Grave Apparel (4 page)

Lacey
tried to lighten things up to defuse the tension. She should
have
known
better.
“Cassandra,
you’ve
got your
next
ed itorial right there. ‘Christmas sweaters mean global
disaster:
Why
does our
government
suppress the
awful
truth?’
”

“You
think I’m joking!
Everything
is just a
joke
to you,
isn’t
it?” Cassandra had a weird look on her
face.

Lacey
laughed. Of course she
was
joking. Cassandra
Went
worth
writing about something as
trivial
as
fashion?
Even
to stop the
worldwide
menace of the Christmas sweater?

Felicity
moved
in
ominously.
Reporters
crowded
around for the
smackdown,
eager for a ringside seat.
Unfortunately,
at that moment, Douglas MacArthur “Mac” Jones, their
editor,
was
hard
on
the
trail
of
blue
sugar
crystals
leading
to
the
promised
land of Christmas cookies
waiting
on
Felicity’s
desk. He ap proached, his
large
eyebrows
knit
together,
bringing a
glower
to
his
café
au
lait
complexion.
The
eyebrows
and
mustache
seemed to compensate for his gleaming bald head. Mac
was
a

mix of races, and he
favored
no one race
over
another.
He
was
an equal opportunity spoilsport.

“Break it up,
ladies,”
Mac ordered. “People
would
think you
don’t
have
enough
work
to do.
You
got time on your hands?
You
got time to debate instead of writing stories?
Well,
you
don’t.
Back to
work!”
He
picked
up a cookie and stared them into sub mission. The
crowd
broke
up. Reporters retreated grumbling to their stories and deadlines. Order
was
restored. Mac
picked
up another cookie.

Cassandra
withdrew,
sans her
blue
sugared treat.
She retali
ated for her humiliation later that day by writing a scathing ed itorial. Not about food or fat people or global warming,
but
about those
selfish
people who
offended
the
very
Earth itself by the wearing of seasonal accessories, the comic ties, the cheery
little
elf
ears
and
Santa
hats,
and
of
course,
the
Christmas
sweaters.
She
even
used
specific
examples
from
Felicity’s
wardrobe.
The piece appeared in the
next
day’s
Eye
,
unbylined as per the
newpaper’s
usual practice with the house editorial, and swifter than
Santa’s
reindeer it became
known
around the
office
as
Sweatergate.

The day after the diatribe appeared, Felicity did not cook. Nor did she
bake.
Nor did she supply the hungry
news
troops with sweet sustenance. She did,
however,
wear a loud purple
sweater
covered
with
saucyeyed
elves
and
a
pair
of
purple
Christmas bells in her ears that announced her presence
every
time she turned her head.

Reporters
suffered
sugar
withdrawal.
Mac
amped
up
his
grumpiness. The lack of seasonal treats resulted in a rush to empty the snack machines. Bereft reporters were seen standing in the middle of the
newsroom
and pleading,
“Anybody
got a cookie?
Anything
at all?” It
didn’t
make
for a
happy
working
environment.

When her
fans
asked
Felicity about her latest culinary ad
ventures,
she said darkly that she simply
wasn’t
in the mood. “I
don’t
know
if
I’ll
ever
be
in
the
mood
again,”
she
sighed.
“After
what
I’ve
su
f
fere
d.
.
.”

Whether
they
covered
sports or cops,
every
time Cassandra or Felicity passed by it fed the
newsroom’s
daily desire for gos sip and sensation. Reporters took sides, bets were placed, and
bookmakers
agreed
the
odds
(and
popular
opinion)
were

stacked
against
Cassandra.
After
all,
she
never
fed
them
anything
but
her opinions, and those often required an antacid
chaser.

Tensions
were running high, with no rapprochement on the horizon. Finally
Tony
Trujillo,
The
Eye
’s
dessertaddicted po lice
reporter,
grabbed
Lacey’s
sleeve
and
begged
her to inter
vene.
Just as he did,
Felicity’s
tinkling purple bells sailed out of
the
office,
along
with
Felicity
and
all
hope
of
the
return
of
Christmas Goodies
Past.

“Lacey,
you gotta do something!
We’re
dying here! Besides, Smithsonian, you
know
this is all your
fault.”

“Me? What can I do?” She arched one
eyebrow
and glared at him.
“And
what do you mean this is all my
fault?!”

“
Madre
de
Dios!
It will kill our Felicidad not to
bake.
She’ll
dry up
like
a prune. The balance of
power
will shift. The North Pole will melt,
civilization
as we
know
it will end. And three
words:
No. Christmas.
Cookies.”
His
brown
eyes
pleaded with
her.
He
smiled,
his
even
teeth
bright
against
his
olive
skin.
Tony
was
handsome and he
knew
it, setting female
newsroom
hearts to
pitterpatter,
but
Lacey was
immune to his charms.

“You’re
breaking my
heart.”

“You
sit
next
to
her.
You’re
friends.”

“Ha!” Her desk was across the aisle from Felicity’s,
and
Lacey
considered this proximity a thankless
burden.
“It’s
com mon
knowledge
that she hates me.
You
try,
she
can’t
resist your
charm.”

“I
already tried. Nada. Besides,
she
owes
you,”
Tony
smirked.
“She’ll
listen to you.
You
set her up with the jinx, and she
loves
him.”
He shrugged
toward
the desk of Harlan
Wiede
meyer.
Most people at
The
Eye
considered
Felicity’s
boyfriend
to be a bringer of bad luck. But
Felicity,
who had already suf fered the indignity of
having
her
minivan
blown
up outside the
newspaper
offices
after
developing
a crush on
Wiedemeyer,
was
now
considered impervious to his peculiar
hexing
abilities.

“Harlan
Wiedemeyer
is not a jinx, and Felicity is a big
girl,”
Lacey
said.
“A
very
big girl. I try not to get in her
way.”

“Do
something,”
Tony
pleaded. “If you let this go on
you’re
gonna ruin
Christmas.”

“I’m caught in the crossfire,
Tony.
And I am not
ruining
Christmas!”

“You
are
too.
It’s
all
your
fault
Cassandra
wrote
that
Sweatergate
thing.
You
goaded
her
into
it.
The
Wentworth
bruja
is jealous of you, so she writes a column just
like
yours! Her
version,
anyway.
Felicity
wound
her up,
but
you pointed her in the direction of
disaster.”

“That’s
not my
fault!”

“Cassandra
created
Sweatergate
and
pissed
off
Felicity,
who
now
is not doing what she does best. Cooking, baking, bringing us food, feeding the troops. What about our Christmas cook ies?” He
looked
as mournful as a little
boy
who’d
been sent to bed without his dessert. He
flicked
a speck of dust from the toe of one black lizard skin boot.

“You’re
not going to turn that into
Cookiegate,
are you?”
Lacey
said.

“You
know
what I’m talking about,
Lacey.
You
started all this. Not your intention, I
know,
but
you gotta do
something.”

Everyone
knew
what
Trujillo
was
referring to: Felicity Pick
les’s
legendary
onceayear
Christmas
cookie
extravaganza,
her
crowning
culinary
achievement.
Lacey
could just imagine the
orgy
of dough mixing, rolling, cutting, shaping,
throwing,
bak
ing,
sprinkling,
and
sugar
decorating
that
took
place
in
Felic
ity’s
kitchen to produce her annual pièce de résistance.
Lacey
liked
to think that Felicity
lived
in the forest in a gingerbread house with cream cheese icing on the roof. In her
mind’s
eye
Felicity’s
cookiebaking scene included Hansel and Gretel
fat
tening up in the
pantry.

Felicity annually produced a Christmas cookie display that
would
make
Betty
Crocker
blush. On one magical day in mid
December,
she
would
bring dozens of
different
kinds of cook ies to the
office.
It happened
every
year,
it
was
a Christmas
Eye
tradition, and the denizens of the
newsroom
were trained
like
a pack of
Pavlovian
dogs to
watch
(and whine and whimper) for it.