Christmas Ghosts - Fiction River

by Fiction River

  Who ironed their jeans in the 21st century?

  “I don’t want to go home,” she said, and, to his credit, he didn’t close his eyes.

  How many times had he heard that over the years? Take me with you, women said. I’ll be the best lover you’ve ever had, other women said. Can we go to your apartment? little kids asked, because his TV apartment on the show that had made him famous had been a veritable magical wonderland, a place that was everything to everyone and in reality, nothing at all.

  He grabbed his cell phone, keeping his gaze on the girl. With his thumb, he dialed the personal assistant the theater had assigned to him. He couldn’t remember the guy’s name; normally, he would have contacted the stage manager, but this seemed like an assistant thing.

  “Please, Mr. McKendrick,” the girl said, sounding desperate. “I don’t want to go home.”

  The door opened and the girl startled backwards, tripping not only on her coat, but on the big pile. The assistant leaned in and didn’t see her.

  “Mr. McKendrick?” the assistant asked. “What can I—”

  The girl shot Roth a look of sheer betrayal and then bolted out of the dressing room.

  Roth leaned back in his chair. “You might want to let the stage manager know that a civilian managed to cross the Rubicon.”

  “What?” the assistant asked, clearly not understanding. How could someone work in a theater and not understand classical references? Roth did, and he never even went to college.

  He sighed. “Please let someone in charge know that an unauthorized person is loose backstage.”

  “Oh,” the assistant said and left without bothering to shut the door.

  Roth stood, and walked past the expensive sofa (that he didn’t need), the table with a computer (that he also didn’t need), the pile of coats (which he certainly didn’t need), and pushed the door closed. It latched quietly.

  He glanced at those coats. Buying them had been a compulsion. He knew that, but he had allowed himself a few days of insanity after the year he’d had. Thanks to a parade of therapists, he even knew what the coats represented.

  Warmth, security, protection, all those things he’d never had. All those things he had to learn to provide for himself.

  “Nicely done, kiddo,” said the ghost lurking in the shadows by the costumes.

  “Shut the hell up, Dad,” Roth said. “And kindly go away.”

  ***

  Erika Brandis stood in the lobby of the hotel, surrounded by fourteen teenage girls, all dressed to what they considered to be the nines, all holding white plastic bags that stated I [heart] New York but which actually meant I Am An Idiot Tourist! Mug Me!, all chattering incessantly. They had shut up for the play, partly because they saw the infamous Jaime McKendrick in the flesh, even if that flesh was wearing 19th century clothing and mostly pretending to be an elderly man. It was hard to make those thighs look elderly, and the biceps weren’t bad either. The famous Hollywood abs were hidden by a long coat and vest, but nothing could hide that face.

  Men shouldn’t be called pretty, and Jaime McKendrick never had been, not really. He had a masculine jawline, what used to be called a Roman nose, and cheekbones that could cut glass. But there was something arresting about him, even when he was in the character of Ebenezer Scrooge.

  There was nothing sexy in A Christmas Carol, except Jaime McKendrick, of course. And girls who had just come into puberty, whose hormones were trying to take over the world, noticed.

  When the Elizabeth Cady Stanton School For Girls in God-Knows-Where Ohio had contacted Erika to run a near-Christmas tour of New York, she had thought the job would be easy. After all, there wouldn’t be boys. In the past, when she’d hosted high school groups, boys had tried to swing from building to building like Spider-man. Boys had had fights in the hotel hallways. Boys had smuggled in beer, and consumed it in the hallways. Boys had rollerbladed down staircases and commandeered elevators with fake guns.

  She had decided never to host boys again. Men, yes. Boys, no. And somehow—she had no idea how now that she was standing in the midst of these girls on penultimate day of the worst tour of her life—she had forgotten what it was like to be a teenage girl. Raging hormones didn’t cut it. Raging insanity plus hormones, boy craziness, giggles, and nonstop talking.

  Maybe she would disband Brandis Tours. Maybe she would have to, given the upcoming insurance and legal problems if she didn’t find Hannah Adams. The girl went missing at the Mary Martin Theater, and the stupid teacher in charge of the headcount didn’t notice.

  Insurance and legal, hell. Erika really didn’t want to think about the human side of a pretty, underage girl lost in Manhattan. A girl Erika was theoretically responsible for although, technically, the school was responsible for her. Not that it mattered; if they didn’t find Hannah, Erika would always blame herself.

  Not in the least because she had confiscated all cell phones before the girls left for the theater. Somewhere in this building, Hannah Adams’ cell phone gathered dust, while Hannah herself was lost in the bowels of the city. Or at least, lost in its tourist mecca.

  Erika grabbed the elbow of Miss Sargent, the twenty-something teacher who had lost Hannah, and dragged her away from the noise, kinda. The other teacher, Mrs. Markovich, a middle-aged woman who had taken the afternoon off thinking that nothing could go wrong in the thea-tah, was glaring at both of them for leaving her alone with the excited girls.

  “Let me make sure I actually heard you,” Erika said to Miss Sargent. “You only counted the girls when you got back.”

  “I haven’t counted them at all,” the idiot teacher said. “The girls told me she was missing.”

  Erika bit back the comment she was going to make because it involved words not acceptable to teachers and other delicate organisms. Instead, she stood on the nearest chair and clapped her hands.

  Miraculously, the girls shut up.

  “Count off,” Erika said.

  They had done this all during the trip, and even though a few of them rolled their eyes, they always emitted a number in the right sequence when she pointed at them.

  Nineteen. She needed twenty.

  “Who is Hannah Adams’ travel partner?” she asked. They were supposed to buddy up. She learned from dealing with boys that two usually worked in keeping track of each other, but three was a mess. And not having someone keep track resulted in—well, resulted in this.

  “I am.” The prettiest girl in the group stepped forward. “I forgot I was supposed to watch her.”

  Her little friends—an even number of little friends, dammit—tittered. Erika had hated cliques. She wondered if they had deliberately dumped Hannah Adams.

  “You forgot,” Erika said mockingly, letting the group know she didn’t believe the girl. “Well, then. You get to stay in the hotel tonight with Mrs. Markovich while everyone else goes out to a fancy dinner. Clearly you’re too tired to enjoy yourself.”

  “Hey!” the girl said. “Do you know who my parents are?”

  “Unless they’re Bill and Melinda Gates, I really don’t care,” Erika said. “And even then, it might be hard to make me care.”

  She nodded at Markovich who looked upset at being forced to stay in (when she claimed she wanted nothing more just five hours ago).

  “When did you last see Hannah?” Erika asked the girl.

  “Oh, in the theater. We sat next to each other. She has a thing for Jaime.”

  All of the girls had a thing for Jaime. They chose the plays by vote before they left, choosing, apparently based on the fame of the lead star, rather than the quality of the production.

  Not that Erika could complain about the quality of A Christmas Carol starring Jamison Roth McKendrick. The man was classically trained, and unbelievably talented. He’d been unbelievably talented when he was a kid. He had learned his craft since.

  “Do we call the police?” Miss Sargent asked tremulously.

  “Not yet,” Erika said.

  Teenage girls were
nothing if not resourceful, especially when it came to pursuing a crush. Erika was going back to the theater—alone—first, to see if she could find Hannah. And if she couldn’t…well, she didn’t want to think about what came next.

  ***

  When Roth got out of the shower, he wrapped a towel around himself and prayed that his father’s ghost wouldn’t be waiting for him in the dressing room. The ghost stayed out of the bathroom, much to his relief, and almost never showed up when Roth was unclothed. His father was more courteous in death than he had ever been in life.

  The ghost had joined him some time in the last ten years, maybe before. He’d slowly become visible, first out of the corner of Roth’s eye, and then as an actual presence that few besides Roth could see. Lately, his father’s ghost actually seemed solid, like a hired assistant who had no idea he was supposed to appear only when summoned.

  Roth stepped into the dressing room, and there was the ghost, sitting on the pile of coats. The old man—who wasn’t that old; fifty-five when he put the gun in his mouth—had his arms crossed and his fully intact face glaring.

  “Angels and ministers of grace defend me,” Roth muttered, misquoting Hamlet.

  The ghost rolled his eyes. He’d actually expressed an opinion about Roth quoting Hamlet around him, saying it was rude. Roth said it wasn’t pertinent, since the ghost had murdered himself rather than let an incestuous uncle do it.

  Still, Roth preferred quoting plays to the ghost rather than actually engaging him in a real conversation.

  Roth dressed, knowing that his father had faded out for the naked part. If Roth went naked for the rest of his life, he would never see his father again, but that wasn’t really viable. Even though he had enough money to do so, he wasn’t the Howard Hughes type. He didn’t believe in locking himself away from the world forever.

  Roth had lied to himself when he came here. Or to be correct, he’d suffered from a glimmer of hope. He’d hoped that a theater as old as the Mary Martin would have its own rather territorial ghost, and that ghost would chase his father off. But apparently ghosts, like their human counterparts, believed in taking a winter break. The theater’s resident ghost took one look at dear old Dad and gave up the ghosting, at least for the duration of Roth’s one-man play.

  Mercifully, his father didn’t reappear after Roth put on his street clothes. Maybe the ghost found someone else to torment. Roth grabbed the coat that he had worn to the theater off the back of the door rather than dust off the coats in the pile. His father’s ghost didn’t leave goo, but one couldn’t be too careful.

  Roth wrapped a scarf around his mouth and nose, and plopped a hat on his head. It was too dark to wear sunglasses. Besides, this was New York. No one cared about the famous here, except for the handful of groupies who hung out at the stage door. With luck, he’d stayed here long enough to avoid them as well.

  He knew he wasn’t alone in the theater. The house manager, Louise Zheng, remained until the last of the crew left. He felt bad keeping her here for an extra half hour, but at least she didn’t have to return tonight.

  He’d actually apologized when he met her for doing a show over the holiday. She had grinned, and told him point blank that no one who worked this show celebrated Christmas. The crew was composed of Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, atheists and others who found the holiday season damn near unbearable.

  In LA, everyone celebrated Christmas, whether they were Christian or not. They used it as a secular suck-up party, ranking the gifts given according to where the recipient stood on the what-can-you-do-for-me-right-now ladder. Since he’d climbed to the top of that ladder, he got all kinds of marvelous, unnecessary stuff.

  He supposed it was piling up at his house in Bel Air right now, like the coats had piled in his dressing room.

  He decided to walk through the theater, so that he could let Louise know he was going home. As he reached the back of the house, he heard her voice. She sounded exasperated.

  “I’m sure we would know if there was a child here. It’s impossible for a child to hide here.”

  “Oh, come on, Louise,” said a second voice, also female, and so familiar that it sent a shiver through him. “This is a theater. We both know that someone could die in here, and no one would know.”

  “Honey, the entire community knows whenever someone dies on stage.” Louise chuckled at her own pun.

  “This is not a laughing matter,” said the owner of the other voice. “This girl—who is seventeen—is missing, and I’m responsible for her. You want me to call the police and let them search this place top to bottom?”

  Seventeen? That tall, too-thin girl was seventeen? Roth shouldn’t have been surprised, but he was. Something about her seemed younger. Maybe because she hadn’t come on to him the way that seventeen-year-olds usually did.

  He pushed open the double doors and stepped into the lobby. Louise dominated his vision, but Louise always dominated someone’s vision. She was heavyset and prone to wearing flowing clothing, even in the dead of winter. It was hard to see past her.

  “There’s a missing girl?” he said. “I think I saw her.”

  Louise turned, and her plucked eyebrows went up at the sight of him. He would have smiled at her reassuringly, if it weren’t for the woman who just stepped out of Louise’s shadow.

  Barely five feet tall, she should have disappeared, but of course she didn’t. She never had.

  His breath caught. “Erika?”

  “Roth,” she said flatly, as if she were mad at him. She had no cause to be mad at him, did she? He hadn’t seen her in fifteen years—damn near as long as the missing girl had been alive.

  “You guys know each other?” Louise asked.

  Erika stuck her hands in the pockets of her black coat and raised one eyebrow, a Spock-like move she had trained herself to do at the age of ten. Back then it had been funny. Now it was sexy.

  Hell, it had been sexy fifteen years ago.

  He wanted to run to her, gather her in his arms, and pull her close. Instead, he mirrored her by putting his hands in his own pockets.

  Erika was waiting for him to answer Louise’s question.

  “We know each other,” Roth said.

  “I could have given you preferred seats, if you’d told me that,” Louise said to Erika. “Jeez, you made those kids sit in the very back, and they could have—”

  “Louise.” Erika still had the ability to shut someone up and make them feel stupid with one word. “The missing girl?”

  Roth took another step closer. His heart was pounding as if he were stepping in front of cameras without knowing his lines. Forty years old and light-headed, like a twenty-year-old boy facing the most beautiful woman in the world.

  Erika wasn’t beautiful. She never had been. When they were kids, she had been almost homely. Her strong features belonged on a face much older, and kids teased her for it. In high school, Roth had realized that a camera took Erika’s mismatched face and glued it together. In photographs, she had been arresting, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out that she would be arresting on film as well.

  He had brought her to New York. And, after their early success, he had accompanied her to Los Angeles.

  And there it had gone all wrong.

  Somehow, he hadn’t expected her to come back here.

  The face had come together, just like he had thought it would. She was stunning. Just stunning.

  And she was staring at him.

  “You saw her?” Erika asked him.

  It took him a moment to gather his thoughts. He’d been lost in her, lost in their past, lost in regrets.

  God, he hated regrets. He tried to ignore them, like he tried to ignore everything else.

  “Somehow she snuck backstage.” Roth addressed this to Louise, because he couldn’t quite talk to Erika. Not yet. “I sent that assistant you hired for me—”

  “Cody?” she asked. No wonder Roth couldn’t remember the name. It didn’t suit the kid at all.

  “Ye
ah, him,” Roth said. “I sent him to find the stage manager and say that a civilian had gotten in.”

  “Rex left before the end of the show,” Louise said, as if the fact that the stage manager left early was Roth’s fault.

  “Well, I also told the assistant to find someone in charge. I guess he didn’t find you, did he? And he’s gone now?”

  “Kid’s gonna get himself fired,” Louise muttered. “Where did you see this girl?”

  Roth’s gaze met Erika’s. Her black eyes were flat. She had a trick that he had forgotten until this moment, a trick that could make her seem like she felt no emotions at all. She only used it in times of high stress.

  “First, let’s make sure we have the right girl,” Roth said. “She’s tall? Too thin? Irons her jeans?”

  Louise chuckled at that last detail, but Erika didn’t.

  “That’s her,” she said.

  Roth sighed. “She got into my dressing room somehow. I thought she was a groupie. When I summoned Cody, she bolted. I didn’t think much of it—”

  “Because you’re the famous Jaime, and all the girls fall at your feet?” Erika wasn’t as in control as she pretended. Was that jealousy he heard beneath the sarcasm? And if so, what was she jealous of? His success? Or the fact that there had been other women?

  A lot of other women. Too many, none of them Erika.

  “It’s not unusual,” he said. “It’s more unusual if the fans don’t find me.”

  “We have the backstage area protected,” Louise said to Erika. “We’re aware of this problem. Roth’s not the first to deal with it. You should have seen it when Hugh Jackman—”

  “What do I need to do to impress upon you that time is of the essence here?” Erika snapped at her.

  Louise took a step backwards. “I’m sorry. I—do you think she’s still here?”

  “It’s a place to start.” Erika stepped around Louise as if Louise were no longer important. She stopped in front of Roth. He caught a faint scent of rose water and the spice that was Erika, and he shivered in recognition. Those scents sometimes haunted his dreams. “What did she want with you?”