Polterheist: An Esther Diamond Novel (5 page)

“This elf is right, Preston,” said Helen. “Solsticeland brings in the crowds. People who could go to half a dozen other flagship stores in Midtown come
here
instead, because we’ve got the biggest, best, most extravagant holiday exhibits you can find anywhere. We aren’t
a
place to shop at Christmas, we are
the
place. And it’s because of Solsticeland!”

“First of all,” Preston said loudly, “I don’t take business advice from an elf. Not even a Jewish one. Secondly, do you two have any
idea
what it costs us to run Solsticeland? No matter how many people it might be bringing in—and you’ve shown me no proof that it makes the difference you say it does—it’s bleeding money!”

“Proof?” Helen shouted back. “You want
proof?
Look at our holiday revenues!”

“They’re not impressive compared to our holiday expenses!”

Arthur broke in timidly, “It’s also our mother’s legacy. Solsticeland was her vision. She saw the future and—”

“Oh, my God, do not drag
her
into this again.” Preston looked suddenly queasy. I wondered if mentioning his mother always had that effect on him. “Look, when Holidayland was a popular Christmas display that took up a modest portion of the fourth floor, it was cost effective. When Mother and Frederick Senior doubled its size and turned it into an ‘immersive experience,’ we still broke even on it. But ten years ago, when Mother blew that good idea all out of proportion to create a multicultural theme park covering the whole goddamn fourth floor for six weeks every year, she fucked us over. And she’s still fucking us over from the grave with this thing.”

Arthur looked upset at hearing an obscenity used in relation to their mother.

Helen said in exasperation, “Are you
completely
dense? Are you so stupid you’re incapable of understanding that the sort of holiday attraction that brought in crowds way back when Frederick Senior was alive and still occasionally sober is so uncompetitive in today’s retail world that dogs wouldn’t even bother coming to Fenster’s to piss on it?”

“
Enough.”
Preston held up a chubby a hand. “I don’t intend to waste any more time arguing with you two—or with your elf.”

“I’m not
their
elf. I’m
an
elf.”

“I’ve made my decision,” Preston declared. “Mother is gone and no longer controls this company. So this is Solsticeland’s final year.”

Helen sneered. She did that well, I noticed. “You say that as if it were up to you.”

“Money talks, and it’s speaking in my favor,” he replied. “So I can persuade the rest of the family to vote with me, even if you and Arthur refuse to see reason.”

“Oh?” Helen said with disdain. (She was good at that, too.) “After the scene you just threw with Freddie, do you really imagine he’ll vote with
you
on anything?”

“If there’s one thing that Freddie and his idiot mother both love, it’s money. When I explain to them how much more of it there will be for them if we’re not flushing it annually down the drain called Solsticeland, they’ll vote my way,” Preston said confidently.

Looking amused rather than convinced, Helen said, “And I suppose you think Elspeth will vote with you, too?”

“She’s my daughter,” Preston replied, obviously expecting filial loyalty to weigh in his favor. “And since the twins are too young to have a say in the matter . . .”

Helen glared at him but didn’t argue. I recalled that she’d had her twins, a boy and girl, with her third husband, an oil baron named Thorpe. She still kept his name attached to hers with a hyphen, perhaps because Thorpe was her kids’ surname. She’d conceived the twins, her only children, late in life (and thanks to the help of expensive fertility treatments, it was said), and they were now still minors. According to Jingle, the twins were spending the holidays this year skiing in Switzerland with their father. Sure, that sounded enviable; but at the moment, I was inclined to think they’d probably prefer scrubbing floors in Poughkeepsie to spending Christmas in the collective bosom of the Fenster family.

Preston said triumphantly, “The vote will be four against two. Solsticeland will be discontinued.”

After a long, tense moment, the three siblings all looked at me, as if awaiting my judgment on the matter. I said, “I think something might be wrong with the freight elevator. Maybe maintenance should look into it?”

Well, that was what was on
my
mind, after all. I hated this job and never intended to come back here after my temporary employment ended in three more days, so I didn’t care what happened to Solsticeland. I cared even less about how the Fensters used or spent their inherited fortune. As far I was concerned, they could all take their silver spoons and shove them up their—

“Ah! I see nearly everyone’s here and ready for the board meeting,” said Freddie Junior as he opened his door and exited his office. He came down the hallway toward us while making sloppy work of tucking his shirt into his trousers. His brown hair was tousled, and a faint sheen of sweat covered his face.

“Hello, Freddie,” Helen Fenster-Thorpe said in a tone of chilly resignation.

“Aunt Helen, you look younger than ever! That’s so
weird.”
Freddie turned to me, looked at my neckline, and said to my breasts, “Hello! I don’t think we’ve met.”

“This is Dreidel, Santa’s Jewish elf,” Preston said tersely. “Was this your idea?”

Freddie studied me for a moment, then shrugged. “I really can’t remember.”

“I replaced someone else who was playing the Jewish elf,” I said. “Mr. Fenster and I haven’t met before.”

“Call me Freddie.” He tried to put his arm around me.

I shifted quickly, so that my garbage bag slid off my shoulder and thumped against him. “Oops.”

Freddie, who did not seem to be the most sure-footed of men, staggered a little. Eyeing my bulging bag, he asked, “We’re making elves take out the garbage now?”

“No, this is . . .” I said, “Never mind.”

Freddie was about thirty years old and moderately good-looking, in a dissipated sort of way. He was only a couple of inches taller than my 5’6”, and the effects of his notoriously heavy drinking were starting to show in his physique.

Although we’d never met, other employees had pointed him out to me a few times in the store. A favorite subject of scandal mongers and society gossip columnists, Freddie liked booze, sex, gambling, high-living, and expensive toys. He was said to be undisciplined, unprincipled, and uncontrollable. On the other hand, it was also generally agreed that, unlike most Fensters, he was an easygoing guy who didn’t hold grudges.

“Freddie, what are
they
doing on this floor?” asked his Aunt Helen, looking over his shoulder.

I followed her gaze and saw Naughty and Nice emerging from Freddie’ office. Which no doubt explained why he’d looked a little sweaty and disheveled when emerging from that room a moment ago.

Freddie glanced over his shoulder and grinned. “We were conferring on business strategies.” As he gave the elves a little finger-wave, he said, “Those girls are my best idea yet, Aunt Helen!”

“The bar was set very low,” Preston muttered.

Naughty and Nice were a couple of bombshells whose special elf costumes, conceived by Freddie, made them look more like strippers than like Santa’s helpers. The girls were each about 5’10”, buxom, wasp-waisted, long-legged, and tan. Their wet-lipped smiles revealed shiny white teeth too perfect for nature, and they both spent a lot of time in front of the mirror in the ladies’ locker room to achieve the carelessly waving appearance of their long blonde hair. Their skimpy red-and-green outfits were almost as revealing as bikinis, with little bells positioned to draw attention to their breasts every time they moved. Or inhaled. Or did nothing at all. Their black, thigh-high boots completed the look of two women better suited to solicit business in a red-light district than to escort children to Santa’s throne.

In fact, Naughty and Nice were only seen in the North Pole when management wanted them to soothe the tempers of irate fathers who were complaining about the long wait to see Santa. The rest of the time, these two elves were usually working in menswear or sporting goods, encouraging male shoppers to spend money . . . or else they spent their time tending to Freddie’s needs.

Since Naughty and Nice were adjusting their clothing (so to speak) when they came out of Freddie’s office, I gathered they’d been tending to him just now. No wonder his enraged uncle had slammed that door shut a few minutes ago.

The girls finger-waved at Freddie and giggled.

Then Naughty noticed me and said, “Oh, look, it’s
Dreidel.
Hello, Dreidel.”

She was one of those women who could make “hello” sound like a snide insult.

“
Shalom
,” I said.

Looking right at me, Nice whispered something into Naughty’s ear, and the two of them burst out laughing.

“Freddie, since your playthings are presumably on the clock right now,” Preston said through gritted teeth, “isn’t there something they could be doing that at least vaguely resembles work?”

“Of course, Uncle Pres,” said Freddie, making it sound like he was granting the older man a special favor. He instructed his bimbos, “Run along, girls. I have to attend the Fenster family board meeting. Very important stuff!”

Giggling and whispering, the two blondes went halfway down the hall, pressed the button for the staff elevator, and then boarded it.

As the doors swished shut behind them, Preston said to me, “Did you say there’s something wrong with the elevator?”

“The freight elevator,” I clarified.

“Oh. Too bad.”

“Hey, those girls are the best weapon in our marketing arsenal,” Freddie chided. “If you run the numbers, I bet you’ll find they’ve increased sales in menswear by twenty percent.”

“You’re talking through your hat, Freddie,” said his aunt. “I’d believe those two witless sluts could sell Viagra, but not much else.”

Freddie said to me, “Great ideas are rarely recognized in their own time.”

“Uh-huh.”

Arthur surprised us all by speaking up. “They don’t seem like very . . .
nice
girls.”

“Y’think?” I muttered.

“Oh, you’d like them if you got to know them better, Uncle Arthur.” Freddie wiggled his brows suggestively at his uncle, who fell silent again as his face took on an expression of pained embarrassment.

The staff elevator beeped at us, and the door swished open. I had an unhappy moment of thinking that Naughty and Nice had returned to this floor for some reason (or maybe they just didn’t understand how to operate an elevator). But instead of the mostly-naked elves, a newcomer stepped out of the elevator—and I flinched when I saw her.

4

I
gave an embarrassed little shrug a moment later when Helen Fenster-Thorpe gave me a peculiar look for overreacting to the goth girl’s arrival on the sixth floor.

I recognized the girl, having noticed her in Solsticeland a couple of times. I’d had a slight phobia about goths ever since appearing in
The Vampyre
this past autumn, where our audiences had an unfortunate tendency to burst into hysterical rioting. And she was particularly noticeable in Solsticeland, where chalk-white foundation accompanied by basic-black everything (dyed hair, clothing, accessories, lipstick, nail polish) wasn’t the usual look for staff or visitors. I had realized from Miles’ subservient behavior to her that she was someone he deemed important, but it hadn’t occurred to me that she was a Fenster. I had vaguely assumed that Preston’s Vassar-educated daughter, mentioned in his bio in my employee handbook, would be a well-groomed debutante, not a slouching rebel in combat boots and scary eye makeup.

“Elspeth!” Preston checked his watch as he greeted his daughter. “You’re five minutes late.”

“So sue me,” she said sullenly, clumping toward us in her heavy boots, her various silver chains jangling as she walked. “I bumped into your revolting bimbos when I got on the elevator, Freddie.
God
, those girls are disgusting.”

I started to like Elspeth.

As she came to a halt beside her cousin, she added, “And
you’re
even more disgusting, Freddie. Is that really what you want in a woman? Fake boobs displayed like—”

“They’re real,” Freddie protested. “You can take my word for it.”

“What
ever.”
Elspeth looked at me and said, “I think I’ve seen you before. Downstairs somewhere. You’re the Hanukkah elf, right?”

“Did everyone know about this but me?” Preston said irritably. “Why did we need a Hanukkah elf, for God’s sake? We have a storage room
full
of Christmas costumes that no one’s using! Any number of those costumes would have fit this girl just fine. Why did we waste money
making
another costume for someone we only employ for six weeks?”

“Jesus, Dad,” said Elspeth. “Would you
chill?
You’re totally harshing my vibe.”

“Whenever you open your mouth,” said her father, “I realize that the money I spent on Vassar was wasted, too.”

I decided I had enjoyed enough of the Fenster family’s company for one day—and, indeed, for the rest of my life. “Well, you people have a board meeting to attend,” I said, starting to back away from them. “And I need to go do something about this damaged costume and then get back out on the floor. We’re understaffed, you know, so—”

“Wait a minute.” Elspeth grabbed my arm, studying me with a peculiar look. “I know you, don’t I?”

“I don’t think so.” Although it was a little hard to tell for sure under her dyed black hair and heavy goth makeup, she didn’t seem at all familiar to me, apart from my having seen her around the store a couple of times. And it’s not as if I habitually meet so many heiresses that I might forget one. “Now if you’ll excuse me—”

“No, I
know
you. I’m sure I do. Your voice.” She eyed me analytically and added, “Your face . . . your cheekbones . . .”

I’m of average height and weight, with fair skin, brown eyes, and shoulder-length brown hair. I fit a lot of “types” and can be cast in a variety of stage roles, from romantic leads to character parts. My cheekbones are my best feature, though they don’t elevate my face to Hollywood-pretty. My looks are okay, but they’re not my meal ticket.

“Elspeth,” said Helen impatiently, “the elf has already said—”

“What’s your name?” Elspeth asked me.

“Dreidel.”

“No, your real name.”

I hesitated, feeling reluctant to give it to these people. It seemed as if that would make our acquaintance real, which didn’t strike me as an appealing prospect.

“Dreidel,” Freddie mused. “I like that. It’s sexy.”

“Shut up, Freddie,” said his aunt.

“Elspeth,” said Preston, “release the elf. We have a meeting—”

“What’s your name?” she repeated.

On the other hand, I was just a seasonal employee, one whom they’d all forget (except possibly the outraged Preston) as soon as I left the sixth floor. So I said, “Esther Diamond.”

“Esther Dia . . .
Oh, my God!”

I flinched and dropped my garbage bag when Elspeth grabbed my shoulders and squeezed with excitement.

“It’s you! Oh, my God! It’s
you!”
she cried.

“Who the hell is she?” Preston asked.

“Yes, who am I?” I asked, as baffled as the girl’s father.

“Jane! You’re
Jane!”
Her sulky face was illuminated by sudden enthusiasm as she said to her bemused family, “This is Jane Aubrey!”

Oh,
no.

I felt paralyzed with panic.

“No, I’m pretty sure that’s Dreidel,” Freddie said with a puzzled frown.

“Elspeth, this elf just said she’s Esther Diamond.” Helen added, “Pay attention, Freddie.”

“Then who’s Jane Aubrey?” her nephew wondered.

“You’re one of
them,”
I said, my well-trained voice barely a croak. I stared in dry-mouthed horror at Elspeth, who was practically jumping up and down in her excitement. “The vamparazzi!”

“The who?” said Freddie.

During the limited run of
The Vampyre,
I had been threatened, mobbed, tackled, harassed, punched, pummeled, and nearly suffocated by the crowds of crazed vampire fanatics and paparazzi who hung around the theater every night. I had also nearly been murdered by a vampire. And if asked whether I felt more haunted by my memories of that homicidal vampire or of the vamparazzi, I’d need to think long and hard about my answer.

Therefore, learning that one of the vamparazzi was here at Fenster’s—indeed, was
a
Fenster . . . Oh, it was too infamous for words! I gaped at Elspeth in appalled shock, keenly aware of her fingers still digging into my shoulders.

“Yes, who
is
Jane Aubrey?” Preston asked.

“I can’t believe you’re
here!”
Elspeth cried again, the fanaticism in her face frightening me. She told her puzzled family, “Jane Aubrey is the woman Lord Ruthven loves!”

I blinked.
Oh,
please.
That does it.

I tried to pull out of her grip; she tightened it.

Preston asked, “Who the hell is Lord Ruthven?”

“I think I met him . . .” Freddie said.

I regained full control of my motor skills and gave Elspeth such a hard shove that she let go of me and staggered backward into the timid Arthur.

“Stop right there!” I said sharply, pointing a warning finger at the goth girl. “I am
not
Jane Aubrey. I
played
Jane Aubrey in
The Vampyre.
And Lord Ruthven didn’t
love
her, he
murdered
her.”

Freddie said, “Hey, love hurts, baby.”

“Shut up, Freddie,” I snapped.

“You
played . . .”
Preston’s expression cleared as he realized what I was saying. “Oh, you’re an actress?”

“Yes.”

Helen reminded him, “Quite a few of the seasonal employees are actors.”

“Wait a minute,” said Preston. “
The Vampyre?
Oh, good God, Elspeth! Wasn’t that the stupid thing downtown that you were at night after night for weeks before Thanksgiving?”

“It wasn’t stupid,” she said sulkily. “It was brilliant! But you wouldn’t understand.” She returned her attention to me and asked, with exactly the sort of feverish obsession that had nearly led to my demise once or twice during the run of that play, “What’s it like to be held in
Daemon Ravel’s
arms?”

“Who’s he?” Freddie asked me.

“The actor who played Lord Ruthven, the vampyre.” I said to Elspeth, “I have no idea what it’s like to be held by Daemon Ravel. I only know what it’s like to be held by Lord Ruthven, who embraced me eight shows per week while I was playing Jane.”

“Well, what was
that
like?” she demanded impatiently.

“Yes, tell us,” Freddie said with interest.

“It was chilly,” I said tersely. “That theater was drafty and my neckline was practically down to my navel.”

“Oh, I wish I’d seen
that,”
said Freddie.

I concluded, “Daemon Ravel and I were short-term colleagues who barely knew each other, and we’ve had no contact since the show ended.”

And because life was intrinsically unfair, Daemon was now prepping for his upcoming lead role in a cable-TV movie, while I was working as an elf at Fenster’s.

Elspeth said sulkily, “Fine. Whate
ver
.” Evidently thinking she was delivering a stinging insult, she added, “You’re really
not
Jane, are you? You’re
nothing
like her.”

“Nope.”

“Is Jane still coming, though?” Freddie asked in confusion. “We could order in some food or something.”

“Jesus, Freddie,” said his cousin, clearly in a sour temper now. “Sometimes I’m amazed you can find your own dick with both hands.”

“Luckily,” he replied, “I don’t often need to find it by myself.”

“That’s enough, children,” said Helen.

They
were
like children, I realized. Both of them. Freddie was older and Elspeth was younger, but they were each within a few years of my age. Yet they both seemed like teens to me—
immature
teens, struggling with too much privilege, too little responsibility, and no real guidance.

What a family.

“Just out of curiosity,” Preston said to me, “not that I care . . . But if you were in a sold-out Off-Broadway play last month, where tickets were going for astronomical prices on the street—which I have good reason to know, since my daughter burned through a small fortune to see that play as many times as she could . . . What the hell are you doing here, playing an elf?”

Now that
did
sting. “I’m out of work.”

“Bummer,” said Freddie.

“That’s life upon the wicked stage,” I said. “Sometimes you’re up, sometimes you’re down. And, up or down, I have to pay my rent, after all.”

“Hey! You see that? Right there?” Preston pointed at me while speaking to his daughter. “
That’s
a work ethic. Why can’t you be more like this elf?”

“Because she’s an
elf
, Dad,” Elspeth said with disdain. “Is that really what you want for me?”

That stung, too. I decided it was time to resurrect my plan to get away from these people.

“I’ve really enjoyed meeting you all,” I lied, “but now I have to take Drag Queen Santa’s costume to the shop for repairs. Or maybe for burial at sea.”

“We have a
drag queen
in Solsticeland?” shouted Preston, his ire renewed. “What the
hell
is going on down there? That’s
it,
I tell you, Helen. That’s it! This is Solsticeland’s final year!”

“Oh?” said Freddie. “Are you sure? I mean, doesn’t it sort of depend how
I
vote when the time comes?”

“Yes, Freddie, it does,” said Helen, turning on a dime and warming up to her loathed nephew with a lightning-quick change of attitude. “You’re absolutely right, dear. But I suggest that we discuss the future of Solsticeland—”

“It has no future!” Preston insisted.

“—in the board room rather than continue to scream about it here in the hallway.”

“Oh. Yes. Let’s do that.”

To my relief, the Fensters all moved off in the opposite direction from where I was headed. Preston, who was muttering angrily, paused long enough to bark at his brother, “Come
on
, Arthur! You can’t attend the meeting from the doorway of your office!”

Looking small in comparison to his relations, Arthur trotted down the hall after them. I picked up my garbage bag, then turned and went in the other direction, heading for the costume shop. The voices of the bickering Fensters floated down the hallway to me until after I turned the corner and started following that corridor to the other side of the building.

The exact distribution of Fenster stock was kept private, but it was known that Freddie Junior had inherited shares from his father, of which he’d gained control when he’d turned eighteen, and that he had inherited more stock from his grandmother, Constance, upon her recent death. His mother tended to leave him in charge of her shares in the company, too, as well as her voting rights. So now that the Iron Matriarch was dead, Freddie—feckless, reckless, and not exactly the brightest bulb in the chandelier—reputedly had more control of Fenster & Co. than anyone else in the family. This undoubtedly drove the rest of them
nuts.

I assumed it was also why no one got rid of Naughty and Nice, though the whole family obviously disapproved of having Freddie’s bimbo elves on the payroll. Realistically, Freddie Junior was in a position to do almost anything he wanted, regardless of how his uncle screamed and raged at him.

All things considered, I suddenly wondered if Fenster’s itself had much of a future, never mind Solsticeland.

On the way to the costume shop, I passed what always struck me as the strangest thing in the whole building: the holding cell. Fenster’s had its very own jail cell, where it locked up shoplifters until NYPD came to get them. I found it weird—and a little unnerving—that I worked for a company that had its own private prison.

The cell was empty and no one was around. Security guards only got posted here if there was a prisoner.

When I got to the costume shop and pulled Satsy’s ruined Santa outfit out of the bag, the costumer was appalled by the extent of the damage. After a few minutes of muttering and head shaking, she stuffed it back in the plastic bag and dumped it in the garbage can.

“He’ll need another costume for the rest of the season.” She snorted and added, “All three and a half days of it.”

She took me down the hall to another room. When we entered it, I realized this was the storage area that Preston had mentioned, full of Christmas costumes that weren’t being used. It was a large room containing half-a-dozen racks of garments (mostly red and green), boots, bells, caps, beards, antlers, and wings. (“We tried sugarplum fairies one year,” the costumer told me, “but the wings were so fragile they needed constant repairs.”)