Carol for Another Christmas (13 page)

“Useless, though,” he said. “A lot of old dead trees when it could be expensive high-rise multiunit housing.”

Before she could respond to that, they pulled out of the wild section of the woods and emerged onto a wide, tree-lined street full of large, stately homes. At the opposite end from where they were was a little sentry station where an armed guard protected the privacy of the residents, and grids with sharp spikes shredded the tires of unwanted interlopers.

The senator's home, Monica knew, was set far back from the road with a grassy park of a lawn in front of it. Tonight she didn't recognize it. Soaring trees, larger than those she and the spirit had just driven through in her forest, stood thickly beyond the gate, every one of them twinkling with lights. As the sleigh drove down the broad avenue between the towering trees, Monica saw that they weren't growing out of the ground but that each was supported by an ingenious scaffolding also decorated with lights. It was extremely beautiful, but the birdless, squirrel-less dead branches lit with electric bulbs made her feel a little sad for no reason she could think of.

She was disappointed the valets who were parking the cars couldn't see what she'd arrived in. She thought she'd like to remember this sleigh business as a great way to make an entrance at another party—one where she was visible.

This must be Christmas night, she thought, because the ghost or ghosts was/were supposed to come on three consecutive nights. And of course, Bob had asked her to dinner last night, so it wouldn't have been when he'd already planned a large celebration at his own home.

“I knew that the senator lived here,” she said to the Ghost of Christmas Present, “but I had no idea his place was so close to Databanks.”

“It isn't,” the ghost said. “This is a magic sleigh, of course, borrowed particularly for the occasion. So we used a little sleight of hand, you might say.”

“I would have preferred that you hadn't,” she said, rolling her eyes, and she climbed down, clutching the warm red velvet cloak around her as they entered the house. She stroked the velvet and wondered why she had never bought one for herself. It had a wonderful feel and you didn't need to worry about being well dressed. She felt like some kind of a Christmas spy there in her gray workout togs with the cloak's soft folds brushing her like some large, affectionate cat.

A Christmas tree decked in gold and white stood sentinel in the front hallway, but the butler did not offer to take the cloak, nor to relieve the Ghost of Christmas Present of the wreath he wore like a hat. The two of them swept into the dining room, its arched doorway flanked by more Christmas trees, these in pink and silver, to see the heavily laden table and the right-wing government leaders from western Washington, as well as the conservative Christian leaders, plus other prominent local businesspeople. Everyone was wearing black and white, even down to the jewelry the ladies wore. At the center of the table was a white Christmas tree decked with black ornaments.

“
Black
Christmas tree ornaments?” the ghost asked.

“The senator's wife is radically chic, I hear,” Monica told him.

With all the talk of tightening the budget that was going on in government, the senator had spared no expense. Waiters clad in tuxes with tails and holly sprig boutonnieres delivered not only goose and turkey and succulent honey-roasted ham but all sorts of other beautifully prepared dishes to the table. At a side table, a bartender made drinks to order. The bar had its own centerpiece: an ice sculpture of the manger scene at Bethlehem.

“The Lord driving the moneychangers from the temple would have been more appropriate,” said the ghost.

“These are my friends!” Monica said.

“Listen to them then.”

“Lovely decorations, Julia,” someone was com plimenting Mrs. Johansen. “The grounds are particularly impressive.”

“Aren't they? You can thank Mr. Priestly,” she said, nodding at a youngish, red-haired man who looked as if he worked out regularly.

“It was nothing,” he said. “Bob won us the right to log a bit of woodland in a former Boy Scout camp. Of course, the spotted owl people raised their usual fuss, but finally we have some good heads in the Capitol building, and the tree huggers got nowhere. Once the trees were down, you know, I thought, what with the time of year and all, it was a shame to cut them up right away. They're very valuable, of course, but so's good legal help. I knew Bob and Julia were having this shindig before their trip to Hong Kong where they'll have their real Christmas when the rest of us are vacuuming tinsel off the carpet and putting the tree in the wood chipper. So I thought as a little Christmas bonus, we could take some of those trees and spruce them up—heh heh—and transplant them before we send them off to Japan. Very expensive operation, of course, but I spare no expense when it comes to my friends at Christmas.”

“That's nice,” Monica said. The spirit said nothing but nodded to the opposite end of the table, where the senator, who was aglow with holiday spirit himself, was talking about the days before he came into political power and the job he had worked as a reclamation agent for a credit firm. He and Monica had discussed the work in the past. She felt in many ways that was why they were friends. Her work for the IRS had involved dealing with the same whining, the same pleading, the same lies and excuses, and the same need to be firm. Of course, the senator's work was more exciting than that, as he was explaining to his guests.

“Thing is,” the senator was saying, “nobody thinks anybody else is working on Christmas day. People who've hidden a car at a friend's house will come and get it to take it for a spin, or people will go visiting relatives and leave their houses unguarded. That's when we'd go take back the furniture or take the car out of the driveway.”

“This guy was the best!” said one of the senator's law partners. “I don't think anything ever got away from him. Once there were these deadbeats that claimed they couldn't pay for their truck 'cause the wife had had a heart attack and was in the ICU. We look and look and can't find it. Go to the guy's house about a jillion times, check every hospital in the city. Finally, Christmas day, we find it in the staff parking lot at Virginia Mason. Guy claimed he'd sold it to send us the payment, but I dunno.”

“What happened to the wife?”

“Who cares?” the senator's admirer said. “They were deadbeats, right, Bob? Hadn't been for deadbeats like them, we'd never have made it through law school.”

“I thought your father owned Yachtsman's National Bank, Bob,” the owner of another bank said.

“He does, but I worked for everything I have, the same way he did,” Johansen said. “It's the American way.”

“Didn't wait to inherit it, like the Banks woman, eh?” said one of the congressmen who had been responsible for some of the antitrust suits against Databanks.

Turning to the Ghost of Christmas Present, she said, “I'm surprised Bob even lets that man in his house. But I suppose if he's going to negotiate with him, he has to talk to him.”

The Spirit of Christmas Present, for all his flesh, now looked remarkably like Scrooge, the former moneylender, as he raised a cynical eyebrow and nodded toward Senator Johansen.

“A fool and her money are soon parted, Freddie,” said Johansen, who was full of his own spirits and in an expansive mood. “Poor little Money is headed for a fall. The suits you've brought have slowed down Databanks enough for the competition to come close. When Monica brings out our program, once the public and the press find out that Databanks has helped add a sort of federal patrol to the information highway, the consumers are going to be peeved with Databanks.”

“Her stock will go down,” Freddie said. “She might even have to sell out. And there will be lots of mutual friends of ours—”

Bob Johansen put his finger to his lips. “Please, Freddie, Christmas is a time for keeping secrets. We wouldn't want to be accused of trying to predict opportunities for insider trading, would we?”

Freddie shut up.

“Let's get out of here,” Monica said. “I thought you were supposed to make me
like
Christmas. What a snake. I'll show
him
who the public is going to hate.”

“Christmas is not the time for hatred,” the Ghost of Christmas Present said with a pious voice and a wolfish smile.

She stepped toward the door, but as she did, someone from the dining room yelled, “Hey!” and Monica jumped before she realized she couldn't be seen.

“Hello there,” the ghost said, looking down. Monica followed his gaze. A dainty, fluffy cat with beautiful calico markings sat on her haunches before him, her front paws raised to snatch the hem of his robe. She was meowing like crazy.

From the dining room, Mrs. Johansen, she of the blond highlights and the hard eyebrows, called, “Oh, dear, it's Chanel. Jefferson, would you please collect her and return her to the kitchen until the soiree is over?” She turned to her guests and said, “She used to be such a mellow creature, but then she went into heat and got out one night and threw kittens whose father obviously wasn't her caliber. We had to get rid of them of course—”

The cat squawled as one of the tuxedoed men scooped her up.

“Don't worry. I won't forget,” the ghost said, and he and Monica were once more in the sleigh.

“What was that all about?” Monica asked. “I thought we couldn't be seen by anyone there. Or are you going to tell me that was a ghost cat?”

“Oh, no, she was alive, though heartbroken, poor thing. Don't look at me that way. I certainly didn't expect such an incident, but there was something peculiar about that animal. Or perhaps it is so with all animals, that they are not troubled by the boundaries between life and death as humans are. We were there, and the cat knew we were there, and furthermore knew that, unlike living souls, I might understand her appeal.”

“Great, fine, very touching. So where are we now?”

“Why, you wanted to visit friends, so I thought we could visit another friend of yours. Don't you recognize this place?”

It was a large, rambling house in the suburbs. No lights were lit, but a rather cheerless swag of greenery with a couple of pinecones wired to it was hooked to the front door.

“No.”

The spirit led her straight through the door and she saw Wayne, wearing an overcoat, sitting in the cold with a phone in his hand. “I can't make it, Ma. Sea-Tac is closed for the storm, and nothing's leaving Boeing Field, either. No, Ma, you're not in Seattle anymore. You're in Florida, remember? Where it's warm.” A pause. Wayne ran his hand over his face. He no longer looked boyish.

Visions of that first Christmas with the Reillys were still fresh in Monica's mind as she heard Wayne say to Mrs. Reilly, who had given her the lace collar and who was the baker of the best bread she'd ever tasted, “Let me talk to the nurse again, Ma. Ma? Yes, the one you call Moira, after Aunt Mary's girl. No, she's not; she's—just hand the phone to her, okay, Ma? No, I'm not mad at you, Mammy. No, darlin', of course I'm not. I love you, and I'll get there as soon as I can. Merry Christmas.”

Another pause, then, “Oh, hi, Meredith, how are you doing? Having a good holiday? I know. It's hard. I'm sorry, but having you there made me feel better. I can't make it tonight at least. Airport's closed. I'll be out there as soon as this clears up, but we're socked in. Look, anything she wants, okay? Just bill me. I've arranged for a few things to come out there for her and the others and a bit of appreciation for yourselves. Kiss her for me and tell her . . . you know. Merry Christmas.”

He hung up, shoved his glasses up to wipe his eyes, and looked around the living room of his decorator-furnished house, full of polished steel and Chihuly glass that had absolutely no connection with the Wayne that Monica knew. She was pretty sure he'd taken the stuff in trade for services at some time or another. He still lived in the nineteenth century in a lot of ways, a strange quirk for a tekkie.

Then he showed his true stripes by stalking out of the living room and into a den full of books: not decorator-bound ones but paperback technical trade books in piles around a computer station, and floor-to-ceiling shelves full of Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, Kipling, Sir Walter Scott, and O. Henry in one section. In another area were the complete
Star Wars
and
Star Trek
series, plus many science fiction and fantasy authors: Greg Bear, Megan Lindholm, Vonda N. McIntyre, Don McQuinn, William Deitz, Bill Ransom, Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, Jack Cady, Terry Brooks, Rod Garcia y Robertson, Sara Stamey, Amy Thompson, Ursula K. LeGuin, Kristine Katherine Rusch, Nina Kirriki Hoffman, Dean Wesley Smith, Jerry Oltion, Damon Knight, Spider Robinson, Bill Gibson, Michael Coney, Kate Wilhelm, and John Dalmas—all Pacific Northwest writers.

Monica looked inside the books, not by touching them, just by looking. They were all signed, and at least one per author was signed to Wayne with gratitude for sorting out some software problem or another. She remembered he had run a consulting business on the side for many years. The shelves ran on to other science fiction by people whose names were vaguely familiar to Monica: Asimov, McCaffrey, Silverberg, Beagle, Norton, Pratchett, and many others, shoved in wherever he'd found a spot when he finished reading the book. None of them was fancy and all looked well-worn.

There were mysteries, too. Again, Pacific Northwest authors were in one section: J. A. Jance, Earl Emerson, Candace Robb, K. K. Beck, Ann Rule, Sharon Newman, and Mary Daheim—more than she had thought possible. Classic mysteries occupied another section: Christie, Hammet, and so forth. Other favorite authors were in yet another section. Her eye lit on the Ms and Ps: McCleod, Mc-Crumb, Michaels, Perry, Peters, and Pickard.