Christmas Tickets

The other day Helene says, "We need six more tickets to go mass on Christmas Eve." The way she said it I knew it was down to me. So I got in the car and headed down to the church. It was cold and I got to the church early, just as the sundogs were peeking up over the horizon. Already there were quite a few people milling around in front, huddled together against the cold and most of them were sipping coffee out of paper Tim Horton’s coffee cups. I parked the car and made my way over to where they were lined up.

"Is this the line-up for tickets?" I asked.

Somebody looked at me and nodded. I stepped in behind him. It was then that I noticed he was wearing a bright green wristband. I looked around. Everybody was wearing bright green wristbands. I tapped the guy in front of me on the shoulder and pointed at his wristband. "What’s that?" I said.

He looked at me, and then he looked at my band-less wrist. "You’ll never get tickets," he said. "They handed out all the wristbands last Sunday. Didn’t you go to church? You would have got one if you went to church."

"I - uh - had to work," I said.

"That’s too bad," he said. "You should have sent somebody else because you’ve got to have a wristband to get tickets to mass on Christmas Eve. The church just isn’t big enough to handle everybody who wants to go. Plus there’s a limit of five tickets per person."

"I need six tickets," I said.

He shook his head and looked at me sympathetically. "You better start praying," he said. I could tell he thought I was crazy. He nudged the guy in line in front of him. "Check this guy out," he said, and jerked his head in my direction. "He wants six tickets for Christmas Eve and he doesn’t even have a wristband." The guy in front of him looked at me. Then he looked back at the other guy.  "C.N.E.?" he said. The other guy nodded. "Guess so," he said.

"What does C.N.E. mean?" I asked.

"People who only go to church at Christmas, New Years and Easter," he said.

"You’d have a wristband if you went every Sunday," the other guy said, distastefully.

All of a sudden another guy appeared out of nowhere. He was wearing a long black trench coat, black sunglasses and a black toque. He squeezed in close beside me and then, in a very low whisper of a voice, said, "Need tickets?"

"Yes," I said, turning to look at him. "I need six tickets for the nine o'clock mass on Christmas Eve but I haven’t got a wristband."

"No problem," the man in black said, and he put his arm around me and steered me away from everybody else.

"You can get me tickets?" I said.

He looked around and then he leaned in close to me. "Keep it down," he whispered. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of crisp, pink Christmas Eve mass tickets. He thumbed through them. "I can get you up front and center, right under the Mary Mother Of God statue. Fifty bucks," he said.

"Fifty bucks!"

He pulled back and looked around nervously. "Not so loud," he said.

"But the tickets only cost twenty-five cents," I protested.

The man in black shrugged. "Supply and demand," he said. "I can get you in cheaper, but it’s off to the side and it’s an obstructed view. Behind a post. Twenty bucks."

I was between a rock and a hard place and I knew it. I paid the mysterious man in black for the six tickets and pocketed them. But even as I was handing him the money I knew this would never happen again. I made a vow to go to church every Sunday. I told him this as he was counting the money I had given him. "I’m going to be here next year when the wristbands got handed out," I said.

He smiled. Then he reached in his pocket and pulled out a neatly folded envelope. "Need season’s tickets?" he said.