The Illusion

By Bev Vincent
January 2006

The man in the Santa Claus suit waves his arm in hopes of a ride on the third morning of the transit strike. Despite freezing temperatures and a severe wind chill, sweat streams across his face.

 Instead of the usual fake beard and padding beneath a Coca-Cola red suit, he wears a flesh-like mask that clings to his face, covering his entire head. The beard and long white hair were threaded through the mask a strand at a time. At the neck it connects to a body suit of the type worn by actresses trying to look pregnant on-screen. Beards get tugged. Hair gets pulled. He wants nothing to spoil the illusion. Only his eyes are revealed, and even these are covered by blue-tinted contacts.

A van slows, but it’s too full. They might squeeze in an extra passenger, but they clearly have no room for his enormous sack. Steam emerges through the opening at his nostrils and the small puncture between his rubber lips. He knows he’s running late but isn’t wearing a watch. That, too, would spoil the illusion.

 The streets are filled with pedestrians, people on bikes, skateboards, scooters, inline skates, anything to get them wherever they need to be. Men and women hold aloft cardboard signs hastily inked with their destinations. Manhattan. Bay Ridge. Lower East Side.

 Desperate drivers pick up strangers to satisfy the enforced limit of four-per-car for vehicles heading into Manhattan south of 96th. The red BMW rolling through that stop sign might contain a lawyer, an office temp, a doorman and a plumber. In addition to the deliveryman, the brown courier van speeding past might hold a CEO, an architect, and an exotic dancer. None of these vehicles have room for a Santa Claus. Several drivers hold their hands up in the universal “Sorry, but what can I do?” gesture. 

The man rubs his gloved hands together for warmth and jostles the sack on the ground beside him with his knee to reassure himself of its presence. He keeps thinking about its contents, lifeless and yet so full of promise. He steps toward the street more aggressively, though he’s hesitant to stick out a red-gloved thumb.

 Finally, a black Escalade with two people up front and a third in the back seat pulls over to the curb. The man peers into a cloud of warmth escaping the open window. “We’re going to West 81st,” the driver says.

 Close enough. The man opens the rear door and places his sack on the seat, making sure the drawstrings are pulled tight. He senses he’s interrupted a conversation in progress, so he tries to break the ice with that old standby, the weather. “Stays like this, we’ll have a white Christmas after all.”

 The others, two men and a woman, smile and nod in response. They introduce themselves. Heidi, in the front seat, wearing a white down jacket with a fur-trimmed hood, is a lawyer. Herschel, bespectacled, with a computer on his lap, is a technology consultant. George, the driver, in a dark overcoat, teaches at NYU.

 “What do you do?” Heidi asks, then covers her mouth with a white mitten as she bursts out laughing. The others join in. The man’s laughter is deep and jolly, well practiced and natural sounding.

 Herschel says, “I heard about this guy who put an ad on the internet night before last. Free rides. No one answered. He put up another one yesterday morning, this time asking for money—he had fifteen replies in five minutes.” He shakes his head. “It’s crazy.”

“I like what happens to people when there's a crisis in this city," Heidi says. “They're nicer to each another than usual. More trusting”

 The man nods in agreement.

 “Wouldn't it be great if a strike happened more often?” George asks. “There's no traffic.”

 The man is glad they’re making good time, because he’s getting hot inside his body suit. He’s tempted to roll down the window, but doesn’t want to freeze out the other passengers. “Not everyone’s nice in a crisis,” he says, remembering an ugly scene that happened earlier, people yelling at cops and at each other. His left arm rests protectively atop his sack.

 George shrugs. The streets are slick with ice and snow, so he seems to be concentrating on his driving.

 “No, not everyone,” Herschel agrees.

 The man listens to the three as they banter about the strike, its side effects, and seemingly anything else that comes to mind. He finds it curious that none of them have commented on his outfit or the fact that he kept his mask on the whole time. They seem like they’ve known each other a while, and it occurs to him to ask if they’ve just met.

 From his position in the back seat, the man sees Heidi glance first at George, then over her shoulder at Herschel.

“We’ve known each other a long time,” she says.

 “Long time,” Herschel echoes.

“Waiting for circumstances like these to go out and gather people willing to join us.”

 George clicks a remote control on his visor. Through the frosty windshield, the man sees a garage door opening ahead.

 “Eager to join us,” Herschel says. “Get in without question. No struggles.”

 The car veers sharply into the opening and the darkness beyond. The man has only a brief instant to consider how easily he was tricked. How perfect the illusion they had created.


THE END

[Story prompt: Write a tale about a mask that hides more than just a face.]