Christmas In Whimsy Read online

  Through it all, Anna had been a terrific friend. They celebrated their successes, like when Anna had gotten her catering business off the ground, and they commiserated in woe, like the time both of their boyfriends happened to break up with them just before Valentine’s Day. Robin’s parents were down in Texas, along with her younger brother and sister, who were both in various stages of their graduate degrees. It wasn’t that Robin was estranged from her family or they still harbored their initial misgivings over Robin’s choice to go into acting, though there had been lots of discussion over that at one point. They just led very separate lives, with not much in common. There was plenty of love there, but most of their phone conversations were long, blank stretches between bursts of small talk. Anna had become the family Robin missed.

  Robin returned her hug. “Thanks for the shot in the arm,” she said.

  “Of course,” said Anna. “And I hope you remember that I’ll do anything I can to make you feel better, and I’m your friend, and I will get you all the pistachio ice cream you want because I have another log of bad news to throw on the fire?” As Anna spoke, she drew out her words longer and longer until they landed in more of a reluctant question than anything. Questioning what, Robin didn’t know. Her ability to take more disappointment today without flopping over? Probably.

  Robin groaned. “Do I have a choice?”

  Anna shook her head. She wore little jingle bells on her ears that gave a cheery ring contrary to her wary expression. “The landlord—”

  “No,” Robin moaned.

  “He’s raising the—”

  Robin put her hands on her ears. “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “He’s raising the rent again,” Anna rushed out.

  “How much?” Robin asked, hands still on her ears.

  “Ten percent.”

  Robin sank to the floor. Santa’s Pavilion was so crowded that even the “adults” area was getting overrun by kids, and Robin found herself sitting in the midst of an impromptu parade. Boys and girls marched around her, tooting on noisemakers and ringing bells that someone apparently thought was a good idea to give them. One little girl gently placed a tissue-paper crown on Robin’s head and then patted it with sympathy, it seemed.

  Anna sat down too. Robin said to her, “Ten percent? Does he know how much that is to someone living paycheck to paycheck?” She shrugged, resigned. “I guess I can give up my train pass and walk to the city for auditions. That’ll only take, oh, seventeen hours one way.”

  “I can float you for a little while,” Anna offered.

  “Oh, thanks, but it’s not like you’re rolling in it either,” said Robin. “Besides, I need to come up with a sustainable solution. Let’s face it, acting might just be a pipe dream. Tons of people want to be actors. Only a few can make a living at it. Maybe I’m just not one of the few.” She said this matter-of-factly, without self-pity, and yet as she heard herself her stomach turned.

  Anna seemed keyed into her true feelings. “You don’t really believe that, do you?” she asked.

  “No,” Robin fairly burst out. “My mother taught me that if you work hard enough for a dream, somehow, someway, you’ll achieve it. There are always obstacles, but that just separates out those who really want it. It’s going to take a little ingenuity, a little elbow grease, and a little grit, but I’m not ready to throw in the towel.”

  “Now that sounds like a prelude to a rousing, uplifting Broadway song,” said Anna and threw her arms open wide. “Belt it, sister.”

  Robin stuck her tongue out. “No.” She pushed Anna over before jumping to her feet and helping her friend up.

  Anna brushed herself off. “Seriously,” she said, “you’re a great actress. And you know what a tough critic I am. You heard what I thought of the Playhouse production of Annie.”

  “That cast was, like, ninety percent kids.”

  “Yeah, really awful kids.” She glanced down at one of the boys marching around, who’d overheard her and sent her a frown. “What?” she said to the boy. “Were you in it? If you were, you were the one really great kid.” She ruffled his hair and sent him away while shaking her head furtively at Robin.

  “I’ve got a few minutes before I start my shift,” said Robin, “so I’ll try to track down Charlotte. Maybe she can give me some more hours. I don’t know when I’ll make time for auditions anymore …” She shrugged.

  “But …” Anna prompted with a grin.

  “I don’t know,” said Robin. “Eventually I’ll figure something out, I guess.”

  “No, no, no,” said Anna. “Rousing song, rousing song. Annie sings ‘Tomorrow,’ not ‘Eventually I’ll Figure Something Out, I Guess.’ Nobody’s going to see that show.”

  “We’ll see what Charlotte says. If I get good news, I’ll sing the whole musical in our living room tonight, rousing renditions and all,” Robin promised.

  Meekly, Anna said, “Can you do Little Shop of Horrors instead? I never really liked Annie, even with a good cast.”

  Robin rolled her eyes. “Whatever you want.”

  Charlotte Lejeune would most likely be in one of two places this time of day: either in the back office with her husband, René, with whom she owned Orange-Clove Marketplace, or at the Holiday Hutch, which she managed. Robin’s first stop was the right one. The office was tucked back in a nice little administrative cove, where the bookkeepers and security were also stashed. Robin waved at the security guard manning the front desk, and then she paused just outside the owners’ door, waiting for the right moment to break into their conversation.

  They were talking about Charlotte’s cousin, whose husband had been killed in a car accident six years ago. Charlotte seemed to think it was time to give her a little push to get back into life, maybe even start dating again. “I’m just saying, Margot and Kyle barely even decorate for Christmas,” said Charlotte. “A couple days before, they throw up the tree. She’s got to get her heart back into something, don’t you agree?”

  Apparently, René did not. In his thick French accent, he said, “Kyle is only quatorze ans, oui? Ehm, fourteen this year. Perhaps she thinks he is not so ready for his mother dating. Perhaps she must focus on Kyle’s dating, she thinks. This will be coming on soon enough.”

  “I feel like if she could just get going,” said Charlotte, “maybe the Christmas spirit would grab her. Maybe the Spirit of Whimsy would grab her.”

  “Do not push, mon trésor,” René said.

  From her listening post, Robin smiled. She loved René’s pet name for his wife: my treasure.

  “I’m not pushing,” said Charlotte. “If I were, I’d set her up with Gavin. Talk about a match made in heaven.”

  René said, “Ah, but if it is to be a match made by destiny, we must allow destiny to make the match.”

  Out on the promenade, the grand cuckoo clock rang out, signaling that Robin was officially late for her shift. She tapped on her bosses’ door and poked her head in.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” she said, and then thumbed out toward the clock. “Guess I’m going to be a couple minutes late at the Hutch.”

  “That’s fine, honey, come on in,” said Charlotte. She was short to René’s towering figure, with “a little extra pudding,” not padding, as she was fond of saying. The sleeve of her sunny orange and yellow crocheted sweater, a Charlotte original, sagged as she reached her arm out to Robin for a quick hug. Charlotte loved to crochet. She wasn’t especially good at it, but if you got a Charlotte original for Christmas, you knew you were loved. Robin had four.

  “How was the audition, mon petit oiseau?” René asked his “little bird.”

  Robin gave them a similar rundown to what she’d told Anna, and then explained why she was there. “I wouldn’t need a lot of extra hours,” she said, “and I don’t think my schedule could handle a whole lot more anyway. But even four or five hours a week would help immensely.”

  “Aw, sweetie,” said Charlotte, “I want to hel
p, but we’re maxed out on holiday hires. We can see how the profit bump plays out in the New Year, but right now I don’t see how we can make it happen. We’re just not projecting enough.”

  Robin tried to sound casual. “Okay. I understand.”

  “Let me make a few calls around. We both will,” Charlotte said, and René nodded in agreement. “There’re lots of businesses I’m sure would love to have such a capable employee. We’ll give you references like you wouldn’t believe.”

  Robin thanked them both. A job was a job, she knew that, and she was grateful for their help in finding extra work. But it felt like finding more retail work was going in the wrong direction. Extra hours at the Holiday Hutch was one thing. She loved that place. She loved her coworkers. She loved that grand cuckoo clock ringing out every hour, and that the Hutch smelled perpetually of Mo’s Popcorn Palace next door. She even loved the cutesy alliteration surrounding her. It was as warming to her as the working fireplace displays they had this time of year at the Toasty Tent on level one.

  Was she at the point, though, where she had to start thinking of a retail career? Should she start putting all her energy into sending out résumés and setting goals that had more to do with bottom lines than chorus lines? Might she even have to give up the one thing she actually liked about working retail, the Holiday Hutch itself, in order to make ends meet? In a matter of seconds, the questions flitted and chirped around Robin’s head like her very own “petits oiseaux.”

  She envisioned a black-and-white, silver screen version of herself in this predicament. All she’d need then, she thought wistfully, would be a fainting couch, some smelling salts, and a handkerchief to dramatically draw across her poor, overextended brow, and the answers would magically appear within an hour forty-five runtime. Of course, her heroines had come far since the romantic swoon. These days, they went after their goals tirelessly, delivering perfect roundhouse kicks to anything that stood in their way, in perfect four-inch heels and perfect hair, no less. Yes, these were movies, make-believe, but that heroine was everywhere; to Robin’s thinking, there must be real-life versions that inspired the character. Maybe they weren’t as airbrushed, but there must be lots of real women who made their own luck, and made it look easy.

  As she took her leave of the Lejeunes, she turned back. “By the way,” she said, “I couldn’t help overhearing about your cousin. Why don’t you send her over to me at the Hutch? Maybe she just needs a good idea or two for decorating to get her in the spirit of things.”

  “Ah-ha,” Charlotte exclaimed. She clutched Robin’s face in both hands. “I could kiss you. You see?” she said to René. “I told you, Margot just needs a little help. One brilliant idea from our Christmas angel here and she’ll be on her way to finally healing.” Charlotte snapped her fingers and turned back to Robin. “I’m going to make you my grandmother’s arroz con pollo.”

  Thankfully, Charlotte’s cooking ran circles around her crocheting.

  “And I’m going to make those calls. We’re going to make them,” Charlotte said pointedly to René.

  “Oui, mon petit oiseau, we will,” René echoed.

  “Please tell them, too,” said Robin, “that I’m a fast learner. I mean, if you find someone who’s hiring. I might not be perfect right off the bat. Maybe I’m doing something wrong, but I just … I just need someone to point me in the right direction.”

  “Fast learner and a brilliant thinker,” said Charlotte. “Just brilliant.”

  Robin left them then, desperately hoping for her own brilliant idea to help her out of the hole she felt she was slowly slipping into.

  Chapter

  When the elevator opened on Upstate’s offices, Lexie bolted out and nearly ran smack into Spark holding a mountain of files.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, boss,” Spark yelped. She got the files back under her control, balanced them in one arm, and then patted her purple swoosh of hair. Apparently satisfied that no strands were harmed in the making of this potential slapstick, she fell into step behind Lexie, rushing to her desk.

  “Talk to me, Spark,” Lexie called over her shoulder. She’d stopped home quickly and traded her purse for her laptop bag, which was currently banging against her thigh as she marched. Lexie was sure it was leaving a black-and-blue mark roughly the size of the Gutenberg press. “What d’we got?” She stopped and turned to grab some of the files off Spark’s pile, which Spark dumped neatly over to her. Neither woman missed a beat. On some level, despite the crisis in front of her and the relative calm of the weekend’s mostly empty offices, Lexie still felt that reporter’s rush and romance: racing the clock to meet her deadline against the backdrop of the city.

  Spark said, “We got research in the top three folders, original notes and legal pads under that, and …”

  “Drafts?” said Lexie. “We have part of a draft that—”

  “Belinda has redlined already,” Spark finished, sidestepping over to her own desk, three down from Lexie’s. “I’ve got it here.” She ripped stapled pages from one of the teetering paper mountains on her desk. “IT is on their way but no one’s here—”

  “Because it’s Saturday,” Lexie said, nodding. “Yeah, I didn’t think we were going to get anyone. But you—”

  “Talked to ’em on the phone, did everything they said.” Spark gestured to Lexie’s computer with all the hope of the Coast Guard who’s just come upon a beached whale. “The thing’s dead, Lex.”

  Lexie stood behind her swivel chair, her fingers digging into the faux leather. Behind her loomed the open floor plan and desks of the “newsroom,” as the staff called it with affectionate smirks. Most reporters here had grown up with Woodward and Bernstein as their heroes. They imagined their own workplace as the chattering Washington Post circa 1973, despite that the most sensational story these walls had seen was when the Sorkum sisters up in Canajoharie got into a heated legal battle over rightful ownership of a rogue pair of Teddy Roosevelt’s shoes.

  Rothco, Inc. owned Upstate, just as it owned a half dozen other niche magazines and housed them all in this high rise. Upstate was lucky in one sense; the newsroom offices were on the eighteenth floor, and boy, if writers needed inspiration, all they had to do was look out the window. Beyond the newsroom were the glass walls of the conference room, and to either side of it, the glass walls of the editorial offices. Chances were at least several offices and the conference room were open at points throughout any given day, and reporters were known to scuttle in their chairs across the newsroom and just stare at the city vista. In the daytime, the urban landscape was an ocean, with sunlight sparkling on the skyline’s glass waves. At night, stars gleamed both from the heavens and in the towers of lit windows. All seemed close enough to touch.

  The downside to being up this high, as far as Lexie was concerned, was twofold. First, layout and the presses were located on the ground floor, so getting there in a hurry was a dash few enjoyed running. And second, when the power went out and you had high heels on your feet, eighteen flights of stairs was cause for a legitimate grown-up hissy fit.

  Lexie spun her chair around and flopped down into it so she was facing the conference room, which was full with the regular Saturday editorial meeting. A few other reporters in the bull pen were typing away at their desks and chatting on phones, but even though this was a workday for some, it was only mandatory for editors, layout, and as needed by reporters up against a deadline.

  “Do you think I can do it?” she asked Spark.

  “What, rewrite the article?” Spark shrugged. “Sure, boss. No problem. Like a walk in the park. Ooh, or a carriage ride! That’s tonight, right? Theo’s taking … you … umm …” Spark’s words melted into mush under the heat rays Lexie was shooting at her.

  “Please,” she said. “I don’t want to talk about it. No, what I was asking is, do you think I can convince Belinda and Stu I can do this?”

  “Well,” Spark said, jutting her chin at the conference room, “they’re a
ll finishing up. Guess we’ll find out pretty soon. But what’s their other option? They’ve gotta let you try.”

  “I’m guessing from the rather calm way they’re sitting in there that they have no idea I’m about to drop a huge bomb on them?”

  “Lex, I’m assistant to four other reporters besides you,” said Spark. “You’re my favorite, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t get paid near enough to be the bomb warning system around here.”

  “Say no more,” said Lexie. The editors had begun packing up notes and standing. Lexie took a breath and strode toward the conference room.

  She held open the glass door as a few editors said hello and walked past. The room smelled perpetually of paint and new carpet, even though the place had last been remodeled before Lexie had started working here. Lexie nodded to Belinda and Stu. “Can I have you two for a minute?” she asked.

  They sat back down, Belinda in her standard three-piece skirt suit—pinstriped, always—and Stu casual with his wild, curly hair, untucked button-down shirt, and cords. It amazed Lexie years ago the first time she heard Stu mention his husband; she couldn’t imagine him letting Stu go out of the house looking like a twenty-two-year-old college bachelor. She really couldn’t imagine it the first time they met at a magazine function, given that his husband wore a gorgeous suit, tie, and pocket square that came right from Milan’s Fashion Week that year. That was the first time Lexie really understood the phrase “opposites attract.”

  Lexie stood at the other head of the conference table, across from Stu, and she planted her hands out in front of her. “Stu, Upstate has a major problem, but I can fix it for you,” she said.

  There was a time she never would have addressed her editor-in-chief with such command, especially without first consulting her own senior editor, but she was no longer the nervous cub who started here five years ago. In fact, as Lexie’s senior editor, Belinda had mentored her and coaxed her to break out of her shell. Her best advice to Lexie had come early on: make every word count, in your articles, in your life. It was advice Lexie had taken to heart, especially since practically everyone she interviewed embodied that very wisdom. They were successful business owners, driven artists, adventurers who spent their holidays spelunking the Herkimer caverns and hiking Mount Marcy and then went back to their everyday lives of parenting and the office. Those people inspired her to never squander a second, never leave any path unexplored. She didn’t want to wake up when she was sixty and regret the road not taken. She was determined to take all the roads open to her, and such ambition left no room for timidity.