A Lot Like Christmas: Stories

by Connie Willis

  “Should I take it back out to the car?” he whispered to Linny.

  She shook her head. “But if it’s perfect, Pandora, why—?”

  Ms. Freeh ignored her. “I knew it was such a good theme someone was bound to steal it, and now we’re going to have to come up with a completely new theme!”

  Linny’s heart sank. “Someone else is doing a high school memories theme?”

  “They might as well be,” Pandora said, flouncing down on the couch. “Joan and Claudette Proudell are doing Rah! Rah! Sis Boom Bah!”

  Linny didn’t dare look at Brian. “Rah, rah, sis boom bah?”

  “Yes, their entire house,” she flung her arm out, “is being decorated in pom-poms, megaphones, and holos of girls in pleated skirts doing the splits—”

  “Oh,” Linny said, finally understanding. “And you think that will take away from the basketball holo you intended to have in the living room. But we can change that to something else. A holo of typing class, or the lunchroom.”

  “Lunchroom?” Pandora shuddered. “Nobody has happy memories of their high school lunchroom. I was going to have the league championship game right before the final buzzer, with the crowd roaring and the cheerleaders leaping into the air,” she explained to Brian, who was still holding the bust of Shakespeare.

  “This is Brian, by the way,” Linny said, leading him over to an end table where he could set it down. “His aunt is having her Christmas done for the first time. She lives near you.”

  “Really, what’s her name?”

  “Shields,” Brian said reluctantly, and who could blame him?

  Pandora waved her hand in a dismissive gesture that meant she didn’t know her, which was surprising. From the number of friends and relatives Pandora cited when she was changing her mind, Linny assumed she knew everybody in a thousand-mile radius.

  “Well, tell her to make sure no one else is doing the same theme before she signs her contract,” Pandora said, “so she doesn’t have to change it and start all over again a month from Christmas the way I am.”

  “Oh, I’m sure that won’t be necessary,” Linny said, trying not to sound as desperate as she felt. She had already ordered all the glassware and the black rubber aprons for the chemistry lab and the prom ornaments and disco ball for the tree.

  “What if we changed it from a memories theme to a modern high school?” she said. “They don’t have cheerleaders, and we could add girls’ bocce ball and KI and virtual learning labs, and your bust of Shakespeare could—”

  “They don’t even teach Shakespeare in today’s high schools,” Pandora sniffed. “And I won’t do a Christmas theme without it. No, it’s going to have to be something completely different. Joan and Claudette have ruined it. I don’t even want to think about high schools anymore. So,” she said brightly, “what do you suggest?” She clasped her hands and looked up expectantly at Linny.

  “I…” Oh, my God. Something with a bust of Shakespeare. Christmas in Stratford-on-Avon? No, she knew of at least two other Christmas designers who’d done it. Famous People Who’ve Been Cut Off Just Below the Shoulders?

  “You know,” Brian said, “this bust of Shakespeare just gave me an idea. Your theme could be a Shakespearean play.”

  “Grimshaw Powell’s ex already did Macbeth two years ago,” Pandora said.

  “No, I was thinking a Christmas play. We were just talking,” he said, nodding at Linny, “about how so many Christmas themes aren’t really related to Christmas at all.”

  Like High School Memories, Linny thought, but Pandora didn’t look at all offended. “I didn’t know Shakespeare wrote a Christmas play,” she said.

  I didn’t either, Linny thought.

  “Oh, yes,” Brian said. “It’s called Twelfth Night, and it was meant to be performed during the Christmas season, on Epiphany. It would be a perfect theme—it’s got a shipwreck, and…”

  “A palace,” Linny said, coming to his aid, “and gorgeous velvet and satin costumes—”

  “And cross-gartering,” Brian said.

  “Cross-gartering?” Pandora said doubtfully.

  “ ‘I will be strange, stout, in yellow stockings, and cross-gartered,’ ” he quoted, “and there are rings and love notes and disguises and romance. ‘If music be the food of love, play on—’ ”

  “And your bust of Shakespeare will fit right in,” Linny put in.

  “And I’m sure no one’s ever done it before,” Brian said.

  “I don’t doubt that,” Pandora said, frowning. “But do you think it’s well-known enough? I’ve never even heard of it. What if people don’t recognize it?”

  “That is a consideration,” Brian said, and Linny wondered whether he was deliberately trying to undermine what he’d just suggested. “It certainly has more substance than Rah! Rah! Sis Boom Bah!”

  Pandora looked delighted. “I hate frivolous themes,” she said, “and, as you say, it’s directly related to Christmas. Cheerleading has nothing at all to do with Christmas.”

  “Exactly,” they both said.

  “And I wouldn’t have to give up my bust of Shakespeare.”

  “It could be right in the entry hall,” Linny said, and Brian promptly picked it up and carried it in, “where it would be the first thing your guests would see.”

  “I love it!” Pandora said, clasping her hands under her chin. “Twelfth Night it is.”

  “You’re a genius,” Linny said on their way out to the car. “Have you ever considered being a Christmas designer?”

  “God forbid,” he said, popping the doors. “I just didn’t want to carry that thing back to the tombstone store. I hope I didn’t let you in for too much work.”

  “Are you kidding?” Linny said, getting in. “The other theme she was considering before she decided on High School Memories was whaling.”

  He laughed. “All right, where to next?”

  “Just the maglev station, thanks,” she said. “That was my last errand, and there’s no point in your driving me all the way back into town. You’re only a few blocks from your aunt’s.”

  “I like to show off my overly big and fancy car,” he said, and pulled out into the street.

  “No, really,” she protested, “you’ve already done enough by suggesting Twelfth Night. It’s an inspired theme. I can do the dining room as Maria’s kitchen and the living room as Olivia’s garden, and for an outdoor tableau…Sorry,” she said when she saw he was looking at her. “I get a little carried away.”

  “You really like doing this stuff, don’t you?”

  “It’s fun,” she said, “doing research—I get to find out about so many different things—”

  “Like E. M. Forster.”

  She nodded. “Most jobs are so narrowly focused these days. And I love taking an idea and thinking how it can be adapted to lights and tree decorations. You do the same thing, I suppose, with your bridges?”

  “Bridges?” he said blankly.

  “Your aunt told me you were an engineer, and I assumed you built bridges.”

  “Oh. No,” he said, frowning. “Dams. I build dams.”

  “Oh, but I mean, seeing where the water needs to go and then translating that into blueprints and then concrete. It must be the same kind of thing.”

  “What’s the hardest Christmas you’ve ever had to design?” he asked.

  “Gum Disease,” she said promptly. “It was for this oral surgeon. The most fun one was the one I did for an ex-stripper named Bubbles O’Halloran. Her theme was—”

  “Let me guess. Bubbles?”

  She nodded. “I had bubble lights and a bubble machine and bubble gum and bubble wrap and those bubble dresses from the 1960s—”

  “What, no champagne?”

  “No, but for the outdoor tableau I had an animated Don Ho singing ‘Tiny Bubbles.’ ”

  They chatted the rest of the way home, him asking her about the best Christmas she’d ever designed and the easiest and the craziest. He was still driving the Incite
on his own, only occasionally glancing sideways at her, and she was grateful it wasn’t on comp-drive because it was already awfully cozy in the darkened car.

  She was hardly ever this close to anyone in person—she couldn’t remember the last time she and Norwall had sat side by side—and looking at someone’s image on a screen just wasn’t the same thing. For one thing, there was the scent. Brian smelled faintly of soap and aftershave and sweat. And video images, even high-definition, didn’t pick up details like the fine hairs on the backs of his hands as he gripped the steering wheel.

  Mrs. Shields had a point about people spending too much time alone staring at a screen. She was proof of it. The mere presence of another person was turning her into one of Pandora’s cheerleaders.

  He had pulled onto her block. “The corner’s fine,” she said.

  “I don’t suppose you’d have time to grab a pita or a cone of red tea—”

  “You’re kidding, right?” she said.

  “No, I—too busy, huh?”

  “Busy isn’t even the word. Hysterical. The busy season’s from January through April, when we do our prelim plans and put in orders. From then on it’s chaos. And now I have to completely redo Pandora’s financial estimate and décor plan.

  “I don’t have time to breathe, let alone sit down and have a—” She realized suddenly how ungracious she sounded. “But thank you for asking me. And thank you for talking Pandora into Twelfth Night. If it were any other time—”

  “Except January through December,” he said. “I could take you back to Rock and a Hard Place so you can order Patience on a monument.”

  “That’s okay, I’ll order it online,” she said, laughing. She got out of the car and leaned in. “I really wish I could.”

  “It’s okay. You need to go order fake mustaches, and I need to go talk to my aunt. I have a few things I want to discuss with her,” he said grimly.

  “You’re not still trying to talk her out of a professional Christmas, are you?”

  “No, definitely not. I was thinking of Number 941 A Dam Christmas. What do you think?” he said, and smelled so good as he said it that she almost said yes, she’d go for a cone of tea.

  It was a good thing she didn’t, though, because she had 226 incomings, nineteen of them emergency override messages. The Ledbetters needed their installation moved up to the fourteenth, Jack and Jill Halsey needed theirs moved back to the eighth, The Hanging Tree was out of otter candles and wanted to know if wolverines would work. Stitch in Time wanted to know whether she wanted walnut brown, espresso, or sludge.

  There was an animated emessage from cyberfloral wishing her a happy Thanksgiving and another one from Online Medical Supplies. “For That Unique Christmas Theme.”

  Careen Everett wanted to change from a vegetarian Christmas Eve buffet to a sit-down vegan dinner. Oppie Harper-Groves wanted to change from Rottweilers to Skye terriers. The Throckmortons wanted to change from twenty-four-caliber to nine-millimeter.

  Surprisingly, there were no messages from Pandora Freeh. It usually took her about ten minutes to find something wrong with Linny’s proposals. She must have really been impressed with Brian’s idea.

  Linny had been, too. It wasn’t often you met somebody who read Shakespeare’s comedies and E. M. Forster novels. It wasn’t often you met anyone, period. Mrs. Shields was right. There were very few romantic opportunities these days. The only other people besides Norwall she ever saw were the guys from FedXUPS and deliveries.com, and the only thing they ever said was, stolidly, “I don’t know anything about that. All I got is these two boxes,” and even if she, inconceivably, had wanted to go out with one of them, when exactly would she find the time to do that? Before she’d even finished reading through her messages, seventeen more had come in.

  Linny read through the other two hundred and twenty and then moved the Emory installation and vmailed the Taylors to see if she could shift theirs to the thirteenth so the Ledbetters could have the fourteenth. She vmailed alfalfa.com for possible vegan menus, decided on a brown (soy sauce), did a global otter candle search, and ordered Skye terrier ornaments from Dog Depot, critturama.com, and the Spot Spot, and then called Norwall.

  He didn’t answer (a bad sign) but when she checked her vmail, there weren’t any messages from him (a good sign), and none from Mrs. Shields, deciding on a theme. There was, however, one from Pandora. She had known it was too good to be true.

  “Twelfth Night isn’t an R, is it?” a message so incomprehensible that even though it was after eleven, she called Pandora back.

  “I remembered your young man said something about garters, and Charmaine Kagasaki’s ex’s children are going to be here,” she said. “You aren’t planning anything with lingerie, are you?”

  “Cross-gartering doesn’t have anything to do with lingerie,” Linny said firmly. “They’re ribbons. Yellow ribbons.”

  “Erna Bunrath’s designer is doing a wonderful Iran hostage crisis,” Pandora said. “Maybe a political theme—”

  “It wouldn’t have your bust of Shakespeare,” Linny pointed out, “which I assure you is the centerpiece of your theme.”

  “Really?” Pandora said, pleased.

  “Absolutely. I’ve been thinking, maybe instead of the entry hall, it should be in the living room, in a sort of specially built niche—”

  They spent the next hour and a half discussing the optimal location for the bust of Shakespeare, but at least at the end of it, Pandora sounded definitely committed to Twelfth Night. Even better, after Linny vmailed her her proposal three days later, there were only two overrides from her, and they were both about the buffet: “I like your ‘If music be the food of love, play on’ idea, but I think trumpets would make a nicer centerpiece than a violin,” and “Primula Outridge’s new live-in is allergic to strawberries.”

  The thirteenth, however, would not work for the Niedmores. They could do either the tenth or the eighteenth, both of which were booked. Soy sauce was unavailable, and sludge was back-ordered till March eighth. Linny mentally rolled up her sleeves and got to work. She called Wang Ho to see if he’d be willing to have his installation on the thirteenth and then checked for messages from Mrs. Shields.

  Still nothing. She was going to have to help her. She vmailed Inge and asked her if she’d finished the netcheck yet.

  “Sorry, no,” Inge said. “I forgot all about it, I was so swamped after Thanksgiving. By the way, thank you for letting me take it off. Carlo was really homesick. The food they have up there is terrible. I’ll get right on that netcheck.”

  “Great,” Linny said, and then, curiously, “How did you meet Carlo?”

  “My sister fixed us up,” she said. “Did you decide which cookies you wanted for the Tornado Christmas afternoon tea?”

  Linny hadn’t. She picked them (chocolate swirls and mincemeat bars), checked the measurements of the Fanworthys’ dining room for their rodeo holo, and then got busy on the Mannings’ installation, which was on the eighth and which took every waking moment till then to get ready. She didn’t even have time to answer her incomings, except for Brian’s. He had called her twice, once to tell her his aunt had decided against the catering package, and again to tell her she’d narrowed it down to six themes. “None of which, I am happy to say, is Number 332 A Harley-Davidson Christmas.”

  Inge still hadn’t gotten the netcheck to her, but it was just as well. She wouldn’t have had time to read it. She was too busy locating three tons of granite boulders.

  The Manning installation took two days. Linny was standing on a ladder on the second, stringing up largemouth bass, when Brian appeared. “Don’t tell me,” he said. “Number 54 A Carp Christmas.”

  “Wrong,” she said, coming down off the ladder. “Number 152 Fisherman’s Paradise. What are you doing here? How did you know where I was?”

  “My aunt had something she wanted me to ask you,” he said, “but your incoming box was full, so I thought I’d come over here. She was wondering if she could m
ove the date of her installation.”

  “To when?” Linny asked, getting out her handheld, thinking, Not to the fourteenth. Please not to the fourteenth.

  “To the morning of the twenty-third,” he said. “She has a big dinner party that night. I know it’s awfully close to Christmas—”

  “No, that’s great. People always want their installations early, so they can have them up for the whole season.”

  “I can see why,” he said, looking at the tree. It was hung with fishhooks, sinkers, and feathered lures, and topping it was a gold-plated casting reel.

  “You ain’t seen nothing yet,” she said, and led the way into the family room where a stream trickled between artificial mossy banks.

  “A River Runs Through It,” he said.

  “Exactly. And it’s stocked, so the Mannings’ guests can fish.”

  He picked up a sign that said “Gone Fishing.” “How about you put this on the front door and go out for chai with me. You could say it’s research for a new theme. Number 928 Chai and Chit-Chat.”

  “I can’t,” she said regretfully. “The nets aren’t here yet, and I’ve still got the master bedroom to do.”

  “What’s going to be in there, a reservoir?” he said, and insisted on looking at all the other rooms before he left.

  “I thought you didn’t approve of professional Christmases,” she said.

  “I don’t,” he said, pointing to the waders hanging in front of the fireplace and the Styrofoam cooler filled with beer on the mantel, “but it’s fascinating, in a horrible sort of way. Speaking of which, how’s our friend Ms. Freeh? Is she still Twelfth Nighting it?”

  Amazingly, she was, though she vmailed Linny twice a day with questions: “Could we have the shipwreck for the lawn decoration instead of as a holo?” “Do you think widows’ weeds are really a good idea? I look so fat in black.” And “Illyria’s not in the Middle East, is it?”

  Linny answered them as best she could, did three Hanukkah installations and the Immerguts’ Christmas Down Under, and tried to track down a set of Masai drums FedXUPS had lost. They were in Honolulu. Linny got them rerouted and was trying to calculate how long it would take for them to get there when there was a buzz.