A Lot Like Christmas: Stories

  Linny reached for the delete button and then realized it was the door. It can’t be the Masai drums already, she thought, and opened the door.

  It was Brian, carrying two cardboard cones. “I knew you’d be too busy to go out for red tea, so I brought it here,” he said. He handed her a cone and walked past her. “So this is your apartment?” he said, walking into the kitchen, her bedroom, her barely-room-for-one-person-and-a-computer office. “Definitely ‘The Machine Stops,’ ” he said, looking at her flatscreen, streamer, rom files. “No Christmas tree? No largemouth bass?”

  “I can’t afford a Christmas designer,” she said. “What are you doing here? Please tell me your aunt’s picked a theme.”

  “No, but”—he set his cone down and pulled a sheaf of papers from his jacket with a flourish and presented it to her—“I have the contract, signed, sealed, and delivered.”

  “But if she hasn’t picked a theme—” Linny said.

  He took the contract back from her and flipped to the second page. “Here,” he said, showing her. “ ‘Theme to be chosen by Christmas designer,’ ” he read aloud. “She thinks you should pick the theme since you’re the expert.”

  “That’s wonderful,” Linny said. If she got to choose the theme, she could base it on what was available and pretty. There was that gorgeous beaten-copper angel at ohheavens.com. It would go perfectly with Mrs. Shields’s Arts and Crafts furniture—

  “All she asks is that it be something related to Christmas, not Las Vegas. Or whaling.”

  Linny nodded happily. “Of course. Thank you for bringing it. You didn’t have to drive all the way over here, you know,” she said. “You could have just emailed it.”

  “Aunt Darby doesn’t trust computers, especially where contracts are concerned. She likes having an actual piece of paper in front of her. Your computer’s buzzing.”

  She went into the office. It was Pandora. “Twelfth Night is not going to work,” she said icily. “I just talked to Cecelia Towstrapp. Why didn’t you tell me it was about transvestites? I knew cross-gartering was an R—”

  “It’s not about transvestites,” Linny said. “I mean, Viola does dress up like a man, but it isn’t because of a sexual—”

  “Put it on speaker,” Brian, who’d followed her in, said, and pulled up a stool to sit next to her. “Ms. Freeh, do you remember me? I met you on Thanksgiving?”

  “Yes, you were the one who talked me into doing Twelfth Night,” she said, but considerably less icily. “You should have told me it had cross-dressing in it. Lulu Pazanetta’s already doing Rocky Horror Picture Show, so I can’t—”

  “Viola dresses up like a man because she’s afraid for her safety as a woman alone in a strange country,” Brian said. “She doesn’t intentionally mean to fool the duke.” He leaned in to look directly into the screen. “She wants to tell him, but she can’t. Telling the duke the truth means admitting she’s tricked him, that she’s lied to him.”

  Linny wished there was a little more room in here. He was sitting even closer than he had in the car, and the smell of his skin, his breath, as he spoke earnestly to Pandora—

  “She can’t risk telling him. She’s in love with him,” he said. “But she also knows he’s bound to find out sooner or later, and when he does, he’s bound to feel betrayed and never want to speak to her again. So she’s trapped.”

  There was a long, silent pause, and then Pandora said, “Oh, that’s so romantic! You’re right. It’s a wonderful theme. Cecelia’s a moron. You’ve convinced me. Transmit the contract.”

  You’re kidding, Linny almost said, but she quickly typed in the contract details and sent it through. “Thank you,” she whispered as soon as the contract replaced Pandora on the screen. “I cannot tell you how much work you’ve saved me.”

  “Good,” he said, still much too close. “Then you’ve got time to go out to dinner with me.”

  “I can’t,” she said regretfully. “I have to do a long-distance installation in Aruba starting at five, and I still haven’t found a decontamination suit.”

  “I won’t even ask what their Christmas theme is,” he said. “Look, I know this is your busy season, and probably you’re already lining up clients for next year, but you can’t tell me you can’t take at least one day off a year. I know it won’t be till after Christmas,” he said when she started to protest, “I just want to put my bid in now.”

  Pandora’s image reappeared on the screen. “The sixteenth won’t work. You couldn’t do it tomorrow, could you?”

  If only she could. She’d be free of Pandora for the rest of the season. “I’m afraid not.”

  “Oh, dear, it’s the only day I’ve got free. I’ll have to see what I can juggle in my calendar and get back to you.”

  And probably tell me Twelfth Night won’t work, Linny thought, waiting for her override, but she didn’t send a single vmessage. She didn’t send the contract either, but at least she hadn’t changed her mind. A week later they were still with Twelfth Night.

  “It’s a miracle,” she told Norwall and Inge during their mid-December three-way conference. “I think she’s actually ready to sign a contract. And that will only leave Mrs. Shields.”

  “I wanted to talk to you about that,” Inge said. “When I tried to run the netcheck on her, I couldn’t find anything.”

  “What do you mean?” Linny asked. “There was a block on the information?”

  “I thought you said the financial check had already been done,” Norwall said.

  “It wasn’t blocked,” Inge said. “There wasn’t a firewall, but when I put her name in, it gave me information on the house, but nothing else. When I ask for personal data, financial records, medical history, there’s nothing, just a blank. And when I tried the address, I got the same thing. Her name as owner and nothing else.”

  “Sounds like some kind of sophisticated privacy baffle system,” Norwall said, “but why—? What did you say her name was?”

  “Shields,” Inge said. “I didn’t have a first name.”

  But a last name and an address should have been enough to get the rest of the information, Linny thought. “Are you sure you spelled Shields right?” she asked.

  “Do you know her first name?” Norwall said.

  “Yes,” Linny said. “Darby.”

  “Darby?” he said, and then sharply, “What about the nephew, the engineer?”

  “Brian West.”

  “Do you want me to try his name?” Inge asked.

  “No, I’ll take care of this,” Norwall said, and downlinked, even though they still had several things to discuss.

  It was just as well. The Masai drums had gotten lost again, and it took her the better part of two days she didn’t have to track them down in Nashville. She did the Kwanzaa installations and an Extreme Sports Christmas and then, emboldened by the fact that Pandora hadn’t messaged her, sent her a Twelfth Night contract.

  She got an override from her immediately. And she should never have said that about it being a miracle because the first words out of Pandora’s mouth were “It isn’t going to work.”

  “Why not?” Linny asked. She refused to believe anyone else was doing Twelfth Night.

  “It’s the jester, Festus. Charlton Lebrock’s ex is doing Christmas in Dodge City, and there’s a Festus in that. He’s a drunk.”

  “The jester’s name is Feste,” Linny protested, but to no avail. Pandora’s mind, such as it was, was made up.

  “We’ll have to do a different play. One that no one else has done.”

  “Coriolanus,” Linny suggested, wishing Brian was here and wondering if she could send him an override. “The Tempest.”

  “That people have heard of,” Pandora said.

  Othello, Linny thought, with an outdoor tableau of you being smothered with a pillow. “As You Like It. Richard the Third.”

  But all the plays people had heard of had already been done by Pandora’s friends, or Pandora’s friends’ exes, or their exes.
Brian’s right, Linny thought, this whole theme thing has gotten out of hand. Why can’t people have a Christmas they like? Why do they have to have something completely unique?

  They finally settled on A Midsummer’s Night Dream, which should at least be comparatively easy—flowers, fairies, a woodland holo. She started a search for a donkey’s head.

  Costumes.com didn’t have one. She tried Don We Now Our Gay Apparel.

  The screen buzzed, and Norwall’s image appeared. “She’s Sara Darbingdon,” he said.

  “Who is?” Linny said blankly.

  “Your client. Darby Shields. She’s the head of Galatek International.”

  “Galatek International?” Linny said. “The software company?”

  “The software conglomerate. Your client’s the computer genius who started it.”

  “But that’s impossible,” Linny said. “Mrs. Shields doesn’t know anything about computers. She doesn’t even like sending emails.”

  “That’s what she told you. Trust me, I ran a complete profile of her. Dr. Sara Darbingdon, 3404 Aspen Lane—”

  Norwall’s image disappeared and a news photo of Sara Darbingdon appeared. “Galatek CEO Announces Intel Merger.” It was Mrs. Shields.

  “But why would she pretend—?”

  “Because she didn’t want you to know who you were talking to. She’s obviously after deck.halls.”

  “After deck.halls? What do you mean?”

  “I mean, they’re researching a takeover. Or else starting their own Christmas company. With your ideas. How many themes did you show her?”

  “Quite a few,” Linny said, thinking of that first interview and the number of holos she’d clicked through. “But why—she’s never even had a professional Christmas.”

  “Wrong again,” he said, and a list came up on the screen. “Home and office Christmases for the last ten years, all done by Galatek’s in-house designers: Christmas in the Country, O Holy Night, A Norman Rockwell Christmas, Christmas in Connecticut…”

  At least she was telling the truth about liking traditional Christmases, Linny thought irrelevantly. “But I still don’t understand. If they already have Christmas designers—”

  “Because we’re successful, and conglomerates like Galatek are always looking for ways to co-opt successes. Look what Time-Warner-Microsoft did to graduation planning. They put every private planner out of business. You didn’t give her a rom, did you?”

  “She couldn’t make up her mind which package—”

  Norwall groaned. “Goodbye, deck.halls. Hello, Galatek Christmases, Inc.”

  She was shaking her head. “But she seemed so nice,” she said, but she was thinking of how she’d kept asking to see different themes, how she’d asked her about her office, how she’d insisted Brian take her to Rock and a…Brian.

  “You’re wrong,” she said. “She can’t be Sara Darbingdon. There has to be some mistake. Her nephew helped me come up with a theme for Pandora Freeh. He wouldn’t be a party to—”

  “He’s not her nephew.”

  After several seconds she managed to say, “What?”

  “He works at Galatek. He’s no relation to Dr. Darbingdon.”

  “I don’t believe you,” she said. “He hates the whole idea of professional Christmases.”

  “That’s something he obviously said so you wouldn’t catch on.”

  So she wouldn’t catch on. She thought of Brian showing up at the Manning installation, at her apartment, of his walking into her office, looking at her equipment. And all the while pretending that he—

  “They were obviously after your designs,” Norwall said, “pumping you for the names of clients and suppliers.”

  “Who do you get a largemouth bass from anyway?” Brian had said, and he’d asked her all about her best Christmas and her most difficult.

  “What’s his name?” she said.

  “Who? Oh, the so-called nephew? He actually used his own name, I suppose because it isn’t one you’d recognize, but he’s not an engineer. He’s a marketing designer.”

  “I have to go,” Linny said.

  “The house is hers, too. I was surprised. When I saw your proposal layouts, I assumed it had to be a rental for the occasion, but no, she actually lives in it when she’s not in San Francisco. Or Stockholm. She’s got houses there, too, plus apartments in Manhattan, Sydney, São Paulo, Addis Ababa, and Beijing. And a villa in Iceland.”

  “I like to keep things simple,” she’d said.

  “I’ve got an override from Pandora Freeh,” Linny lied. “I’ve got to go.”

  “Pandora will have to wait,” Norwall said. “We have to talk about what you’re going to do about this.”

  “I’ll call you back,” she said, and downlinked before he could protest.

  And then sat there, thinking, I don’t believe it. But she did. After all, it was the oldest trick in the book—#145 Romantic Con Men. Sweet-talk the mark into revealing her secrets. Buy her red tea, help her carry something heavy, sit too close to her in her office, and for good measure, pretend he liked E. M. Forster, which he had no doubt found out about from one of those netchecks.

  And she had fallen for it, hook, line, and sinker—#182 Fisherman’s Paradise.

  The screen buzzed an override. She reached for the delete key, but it wasn’t Norwall. It was Pandora.

  “A Midsummer Night’s Dream won’t work, after all,” she said. “Fashad Tweedlowe did Christmas at the Grand Canyon last year.”

  “The Grand Canyon?” Linny said, unable to see the connection.

  “Riding down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon,” Pandora said.

  Oh, she can’t mean—

  “Burros,” Pandora said. “They ride burros.”

  “Bottom’s an ass.”

  “Ass, burro, it’s the same thing. Maybe your young man was right. I should do Twelfth Night.”

  He’s not my young man, Linny thought. He’s a marketing designer for Galatek.

  “But it’s just so obscure. Didn’t Shakespeare write any other plays?”

  “Just the thirty-nine,” Linny said. “And 154 sonnets.”

  “The sonnets,” Pandora said thoughtfully. “That’s an idea. Let me think about that.” Her image blinked off. The screen immediately buzzed again.

  It was Brian. She hit “record answer,” and Brian said, “Look, I know you’re wildly busy and my chances of taking you out for a red tea are nonexistent till after Christmas, but if you’ll tell me where you’re going to be stringing up hot dogs or synchronized swimmers, I’ll bring you a cone. I’ll even hold it for you so you can keep both hands free for plucking chickens or whatever it is you’ll be doing.”

  Fighting off intellectual property thieves, she thought. Norwall was right. They had to talk about what she was going to do.

  She uplinked to him.

  “You don’t do anything. If she gets demanding, you tell her you know what she’s up to and you have no intention of helping her steal deck.halls out from under you.”

  But she has all those people coming for dinner, Linny thought, and then realized that was probably a lie, too.

  “I know this is Galatek you’re dealing with,” Norwall was saying, “but there’s no contract, and she’s on very shaky legal ground herself: fraud, criminal misrepresentation—”

  “I’m afraid there is a contract,” Linny said ruefully. “She signed it yesterday.”

  “Online?”

  “No, an actual signature.”

  Norwall nodded. “So there wouldn’t be a corneal ID.”

  Of course. “Aunt Darby doesn’t trust online contracts,” my foot. She hadn’t wanted electronic identification of her signature.

  “What name did she use?” Norwall said. “If she used Shields, the contract’s invalid.”

  Linny went and got the contract, hoping that was the case, but it was an illegible scrawl. She scanned it in for Norwall.

  “No, that’s definitely Sara Darbingdon’s signature,” he said. “An
d it’s the address of the house that’s listed on the contract, not the owner. This changes things.”

  “How?”

  “If you’ve got a legally binding contract—she didn’t snail-mail this to you, did she?”

  “No, her—Bri—the marketing designer brought it over.”

  “Too bad,” he said. “We might have been able to prove mail fraud. But under the circumstances, unless you can prove fraudulent signing conditions—”

  “I thought I was signing a contract with someone else,” Linny said. “Doesn’t that count as fraudulent?”

  He shook his head. “It’s your word against hers, or, rather, against Galatek’s legal department, which is like going up against—”

  “Are you telling me that even though she’s trying to steal my ideas, I might have to do her Christmas?” she said, feeling sick at the thought of it. What if Brian showed up?

  “Calm down,” Norwall said. “Let me uplink to lawyer.com and see where we stand, and then we’ll decide what to do. Don’t worry. They’re not going to get away with this.”

  They’ve already gotten away with it, Linny thought numbly. She called up her messages and tried to get some work done, but she couldn’t concentrate. She ended up going through Shakespeare’s sonnets, looking for one she could use for Pandora, but there wasn’t much to work with. “Bare ruined choirs”? The “barren rage of death’s eternal cold”?

  The screen buzzed. “It’s what I was afraid of. The contract’s legally binding, and the payment-on-signing’s already been deposited in your online account. You’re legally obligated to do the Christmas.”

  “I can’t—” Linny said.

  “The object is to minimize the damage and not reveal any more trade secrets than you already have. What theme is it? How detailed was your proposal?”

  “I haven’t done it yet. Mrs. Shie—she left the theme to my discretion.”

  “And that’s in the contract?” he said excitedly.

  “Yes. No. I mean, that line was left blank, to be filled in by me.”

  “This changes everything. Let me—” he said, and his image disappeared.