Polterheist: An Esther Diamond Novel Page 5

  “Don’t you follow the news?” Helen said, looking at me critically. “This has been all over the media.”

  “All over,” Arthur added, looking distressed.

  “I haven’t had time for the news lately. I’m always here,” I said. “Armed robberies? That’s scary.”

  “Also expensive.” Helen gave Preston a pointed look. “Of course, we could put a stop to it.”

  “You could?” I asked, puzzled.

  “The police will put a stop to it,” her brother said brusquely.

  Helen said, “All we’d have to do—”

  “No,” said Preston. “Fenster’s is through dealing with criminals and giving in to extortion!”

  Helen persisted, “This mess is turning order fulfillment into a catastrophe and costing—”

  “The police will take care of this,” Preston snapped.

  His sister shook her head. “My God, you’re naïve. Doesn’t it even occur to you that the police might be in their pockets?”

  “Whose pockets?” I asked.

  “Anyhow, I wasn’t talking about that when I referred to our losses,” Preston said impatiently. “I was talking about your goddamn Solsticeland! It’s draining us dry!”

  “Really?” I said in surprise. “I thought the whole idea was that it brings a lot of people into the store. And it sure seems to work. I’m always amazed at how crowded this place is.” Since Arthur was nodding at me with approval, I continued, “Just like your ad slogan always says, ‘At Christmas, everyone comes to Fenster’s.’ And they come to see the holiday displays. You have the most elaborate ones in the city, after all.”

  Looking bemused, Preston asked me, “Who are you?”

  “I’m Dreidel,” I reminded him. “I sing Hanukkah songs and teach Santa’s visitors Hebrew words like shalom and . . . um . . . No, just shalom.”

  Sure, I had been sent to Hebrew school as a child. But I was such an inattentive student that our nice rabbi—who was unusually progressive even for the Reform movement in Judaism—eventually agreed to let me focus my studies on Yiddish theater, a unique legacy of the Jewish diaspora, for my bat mitzvah. Which is not to say that I know Yiddish any better than I know Hebrew; just that I knew, even as a child, that theater would be my lifelong vocation.

  “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 no
t 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.”

  “Whatever.” 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—”
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  “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!”