the steve morales kit

In Christmastown Louisiana, it is Christmas all year. The Spanish moss dangling from the cypress trees, once deathly and stately, has been spray-painted white. It is stiff and crackling, shedding white flakes onto the ground like oily snow. Our Christmas lights are never taken down, but they are seldom lit. On Christmas when I was twelve, as we set the final window unit air-conditioner to full blast, there was a tired whoosing sound. Power throughout the town died until the day after New Year’s. We resisted the heat, but were finally forced to remove our chunky knit sweaters, and accept that it cannot be forty degrees in Christmastown.
I do not mean to seem bitter about my town. I stayed here. I work, like most people, outside of the Christmas industry. I go on frequent business trips to New Orleans, and stay high up in hotels. Hurricane Ferdinand is coming. Now my uncle is glaring into the computerized maps on the weather channel; Ferdinand is a huge swirling red and orange demon. My uncle’s cheeks are permanently red, in blurry vein patterns like bleeding marker, from the daily heat of his Santa suit. There are beads of sweat on his forehead. Now he is wearing cutoff jean shorts and a white pocket t-shirt.
“Category 5.” He says unemphatically. Frame by frame, the storm image clicks towards the gulf. “Look at the fucking eye on that thing.” A fuzzy green satellite video shows the storm from space. The eye really is amazing, dipping into the ocean, threatening to gouge it with its clarity and stillness.
“I need to be in New Orleans tomorrow.” I say, with the right amount of manly annoyance.
“Hope you can swim.” My uncle smiles a rare off work smile. It is genuine, and slightly sadistic.
I do not leave for business trips without the Steve Morales kit. It started with his social security card, which I found on the ground in New Orleans. It was properly aged and yellow, much more authentic than my own card. Regrettably, the inspiration to keep Steve’s card came from a lifetime movie, about identity theft. When I was young I bent a paper clip into an electrical socket, after seeing it done on a safety video. As my kit came together, I began to feel like I was in love. Hair dye, an electric razor, a fake id with Steve’s name and my picture, colored contacts, and a suit that wasn’t me- it was that moist autumn feeling, like my chest was becoming a mushroom, juicy and warm, awkward but vital. I keep the kit in a well built hard case. As I arrive in this particular hotel room, I take out the kit, slide a bathroom ceiling panel loose and place the case out of sight. But before I replace the panel I pull the kit back out again. I run the razor through my beard without turning it on. I have estimated the transformation to Steve Morales would take 12 minutes. I turn on the TV to hear about our friend Ferdinand the hurricane. My meetings are in 45 minutes.
I wake up from an evening nap. I dreamt about water rising outside the Decatur street mall, darkening the empty pastel stores. The crowds had already hurried up the escalators, but I traveled more slowly with the Starbuck’s boys. We were awed by the tranquility of the purple surge rising outside our fish bowl. Now I am stepping outside the hotel lobby, into a warm night with no weather. There is a brilliant shooting star, cutting across half the sky, threatening with each second never to stop, to rip my whole world silently open. I take a cab to a restaurant that I can’t really afford.
The rain begins early, wakes me up with the excitement of Christmas morning. I usually tell people I am from Royale, which was the name of my hometown before the Christmastown vote in the 70’s. This avoids the delicate theater of excitement and mockery that I used to endure. Before I go home, I have to find a video game for my son’s birthday; I couldn’t find it in the toystores in Royale. I round the corner and enter a toy store. The door goes whoosh as it opens, and then closes slowly, fading out the hiss of the rain. The air conditioning is much too intense for my damp state. I walk up to the counter where the video games are held. There appears to be no one in the store. I am looking for sin city, a game in which the protagonist is an aspiring mobster; killing police officers, trafficking drugs and having sex with prostitutes. My sister will say, “At least they’re doing it where we can see them,” and laugh wisely. Inspired by my son’s flirtation with the dark side, I slip behind the counter to look at the games closer. A portly attendant rushes up and shoes me away from the games. Sheepishly, I ask for Sin City and then leave. Now it is howling outside. My cabbie says no planes are flying. He tells me a rumor that the seas are not rising, but receding from the shore. He says it snowed in Christmastown.