The Christmas Show Read online

  Our problem was, not all of our ghosts could agree on an acceptable Scrooge. The Ghost of Christmas Past liked the cop. The Ghosts of Christmas Present and Christmas Yet to Come insisted his aura was unacceptable; Present wanted Mr. Shop-A-Rama, Yet to Come wanted the ex-Marine. Jacob Marley said he found them all equally intolerable but as he spent the least amount of time in direct contact with Scrooge, we didn’t count his vote as much.

  The ghosts portraying Scrooge’s past—Fezziwig, young Ebenezer and his sister, and others—only had to share visible space with the live actor, but they had surprisingly strong feelings. None of them wanted the football coach or the insurance salesman but there was no clear majority among them for any of the other three. The discussion deteriorated into an argument so intense it blew out the lights, even though we didn’t have any on at the time (sparks flew; we had to buy new lightbulbs). It took us forever to find the circuit breaker. Just try to find anything in the dark with a houseful of ghosts all revved up to the point of hysteria by a sudden power surge—they’re like kids on a sugar buzz, only less manageable. They know we need them more than they need us and they seldom miss an opportunity to point it out. But even leaving that aside, what could we threaten them with? They’re dead.

  After the charge dissipated and they were calmer, we called a vote, or tried to—Marley broke out in a case of democratic activism and objected because it couldn’t be a secret ballot (well, it could have been but that would have taken hours, raising them all up separately and then sending them back). It spread to some of the others—did I mention ghosts are easily led?—and we might have had an all-out mutiny if Past, Present, and Yet to Come hadn’t ganged up on him and told him he was being a complete dick.

  Still, that didn’t make the actual voting any easier, even after we eliminated the cop and the coach. Finally, at three in the morning, the ex-Marine—Steve Rock—somehow edged out Mr. Shop-A-Rama, Dan Cuthbert. Don’t ask me how; I think there was a coin toss involved (besides being easily led, ghosts are also inveterate gamblers, because what have they got to lose?). I was so groggy by then I just curled up where I was and passed out. The next morning I found myself under the bed with no memory of how I’d gotten there. It was a pretty tight fit; I suspect my unconscious was hiding from Marley, whose last words had been, I’d rather have the other guy. (He’d have said the same thing if it had been the other guy.)

  * * *

  You’re probably wondering how we rehearse with ghosts and live people without letting on we’re using real ghosts. Most people would never believe it—they’d think it was a trick, and drive us crazy wanting to know how we did it. The few who did believe would also drive us crazy wanting to know all about the supernatural and magic, bugging us to raise this or that deceased relative or, worse, some dead celebrity, not understanding it wasn’t that simple and refusing to take no for an answer.

  So we have some “equipment”—a few PC housings with fancy lights that can be concealed in the set. The ghosts are supposed to remain within a limited area around them, so it seems like they’re projections, while we tell the live people to maintain a certain distance so they won’t “create interference” or “break the line of projection.” We even do a little demonstration with Marley, where he blurs out of focus or flickers when they get too close (Marley has exceptional image control—he can even do static).

  We explained much of this to the cast at the first read-through. We sat them in folding chairs in a semi-circle on the stage and positioned the “equipment” to look as if it were projecting onto a plain backdrop. Then Coco and I took turns with the video camera, recording the whole reading. The first read-through is the trickiest because the ghosts have to behave like they’re pre-recorded CGIs. All the ghosts hate this part; they find it unbearably stifling. But they can’t interact with the cast at that point, except to deliver their lines on cue while Coco and I pretend to use an iPad to adjust them. Later, when we block everyone’s movements, they have a little more wiggle room because we can say they’re programmed to respond to stimuli. Sometimes people get very curious about that; we tell them it’s adapted from gaming software, which neither of us really understands and it’s a trade secret anyway, sorry.

  It used to be easier to convince—ahem, fool—the very old and the very young because they have a greater number of things in their lives that they don’t understand. Back when the personal computer and its less-than-wholesome companion, the Internet, were more novel and less ubiquitous, we could get away with buzz word non-explanations. These days, however, even the least technologically savvy people know enough to be inconvenient, and they don’t even know how much they actually know. Fortunately, we have an app to help with that. Okay, a spell. But really, six of one, half dozen of the other, right?

  Our first read-through went surprisingly well. Everyone oohed and aahed at the preliminary “projections” (although it was a miracle no one caught Marley rolling his eyes after every line). Except for the ex-Marine, that is; when he wasn’t reading his lines, he was positively stoic. I didn’t like that.

  “You picked a fine time to have second thoughts,” Coco said when I told her afterward, back at the condo. We put the video on the big flat-screen TV—I swear, that thing was larger than the windows in my first apartment—and the resolution was practically lifelike. If it weren’t for that stupid curse, I could have one of those, I fumed to myself.

  “Well?” My sister elbowed me. She had paused the video with the ex-Marine’s face in close-up. His name is Steve, I reminded myself. “Except for the fact that he’s built like a refrigerator and we’ll have to glamour him so he won’t totally dwarf everyone else onstage and the ghosts’ll have to manifest at 150% actual size—except for Present, he’ll have to be 200%, maybe more—and he looks more like he could scare a ghost rather than vice versa … except for all that, what is it you think is wrong with him?”

  “It’s not that there’s anything wrong, exactly—” I grimaced. “I’m having trouble getting a read on him.”

  “Do tell,” Coco said. “What is it about that chiseled stone face you feel isn’t forthcoming?”

  “He’s shy,” said the Ghost of Christmas Past helpfully from the iPad.

  “You think so?” I propped the tablet up on the coffee table to let her see the screen.

  “Absolutely,” she said. “I’ve seen this a million times. A billion. Big, strong, and bashful. It’s an archetype.”

  “Bullshit,” Coco said, turning the iPad toward herself. “He’s so shy he tried out for the Christmas play that the whole town is going to see?”

  “Maybe he lost a bet,” Past suggested. “Or made a promise. Or he suddenly decided to do something wild and crazy. Wild and crazy for him,” she added in response to Coco’s incredulous look. “Could be a bucket list thing. Bucket lists are trending like mad, you know. A lifetime of regrets on a sheet of paper. Or two. Or three. Hey, I know what I’m talking about, Coco, so don’t be giving me the stink-eye. Your face might freeze that way.”

  “Bitch, please,” said my sister. “Who do you think you’re talking to, a country mark?”

  “Or a glamour might get stuck so it just looks like your face froze that way to everyone else,” Past went on serenely.

  “And don’t call people marks,” I couldn’t help adding. “The Muses don’t like it.”

  “Okay, gang up on me, why don’t you? I’m not the one who got my way on casting and then started having second thoughts.”

  “I’m not having second thoughts,” I said. “I’m just concerned. I still think he did the best reading. But even if it is just the first read-through, I thought he’d open up more. It’s like he’s still holding himself apart from the rest of the cast.”

  “I told you, he’s shy,” Past insisted. “What do you know about him?”

  Coco picked up the iPad. “Excuse me,” she said, pressing the home button. Past disappeared as my sister called up her notes. “Retired ex-Marine, lives…” her eyebrows we
nt up. “Here. In this complex, I mean. He’s got a one-bedroom with garden—” she stood up and turned slowly until she was facing the kitchen. “Somewhere over that way.” Coco’s gift for direction is better than GPS (we have one in the bus anyway, for cover). “Maybe you should go talk to him,” she said to me brightly as she sat down and handed me the iPad. “Bring him out of his shell.”

  “Maybe we should both go,” I said evenly. “It’s not like I’m working alone.”

  “Girls, girls,” said Past, coming back on the iPad in the middle of Coco’s notes. “No bickering! You know we can’t stand the vibe.”

  The vibe. That made both me and my sister smile in spite of ourselves. Past is three hundred and forty years old. It took months of vocal practice before she was understandable, and almost as long to update her vocabulary and syntax, so we still get a kick out of it when something like the vibe rolls off her spectral tongue with such casual ease.

  “I’m not saying I want to change Scrooges,” I said. “I still think he’s right for the part. But I think we’re going to have to help him be in the cast and not just in the same place. If you see what I mean.”

  “Well, if he really is shy, we’ll have to be careful not to come on too strong,” Coco said. “We have to entice him out of his shell while letting him believe it’s his idea.” She tried to smile and only looked pained. “I’m sorry, I’m just going to say this one last thing: we probably wouldn’t have this problem with the Shop-A-Rama guy. Or the salesman, whose job is relating to people.”

  “That’s two last things,” I said. “But that’s okay, I’ll give you the extra. Maybe you’re right. But if we can get this guy into the zone, we’ll have a production ten times better than with any of the others. And that counts for a lot.”

  Coco nodded. “True. But it looks like we’re gonna work awful hard for the payoff. I just hope it turns out to be worth it.”

  “Hey, I’m behind you,” Past said.

  “The past usually is,” said Coco. “Now get out of my notes before you set off a typo bomb.”

  * * *

  We spent the month of November rehearsing six days out of seven. Not with the whole cast—we’d do every other day with different cast members, sometimes with me or Coco standing in for Scrooge. We were trying not to overdo it with him, although we’d have liked to have him there every night. After the first two weeks, though, he came to us and asked if it would be all right if he came to every rehearsal, even if we didn’t want him to take part. He felt he needed to watch. “You know, for the character,” he said, as if he were asking a favor. “To see how the character is in the story.”

  With his increased participation, we found we could take the rehearsals down to five days out of seven, and some of those were Scrooge alone with a ghost. Past said she could see he was getting used to the part, almost like he was breaking in a pair of shoes. To me, it seemed more like a strange place was becoming familiar to him. But although he wasn’t as closed off, he still had some opening up to do.

  Past came up with the bright idea of taking him away from the stage and rehearsing in a completely different environment—viz., while Christmas shopping in the nearby mall (nearby being thirty miles away on the interstate). I wasn’t sure that making him do his lines strolling past the Gap or in the middle of a food court would help him overcome his shyness. But the drama club kids were working on the set (for extra credit) and Coco was supervising them (with their teacher) and I figured what the hell, it probably wouldn’t be any easier to concentrate onstage.

  As it turned out, I was the one who was too shy to run lines with him while strolling past the Gap, and he knew it. He might have been relieved—I couldn’t tell. But I could definitely see that he was amused.

  “I should just let you go home,” I told him, embarrassed. “I really didn’t mean to bring you all the way out here for nothing.”

  “It doesn’t have to be for nothing,” he said in a kindly voice.

  “Well, maybe if you start—”

  “I don’t mean that.” He paused in an open area between a small, glittery double-decker carousel and a Santa’s Village with smiling plastic reindeer, a couple of snowmen (or snow-people: Mr. and Mrs. Frosty, holding twig hands), a train for little kids to ride on, currently not in service—a sign said the engineer was out to lunch, would return in one hour—and a little house where Santa would be receiving visitors starting at 3:00 p.m. (another sign). “Why don’t we do a little Christmas shopping? Since we’re here anyway.”

  “Christmas shopping?” I said, startled.

  He laughed at the expression on my face. “Come on, you musta heard of it. See, you go out and buy gifts for friends and relatives. And then you take them home and you wrap them, or you can pay somebody to do that for you.” He pointed at a stand offering gift-wrapping services.

  “Or not pay,” I said, pointing. “The sign says it’s free.” I frowned. “That’s awful generous, even for the season of giving.”

  “Yes,” he said, “it is.”

  I’d been about to ask him to pardon my cynicism but his tone stopped me—his voice was soft and thoughtful but there was an undertone that made me uneasy. He gazed at the stand for a few moments longer and then suddenly walked over to it. I was so surprised, I could only stare after him; he seemed to have forgotten all about me.

  The woman behind the counter was just handing two large boxes, perfectly-wrapped parcels to a man and giving him a thousand-watt happy-holidays smile. But as soon as she turned toward Scrooge, the smile was replaced by something like horror … or terror. Scrooge caught the man by the sleeve of his coat, took the packages out of his arms, set them on the counter, and tapped them hard with two fingers.

  The woman backed away slightly; Scrooge shrugged and tore the wrapping off the smaller package. This shocked me enough that I finally snapped out of my statue impersonation and hurried over. I had no idea what was going on—ex-Marine PTSD triggered by free gift-wrap service? If so, what the hell did I think I could do about it?

  I got to the stand just as Scrooge opened the box and showed the man what was inside. Which, as far as I could tell, was a tangle of old rags.

  “Hey!” the man said indignantly. “What happened to the sweater I bought my wife?”

  “I’m so sorry, obviously there’s been a terrible mix-up, I’ll just go find that for you right now—” the woman babbled, and slipped behind a screen decorated with snowflakes and cartwheeling elves. Scrooge looked around and beckoned to someone—a security guard. He was joined almost immediately by three more who seemed to materialize out of thin air. As soon as they appeared, Scrooge took my arm and steered me away, toward the food court. I was so flabbergasted I couldn’t say a word.

  * * *

  “How did you know?” I asked as we sat at a garish orange plastic table with cups of hot chocolate.

  “It’s actually a pretty old scam,” he said. “Go to a busy mall, bring in a table and a few decorations, and find a place where you can hide what you’re really doing. Swap the merchandise out with some crap weighs the same—pretty girl up front, one or two accomplices to stash the loot and carry it out when it starts to pile up. If someone catches you, you just say you’re on your way to the storeroom because you ran outta tape or paper or ribbon, or there’s so much to wrap you gotta get help.”

  “But doesn’t the mall management know they don’t belong there?”

  “This time of year, the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. If mall staff even bother to ask, they say they’re working courtesy of this or that social group—the Elks, the Rotary Club, the Better Business Bureau, the Auto Club. Nobody calls to check.”

  “I had no idea,” I said, still pretty taken aback.

  “You never saw something like that before, huh?”

  I shook my head.

  “But you thought it was kinda strange, someone giving something away this time of year,” he said with a chuckle. “Then, what—you just figured, aw
, isn’t that nice, the mall’s doing something nice for the people who shop there. Right?”

  I nodded sheepishly.

  “On top of Santa’s Village and the carousel.”

  I laughed. “Okay, when I stop to think about it…”

  “Which most people are too busy to do.”

  I was about to make some innocuous reply when my gaze met his. For the first time, I noticed that he had light-colored eyes; hazel, I supposed, but with flecks of green and black. They were beautiful; unique, even. Some people, men and women, would have killed for eyes like that.

  Abruptly, I realized I’d been staring and took another sip of hot chocolate. Or I would have, except my cup was empty. “I need another,” I said. “How about you?”

  “I’m good,” he said, not quite chuckling.

  * * *

  “All right, so what do you think it means?” Coco said when I told her about it that evening over Chinese food.

  “I was hoping you’d help me figure that out,” I told her.

  “I don’t suppose you caught everything on video.”

  “What? No, of course not.”

  “Then I don’t know what you expect me to do. I wasn’t there; I didn’t see it.”

  I looked at the time, then grabbed the remote and pointed it at the TV. The news had already started but they were still in the national/international segment.

  “You think you made the news?”