Miracle (29 page)

“How do you spell ‘fabulous’?” Allison asked.

“Flight 2216 to Spokane is now ready for boarding,” the flight attendant at the desk said. “Those passengers traveling with small children or those who require additional time for boarding may now board.”

A single old lady with a walker stood up and got in line. Allison unhooked the girls’ headphones, and we began the ritual of hugging and gathering up belongings.

“We’ll see you at Christmas,” she said.

“Good luck with your newsletter,” I said, handing Dakota her teddy bear, “and don’t worry about the heading. It doesn’t need one.”

They started down the passageway. I stood there, waving, till they were out of sight, and then turned to go.

“We are now ready for regular boarding of rows 25 through 33,” the flight attendant said, and everybody in the gate area stood up. Nothing unusual here, I thought, and started for the concourse.

“What rows did she call?” a woman in a red beret asked a teenaged boy.

“25 through 33,” he said.

“Oh, I’m Row 14,” the woman said, and sat back down.

So did I.

“We are now ready to board rows 15 through 24,” the flight attendant said, and a dozen people looked carefully at their tickets and then stepped back from the door, patiently waiting their turn. One of them pulled a paperback out of her tote bag and began to read. It was
Kidnapped
by Robert Louis Stevenson. Only when the flight attendant said, “We are now boarding all rows,” did the rest of them stand up and get in line.

Which didn’t prove anything, and neither did the standing on the right of the moving sidewalk. Maybe people were just being nice because it was Christmas.

Don’t be ridiculous, I told myself. People aren’t nicer at Christmas. They’re ruder and pushier and crabbier than ever. You’ve seen them at the mall, and in line for the post office. They act worse at Christmas than any other time.

“This is your final boarding call for Flight 2216 to Spokane,” the flight attendant said to the empty waiting area. She called to me, “Are you flying to Spokane, ma’am?”

“No.” I stood up. “I was seeing friends off.”

“I just wanted to make sure you didn’t miss your flight,” she said, and turned to shut the door.

I started for the moving sidewalk, and nearly collided with a young man running for the gate. He raced up to the desk and flung his ticket down.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the flight attendant said, leaning slightly away from the young man as if expecting an explosion. “Your flight has already left. I’m really terribly sor—”

“Oh, it’s okay,” he said. “It serves me right. I didn’t allow
enough time for parking and everything, that’s all. I should have started for the airport earlier.”

The flight attendant was tapping busily on the computer. “I’m afraid the only other open flight to Spokane for today isn’t until 11:05 this evening.”

“Oh, well,” he said, smiling. “It’ll give me a chance to catch up on my reading.” He reached down into his attaché case and pulled out a paperback. It was W. Somerset Maugham’s
Of Human Bondage.

“Well?” Gary said as soon as I got back to work Thursday morning. He was standing by my desk, waiting for me.

“There’s definitely something going on,” I said, and told him about the moving sidewalks and the guy who’d missed his plane. “But what?”

“Is there somewhere we can talk?” he said, looking anxiously around.

“Hunziger’s office,” I said, “but I don’t know if he’s in yet.”

“He’s not,” he said, led me into the office, and shut the door behind him.

“Sit down,” he said, indicating Hunziger’s chair. “Now, I know this is going to sound crazy, but I think all these people have been possessed by some kind of alien intelligence. Have you ever seen
Invasion of the Body Snatchers?”

“What?” I said.

“Invasion of the Body Snatchers,”
he said. “It’s about these parasites from outer space who take over people’s bodies and—”

“I
know
what it’s about,” I said, “and it’s
science fiction.
You think the man who missed his plane was some kind of pod-person? You’re right,” I said, reaching for the doorknob. “I do think you’re crazy.”

“That’s what Donald Sutherland said in
Leechmen from Mars.
Nobody ever believes it’s happening, until it’s too late.”

He pulled a folded newspaper out of his back pocket. “Look at this,” he said, waving it in front of me. “Holiday credit-card
fraud down twenty percent. Holiday suicides down thirty percent. Charitable giving up
sixty
percent.”

“They’re coincidences.” I explained about the statistical peaks and valleys. “Look,” I said, taking the paper from him and turning to the front page. “People Against Cruelty to Our Furry Friends Protests City Hall Christmas Display. Animal Rights Group Objects to Exploitation of Reindeer.”

“What about your sister?” he said. “You said she only dates losers. Why would she suddenly start dating a nice guy? Why would an escaped convict suddenly turn himself in? Why would people suddenly start reading the classics? Because they’ve been taken over.”

“By aliens from outer space?” I said incredulously.

“Did he have a hat?”

“Who?” I said, wondering if he really was crazy. Could his being hung up on his horrible ex-wife have finally made him crack?

“The man who missed his plane,” he said. “Was he wearing a hat?”

“I don’t remember,” I said, and felt suddenly cold. Sueann had worn a hat to Thanksgiving dinner. She’d refused to take it off at the table. And the woman whose ticket said Row 14 had been wearing a beret.

“What do hats have to do with it?” I asked.

“The man on the plane next to me was wearing a hat. So were most of the other people on the flight. Did you ever see
The Puppet Masters?
The parasites attached themselves to the spinal cord and took over the nervous system,” he said. “This morning here at work I counted nineteen people wearing hats. Les Sawtelle, Rodney Jones, Jim Bridgeman—”

“Jim Bridgeman always wears a hat,” I said. “It’s to hide his bald spot. Besides, he’s a computer programmer. All the computer people wear baseball caps.”

“DeeDee Crawford,” he said. “Vera McDermott, Janet Hall—”

“Women’s hats are supposed to be making a comeback,” I said.

“George Frazelli, the entire Documentation section—””

I’m sure there’s a logical explanation,” I said. “It’s been freezing in here all week. There’s probably something wrong with the heating system.”

“The thermostat’s turned down to fifty,” he said, “which is something else peculiar. The thermostat’s been turned down on all floors.”

“Well, that’s probably Management. You know how they’re always trying to cut costs—”

“They’re giving us a Christmas bonus. And they fired Hunziger.”

“They fired Hunziger?” I said. Management never fires anybody.

“This morning. That’s how I knew he wouldn’t be in his office.”

“They actually fired Hunziger?”

“And one of the janitors. The one who drank. How do you explain that?”

“I—I don’t know,” I stammered. “But there has to be some other explanation than aliens. Maybe they took a management course or got the Christmas spirit or their therapists told them to do good deeds or something. Something besides leechmen. Aliens coming from outer space and taking over our brains is impossible!”

“That’s what Dana Wynter said in
Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
But it’s not impossible. It’s happening right here, and we’ve got to stop it before they take over everybody and we’re the only ones left. They—”

There was a knock on the door. “Sorry to bother you, Gary,” Carol Zaliski said, leaning in the door, “but you’ve got an urgent phone call. It’s your ex-wife.”

“Coming,” he said, looking at me. “Think about what I said, okay?” He went out.

I stood looking after him and frowning.

“What was that all about?” Carol said, coming into the office. She was wearing a white fur hat.

“He wanted to know what to buy his Secret Santa person,” I said.

Friday Gary wasn’t there. “He had to go talk to his ex-wife this morning,” Tonya told me at lunch, picking pickles off her sandwich. “He’ll be back this afternoon. Marcie’s demanding he pay for her therapy. She’s seeing this psychiatrist, and she claims Gary’s the one who made her crazy, so he should pick up the bill for her Prozac.
Why
is he still hung up on her?”

“I don’t know,” I said, scraping mustard off my burger.

“Carol Zaliski said the two of you were talking in Hunziger’s office yesterday. What about? Did he ask you out? Nan?”

“Tonya, has Gary talked to you since Thanksgiving? Did he ask you about whether you’d noticed anything unusual happening?”

“He asked me if I’d noticed anything bizarre or abnormal about my family. I told him, in my family bizarre
is
normal. You won’t believe what’s happened now. Tom’s parents are getting a divorce, which means five sets of parents. Why couldn’t they have waited till after Christmas to do this? It’s throwing my whole schedule off.”

She bit into her sandwich. “I’m sure Gary’s going to ask you out. He’s probably just working up to it.”

If he was, he had the strangest line I’d ever heard. Aliens from outer space. Hiding under hats!

Though, now that he’d mentioned it, there were an awful lot of people wearing hats. Nearly all the men in Data Analysis had baseball caps on, Jerrilyn Wells was wearing a wool stocking cap, and Ms. Jacobson’s secretary looked like she was dressed for a wedding in a white thing with a veil. But Sueann had said this was the Year of the Hat.

Sueann, who dated only gigolos and Mafia dons. But she had been bound to hit a nice boyfriend sooner or later, she dated so many guys.

And there weren’t any signs of alien possession when I tried to get somebody in the steno pool to make some copies for me. “We’re
busy,”
Paula Grandy snapped. “It’s Christmas, you know!”

I went back to my desk, feeling better. There was an enormous dish made of pine cones on it, filled with candy canes and red and green foil-wrapped chocolate kisses. “Is this part of the Christmas decorations?” I asked Penny.

“No. They aren’t ready yet,” she said. “This is just a little something to brighten the holidays. I made one for everyone’s desk.”

I felt even better. I pushed the dish over to one side and started through my mail. There was a green envelope from Allison and Mitch. She must have mailed her newsletters as soon as she got off the plane. I wonder if she decided to forgo the heading or Dakota’s Most Improved Practicing Piano Award, I thought, slicing it open with the letter opener.

“Dear Nan,” it began, several spaces down from the angels-and-mistletoe border. “Nothing much new this year. We’re all okay, though Mitch is worried about downsizing, and I always seem to be running from behind. The girls are growing like weeds and doing okay in school, though Cheyenne’s been having some problems with her reading and Dakota’s still wetting the bed. Mitch and I decided we’ve been pushing them too hard, and we’re working on trying not to overschedule them for activities and just letting them be normal, average little girls.”

I jammed the letter back into the envelope and ran up to fourth to look for Gary.

“All right,” I said when I found him. “I believe you. What do we do now?”

We rented movies. Actually, we rented only some of the movies.
Attack of the Soul Killers
and
Invasion from Betelgeuse
were both checked out.

“Which means somebody else has figured it out, too,” Gary said. “If only we knew who.”

“We could ask the clerk,” I suggested.

He shook his head violently. “We can’t do anything to make them suspicious. For all we know, they may have taken
them off the shelves themselves, in which case we’re on the right track. What else shall we rent?”

“What?” I said blankly.

“So it won’t look like we’re just renting alien invasion movies.”

“Oh,” I said, and picked up
Ordinary People
and a black-and-white version of
A Christmas Carol.

It didn’t work.
“The Puppet Masters,”
the kid at the rental desk, wearing a blue-and-yellow Blockbuster hat, said inquiringly. “Is that a good movie?”

“I haven’t seen it,” Gary said nervously.

“We’re renting it because it has Donald Sutherland in it,” I said. “We’re having a Donald Sutherland film festival.
The Puppet Masters, Ordinary People, Invasion of the Body Snatchers—”

“Is Donald Sutherland in this?” he asked, holding up
A Christmas Carol.”

“He plays Tiny Tim,” I said. “It was his first screen appearance.”

“You were great in there,” Gary said, leading me down to the other end of the mall to Suncoast to buy
Attack of the Soul Killers.
“You’re a very good liar.”

“Thanks,” I said, pulling my coat closer and looking around the mall. It was freezing in here, and there were hats everywhere, on people and in window displays, Panamas and porkpies and picture hats.

“We’re surrounded. Look at that,” he said, nodding in the direction of Santa Claus’s North Pole.