seems to be doing anything else, although I hear rumours that when he is not dancing he is carrying on in a most illegal manner at one thing and another. But of course you can always hear rumours in this town about anybody, and personally I am rather fond of Dancing Dan as he always seems to be getting a great belt out of life … although I wish to say I always question his judgment in dancing so much with Miss Muriel O'Neill, who works in the Half Moon night club. And the reason I question his judgment in this respect is because everybody knows that Miss Muriel O'Neill is a doll who is very well thought of by Heine Schmitz, and Heine Schmitz is not such a guy as will take kindly to anybody dancing more than once and a half with a doll that he thinks well of."
They are taking more cracks of Tom and Jerry when in comes an old guy in a Santa Claus outfit named Ooky. This Ooky has been carrying a signboard advertising Moe Lewinsky's clothing joint on Sixth Avenue. He's all tuckered out and after just five mugs of Tom and Jerry he falls asleep in an armchair.
About midnight Dancing Dan wishes to see how he looks as Santa Claus. They remove Ooky's outfit and put it on Dan. Then they get to wondering where they could find a Christmas stocking to fill with gifts.
Dancing Dan says he knows of a stocking that is hung up in Miss Muriel O'Neill's flat on West forty-ninth Street. It belongs to Gammer O'Neill, Miss Muriel O'Neill's grandmother aged 90.
They set off, Dancing Dan first putting his parcel in Ooky's Santa Claus sack. They find the flat. An old doll is asleep in bed. A stocking is hanging up. Dancing Dan then produces "a raft of big diamond bracelets, and diamond rings, and diamond brooches, and diamond necklaces" which the three proceed to stuff into Gammer O'Neill's stocking.
"And it is not until I get out in the fresh air again that all of a sudden I remember seeing large headlines in the afternoon papers about a five hundred-Gs stickup in the afternoon of one of the biggest diamond merchants in Maiden Lane while he is sitting in his office, and I also recall once hearing rumours that Dancing Dan is one of the best lone-hand git-'em-up guys in the world."
Runyan's story then skips a year. It's Christmas Eve again and he meets up with a character named Shotgun Sam, who says he last saw him a year ago when he, Good Time Charley and Ooky the Santa Claus man came out of the speakeasy very much the worse for wear .
They'd been tipped off that Dancing Dan was in the place. Heine Schmitz was sore about some doll. Shotgun Sam and two others were across the road with orders not to miss. But Dancing Dan had never showed up.
"'Well, Shotgun,' I say, 'Merry Christmas.'
"'Well, all right," Shotgun says, 'Merry Christmas.'"
Tailpiece
IF THERE are two Santa Clauses on your roof, which one's Van der Merwe?
He's the one with the Easter eggs.
Last word
Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home!
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