Carol for Another Christmas (15 page)

The spirit beamed at Monica, who sputtered, “I never; I—what's he doing, writing about me? I—he's just a kid—”

“He looks grown-up enough to me, actually,” the spirit said. “But obviously he's wasting his time on a woman too preoccupied to see his worth. Shall we go, my dear? There's still much to do—”

“I have done more visiting tonight than I've ever done in all my life put together, I think,” she said. “I give up. Uncle. You sold me. Christmas is good. I am lucky. Many are not. I should give more. And, whatever that bastard Johansen wants, he is definitely not getting it from me, no matter what. Those people writing to Wayne deserve their privacy and—”

“As to that, I think I really must in all fairness show you something,” he said. Fortunately, Wayne used a glide-point mouse device, which was quite easily ghost-manipulated. The cursor arrived at the icon bearing the Databanks avatar, a vault with a question mark, and clicked.

Monica caught a glimpse of Wayne's startled face before she and the ghost were swooshing once more to end up back at Databanks. Not in her office but staring out through multiple screens at her staff. The staff she was paying to be working the holiday developing Johansen's software. Instead, they were all watching her like she was some sort of soap opera.

“What is this?” she demanded of the ghost.

“Why, it's your employees, obviously,” the ghost said, clearly waffling.

“I know that. Why can I see them? Can they see me?”

“Oh, yes. A greeting might be in order, in fact. Might I suggest ‘Merry Christmas'?”

“Hi, Ms. Banks! You sure look natural!” Phillip said, as if of a well-made-up corpse.

“Look at that color resolution. I never knew your eyes were so blue, Ms. Banks,” Dave said admiringly.

“Spirit, you look terrific,” Melody said. “I keep wanting to tell you what I want for Christmas.”

“A new job would be appropriate,” Monica said.

“Oops. Backsliding, eh?” Sheryl said, shaking her head. “Ms. Banks, you've already fired most of us if we don't have Get a Life ready by New Year's, and with you and your spooky friends taking up all our online time, I don't think we're going to.”

“
Now
look at the color resolution!” Dave said, even more admiringly. “That shade of red you're turning matches the spirit's robe exactly, Ms. Banks.”

“Don't just sit there, you two,” Melody said sweetly. “I know you have lots more to accomplish. Never mind us. We're seeing a side of you we never knew existed, boss.”

“Yeah,” Harald said. “Pardon my sexism but, gee, Monica, you know you're really cute when you're
not
angry.”

“Mutiny, that's what this is,” Monica said to the spirit.

“You're not a ship's captain, Money,” John told her. “You're the president of a company whose function you don't understand, whose staff you resent, and whose resources you're putting to improper use.”

“Not only that,” Miriam said, “we're not sailors. We're subcontractors and will probably go on to form competing companies.”

“That is, unless you find some way to make it worth our while to stay,” Sheryl said.

“I don't think this is exactly the spirit of Christmas, ladies and gentlemen,” the spirit said. “No business to be transacted on the holiday. Thank you very much. Miss Banks and I have another stop to make. Merry Christmas to you all.”

“And to all a gooooood night,” Sheryl said, and she had the gall to sneer.

Twelve

This time the spirit and Monica reappeared in the horse-drawn sleigh instead of inside Wayne's office.

“Why is it that we're not swooshing this time?” Monica asked.

“All of those visits were paid to people who were online. The visit we're making now is to someone who is not—at least, not ordinarily. Besides, it gives us a chance to take a more scenic route.”

Monica was rather hoping they'd go back through the forest again, but instead, they drove through the downtown district of Seattle and down to the southern end. On several occasions, when gangs were celebrating Christmas in their own special way, Monica had cause to be glad that they were invisible, at least to everyone but cats.

They stopped at the end of a block, by a bus stop, and dismounted. “What?” she asked the ghost. The snow was falling only very lightly now and the streets looked like glass. “Are we going too far for a ghostly sleigh or are the horses tired? Is that why we're taking the bus?”

“We're not taking it; we're meeting it,” the Spirit of Christmas Present said.

“You don't think that's carry ing season's greetings a little far?” she asked. She wasn't cold anymore, and the wind had died down, but she wanted to be back on her own couch in her own office. She was wearying of revelations and feared more of them.

He laughed with annoying merriment at her sarcasm, as if it was amusing. A bus pulled up and disgorged a few late-night stragglers. Most of them were drunk. One was a woman in boots, fishnet stockings, and a black leather jacket longer than her skirt. Behind her, a man carried a little girl, not because she was sleeping. She was wide-awake and laughing at something someone had said. Then she looked around her and stopped laughing. “It's not snowing anymore,” she said, as if someone had snatched a present.

“What do you care?” the fishnet-stockinged woman asked her tiredly. “It's not like you could build snowmen or anything, and if you could, they'd get stolen by morning—don't ask me what for.”

“Long night, Tiffany?” the man asked.

“I know him!” Monica said to the ghost. “That's the guy who cleans at night—one of them, anyway. Whassisname? Moses?”

“Noah,” the ghost said.

“Who's the chippie? His wife?”

“Give Tina to me, Daddy,” the woman said. “She's not heavy.”

“I could walk if you'd brought my crutches, Grandad,” the little girl said.

“It's too icy, baby,” the man said. “We got by okay, didn't we? You and me goin' to pick your mama up so she didn't have to come home from her work alone on Christmas?”

“Thanks, Daddy,” the woman said. “Only the lonely—and the total bizarros—are out right now. Not that a guy your age carry ing a kid is a lot of protection.”

“No, but we're company,” he said. “Aren't we, Tina?”

She grinned and nodded, and Monica and the ghost followed them up many flights of stairs. Several of the individual steps were in bad need of repair. The woman and man knew the hazards well, however, and avoided them without hesitation. The building smelled of mildew and rotten wood, urine and mouse droppings, smoke and booze, sweat and burned TV dinners.

Noah's hard-faced daughter opened the door to their apartment. It was dark. “Jamie! Brianna!” Tiffany called.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are!” Tina car oled, and suddenly the lights went on and there, suspended from the central lightbulb, was a Christmas tree of sorts, its proud creators looking on. It was made of used aluminum foil, taped and bent into a cone and cut so that pieces could be extended to form fronds from which tiny bits of colored plastic paper shone in the white light of the formerly bare bulb.

“It's beautiful!” Tina exclaimed.

“Look at that,” Monica said to the ghost. “My guess would have been that they'd have been out dealing drugs while the old man and the woman were gone.”

“You see, my dear Monica, being wrong can sometimes be a pleasure,” the ghost replied.

Then Monica looked at the dinner Noah had prepared before going to fetch his daughter.

“Tuna casserole for Christmas dinner?” she asked the ghost. “What happened to the basket with the ham in it, that kind of thing? Don't poor people always get free food at Christmas?”

“Of course, of course, my dear. But these are gain-fully employed people. Surely that man makes enough at your place of business that, coupled with his daughter's pay where she—er—plies her trade, they could afford a sumptuous meal.”

“Yeah. Of course they can. I think. Actually, they're subcontractors, too. I'm not sure what they make. Probably he drinks. Or gambles. What I can't figure out is why are they acting so
happy
when they're miserably, putridly poor.”

“Maybe because they help each other. Maybe because there's love in this house holding them together,” the spirit said.

“You are Victorian, aren't you?” Monica said, meaning to mock, but ending up merely smiling before she resumed watching the family as they cleared the table that had served as a study desk and sculpture studio for one of the kids whose medium seemed to be Popsicle sticks. They set the table under the supervision of Brianna while Jamie pulled the casserole out of the oven and Tina's mother went into another room to change her clothes, returning in jeans and a sweatshirt, her face washed and her hair pulled back in a ponytail that made her look very young.

When the table was laid, they sat on a variety of things around it, including a portable TV that seemed to have been broken for some time. The little redheaded girl with the crippled legs and the grandfather were the only ones who actually had chairs. The mother and Brianna sat on two plastic trunks piled together, and the boy, Jamie, on a footstool. Noah had a seat-sprung easy chair, and the little girl took the straight-backed chair.

“Okay, time to say the blessing,” Brianna said. Monica thought the way she'd been stage-managing everyone and bossing her brother amusing. “You start, Grandpa.”

“Okay, I'm grateful that Ms. Banks didn't catch Tina under the desk this morning.”

Tina giggled. “And I'm grateful she didn't catch Doug and me before we were finished.”

That stopped the blessings right there. Tiffany turned to her daughter and demanded, “Doug who? Who is this Doug? Daddy, you were watching my baby, weren't you? You wouldn't let any strange Doug—”

“Calm down now, honey. Nothing to get upset about. Doug is just Tina's imaginary friend she made up when she started coming to work with me. Isn't that right, Tina?”

Tina scrunched up one side of her face and appeared to be thinking about that. “Sorta,” she said finally.

“Sorta what?” her mother demanded.

“Well, he's sorta real and sorta not. He's not like, in person; he's over the computer. Except I think I saw his face once.”

“Computer?” Noah's voice was ominously quiet. “What computer, Tina? You know you weren't supposed to touch them. If I got fired—”

“And he
will
,” Monica said, feeling tricked. She had started to think that here was at least one hard-working employee whose work she could understand, whose problems she could sympathize with, only to find out he'd been tricking her like everyone else who worked for her.

“The one in the office,” Tina said. “And it's okay, Grandpa. Doug was the owner before your Miss Banks. She's his sister. He wanted me to help him make her a Christmas present.” She chewed her lip some more. “Sorta. It's pretty complicated, Grandpa.”

“He was there with you working on the computer?” Her mother's knuckles were white on the table. “And you didn't tell Grandpa?”

“No, Mama. He wasn't with the computer. He was
in
it. Mostly, he just wrote me notes, but once I think I saw him.”

Noah was shaking his head at his daughter. “Nobody was there with her, Tiffany. I was watching. I couldn't listen, though, because of the machines. You mean to tell me that whole time you were in there you were playing with the computer, Tina? Even though I told you not to?”

“Yes, but it was a secret, Grandpa, and Doug said I couldn't tell anyone, even you. Except, now that it's Christmas Eve, she's probably got her present already so it's okay. I hope she likes it.”

“What is it, honey?” Brianna asked, more mater nally than either of the adults.

Tina shrugged. “Some kinda game. Doug was going to introduce her to Ebenezer Scrooge, from the book, so she wouldn't be lonely and mean anymore. But there was this game first, and someone called the Program Manager who wrote stuff that looked like it was in the Bible. Grandpa, I think he was God. I think Doug is an angel, so it's okay; you won't lose your job.”

“Hah!” Monica scoffed, so loudly that it seemed as if, when a mighty gust of wind bowed the window in, and outside the transformers popped in a brilliant flash of light and the power went out, Monica was somehow responsible. She paid no attention whatsoever to the dramatic change in weather, which was accompanied by more heavy gusts splatting clumpy, wet snowflakes against the window.