A Lot Like Christmas: Stories

by Connie Willis

  So it was a shock when she showed up after the Wednesday matinee. “I thought you were doing The View,” I said.

  She shook her head, looking so pale I thought her sensors must have malfunctioned. “They just changed the rules for being a Rockette so I don’t qualify,” she said.

  “Then you’ll have to do what you did before,” I said firmly. “Change yourself so you do meet them.”

  “I can’t,” she said, and showed me the new rule.

  “No artificials,” it read. Only humans need apply, I thought.

  “Then we have to make them change the rule,” I said.

  “How?”

  “We’re going to make them look like monsters for picking on a sweet, harmless child like you. Do you remember the party scene from Bumpy Night? Where Margo Channing tries to expose Eve and says all those terrible things to her?”

  She nodded.

  “And do you remember how it backfired? How it made Margo look like a bully and Eve look like a victim? Well, that’s what we’re going to do. Can you cry?”

  “No, but I can look really sad.”

  “Good. You’re going to do that. And you’re going to look helpless and victimized. I want you to go watch All About Eve and memorize Eve’s tone of voice and mannerisms while I write the script you’re going to follow. You never wanted to hurt anyone or cause any trouble. You just admire the Rockettes so much!”

  “But—” Emily said, looking up at me with those wide, innocent eyes. “I don’t want to be Eve Harrington. She’s not a nice person.”

  “Let me tell you a little secret, Emily,” I said. “Nearly every actress is Eve Harrington at some point or other and has lied about her age or used her feminine wiles or taken unfair advantage to get a part. How do you think Margo Channing knew what Eve was up to?” I asked her. “Because when she looked at her, she reminded her of herself.”

  “Did you ever do anything like—?”

  “Of course. I lied about my age and my Off-Broadway experience when I tried out for Love, Etc. And when I found out they’d moved the audition time I didn’t tell anybody.” And I had slept with the director.

  “But I got what I wanted,” I said. I looked at her. “How badly do you want to be a Rockette?”

  And Dr. Oakes was wrong. He’d said his artificials had been designed to lack initiative, drive, preference. But once you wire in preference, even if it’s only the ability to choose one word, one gesture over another, everything else comes with it. And when he’d put in safeguards against all those driving forces—lust and greed and ambition—he’d forgotten the most dangerous one of all, the one that overrides all the others.

  Torrance wasn’t the only one who could have benefited from watching a few musicals. If Dr. Oakes had seen A Chorus Line, this never would have happened. And he’d have known what was going to happen when I asked Emily what she was willing to do to be a Rockette.

  “Well?” I said, repeating the question. “How much do you want to be a Rockette?”

  She raised her artificial chin and looked steadily at me. “More than anything else in the world.”

  She wanted to know how we planned to make the Rockettes management look like bullies.

  “Do you remember how the Rockettes saved Radio City Music Hall?” I said. “Well, you’re going to make them make you a Rockette the same way. What’s the weather like this week?”

  “A high of twenty degrees Fahrenheit with a rain-snow mix.”

  “Good,” I said, remembering her standing outside my car in the rain, shivering and bedraggled. “I want you to wear the skimpiest Rockette costume there is, preferably something with a feathered headdress. And mascara that runs. And I know you don’t wear mascara,” I said before she could interrupt me. “But you’re going to wear it for this. You’re going to stand out there twenty-four hours a day looking half frozen, asking people to sign a petition to make them change the rules so you can be a Rockette, and I’m going to see to it the media’s there to film it.”

  I picked up the phone to call Torrance and have him arrange for the camera crews.

  “But they know artificials can’t feel cold or heat—”

  “It doesn’t matter, trust me,” I said, thinking of Jorge, who still wasn’t speaking to me. “I want you to shiver and do the teeth-chattering thing, and when passersby ask you if you’re all right, you need to say, ‘Yes, I’m just so cold!’ and ask them to sign your petition.”

  “But won’t the rain-snow mix run the signatures?”

  “Yes, which is even better. It’ll look like tears.”

  “But—”

  “This isn’t about getting signatures. It’s about making the Rockettes management look like bullies.”

  “But I don’t see how…Margo said mean things to Eve….”

  “And they’re making you stand outside,” I said. “At Christmas. In the rain. Trust me, they’ll look like bullies. And people don’t like to look like bullies—or like the kind of people who’d let a historic landmark be torn down. They like to see themselves as the hero who rescues the building—or damsel—in distress. You stand out there in the rain in a skimpy strapless costume, and by Friday the Rockettes will be begging you to join them. And if it starts snowing, we’ll have action by Thursday.”

  It didn’t take even that long. When I called Torrance the next morning to ask him when the film crews were going to be there, he said, “There’s no point in sending them. It’s all over.”

  “You mean, they got rid of the ‘no artificials’ rule? That’s wonderful!”

  “No,” he said. “I mean she’s over wanting to be a Rockette.”

  “Over?”

  “Oakes reprogrammed her.”

  “Reprogrammed her,” I repeated dully. “When?”

  “This morning. I thought you’d be pleased. It means you won’t have to worry about her poaching your career anymore. Oh, and speaking of your career, Austerman called and said this’ll be great publicity for Desk Set. You know, ‘Only Human Actress Sends Artificial Packing.’ He said it’ll make you a shoo-in for the Tony nomination. So it’s just like the ending of Bumpy Night, only this time Margo wins the Tony, not Eve.”

  “It wasn’t a Tony,” I said. “It was the Sarah Siddons Award, which you’d know if you ever watched the play.” Like Emily did, I thought.

  “I don’t know what you’re so upset about,” Torrance said. “She changed her height and her measurements and her hair color. This is no different.”

  Yes, it is. “Did they erase her entire memory?” I asked. “When they reprogrammed her?” All those plays and cast lists and lines, all that Rockette history.

  “No, no, nothing like that,” Torrance said. “According to Dr. Oakes, they just made a couple of adjustments to her software. They tamped down the preference thing so she wouldn’t have such a strong response to the Rockette stimulus and adjusted her obstacle-to-action ratio. But she’s still the same Emily.”

  No, she’s not, I thought. The real Emily wanted to be a Rockette.

  So here I am, standing in a freezing snow-rain mix in the leotard and fishnet stockings I swore I’d never be seen in, plus the trademark maroon-and-gold Rockette cap, which is doing nothing at all to keep the rain from dripping down the back of my neck.

  I am clutching a clipboard for warmth and trying not to shiver convulsively as I accost passersby and attempt to get them to sign a petition to get Emily’s software put back the way they found it and the Rockettes’ rules changed so she can have a shot at her heart’s desire.

  And yes, I know artificials don’t have hearts, and what about all the human girls out there between five foot six and five ten and a half with tap, jazz, and ballet experience whose job she’ll be stealing?

  And yes, I know I’m probably also opening the floodgates to a horde of robots whose dream it is to be ballerinas and neurophysicists and traffic controllers, and that I’ll go back to my dressing room some night in the near future to find some disarming young woman who
’s the spitting image of Anne Baxter and wants to be my assistant, and I’ll be really sorry I did this.

  But I didn’t have any choice. When I announced I wanted to be on Broadway, my mother told me I’d be mugged and raped and pushed onto the subway tracks, my father told me I’d end up broke and waiting tables, and the first three agents and five directors I auditioned for told me to “go back to Kansas and get married, sweetheart.” Everybody had done everything they could think of to talk me out of it.

  But they hadn’t had me lobotomized. They hadn’t cut out my stagestruck heart and replaced it with one that would have been willing to settle down in Topeka and have babies. Or adjusted my obstacle-to-action ratio so I’d give up and go home.

  So here I stand, trying to blow some warmth into my frozen fingers and wishing I’d worn a warmer costume and that my skin turned rosy like Emily’s when it gets cold.

  It doesn’t. When cellulite gets cold, it turns a mottled purple and ash gray. The rain’s washed away every bit of my age-defying makeup; I’ve completely lost my voice from calling to passersby to come sign my petition, so heaven knows how I’m going to get through tonight’s performance; and Torrance dropped by a few minutes ago to tell me I was making a fool of myself and jeopardizing the Desk Set lead and the Tony.

  And in three days out here I’ve collected signatures from exactly eighteen people, including Torrance (I told him if he didn’t sign it, I was getting a new manager), Jorge (who said sternly, “Now you know how it feels to be made to stand out in the freezing cold”), and a couple of teenagers who didn’t care what they were signing so long as it got them on TV.

  But the camera crews left an hour ago, driven inside by the icy rain and the fact that nothing was happening, and now it looks like it’s going to snow, so the only thing that will bring them back is the discovery of my huddled, frozen body in a snowdrift. Even the tourists are giving up and going home. In a few minutes the only people left on the premises will be the Rockettes, and I haven’t seen hide nor hair of them since I started this. They must be going in and out a door on the other side of the building to avoid me.

  No, wait, here comes one out of the same side door Emily used that night she ran away to talk to me. The young woman’s definitely a Rockette. Her coffee-colored legs are even longer than Emily’s, and she’s dressed like a Christmas present, with a wide candy-cane-striped red and green sash slanting over one dark shoulder and tied in a Christmas bow at her hip.

  She looks cautiously around, and I think, disappointed, She just sneaked out for a cigarette, but no, after a second look around, she shuts the door silently behind her and hurries over to me, her character heels tap-tap-tapping on the sidewalk.

  “Hi, my name’s Leonda,” she says, hugging her arms to her chest. “Brr, it’s cold out here!”

  “Did you come out to sign my petition?” I ask hopefully. The Rockettes resisted hiring minorities for a long time. They claimed audiences would be distracted if the Rockettes didn’t all look exactly alike, including the color of their skin, and (according to Emily when she did the Today show) they’d resisted doing the right thing till 1982, when they’d finally hired the first African American, and three years after that, the first Asian American. Maybe Leonda heard Emily say that and decided she had to do the right thing, too, even if it did mean risking her job.

  Or not. “Oh, no, I can’t sign it,” she says, glancing anxiously back at the side door. “I just wanted to tell you what a wonderful actress I think you are, Miss Havilland. I saw you in The Drowsy Chaperone when I was a little girl, and you were amazing!” She looks at me with starry eyes. “Seeing you was why I decided to be a dancer, and I was wondering if I could have your autogr—?”

  “Leonda!” someone shouts from the door.

  Another Rockette, dressed as a toy soldier, is leaning out, frowning. “What are you doing out here?” she says. “You’ve got to get changed! It’s almost time!”

  “I was just…Sorry,” she says to me, and runs back to the door, her taps echoing on the wet pavement.

  “I’ll give you my autograph if you’ll sign my petition,” I call after her, but she’s already gone back inside, and it’s clear they aren’t going to rise to the occasion like they did when Radio City Music Hall was about to be torn down. Or maybe Emily was wrong about them, and they weren’t wonderful. Maybe they hadn’t been trying to do something noble after all. They’d just been trying to hang on to their jobs.

  And of course now that the two Rockettes are gone, a TMZ reporter and a cameraman with his videocam wrapped in plastic to protect it from the rain show up, looking annoyed. “Where are the Rockettes?” the reporter demands. “We were told to get over here because something was going on. So where are they?”

  “There was one here just a minute ago,” I say, but that’s clearly not good enough, and to add insult to injury, a cab driver rolls down his window and leans out into the rain to shout, “Traitor! What the hell are ya doin’ standin’ out there trying to get a robot a job? Why don’t you stick up for your own kind, lady?” and of course the cameraman’s getting it all.

  “That’s First Lady of the Theater to you!” I shout back at the cabbie, and he waves a hand dismissively and drives off.

  “How do you answer that question?” the reporter asks, sticking a microphone in my face. “Why aren’t you sticking up for your own kind?”

  “I am,” I say. “I’m sticking up for the Rockettes and for the theater. They’ve always stood courageously for doing what’s right,” a speech which would have been more impressive if I thought it was true. And if my teeth weren’t chattering. “I’m also, in spite of what he thinks, standing up for the human race. If we’re going to make humanity such a hard show to get into, then we’d better make sure it’s worth auditioning for by acting the way humans are supposed to.”

  “Which is?”

  “Humane.”

  “And that’s why you’re doing this,” he says skeptically.

  “Yes,” I tell him, but I’m lying. I’m not doing this to defend a noble cause, or because Emily looked like Peggy in 42nd Street or the poor, doomed heroine of Our Town.

  I’m out here ruining my voice and my chance at ever getting a decent role again because that night in my limo, sitting there in her drenched coat, pouring out her nonexistent heart about tap steps and precision kicks, she had looked like me.

  And I realize for the first time that that’s why Margo Channing helped Eve Harrington. Not because Eve manipulated her into it, but because when she looked at her, she saw her younger, stagestruck self, that girl who’d fallen in love, who just wanted a shot at doing what she’d been born to do.

  If they ever do a revival of Bumpy Night and I get to play Margo again, I’ll have to remember that. It could add a whole new dimension to the character.

  But at this point, getting the part—or any part, even Mama Morton—looks extremely doubtful. The reporter wasn’t at all impressed with my “proud tradition of the theater and humanity” speech. For the entire length of it, he was looking past me, scanning for possible Rockettes.

  But they’re not going to show, and the reporter’s apparently reached the same conclusion. “I told you they were getting us over here for nothing,” he says to the cameraman.

  The cameraman nods and lowers the plastic-covered camera from his shoulder.

  “Let’s go,” the reporter says. “I’m freezing my balls off out here.”

  “Wait,” I say, grabbing his arm. “Won’t you at least sign my petition before you go?” But they’re not listening. They’re looking over at the side door, which is opening again.

  It’s only Leonda, I think, back for a second try at an autograph—which she is not going to get—but it’s not. It’s the Rockette who yelled at her before. She’s changed out of her toy soldier getup into the Rockettes’ signature red and white fur Christmas costume, and, as we watch, she pushes the door wide, braces it open with her gold-shod foot, and makes a beckoning motion to whoe
ver’s inside.

  And out comes a Rockette dressed just like her who’s…oh, my God! holding a clipboard. And on her heels is another Rockette. And another. And Leonda, who as she passes me turns her clipboard so I can see the petition and whispers, “I’d already signed mine. That’s why I couldn’t sign yours,” and smiles a smile almost as sweet and disarming as Emily’s.

  “Are you getting this?” I ask the cameraman, but of course he is. Because what a glorious sight! They march out, heads up, chests out, as oblivious to the frigid wind as if they were Emily, even though I know it’s cutting right through those tights, right through the toes of those gold tap shoes.

  Here they come in a gorgeous, unending line that is going to go all the way around the building, every one of them in a red leotard and white fur hat. And TMZ isn’t the only one getting this. Other camera crews are arriving every minute, and so are tourists, holding up their cell phones and Androids to record this. Taxi drivers are slowing down to whistle and cheer, Jorge shows up with a cup of hot brandy-laced coffee for me, and even though the Rockettes aren’t even all out the door yet, people are flocking around them, wanting to sign their petitions. And mine.

  The only thing that could make this a better finale is if it would start snowing, which it does just as the last of the Rockettes step smartly out the door. Starry white flakes fall on their white fur hats and their eyelashes as they move into position, and their cheeks are almost as pink as Emily’s.

  They take up their places, eighty Rockettes and—I find out later—thirty-two former Rockettes and every female dancer from A Chorus Line, Forbidden Planet, and Almost Human. And the chorus line from La Cage aux Folles. And they all stand there, backs straight, heads held high, facing into the bitter wind that seems always to be whipping around Radio City Music Hall, with their petitions and their fabulous legs and their knock-’em-dead smiles. And right now even I want to be a Rockette.