After a bunch of wasted auditions, The Nail said goodbye to the music scene. He had his pride, man. As a lark, he started boosting stuff and selling it off. Wound up making more that way than any of the nowhere, no-name thrasher bands who never called him were gonna pay him.

But then Tina goes and gets herself knocked up and tries to tell him the kid’s his. Sure. Right. Like with the way she jumps on anything upright and hard, he’s gonna believe that shit? No fucking way.

Then she gets all fucked up in the head and won’t have an abortion. Nah. She’s gonna have the kid and be a mommy.

Right. Mommy Tina. Sure.

But surprise, surprise. She’s goes through with it. And of course the kid’s born like totally wasted. And then the word comes down that it’s got fucking AIDS, man. AIDS!

That meant Tina had the bug, and that blew The Nail’s mind. Fuck, he could have it too, what with screwing Tina all the time and sharing needles. He should’ve gotten tested right then, but he was too scared, man. Like he didn’t want to know.

But for Tina, it was like she wasn’t even sick and like the kid wasn’t sick either. Her head was royally fucked. So she was all broke up when they took the baby away from her.

And she kept telling him it was his kid. Kept saying how it looked just like him. So one day last week she finally hounded him into going over to this place where they keep the kid and look after it. The Nail didn’t know what had gotten into him—maybe that Ceylonese brown they’d been using had got him over-mellowed—but he was glad he’d given in. Because as he was hanging around the place, he saw people carrying a bunch of Christmas gifts through this doorway. He took a peek, figuring he might be able to make off with something small, but he saw a whole room filled with toys. Whoa.

Merry Christmas to me.

He did the place two nights later.

And the coolest part of the whole thing was the news coverage. Shit, man, last night you couldn’t turn a radio or TV without hearing about “the AIDS baby Christmas toy theft.” He’d spent hours hopping from channel to channel, one news show after the other, grinning like a total asshole.

That was him they were talking about. The Nail.

The only bad thing was, he couldn’t tell anyone. At least not until he’d sold off the stuff. After that he could talk all he wanted because the toys would be gone and no one could prove nothing.

The only thing he didn’t get was how pissed off and disgusted all the news geeks acted. Like it really mattered to them. Bullshit. Everybody knew how stupid it was to waste presents on those AIDS kids. Really, how long were they going to live anyway? Weren’t going to be around long enough to appreciate them. Total waste, man.