Secret Santa Read online

  One thing was for sure: they weren’t planning her a surprise birthday party.

  Her birthday was in July.

  Maybe Gail had circulated a memo about the meeting and it was buried under the stack of mail on Lussi’s desk. Maybe The Raven had mentioned it in one of the meetings last week, and she’d just forgotten to put it in her day planner. Meetings, meetings, meetings—that’s all they seemed to do at Blackwood-Patterson. In that respect, the company wasn’t much different from every other publishing house in Manhattan. The average publishing workday was a blur of production meetings, sales meetings, cover design meetings…and, Lussi’s favorite, meetings to schedule future meetings.

  She had no clue what the all-hands was about. It could have been a meeting to discuss the summer catalog, or that they were switching the Coke machine out for Pepsi. All that really mattered was that, once again, she was on the outside looking in. Literally. She wasn’t at the kids’ table; she wasn’t even at the party.

  The office’s resident fiddle player, Brian, was standing at the whiteboard, gesticulating at something he’d written. Lussi couldn’t read what was on the board—her contacts helped her vision, but they didn’t give her superpowers. He paused and looked straight at her. The rest of the room followed suit. Lussi raised her hand to give them a little wave. No one waved back. Instead, Sloppy Joe came to the window and, with a dead-eyed glare, snapped the blinds shut.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Lussi marched back to her office with the Percht. To anyone who might have caught sight of her, she probably looked like an angry kid stomping back to her room with her stuffed animal. Which wouldn’t have been far from the truth. She put an extra oomph into her step as she mounted the winding staircase, pounding the steps like an asshole neighbor. Halfway down the third-floor hallway, however, she stopped.

  The door to the art department was open.

  It was the first time she’d had a chance to see inside Stanley’s office, and now she knew why: the place was a disaster area. Charcoal drawings covered the peeling wallpaper; the paisley print was completely blacked out in spots. Art supplies were stacked on every available surface—easels, a light box, several desks. One chair was buried beneath a tower of galleys. It didn’t seem possible to work in such conditions. Then again, it was to be expected. You couldn’t cage an artist inside a publishing house and expect them to suddenly behave by society’s rules.

  A rough watercolor of the Richard Yates cover was sitting on an easel. Stanley was in the meeting downstairs. It couldn’t hurt to take a quick peek…

  She slipped into the room for a closer look. The human skull was a huge improvement. They were really going to go with her suggestion. She couldn’t wait to see the final version—Stanley had farmed it out to a freelance artist, and they expected the piece to come in later this week. The Raven had torn into him at a follow-up meeting with a long diatribe about the importance of adhering to the schedule. Although normally sullen and withdrawn, his face had grown redder and redder until it looked like he needed to be juiced like Violet Beauregarde in Willy Wonka.

  “What are you doing in here?”

  Lussi whipped around. Stanley was in the doorway, a despondent look on his face.

  “Sorry, the door was open and I wanted to take a look at the cover design. I think it’s brilliant. The colors…”

  He wasn’t listening to her. He hurried to his desk, where he plucked a pencil out of a coffee mug full of writing utensils. He examined it closely then tossed it over his shoulder. All Lussi could do was watch as he emptied the mug. Still not finding what he was after, he opened the top drawer of the desk. Lussi was afraid he was after a firearm—the receptionist couldn’t be the only one around this office locked and loaded—but after a fruitless search, he slammed it shut. He pointed a trembling finger in her direction. Lussi inched backward. She was about to run when he dropped to his knees and buried his face in his hands.

  “Norma,” he wailed. “What did you do with her?”

  Lussi wasn’t sure how to respond. Here was a man old enough to be her grandfather, bawling like a toddler who’d lost his blankie. He’d seen action in the Korean War, according to Sloppy Joe. Everyone in the office carried around shadows of former lives, which she only glimpsed here and there. Was he having some sort of flashback?

  She knelt beside the art director. She reached for him, but then thought better of it. Instead, she lightly patted the air a safe distance from his back. “Tell me about Norma.”

  “You tried to take her the other day,” he said between muffled sobs. “You just couldn’t keep your hands off her, could you?” A large snot bubble had formed in one nostril and was about to pop. “We’ve been together since I was at Random House. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

  The Raven was at the door now. She was sipping a hot cup of joe with a look of amusement. The Raven caught Lussi’s eye and nodded to the hallway. They closed the door on Stanley, who had curled into a fetal position.

  “Done with the meeting?” Lussi asked her, doing little to disguise her sarcasm.

  The Raven ignored her remark. “What did you do to him?”

  “What did I do? The door was open. All I wanted was a closer look at the Yates mock-up. Then he storms in, and flies off the handle about some girl named ‘Norma,’ accusing me of trying to steal her away from him.”

  The Raven held up a chrome mechanical pencil, the same one Lussi had found on the floor last Monday. “Meet Norma. He left her in the conference room.”

  Lussi closed her eyes and tried to find her Zen. She knew men named their penises, but this was ridiculous.

  “You’re not about to cry, too, are you?” The Raven asked, her tone just this side of patronizing. “We don’t need two sobbing messes around here.”

  Lussi forced a smile. “I don’t cry at work. I save it for when I get home, like a regular goddamn person.”

  The Raven snort-laughed. She put a hand on Lussi’s shoulder. “Here’s what we do. If you try to apologize now—”

  “For what?”

  “How would you like it if someone trespassed in your office?”

  “They do all the time!” Several more office doors were cracked open now. They had an audience. She lowered her voice. “Fine. I’ll apologize. And then I’m going to stick that damn thing where the sun doesn’t shine.”

  The Raven tried to shoot her a disapproving look but couldn’t keep a straight face. She rolled the pencil under Stanley’s door. “Give him a few hours,” The Raven said, rising to her feet. “This isn’t the first time this has happened. Won’t be the last. But if you want to be part of this company, you’ll need to learn to work with people. And some of them are…difficult.”

  They walked together down the hall to where the editorial offices were located. “Wait a minute,” Lussi said, halting. “Where’s Cal?”

  The Raven looked at her, puzzled.

  “The intern? The young man you borrowed?”

  “Oh, Calumet. I just sent him to Midtown to fetch a manuscript.”

  “His leg is broken.”

  “He has crutches,” The Raven said. “And excellent upper body strength.”

  “They couldn’t overnight you the manuscript? If he gets hurt again…”

  “He’ll be fine. And, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, the mail in this neighborhood can be…unreliable. Erratic.” The Raven smirked. “Although, between you, me, and the partridge in the pear tree, the mailman also sells primo Mary Jane.”

  * * *

  —

  Lussi slumped in her chair, her energy sapped. She found the plastic vampire teeth in her drawer and fit them into her mouth. They were sized for a child; the uneven plastic on the edges dug into her gums. It was the closest thing to a stress ball she had.

  Today was turning out to be another one of those days. She swiveled in her desk chair to l
ook at her bookshelves behind her desk and saw the empty spot where she’d placed the Percht after the holiday party. Damn it. She’d set it down on the light box in the art department. She’d have to figure out a way to snatch it back later. But there was something else she was forgetting. The coffee. She’d been brewing a fresh pot before she went out on the fire escape and got sidetracked by that stupid secret meeting.

  She raced down to the break room, taking the stairs by twos.

  Not that it mattered. When she got there, the pot was empty.

  The meeting had cleared out, and everyone had descended on the coffee machine like fire ants on a sleeping baby. And, of course, no one had started another pot.

  She dug her nails into her palms. Her patience had worn as thin as the veil between worlds on All Hallows’ Eve. Mercurial artists. Clandestine meetings. Trigger-happy receptionists. Small mammals in serious need of house training. Lunch thieves. Pranksters. The more she ran over the past week in her mind, the more she felt herself slipping into darkness.

  All she wanted was a simple cup of coffee. Black, no sugar.

  Brian rounded the corner, whistling some long-forgotten battle hymn. He had a Styrofoam McDonald’s coffee cup in one hand. He walked right past Lussi to the Coffee-mate jar and set his cup on the counter. As he was unscrewing the creamer’s lid, he glanced over at Lussi. When he saw how intensely she was staring at the empty pot, he slowly set the creamer back down.

  “Someone drink the last of the coffee?” he asked. “I hate that, don’t you?”

  She hissed at him, baring the plastic teeth.

  He pushed the McDonald’s cup toward her and backed up as if she were as unhinged as Stanley. “Here. I haven’t touched it,” he stammered. “I…probably shouldn’t have caffeine past noon anyway.”

  She tried to explain she was only playing around, but her words were garbled. By the time she spat the fangs out, Brian had already ducked out. Was he really afraid of her? She was pint-sized. She’d never been in a fight in her life. He must have felt the anger radiating off her like steam from a sewer grate. She wasn’t herself lately.

  Lussi took Brian’s coffee back to her office, because, hey, coffee was coffee. She wondered whether it wasn’t simply time to cut and run. She needed a job, but not this bad. She could always return to waitressing. She settled into her desk and stared at the stack of manuscripts that she’d already read…and then at the larger stack in the corner of her office. Reading submissions while angry was rarely a good idea. Then she remembered she still had Fabien’s book in her handbag. She turned to the first page.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  By the time she looked up from Fabien’s manuscript, it was five thirty. She took a break to hit the restroom. His book was good—better than good. It was great. Transylvanian Dirt was, as he’d told her, the best thing he’d ever written. A page-turner that transported her far away from all the office drama for a few hours. She was only a hundred sixty pages in, but already she could smell a best seller. Even the clichéd World War II prologue worked. Had the book she’d been looking for been right under her nose? She’d have to finish it first, but she felt something she hadn’t felt in a long time: hope.

  On the way back to her office, she peered over the railing into the lobby. Gail had already gone home for the day. Down the hall, the light was still on under the art department door. She would wait for Stanley to head home, then slip into his office to take back the Percht. If the door was unlocked, that was. She had no experience picking locks.

  When she got within earshot of her own office, she heard the phone ringing. She rushed to answer it. “Lussi Meyer, Broken—sorry, Blackwood-Patterson,” she said.

  “Want me to hang up and call again so you can do that over?”

  Lussi sighed. It wasn’t an agent with a hot manuscript. It was only her sister, returning her call from last week. “Why don’t you hang up and I’ll call you back—free long distance,” Lussi said. “Perks of having an office job again.”

  “I’m talking to you on Friends and Family, don’t worry,” her sister said. “It wouldn’t hurt you to get a home phone, but anyway, congrats on the job. It sounds like a great company to work for—we have scads of Blackwood books in the high school library.”

  But does anyone check them out? Lussi wanted to ask. She stretched the phone cord to the window.

  Kiera taught sixth-grade home economics, and filled Lussi in on some drama with the teacher’s union and gossip from their hometown. Lussi only half followed what she was saying. She was busy looking out the window to see if Stanley had left the building yet. As the last of the sunlight faded, the trash cans in the park burned brighter. Among the brambles, deeper into the park, she saw the silhouette of a man in a fedora. Peter Faber. Was he watching her? She could no longer tell friend from foe. Before moving to the city, she’d been warned that the parks were no place for a young woman. No matter how inviting they looked during the day, they transformed at night like werewolves under a full moon.

  The same could be said for some buildings.

  “…I should get going,” her sister was saying. “Syd’s been quiet too long. She’s probably gotten into something. She’s at that age…”

  Lussi was about to ask about her niece, but the sight of the empty gift box next to the wastebasket reminded her there was another reason she needed to talk to her sister. “Before you go, I have kind of a weird question. Do you remember Perky?”

  There was a pause. Lussi thought she’d lost her, but her sister finally answered. “Don’t even think about getting one of those things for Syd. Unless you’re willing to sit up with her at night when she wakes screaming. She’s not like we were at that age. Kids these days are a lot different. They’re not as tough.”

  “It’s not another Cabbage Patch situation, if that’s what you’re worried about.” Last year, Lussi had bought her niece a bootleg Cabbage Patch Kid in Chinatown. Thankfully, the rash on her niece’s chest was short-lived.

  “Leave the toys to Santa,” Kiera said. “He’s a professional.”

  “I was just wondering if you know what happened to Oma’s doll. I know we sold a lot of stuff in the garage sale, after the—after the funeral.”

  “You don’t remember.”

  “I was, like, four,” Lussi said. “All I’ve got are bits and pieces. Tiny memories. The funeral is a blur. All I remember is the make-up on her face. She looked like a clown.”

  “You were five when she passed away, but you’re lucky if that’s all you remember. I was old enough—I knew Santa wasn’t real, and all that. You, on the other hand, had trouble differentiating fact from fiction. Mom was afraid Oma was going to scar you for life with her folk stories. That was basically the reason Mom wouldn’t let her speak German in our house.”

  “There are worse things than scars.”

  “If you say so. Syd’s the same way you were—she’ll believe anything we tell her. We have to be careful.”

  “A girl after my own heart,” Lussi said.

  Kiera laughed. “Let’s hope not. One writer in the family is enough.”

  Lussi let the comment slide, as she always did. “Why did she bring the doll with her? To America, I mean. Of all the things she could have brought with her, why that?”

  Her sister sighed into the phone. “It was the middle of a war. Her husband had died. She was pregnant with Dad. Maybe she just wanted something to remind her of home.” Another silence. Then: “I don’t know what happened to it, but if it’s still around it’s in Mom and Dad’s basement. Who, by the way, keep asking if you’re coming home this year.”

  “I’ll call them when I know for sure,” Lussi said. After they said their goodbyes, Lussi noted the time. It was past six. Dusk was fading into night. Lussi hadn’t seen Stanley exit the building yet. Not unless he’d taken the fire escape, leaving through the alley like Tom Cruise trying to avoid a t
hrong of fans on the sidewalk.

  But when she checked in the hall, there was no light coming from under the door to the art department. She stopped and reached for the knob. It turned when she tested it. Unlocked. Perfect. She looked both ways down the hall. Empty. The building had all but cleared out; night had moved in. She was about to give the knob a quick twist when a muffled cough from inside sent her leaping back.

  Stanley was waiting for her in the dark.

  Had he known she was going to come back for the Percht? It didn’t seem possible. He couldn’t have known for sure the doll was even hers—nobody had so much as glimpsed it inside that box. More likely, he was lying in wait for her to make another pass at his girl.

  This man was patently deranged.

  Lussi crammed the rest of Fabien’s book into her handbag. She’d talk to Digby about the Stanley situation tomorrow. See if the three of them could sit down and talk through all of this like adults. Maybe he’d even confess to hazing her. Wouldn’t that be nice? Two birds, one stone. She made sure to lock the door to her office, jiggling the knob. When she reached the stairs, she turned back and rechecked her office door. Still locked. She didn’t want to come in tomorrow to find another person waiting for her—or another surprise on her floor.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  When Lussi returned to work the next morning, the entire staff of Blackwood-Patterson was assembled in the lobby. Xavier Blackwood’s funeral was that morning. She’d forgotten all about it, with all the excitement from yesterday. Lussi had never been so glad to be a conservative dresser—thank God she wasn’t wearing a yellow jumper or something. Her coworkers were milling around, chatting quietly, respectfully, as if not to wake the man napping in the casket uptown. She didn’t see Stanley. It occurred to her that he might have called in sick today, on account of what happened yesterday. If so, she hoped a day of rest would help him pull himself together.