Carol for Another Christmas (11 page)

“How do we get in?”

“I'm sure I don't know,” Scrooge said, looking from one face to another.

He felt a warm glow on his face and shoulders and looked up to see a golden light that read, “Program Manager,” over his head, with choices reading, “Escape,” “Help,” and “Enter,” shining with a ruby glow.

“Geronimo,” John said, and twiddled something that clicked. The “Enter” button above Scrooge blinked from ruby to gold, and a moment later John was standing inside the frame, beside Scrooge. Very quickly he was joined by the others.

“We saw all about Money Banks and her unhappy past,” Harald said. “Now do us. We want to see each others' Christmases past.”

“Do you just do Christmas, or will you do Han nukah and Kwanzaa and Yule and Saternalia as well?” Miriam asked.

Scrooge was embarrassed. “I beg your pardon, madam, but I'm afraid I don't know what those are. I know only Christmas, and frankly, I learned about it rather late in life.”

“Hmmph, doesn't show much cultural diversity,” Sheryl said.

“He's a Victorian Englishman, for heaven's sake, Sheryl. Whaddaya want from him?” Phillip said.

“This is a very Eurocentric program or virus or whatever it is, is all I'm saying,” Sheryl said.

“Haunting, miss,” Scrooge said, a little wearily now.

“Ex
cuse
me?”

“It's a haunting, miss.”

“Then why does it have a program manager and a lotta choices up over our heads?” she demanded.

“On the other hand,” Harald said, “if it's a standard program or virus, why does it have us standing around inside of it instead of directing it from our seats? I don't recall putting on any special VR equipment; do any of you?”

“Good point,” said John, Curtis, Phillip, and David simultaneously as they nodded and looked around them.

“I just think something supernatural wouldn't smack so much of the dominant culture,” Sheryl insisted.

“That being, in this case, the dead? Christmases past?” Harald said. “Hmmm . . .”

“Look, Mr. Scrooge, here, is a literary device—” Miriam began.

“I beg your pardon, young lady!” Scrooge said indignantly.

“Well, possibly based on real life, but based on it by Mr. Dickens, who may have been dominant culture but was one of the big social consciences of his time.”

“So?”

“So, Mr. Scrooge is definitely on board to teach Monica something, and apparently, us, too, just like in the book.”

“Yeah,” Melody said, looking around. “Yeah, and it's really cool and everything, except why do I share Monica's feeling that this whole milieu has been designed by Doug? You sure Doug Banks didn't put you up to this, Eb, honey? I mean, Monica did say she'd seen him, and he'd mentioned you were coming, right?”

“Presumption on his part,” Scrooge said. “I was never asked. Naturally, I would have been happy to accede to any reasonable request, although being dead was something of an obstacle to receiving or executing—excuse the terminology, please—such a request.”

“And only one way you got here after being dead and everything, into this particular place, no matter who designed the environment,” Curtis said slowly. “Ladies and gentlemen, we all know Doug Banks at least by reputation and while we had to
think
he was God while he was boss, actually, he was just a very hot tekkie billionaire. He couldn't have brought Ebenezer Scrooge back from the dead.”

“Maybe he didn't. I'm not convinced this thing is real,” Sheryl said. “Come on, Scrooge, I want to see my past. I was real misunderstood. My therapist can tell you all about it. My mama had three husbands and my daddy had four wives and I have sisters and brothers I have never even met. Our family Christmases were a nightmare. I got to where I talked to my 'puter 'cause it was the only one I could count on not getting divorced and moving out on me.”

“That's touching,” Curtis said, nodding. “That's very touching. I grew up in the International District and my father really wanted me to go into importing.”

“That's your tragic story?”

“That's it. Except, when I was a kid, we never got into Christmas as much as I always wanted to, because we were Buddhist. I really think the old man was just too cheap.”

“My mom left us and my dad drank,” John said.

“I kept wishing my mother
would
leave us.” Harald sighed. “But she never did, so
I
have to drink.”

“Hey, we're talking serious childhood traumas here,” David said. “Speaking for myself, I was just so damn brilliant, nobody in my family ever—sobs here, deep sobs—understood me.”

“Sorry,” Harald replied. “I'm an insensitive brute. I know that. It's spoiled
all
my Christmases.”

“Ahem,” Scrooge said. “There is, as you see, only one door.” He pointed to the portal that had opened up under a sign that now said, “Christmas Past, continued.” “Shall we?”

They did and were whisked immediately into a maelstrom of activity. People in the briefest possible costumes scurried to and fro bearing sacks and gift-wrapped packages while the sun beat down mercilessly upon their heads.

“I don't understand,” Scrooge said. “Where are we?”

Miriam had paused at a machine that dispensed newspapers. “We're in Seattle—that's perfectly obvious—in the middle of Westlake Plaza between Nordstrom's, the Bon, and the Westlake Mall. You can tell by the fancy brickwork here. See, Scrooge? They don't let cars drive here.”

Scrooge had by now taken in the cars rushing along the nearby streets and found them a bit unnerving.

“What if one of them—ahem—should disobey? Would we all be killed instantly?”

Miriam shrugged. “Nope, but he'd get a hell of a ticket. Look here, guys, this is so bogus. We're not in any Christmas past at all. This is last July.”

Melody shrieked, “Eek! I knew it!” Everyone looked where she was now pointing, much, Scrooge remembered, as the bony hand of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come had pointed at his own gravestone. There, in front of the plaza, was another Melody, this one clad in a red velvet costume of the utmost brevity, paradoxically trimmed with fur, long, green-banded stockings that stopped about a foot short of the hem of her garment, and curly toed slippers.

“Oh, is
that
the elf gig you were telling me about?” Sheryl asked her with a giggle. “You're right. Gruesome in the extreme.”

“I don't understand at all,” Scrooge said. He was not happy about this. He was almost certain neither Marley nor any of the dignified ghosts that had attended him had been subjected to large groups of people who spoke their own language—rather like being a tour guide in a country stranger to you than to those you were guiding, it seemed to him. Not entirely cricket, that.

“It's Christmas in July, old man,” Harald said, attempting to clap him on the ghostly shoulder. Didn't work.

“I distinctly remember that Christmas arrives in December, on the twenty-fifth to be precise,” Scrooge said.

“Ah, maybe in London, old bean, and maybe in the long ago, but in America, we have better merchandising schemes than that. Christmas in July is a fine old retail custom that capitalizes on the prime emotion Christmas awakens in many middle-class working Americans.”

“Joy?” Somehow, Scrooge knew that wasn't the right answer.

“Terror,” Harald said. “Terror of being so stressed-out you won't do anything right; terror of not meeting all your obligations; terror of not providing the best Christmas pageant ever; terror of—heaven forbid!—not having your heart warmed in some way or significantly warming the hearts of your family with a monumental pile of gifts under a tree worthy of Martha Stewart.”

“And don't forget, Harald. Be fair,” Melody put in. “The retailers are terrified, too. In small, touristy towns throughout the land, they quake between tourist season and Christmas for fear the sales figures won't be up during the holiday season and their businesses will, like, croak. Sometimes even the major stores overstock during the summer when locals avoid large population centers because they're so full of tourists. So businesses entice customers downtown by appealing to the virtue of the customer who wants to shop early and avoid the Christmas rush by participating in the Christmas in July rush.”

“Fine institution,” Phillip said ruefully, going into the mall where little trays and tables of things were set out in front of stores. “Another good excuse to get rid of old merchandise during a sale and make way for the good stuff they get for the real Christmas. Also a way to get rid of old ornaments and seasonal items that didn't sell last year.”

Scrooge looked at the many beautiful beaded and sequined, quilted, and tufted ornaments, not to mention the handblown glass ones. They were lovely in design but rather poorly made. Each of them said, “China,” on a small white tag someplace on its surface. “I had no idea China was such a Christmassy place,” he confessed. “I thought it was wholly comprised of opium dens and sinister men with long mustaches and ladies with tiny, bound feet. And—er—dragons; that sort of thing.”

Curtis rolled his eyes, but Miriam said soothingly, “Remember, he's a Victorian Englishman, Curtis, and consider the source. The literature of the day was full of that stereotype, and I'll bet Mr. Scrooge wasn't exactly widely traveled.” She cocked an eyebrow at him.

“I took the train to Manchester once,” he declared stoutly.

“See what I mean?” she told Curtis.

“I'm not a complete dweeb, Miriam. I know that,” Curtis said. “It's just that this kind of trash really annoys me, Scrooge.” He wasn't talking about Scrooge's words; he was holding up a Christmas ornament. “Do you know that a lot of this stuff for the holiday of joy and family and giving and warmth and all like that is made by slave labor? I had a cousin at Tiananmen Square . . .”

Scrooge tried to look politely inquiring, and Melody leaned over and whispered in his ear, “There was a terrible massacre there where the students were protesting for democracy and the government troops shot them and ran over them with tanks.”

“Good heavens,” Scrooge said, and was ashamed for having felt for so long that China, at least, was one place on earth where one did need to decrease the excess population. Apparently all he had heard about how little Chinamen valued life was untrue, for Curtis seemed most genuinely upset.

“Some of those students have never come out of prison,” Curtis told him. “And they, along with other people in disfavor with the government for one reason or another, are locked up in factories no better than those of your own day and tortured and humiliated into mass-producing this sort of trinket.” He tossed the ball back into its basket. “I find it hard to believe anyone can get into such an altruistic mood as people are supposed to at Christmas when surrounded by junk made by slave labor.”

“I do see your point, dear boy,” Scrooge said.

“Oh, hey, Curtis, all that altruism and joy is exaggerated, anyway. We all know that the suicide rate is higher at Christmas than other times.” This was from Melody. “Family deaths, too. Since my grandma died at Christmas five years ago, I keep noticing how many people get divorced or lose a mom or dad or a kid at Christmas. And it seems like there's always some big disaster like a flood or an earthquake or a fire that wipes out a bunch of people every year.”

“Crime's worse, too. In fact, I think we can agree we'd all be better off without it,” David growled. “So let's get out of here. I wore my HO-cubed sweatshirt tonight and I'm sweltering.”

“You can't be sweltering,” Sheryl told him sternly. “Here we're as much ghosts as Mr. Scrooge. Right?”

“He's real suggestible, Sheryl; you know that,” Melody said with a kindly look at the marketing manager.

Scrooge had wandered away from them and was listening to more disembodied Christmas music coming from a variety of cards, bell ornaments, and lights. None of it had a very good tone, but he thought it was a lovely idea. Perhaps Doug Banks could have made it sound more like music if he had lived long enough, in the same way he had improved the voice on his sister's doll.

“Well, I for one am disappointed,” Sheryl said. “I thought we were going to have profound revelations here, and all we did was come back to the sale I avoided the first time.”

“I wish I had,” Melody said. “If I hadn't needed the money so bad, I'd never have taken the job. All those guys who thought they were being cute trying to get me to sit on
their
laps while they told me what they wanted for Christmas.
Gruesome.
”

Scrooge suspected from the expressions on the faces of many of the other people in elf costumes that Melody's feelings were shared by her coworkers. Besides, unfamiliar as he was with how this city customarily celebrated Christmas (except for the glimpses he'd had into Monica Banks's past), this setting lacked the proper feeling entirely. There were no street decorations, no wreaths on doors, no Christmassy feel at all to the sale.

All he saw around him were tawdry trinkets made, according to these people, possibly by slave labor. Baskets full of shopworn merchandise. Lights that blinked furiously enough to give anyone a headache, if the tinny carols that came from no musical instrument ever invented by God or man had not already done so. Unseasonable weather and harried people. He and Christmas both were completely out of place on this hot summer day in this hot little indoor village within a city. The air was not as sooty or foggy as his London, but it was somehow less wholesome for being confined.