"Magic Gets You 2-4"
Last week I helped test Patreon drops, a scheduled release of a file that everyone can experience together, like an album reveal on YouTube or live television in the 80s. I did a reading of my new Xmas story, and I'm offering it here to you if you missed the drop! It's just a quick story that I use to help answer my questions like, "What happens the day after Christmas when it comes to light just how much crime was committed to save Christmas?"
The man sat in the waiting room, casting his eyes around at the tasteful, minimalist Christmas decorations, the picture books on the coffee table, and the leather-bound volumes in the book shelf. Then back to the small Norfolk pine that sat at the end of the sofa, adorned with red velvet bows.
In the small kitchenette, Jennifer Ivanova, Esq. studied him briefly in the security feed’s black and white screen, then nodded to her assistant. “He’s ready, I think.”
Her assistant was Roman Ti, a fresh from college student taking a break between college and law school. He was eager and adorable, quick to smile and always put the clients at ease. She had a feeling she had to beat that out of him. “Can I sit in on this one?”
She shook her head. “He’s a flight risk, I think. If we snag him as a client, I’ll let you do the research, but I don’t think you should be in the meeting.”
Roman pursed his lips and left the kitchen, head down. Jennifer watched him go. He was already mad that he had to work on Christmas Eve, and she wasn’t throwing him any bones. She poured herself a cup of coffee, adding cinnamon and milk, and went to meet the client.
Her office was large, with an antique mahogany desk and a very slim, very expensive laptop sitting atop it. On her walls hung photo after photo of happy clients, some of them quite famous. Lucy Van Pelt, Hoarace Grinch, and her first client, George Bailey.
The client was settled into the leather guest chair facing her desk when she walked in. He craned his neck to see her, then jumped to his feet and shook her hand.
“Good morning, Mr. Cross,” Jennifer said. “My assistant can get you some coffee.” She nodded to Roman.
“Making your assistant work on Christmas Eve?” Mr. Cross said. “That’s not very Christmassy for the Christmas lawyer.”
“Well your needs indicated that now was the time,” she said, raising her eyebrow. “Get Mr. Cross some coffee, Roman.”
“Yeah, black, please,” the client said, not looking at Roman.
Roman gave her that look again and left the room.
Jennifer sat down at the desk, cupping her hands around her mug. “Tell me about your case.”
Mr. Cross was a white man in his thirties, skin looking like it needed some care, and a widow’s peak that indicated balding was in his future, but otherwise he looked well-groomed and polished. He wore a tailored suit and a little enamel pin that held a sprig of holly. He cleared his throat. “Well, I was a real asshole, to tell you the truth. This time last year, I was the youngest exec at my company, one of the top 100 most influential people in the last Time magazine list. But I treated my subordinates — everyone, really — like dirt.”
Jennifer nodded impatiently. “Most stories start out like this. Tell me what happened last Christmas Eve.”
She knew the story, of course, Frank Cross’s story had gone out over live television around the world as he had confessed that he had been a terrible person, and now wasn’t a terrible person anymore. Not the most riveting television, but it was remarkable in its scope. But she needed to hear it from him.
As he told the story, mentioning visions of his dead partner and memories about his fiancé when they had been together a decade earlier, Jennifer flipped through the paper file. She stopped on the report from his previous lawyer, regarding his medical records claiming a psychotic break, and marked that page with her finger. She then went back to paying attention to him.
He had only gotten so far as lunch with his boss and an “LA slimeball” when she held up her finger.
“Tell me when you broke the law,” she said smoothly.
“Well you’ve got the file there, I assume,” he said, looking irritated. “I know what everyone says about my mental state, but how could I know about the SS Minnow?”
“The… what?” she asked. She looked down at the file again.
“I visited my brother’s Christmas party and heard them playing a game. He got a question wrong on their stupid Christmas game, and I knew the answer?” He winced as if a pin had stuck him. “It’s actually a fun game. Not stupid. But he got it wrong. And I knew it. When I brought it up later, he was the only person who believed I had been there.”
“All right,” she said, nodding. “But tell me about the law breaking. You’re charged with second degree kidnapping, second degree assault, and—whoo, these FCC charges are a mile long.”
He sighed and leaned forward. “I treated my employees like shit,” he said. “One of them, Elliott, I laid off right before Christmas. His wife left him, he snapped, and came back with a shotgun.”
She flipped a few more pages. “Elliott Loudermilk, right. Serving 2-4 for assault with a deadly weapon and similar FCC fines. All other charges dropped.”
Mr. Gross grinned at her. “He’s getting out today on good behavior! I’m taking him out for smoking bishop.”
“Good for him,” she said. “Why didn’t he come to me for representation?”
“His brother in law is a lawyer, and he wanted to get his wife back, so he hired him.”
“Ah, right, a Jeffrey Bell, real estate lawyer.” She raised an eyebrow at Mr. Cross. “Did his wife take him back?”
“She did!” he said happily. “So anyway, he tried to kill me, blew up a bunch of the top floor. I left for my time with the ghosts, and when I came back, I decided to reach the most people with my epiphany, I would need a loud bullhorn, and with Elliott’s gun and our live broadcast, I had one!”
“Your company’s live broadcast of Scrooged,” Jennifer confirmed.
“Right. So Elliott took over the tech booth and that’s when the kidnapping —”
“—alleged kidnapping. You need to practice saying that,” she said.
“Alleged kidnapping, yeah,” he said. He grinned again. “Although he really did do it. Had to. Bryce- the slimeball- was taking over the show and would have pulled the feed, so Elliott made them tie him up.”
“The alleged hostage situation,” she confirmed, looking at that charge.
“So I went over the air, interrupted the end of the broadcast, and told everyone to be nice to each other for a change,” he said. “That’s pretty much the end.”
“What fascinates me is the number of charges that were dropped,” Jennifer said. “Your boss saw fit not to sack you, and as president, you didn’t charge Elliott Loudermilk with assault or property damage.”
He shrugged. “Eh, I deserved it, and I paid for the damage with my Christmas bonus.”
“Bryce Cummings dropped charges against Loudermilk and sexual assault charges against a Ms. Fields, the network censor?”
“She took advantage of him under the mistletoe,” Mr. Cross said. “Not cool. But they’re getting married this New Year’s.”
“Not the lesson we want to teach the kids,” Jennifer muttered. “It looks as if all the charges against you were dropped. What’s the problem?”
“I took some time off, went back to work, mostly research and admin stuff, but didn’t have my hand in any broadcasts. I want my old job back now, and my boss will give it to me, but the FCC has decided to remember all their dropped charges. They don’t want me to work on actual broadcasting.”
“One of the hardest groups to move into the Christmas spirit is a government office,” Jennifer confirmed. She pointed to the file. “But it looks like you had an out.”
He shook his head. “They want me to undergo full psychiatric examination, including a stay in a hospital for three months, and then agree to antipsychotic drugs for the rest of my life. Then they will drop the charges.”
“So they will drop the charges if you offer an insanity plea,” she said, reading with her finger under the line in question. “‘Recommends no return to work until considerable therapy and medical treatment.’”
His eyes grew wide. “They don’t believe me!” he said. “They dropped all those charges, and yet won’t accept why I did the things I did.”
“It seems an easy way to get off,” she said. “Why didn’t you?”
“Because I wasn’t insane!” he said. “I’m telling the truth. My old boss came to me, then three spirits came, showed me my past, present, and future, and then I woke up, it was midnight, the show was almost over and Elliott had a shotgun in my face.”
Jennifer smiled sadly. “Oh honey. The law isn’t about the truth.”
Usually clients gave in when she got all folksy, but this guy wouldn’t budge. She sat back in her chair and tapped a ball point pen on the desk. “All right,” she finally said. “What is your defense? Why are you not-guilty?”
“Aw, no, that’s your job,” he said, shaking his head like Jennifer was trying to trick him.
“Look, your last lawyer wasn’t wrong. There is a pile of evidence that you and Elliott Loudermilk shot up the TV studios and put unplanned content out on the TV last Christmas Eve. You were incredibly lucky that you got most charges dropped or the sentences were minimal. The only defense at this point is to either throw Elliott under the bus and say it was his idea—he did have the gun, after all—or say you were insane because of the ghost defense.”
“That’s it? But you’re the Christmas lawyer!” he said. “You famously got George Bailey out of embezzlement charges, you got Lucy Van Pelt out of the Christmas decoration theft charges. You created the “there shouldn’t be a speed limit on Christmas Eve” defense. How am I different?”
Well, at least he had done his homework. She held her hands out and began counting on her fingers. “Those cases, in reverse order, people need to get home for Christmas. And they should be allowed to do anything to get there. It helps that there are lots of songs referencing how important it is to get home for Christmas.” She had been very proud of the Christmas song defense. “In the Van Pelt case, dogs don’t have legal ownership of things like decorations and dog houses. Snoopy was Charles Brown’s dog, ergo his decorations also belonged to Brown, ergo they stole nothing, simply moved decorations from one part of Brown’s property to another. And in Bailey’s case…” She thought for a moment. “Well. We had a star witness.” She squinted at him and saw hope blossom in his blue eyes.
“Could you get one of those for me?”
“You’re sure this is the way to go?” she asked.
“Definitely!” he said.
She nodded, then gestured to the door. “I’ll be in touch later tonight or tomorrow.”
He stood, uncertain. “Okay. Merry Christmas, I guess.”
“Hm,” she said, looking at her phone. “Unlikely.”
He left, shutting the door behind him. Roman came back in, looking uncertain.
“He left in a hurry,” he said. “What happened?”
She sighed. “You’re fired.”
Jennifer paced the floor, checked her watch, then paced again.
Nothing was happening.
It was nine pm. The snow was falling, she was alone in her office on Christmas eve. The had fired her assistant on Christmas Eve. She had canceled all travel home, and removed her promises to pay for the traditional family dinner out.
Roman had left in tears. There were unread angry emails from her sister and unplayed voicemails from her mother waiting for her. Roman hadn’t updated his status on LinkedIn yet but she knew he’d be going there shortly.
What was she missing?
The answer occurred to her in a flash, and she snapped her fingers and ran to her computer, bringing up her Fidelity donor advised fund page. With a few clicks, she canceled her monthly scheduled donations to Toys for Tots, the Trevor Project, the Doctors Without Borders, Amnesty International, and Greenpeace.
There.
Her lights dimmed, and the snow began falling harder outside. She schooled her expression and stared at the door, where a mist began coalescing.
“Jennifer. Hear me!” a hollow voice called.
The temperature dropped in her office, and her electronics all shorted out, the screens dying. It was dark besides the streetlight from the parking lot shining through. The mist hung, barely visible, and a sound of a great chain dragging on the floor became audible.
She realized the ghost was waiting for her to answer. “Oh, uh, who’s there?”
“It is I, your college roommate, Mary Dale,” the voice moaned.
“Mary died seven years ago,” she said. “Besides, we hadn’t talked in several years before that.”
“Yes, well you aren’t connected to a lot of ghosts on this side,” the voice said, slightly irritated.
“Right,” she said, getting up. “Good to see you again, Mary. Sorry about that accident at Burning Man. That had to suck.”
“Hear me and repent!” Mary’s ghost howled, and Jennifer felt a thrill go up her spine.
“Absolutely. Now that you’re here, however, can you do me a favor?”
The specter leaned over her desk, getting a few inches from Jennifer’s face. In life, Mary’s eyes had been huge and doe-like, letting her enthrall any man she set eyes on, including Jennifer’s crush, Ryan. Now they were even bigger, round holes in her head with an unearthly glow coming from within. “Your eternal soul is in danger!” she cried. “If you do not repent, you will face the horrors that I have experienced these long years!”
“Right, I’m totally ready to repent,” Jennifer said. “But first, I have some questions. You’re working with the Dickensian faction now? That’s a good job as I understand it.”
The specter paused. “It’s nice work if you can get it,” she admitted.
“How does that work, exactly? This isn’t your one job, is it?”
“Jennifer, I am here on your behalf. I have seen your soul and how you have soured these many years, and I am here to bring you warning, that tonight you will be visited by three spirits…”
“Exactly! You and three others. If you’re working for the Dickensians, I can’t be your only client. I mean you would have the one job of my salvation, and then you would be done. I’ve been suspecting that each of you ghosts has a main client, but you serve each other, like backup singers. In someone else’s story, I bet you’re the ghost of Christmas Past, right?”
“How do you know about that?” Mary asked, sounding a lot more like her college friend.
“Oh come on,” Jennifer said. “If you’re here to warn me about my soul, then you have to know what I do for a living.”
“You’re a lawyer,” Mary said hesitantly.
“I’m the Christmas lawyer, and I’ve been studying how you folk work on your side. You’re not the first Christmas ghost I’ve talked to. But you are the first I’ve summoned.”
“Summoned?” Mary cried, raising her arms and bringing a chill wind to blow through the room. “It is only the darkness of your soul that has brought me here! The pain you have brought your family, friends, and subordinates! The tight hold you have on your money and the kindness you never show to others!”
“Right, but why do you think I’ve done that?”
“Love of money, the heaviest weight on a soul!” the ghost cried, shaking her chains.
Jennifer shook her head. “No, I’ve done it so I can connect with you. I struck out with the church, so instead I made my life look really miserly so I could get in touch with someone like you. I need your help.”
“You need my salvation! Think of your own soul, and the harm you’ve done others!”
Jennifer sighed. She pulled out her phone, tapped it, then frowned. She glared up at Mary, who hovered above her, robe-like fabric scraps waving in a breeze Jennifer couldn't feel.
“If you hadn’t fucked up all the electronics, I could show you, and it would be a much more impressive moment. But for now I will have to just tell you. Am I ready with the push of a button to double my assistant’s salary and deliver a hefty bonus, I am apologizing to my family and assuring that I will be there tomorrow, with lots of presents for the nieces and nephews, and cruise tickets for the rest of my family. I will reverse the cancellation of the charitable organization donations I usually give to. And I have three kids from St. Jude that I’m sponsoring trips for in the spring.”
Mary collapsed on the floor, still looking translucent but still more present than before. She stood, putting her hands on her hips. “Do you mean to tell me that you were an evil person on false pretenses? You’ve lied about being a bad person? That doesn’t even track. I literally don’t know what to do with that.”
“I did it for a reason, Mary. I need help and only you can give it to me. Let’s make a deal. I will go through the motions and see all your ghost friends and learn the mistakes I’ve made, and you get me in touch with a coworker to help out my client one more time.”
“I don’t know.” Mary cocked her head, looking like she was listening to something Jennifer couldn’t hear. “Who do you want to talk to?”
Jennifer grinned. She could always identify when a target was about to bend.
It was December 27, and Jennifer had managed to cajole Roman into a drink with her. They sat at the Three Spirits, a faux Victorian pub.
“So what did being a complete asshole get you?” he asked, sitting at the bar and not looking at her. Even after her messages on Christmas day, he hadn’t been eager to return her messages.
“We got not one, but two of the ghosts that aided Frank Cross to agree to a meeting with FCC officials,” she said, trying not to look too pleased with herself.
“They agreed to a meeting on Christmas day?” Roman asked, giving her a side eye.
“You don’t agree to meetings with these ghosts,” Jennifer said. “They will meet with you when they want, but they prefer middle of the night at Christmas.”
“So you haunted the FCC?” Roman said, finally looking at her with his eyes wide.
“I’m very good at my job,” Jennifer said, hiding her smile behind the large steaming mug. She took a sip and winced. “What the hell is this, anyway?”
“Smoking bishop. Mulled wine and spices,” Roman said, frowning down at his goblet of steaming wine. Three Spirits was the only bar in town that served it. “I can’t say I approve of your methods, though. Christmas Eve sucked.”
“I know, and I’m very sorry. I sent you my update as soon as I could,” Jennifer said. “But the ghost had some sort of EMP to short out my phone, so I had to go through the motions with her before I could contact you.” She swirled her goblet, trying to get the floating cloves out of the way so she could take a sip. “I am sorry for the stress I put you through.”
“Did you see your childhood and all the stuff you’ve done to turn your life in the wrong way?” he asked. “Lost loves, people who don’t love you anymore, old boyfriends’ families?”
She sipped, then spat out a clove into a napkin. “I mainly learned not to make my loved ones suffer for the sake of a client. Apparently, I had my priorities out of order.” She grinned apologetically at Roman. “The FCC dropped their charges, though.”
“You still ruined most of Christmas of a lot of people, just so you could stick it to the FCC,” he said.
“I know, and I’m sorry. Mr. Cross and I are discussing funding your post grad education,” she offered. “And the raise offer still stands. Will that help?”
“Christmas is so materialistic,” he said. “But I’ll take it.”
Creative Commons BY-NC-ND
Copyright 2023, Mur Lafferty
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