It Must Be Christmas

by Jennifer Crusie

  “Yeah,” Trudy said bitterly. “That’s why I’m in handcuffs now.”

  “You’re in handcuffs because you’re resisting,” Nolan said. “I’m trying to get a promotion here, and you’re beating me up. It makes me look bad.”

  “Great. That’s what this is about, some damn promotion? Knock a helpless woman to the ground and steal her little nephew’s Christmas present?”

  “The ‘helpless’ is debatable,” Nolan said as they went past the cabbie, who was dabbing at his bleeding nose and glaring at her. “You owe Alex an apology.”

  “He attacked me.”

  “He was trying to get you into the cab so he could get you away from here,” Nolan said. “He’s one of ours.”

  “He was trying to take the doll, so he’s not one of mine,” Trudy said, and then she saw the woman they were moving toward. She was wearing a red and green bobble hat, but she didn’t look like a Christmas shopper anymore. “Who the hell is she?”

  “My boss,” Nolan said.

  Trudy waited until they were in front of the woman, and then she said, “Is this guy really an NSA agent?”

  “Yes.” The woman spoke without any expression whatsoever, which only made Trudy madder.

  “Well, he groped me in that warehouse,” Trudy said.

  “I’m not at all surprised,” the woman said, and held her hand out for the Mac.

  Nolan gave it to her.

  “You bastard,” Trudy said.

  “Trudy, it’s national security.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Trudy snapped. “You got the codes when you got the instruction sheet, and then you got the USB key when you got the silencer. You don’t need the doll. You don’t care that a little kid is going to wake up tomorrow and know that everything in his world is a lie, that doesn’t bother you—”

  “Trudy,” Nolan said, misery in his voice.

  “—as long as your work gets done.” She wrenched away from him, her hands still cuffed behind her. “You guys, guys like you and Reese and Prescott, you don’t care about anything as long as you get what you want. Well, fine, you got it. Now take these handcuffs off me, because you know damn well you’re not going to arrest me for anything.”

  “You have to promise to stop hitting people,” Nolan said.

  “Fine,” Trudy said. “I promise.”

  He unlocked the cuffs and she kicked him in the shin. He said, “Ouch,” and grabbed at his leg.

  “You promised me,” Trudy said. “You said I could trust you, and I was as dumb as Courtney, I believed you.” She turned back to his boss. “You need me for anything else or can I go home to my devastated family?”

  “We have questions,” the woman said, and gestured to the car. “We’ll have you home in a couple of hours.”

  “Fine,” Trudy said, refusing to look back at Nolan. “I’ll tell you anything you want as long as you give me back the Mac.”

  “Unfortunately not,” the woman said.

  “Here’s your Twinkletoes,” Nolan said, holding out a shopping bag. “I found it in the warehouse.”

  Trudy took the bag. “Rot and die,” she said, and walked toward the car.

  “Trudy, be reasonable,” he said, following her. “This is national security—”

  She turned around and he almost bumped into her. “You didn’t have to kiss me and tell me I could trust you. You didn’t have to make me believe in you again. You had the NSA out here, you were always going to get that damn doll. You could have left me my dignity, but no, you had to sucker me in.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  She stepped closer. “That’s why I hate you. That’s why Leroy’s going to hate his dad and his mom and me tomorrow, because he knew there was no Santa, but we all said, ‘Trust us, Santa’s gonna come through for you.’ We hung that kid out to dry. He’s going to be right to hate us. And I’m right to hate you.”

  She turned to get into the car, and he caught her arm and said, “Trudy, I’m sorry,” and she shook him off and got into the backseat without looking back at him.

  Chapter 3

  Trudy borrowed a cell phone and called Courtney to tell her she was all right. Then she faced Nolan’s boss, who ditched the hat with the green and red bobbles and became tough, efficient, thorough, and polite, none of which made Trudy feel better. She answered everything the woman asked, and when she was finally released, it was well after midnight. She took her purse and the battered bag with the Twinkletoes and rode home through the snow in the back of a black car, too tired and too defeated to argue anymore.

  I couldn’t do it alone, she thought. I really needed that bastard’s help; nobody could have done it alone. But she still felt like a failure. If only she hadn’t trusted him, hadn’t trusted Reese, hadn’t gotten in that cab in the first place, hadn’t ever talked to Nolan at all, they’d never have known she’d found the MacGuffin and Leroy would have it now. Her throat swelled and she stared at the back of the driver’s head and willed herself not to cry. Not in front of the NSA, anyway.

  She tiptoed into the house, but Courtney called out from the dimly lit living room. Trudy went in and found her on the couch, glass in hand, her feet propped up on the coffee table that held a bowl of white icing, a lopsided gingerbread house, and a stack of gingerbread men with a knife stuck through them. She was staring into the gas fire, and the glow reflected off the tinsel on the tree while Christmas music played low and slow in the background.

  “Do you have it?” Courtney said, her voice dull.

  “No.” Trudy went around the mess on the coffee table and sat down beside her, dropping her bags on the floor. “The Feds took it from me. For national security reasons. Nice gingerbread house.”

  “It’s crooked,” Courtney said, clearly not caring. “The Feds?”

  “Turns out Nolan works for the NSA. I know. Unbelievable.”

  “I believe it.” Courtney sat unmoving, her eyes on the fire. “That’s just my luck. Even the government is out to get me.”

  “Two governments. Reese the Surfer turned out to be a double agent for the Chinese.” Trudy leaned forward, pulled the knife out of the gingerbread, and scooped up a glop of white icing.

  “Well, at least you’re meeting men.” Courtney picked up her glass to drink and then made a face when she realized it was empty. “So why did they want the Mac?”

  “It had the codes to the Chinese spy network on the instruction sheet and then something else was on this thumb drive disguised as a silencer for the gun.” Trudy smeared the icing on the roof. The white mass hung there for a moment and then began to slump its way to the edge. Not enough powdered sugar. The icing plopped off onto the cardboard base, looking like a snowbank.

  “Chinese spy codes?” Courtney said.

  “I wouldn’t have believed it, except that I saw the thumb drive. That and there were so many guys in bad black suits there at the end.” She glopped more icing on the other side of the roof. It slumped and became a snowbank, too. Definitely too thin. “Where’s the sugar, Court?”

  Courtney gestured to the kitchen with her glass.

  The kitchen looked like a war zone, bodies of mutilated gingerbread men everywhere, red and green gumdrops stuck to the island like body parts, and a drip of icing pooled on the floor like thick white blood.

  “Christmas didn’t used to be this violent,” Trudy called back to Courtney, and then picked up the powdered-sugar box, the half-filled bag of gumdrops, and some toothpicks. Toothpicks were good. She could probably have done more damage in the warehouse if she’d had toothpicks. She could have stuck several of them into Reese.

  And more into Nolan. Nolan, she thought, and blinked back tears. Damn.

  She went back to the living room. Courtney hadn’t moved.

  Trudy dumped her armload on the coffee table and sat down beside Courtney. “Forget about rotten men. There was one good thing that happened tonight. I got you a present.”

  Courtney turned her head a millimeter. “Does it have gin in it?”<
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  “No, but you want it anyway.” Trudy pulled the Twinkletoes box out of her last shopping bag and handed it to Courtney, who stared at it for a moment, her eyes unfocused.

  Then she sat up slowly, her forehead smoothing out, her lips parting. “Where—”

  “They’re making them again. Like a reissue. Second chance. Do-over.”

  “Oh, please,” Courtney said, but she said it while she was ripping the cellophane off the package. She pried open the top and pulled out the cardboard shell with the Twinkletoes doll and her manicure set wired to it. “These aren’t the same colors of polish as the old one.”

  “I’m sorry—”

  “These are better.” Courtney began to unwire the doll. “She has really big feet.”

  “Well, she needs really big toenails if little kids are going to paint them.” Trudy watched her for a minute and then went back to the gingerbread house as Courtney set up her play station. One thing had gone right that evening, she thought as she beat sugar into the thickening icing. Now if she could get the icing and the gumdrop shingles to stay on the iced roof, that would be two. It was tomorrow morning that was going to be bad.

  Poor Leroy.

  Damn it.

  She began to spackle the roof with the thicker icing, thinking vicious thoughts about government agents who took toys from little kids on Christmas. She picked up a red gumdrop and shoved it into the icing with more force than necessary and almost cracked the roof.

  Easy, she told herself and looked back at Courtney, who was studying the Twinkletoes doll with an odd expression on her face.

  Well, she was drunk.

  Trudy shoved another gumdrop into the icing and dared it to fall off. It didn’t.

  At least Leroy would have a gingerbread house in the morning. That might help calm things down. She filled in rows of red gumdrop shingles, trying to think of things to say to him.

  “Sorry about your Mac, Leroy, but Santa sent you this nice toy cow instead.”

  No, they’d shot the cow. Jesus.

  “Santa got delayed over Pittsburgh but he’s going to put your Mac on backorder.”

  No, Santa was not a mail-order house.

  “Maybe it fell off the sleigh.”

  Trudy shoved another gumdrop in. Bastards.

  Not that Leroy would throw a fit. He wasn’t a fit-throwing kind of kid. But he’d be disappointed; that stillness would be on his face, like the stillness that had been there when his father left.

  Men, she thought, and shoved in another gumdrop, but that wasn’t fair, she knew it wasn’t fair. Nolan had risked his life for her at the end. Maybe even before the end, maybe that was why he’d gotten in the cab, because he cared. Trudy sat up a little. “You know, I think he came along in the cab to save me.”

  Courtney had the doll out now and her shoes off. “Who?”

  “Nolan.” Trudy watched Courtney pry open the bottle of silver nail polish, awake and alert, if still a little unsteady from the booze. “He took the Mac away from me at the end after he’d sworn to me he wouldn’t, but when he got in the cab at the toy store, he thought he already had the codes. He didn’t need me anymore. Maybe he got in to protect me from Reese.” She put the last gumdrop on the roof gently. Maybe Nolan cared about her, at least as much as he cared about the Mac.

  She looked closer at the roof. The gumdrops seemed to be sliding down.

  Beside her, Courtney painted the first Twinkle toe, her face concentrating on the job. Court didn’t look particularly happy, but she did look alert. That was something. Trudy picked up a green gumdrop and flattened it and then threaded it onto a toothpick, the first set of branches for a gumdrop tree.

  Okay, so Nolan worked for the NSA. Well, good for him, protecting his country. And of course he had to lie to her about his name, he was undercover.

  And if he’d gotten into that cab without needing to, if he’d gotten in with her to save her, then maybe he was a good guy. She flattened another gumdrop onto the toothpick and then paid attention for the first time to the music in the background, a slow growly voice singing, “Hurry down the chimney tonight.”

  She looked at Courtney, jolted out of her fairy tale. “Is that ‘Santa Baby’?”

  Courtney nodded as she finished Twinkle’s last toe. “Yeah. I couldn’t get it out of my head after you talked about it.”

  Trudy listened to the slow, jazzy version on Court’s stereo. “That is not Madonna.”

  “Etta James,” Courtney said. “The only good thing I know about Pres is his taste in music. And his kid.” She screwed the top back on the polish and looked at the doll, her pretty face puzzled.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “This is a dumb toy.” Courtney turned Twinkle around so Trudy could see her vapid plastic face.

  Trudy sighed and stuck the last green gumdrop on the top of the toothpick. “I always thought so, but then I wasn’t the manicure type. You probably would have loved it when you were six.” Timing is everything. If Nolan already knew all he needed to about the codes when he got in my cab—

  “No, it would have been a huge letdown then, too.” Courtney set the doll on the table, where its pink party dress flopped into the icing. “I’m sure there’s a lesson in this, but I’ll be damned if I know what it is.”

  “I know what you mean.” Trudy stuck her gumdrop tree into the gingerbread beside the door. The red gumdrop shingles had moved another millimeter. “I’d love to find a meaning for what happened tonight besides ‘Don’t trust men,’ but I don’t think there is one.” Except maybe Nolan came with me to keep me safe.

  “You don’t know that yet.” Courtney picked up the manicure set and unzipped it. “The doll was a letdown, but this could be a really great manicure set. You have to believe.”

  “Do you really think so?” Trudy said, trying not to sound hopeful.

  “No. But I think that’s what I’m supposed to say.” Courtney opened the pink plastic manicure set. “And this is not a great manicure set.”

  “Oh, sorry,” Trudy said. “I used the nail file to stab somebody, so it’s gone.”

  “No, it’s in here.” Courtney held the case so she could see in. “It looks like it’s in pretty good shape. No blood.”

  Trudy straightened. “It shouldn’t be in there at all. The last time I saw it, it was stuck in Reese.”

  “Must have been a different box.” Courtney took the file out. “This box was kind of mushed in the back. Did you—”

  Trudy took the box and turned it over. The bottom corner was smashed, as if somebody had driven it into a counter, and over the creases was marked a tiny black X.

  Oh no, she thought as her hope deflated. This was why Reese had been in the toy store; he’d been picking up this year’s codes. And that was why Nolan had gotten in the cab: he hadn’t been trying to save her, he’d been following Reese and the Twinkletoes. More Chinese codes, not her. You’re so dumb, she told herself. He betrays you and you still want to believe.

  “What?” Courtney said.

  “Nolan picked up the wrong Twinkletoes box in the warehouse. He got Reese’s instead of mine.” Trudy pulled out the instruction sheet. “He wanted this.” She stared at the flimsy paper with its bad illustration of Twinkle and its warning not to drink the nail polish in both Chinese and English. “I bet this is this year’s codes.” She looked over at Courtney holding the neon pink nail file. “Let me see that, please.”

  Courtney handed over the file, its thick pink plastic handle first. Trudy grabbed the file end and yanked on the handle until it came apart.

  “What are you doing?’

  “It’s a thumb drive,” Trudy said when she was sure it was. She showed the end to Courtney. “More espionage stuff. Nolan saw Reese leave the store with a Twinkle, but I had one, too. He got the two bags mixed up in the warehouse and gave me the one with the codes by mistake.”

  “What does that mean?” Courtney said.

  Trudy felt like throwing up. “It means that he’s goi
ng to show up here and take your Twinkletoes away.”

  Courtney sat back. “That’s okay. It’s lousy nail polish, too.”

  “Another dream shattered,” Trudy said, trying to make it sound like a joke.

  “Twinkle or Nolan?”

  “Both.” Trudy packed up the box, feeling sick and stupid.

  “Gin?” Courtney picked up her glass.

  Trudy shook her head. “You know how dumb I am? I’m so dumb, I believed in that bastard even though I knew he’d lied to me. I even believed he got in that cab to save me. That’s how much I wanted to believe.”

  “He did save you at the end.”

  “To get the doll,” Trudy said, miserable. “And now I’m alone and Leroy is not getting a MacGuffin. So how dumb am I?”

  “You’re not dumb.”

  Trudy sank back into the couch as Etta began to sing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” “Because you know what? I still want to see him. He took my MacGuffin and I still want to see him. I want to kill him, but I want to see him.”

  Courtney nodded in sympathy. “I know. I hate Pres but I’d take him back. That’s so sad.”

  “Prescott will come back,” Trudy said tiredly. “When the novelty wears off, he’ll want his nice home and his cute kid and his pretty wife again.” And I hope you slam the door in his face because that’s what I’m going to do when Nolan comes after this doll.

  Courtney shook her head. “Forget Pres. Tell me about Nolan. Did he say, ‘I’ll call you’? What was the last thing he said?”

  “He said, ‘I’m really sorry’,” Trudy said, remembering the miserable look on his face at the end. That had been something: he knew he’d screwed her over.

  “And what did you say?”

  “I think it was, ‘Rot and die.’”

  “You think you might have been overreacting there?”

  “No.” Trudy sat up again and stuck another red gumdrop on the roof of the gingerbread house. “I think I just told him the truth. Which was the best thing I could have done. I don’t care if he thinks I’m nuts or irrational or anything else, I told him the truth. He did the worst possible thing he could do to me, so don’t bother showing up with flowers, making cute apologies and bad jokes. And yes, I know it’s not all about him. I know he’s cashing Daddy’s emotional checks, but right now? It’s about him.”