Satsy was right about the tense atmosphere at Fenster's. But considering how virulently all the Fensters seemed to hate each other, based on staff gossip and what little I'd seen for myself, I found it difficult to believe that last year had been any better. (Though last year my friend had presumably not been attacked by a growling, laughing, flaming freight elevator.)
I opened the stairwell door again and stepped into the hall.
"So if you think for one goddamn minute that we're paying for all this crap, Freddie, THINK AGAIN!"
I winced at the volume as I glanced down the hall and saw Preston, red-faced with rage, standing just outside the office of (I assumed) his nephew, Frederick Fenster, Jr.
I hovered uncertainly where I was, wishing Preston would enter Freddie's office. If he remained in the hall, I'd have to pass right by him on my way to the costume shop, which was on the far side of this floor.
An overweight, doughy-featured, balding man in his early fifties, Preston was holding a pile of papers-bills, I supposed-in one hand. With his other hand, he was peeling pages off the stack, one at a time, and flinging them into Freddie's office while he continued shouting.
"This family is not made of money!" Fling. "This company is not your personal plaything!" Fling! "Entertaining Russian gangsters is not a deductible expense!" Fling, fling, fling! "And this will get you arrested and indicted if the police ever find out about it, never mind the IRS!" He threw the whole remaining pile into Freddie's office and stood there panting with rage. Then he added, "And for God's sake, Freddie, learn to lock your damn door when you've got-got-got company with you!" Preston pulled on the doorknob to slam the door shut with a resounding wham!, then he stormed down the hallway, moving in my direction.
Clutching my garbage bag, I hugged the wall, intending to stay well out of his way.
Preston saw me, came to an abrupt halt, and shouted, "My God, what are you? Another of Freddie's bright ideas?"
"No, sir," I said with dignity. "I'm an elf."
"No, you're not!" he bellowed. "Our elves wear red and green!"
Unlike Santa's other elves, I wore a costume of blue and white. Because of this color scheme, shoppers and store staff (and Fenster family members, I now gathered) didn't always recognize me as an elf, even though the cut of my costume was identical to that of the other female elves: a micro-velvet bodice with short sleeves and a neckline too low to be comfortable in the chilly department store, high-cut shorts with a pointy scalloped hem, striped tights, and dainty boots with bells on them. While wandering the floors of Fenster's in this outfit, I had so far been mistaken for a hooker, a cocktail waitress, and a store model for an absurdly expensive line of teen clothing featured on the third floor.
I thought my pointy elf ears, which were attached to my blue stocking cap, were a dead give-away. But experience had so far proved me wrong.
"I'm a Jewish elf," I explained, thinking that Preston looked overwrought enough to have a nasty medical episode right in front of me. "These are the colors of the Israeli flag. Blue and white. I'm called Dreidel. You know the spinning top that children play with at Hanukkah? It's got four sides, with a Hebrew letter on each side? That's a dreidel. And it's my elf name."
"A Jewish elf?" Preston shouted into my face.
"Yes."
"A JEWISH ELF? Since when are there Jewish elves?"
I looked around, hoping someone would come to my rescue. The hallway was completely empty. Of course. Everyone on this floor was probably waiting for Preston to disappear into his office-or maybe keel over dead from the heart attack he was so ardently courting.
I said, "You're perspiring, Mr. Fenster, and you look pretty red. Maybe you should get a glass of water and-"
"What the hell are we doing?" he shouted at me. "Whose idea was this? How much did that costume cost us? What are we paying you?"
"Not nearly enough," I said. "Er, my pay, I mean. I don't know what the costume-"
"You're fired!"
"What?" I said. "What did I do?"
"Oh, for God's sake, Preston," a woman said behind me. "Don't take out your frustrations on this girl."
I whirled around, grateful for this support by someone brave enough to face Preston Fenster's noisy wrath. My savior was his older sister, Helen Fenster-Thorpe. We'd never met, but I recognized her face from my employee manual. Helen obviously took excellent care of herself, and she seemed to have a talented plastic surgeon; the result was a triumph of will (and money) over nature, if a little eerily plastic.
I knew some of her personal history, thanks to Jingle's gossip during my training. Helen was currently on her fourth husband. Her first marriage, when she was nineteen, had lasted barely two weeks before her mother-Constance Fenster, the Iron Matriarch-had gotten it annulled. Even Jingle didn't know who that short-lived spouse had been. Helen's current (and not necessarily final) marriage was to a gorgeous "tennis pro" twenty years her junior; according to Jingle, although the guy looked hot in his sporting gear, no one had ever seen him play tennis, let alone engage in it professionally.
"Oh, so you finally deigned to show up, did you?" Preston roared at his sister. "It's almost time for the board meeting to start!"
"And I'm here in time for it," Helen said coolly. "So do try to calm down. The doctor warned you, after all . . ."
"Mind your own goddamned business!"
"The entire floor can hear you screaming, Preston," she chided. "In fact, I suspect that all of Manhattan can hear you!"
"Have you seen the bills for Freddie's latest escapade? Does he really think we can afford this shit now, on top of everything else? We're going to need cash flow to pay the lawyers if we have to fight another lawsuit from the-the-the . . ." Preston turned red again. "You know. From those bastards."
"They wouldn't dare. They were beaten for good last time," Helen said, though she sounded hopeful rather than confident. "These new threats of a lawsuit now that Mother's dead are just so much saber rattling."
Clearly unconvinced by this assertion, Preston continued, "And we've got the hijackings to deal with, too! Do you know how much merchandise we've lost this season? So this is no time for Freddie to pull one of his expensive stunts!"
Helen Fenster-Thorpe sighed in disgust. "What has that little wretch done now?"
Seeing my chance, I tried to slip away unobtrusively. I failed.
"Never mind that! Who's responsible for this?" Preston blocked my path and barked, "A Jewish elf! Are you kidding me? First it was solstice! Then Kwanzaa! And now this! What next? Should we get an imam in here for the holidays, so that everyone can feel included?"
"That's not a bad idea," said his sister. "We live in a multicultural society, Preston. Fenster's must keep moving with the times." Over her shoulder, she said, "Tell him, Arthur."
"Um . . . well, er . . . ah . . ." A timid voice floated out of the open office door behind Helen.
A man of about fifty, Arthur was the fourth and final child of the late Constance Fenster. Helen, who was Constance's only daughter, was the Iron Matriarch's eldest surviving offspring. Constance's first child, Frederick Senior, had died in a liquor-soaked car accident twenty years ago, though the stripper riding with him that night had survived (and promptly sold her story to the tabloids). According to Jingle, Frederick Senior's merry widow rarely made an appearance at Fenster's, though she owned a chunk of the stock. She usually let her son, Freddie Junior, vote for her at Fenster board meetings.
"Oh, come out of there," Helen snapped over her shoulder at Arthur. "And speak up, for God's sake."
Arthur partially complied, creeping up to the doorway and hovering there. Although the youngest of the three siblings, he looked the oldest, his face heavily lined with stress, his hair completely gray. A thin, soft-spoken man who wore wire-rimmed glasses and always dressed formally (even at company picnics, Jingle said), Arthur had never married, nor did he date. Some of the staff thought he was in the closet; others thought he'd been psychologically castrated by his notoriously ruthless mother, who'd died only a few months ago.
"Well, er, actually, yes," Arthur said, looking around anxiously as he tried to avoid eye contact with his siblings. I must have looked innocuous (Santa's elves weren't supposed to be threatening, after all), because his gaze zeroed in on me, and he began speaking directly to me, as if I had asked for this information. "Demographic statistics show that ethnic and religious minorities by now form a substantial portion of the city's residents and also its visitors, particularly if we consider these disparate groups as one combined whole in comparison to the population we would describe as white and Christian."
He looked so anxious for my approval that I couldn't help giving him an encouraging little nod, which made the bell on my stocking cap jingle as I said, "Ah! Yes, I see your point."
He smiled, bashfully pleased by my response. "In fact, actuarial studies suggest that-"
"I don't give a damn about actuarial statistics!" Preston roared, the veins at his temples bulging so alarmingly that I thought he was on the verge of becoming an actuarial statistic. "Fuck your demographics!"