Chapter Twenty-One
Welp, it was a disaster.
Evelyn sat on set, watching the cast and crew massacre the middle act of A Christmas Carol.
The Ghost of Christmas Present went rolling across the stage on its own.
Three frantic puppet masters, dressed all in black, darted across the stage to catch it.
In the commotion, a trio of dancing Christmas Cratchits ran smack-dab into Tiny Tim, causing all four of them to topple over.
She had seen enough. Rising from her chair, she waved her arms above her head, bringing everyone on set to attention.
“Stop!” she shouted. “Just . . . enough.”
Slowly, the cast and crew came to a standstill. Her eyes landed on Tiny Tim, now being helped up to his feet by Mrs. Cratchit.
“Are you okay?” Evelyn asked.
The last thing she needed was to lose an actor on crutches to actual crutches. Tiny Tim nodded his head, and she debated calling for David to check him out just to be sure. But after last night, and this morning, she was desperate to keep some measure of distance from her ex-husband.
Her eyes wandered to Tiny Tim once more. Aside from a slightly glazed look, the kid seemed fine. He was walking. Nothing was broken, and frankly, in terms of disasters happening on her watch, they had more than a Christmas stocking full. Evelyn called over the choreographer.
“What is this?” Evelyn whispered beneath her breath.
“It’s . . . it’s the second act.”
“A disaster is what it is!”
Evelyn didn’t mean to snap, but her head was killing her.
Somewhere between breaking up with David again and the chicken salad sandwich she had scarfed down for lunch, her migraine had worsened.
Now it came accompanied by visual auras and the worst case of nausea she had experienced in her entire life.
But it wasn’t just the migraine.
On top of the debacle that was now her production, the upper echelons were emailing her nonstop, freaking out and wanting contingency plans if the production had to be called to a halt.
The reblocking of all their most important numbers was taking forever.
Worse still, it was now the end of the day—she was obliged by federal law to have them all depart from set—and they were nowhere near ready to welcome a major celebrity like Jared Sparks.
“As many of you know,” Evelyn said, “tomorrow, Jared Sparks—seven-time Grammy Award winner—will be arriving to our set.” An excited trill rose up from the crowd.
Evelyn took a deep breath and continued.
“Now, I know that we have had some unforeseen setbacks to our production, but I also know that every single one of you has the Christmas spirit.” Wait, she couldn’t say things like that.
She could get in trouble. “Or the Hanukkah spirit!”
Tiny Tim raised his hand.
“Yes?” Evelyn said.
“I’m an atheist.”
“Or the winter spirit,” she said, wanting to get off this whole spirit conversation. “The point is, we know how important what we’re doing here is.”
A tennis ball–size feeling began to rise up from the center of her chest. Because she loved making television. She loved telling stories. It wasn’t just getting things perfect for her career—it was creating art. She wanted everyone to understand it was important.
“Look,” she said, “we’re not just singing songs here.
We’re not just dancing intricate numbers or telling a fanciful story.
Four days from now, millions of people are going to sit down in front of their televisions and watch our live-action production of A Christmas Carol.
They’re going to smile, and laugh and be amazed .
. . and maybe, it will be the show that appears at a time when someone desperately needs it. ”
She was getting emotional. Tears welled up in the corners of her eyes, even though she wasn’t entirely sure why. It must be the headache.
“And that’s why,” she said, stammering on the words, “that’s why we give our entire life to something.
Sacrifice ourselves, our husbands and our marriages, just for the chance to create something lasting.
Something that won’t die, or hurt you, or abandon you in the middle of the night.
Something that never goes away. This thing we created lives worldwide and in perpetuity forever and ever . . . You understand?”
The cast blinked back at her.
Evelyn sighed and glanced down at her watch.
“The day is over,” she said dryly. “I can’t legally keep you any longer. But if you have not yet mastered the choreography for tomorrow, I hope you will take the time this evening to practice and get it right. Jared Sparks is arriving tomorrow. With that, you’re all dismissed.”
Evelyn watched the room gather up their bags and shuffle out toward home. She reasoned that she should do the same.
It was freezing out when Evelyn stepped onto the sidewalk outside CBS7-T studios. Though it was still early enough for there to be light, dusk was coming in fast. Hailing a cab, she tried to look on the bright side. She was, officially, nearing twenty-four hours without seeing a ghost.
“Sixty-second and Third,” she said, crawling into the back seat of the cab.
The driver, a middle-aged woman in a knit Peabody-style cap, turned on the meter and took off.
Evelyn yawned and, reaching into her purse, pulled out her phone. It had been less than five minutes since she’d left the office, and already, her inbox was full, teeming with notes from Jared Sparks’s agent. Her eyes scanned the subject headings:
IMPORTANT: Jared is very sensitive. It is important that the emotional energy of the space is cleared of all toxic negativity before his arrival.
REMINDER: Jared prefers alkaline water to coconut. Absolutely no tap!
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: Jared MUST have his preferred candy to work.
As stipulated in our contract with CBS7-T studios, this is lemon-only Starbursts mixed together with blue M&M’s, then placed into a BLUE gallon-sized freezer bag, filled three quarters of the way, which should be accessible and available to him at all times while on set and in New York.
Okay, the last one was a little weird—especially because no one liked lemon Starbursts—but she was used to A-list celebrities requesting all sorts of strange things in their contracts.
Usually, they weren’t real requests. Rather, it was a way for agents to confirm that producers had both read and adhered to terms of the contract.
Even still, before Evelyn had left for the evening, she had dumped those specific Starbursts and M&M’s into a blue plastic bag, leaving it in his dressing room for the morning.
She went to type the agent back, alleviating any of his concerns, confirming that all had been done up exactly how the contract demanded, when the taxi driver turned hard on the wheel.
The entire car shifted left, and then stopped short because of the red light directly in front of them.
Evelyn had to put out her hand to keep from hitting the plastic security barricade that separated them.
“Sorry about that,” the woman said.
Evelyn grumbled and sat back up. “It’s fine.”
It wasn’t fine. Her head was killing her.
“Traffic is terrible today,” the taxi driver said.
Evelyn gazed out the window. The traffic was awful.
Cars and trucks lined the street and fought their way up Sixth Avenue.
Despite the congestion, her own driver seemed unfazed.
She was zipping in and out, nearly hitting a bicyclist and slamming into a bus in the process.
Evelyn found herself angling one hand against the back of the driver’s seat.
“Could you maybe . . . slow down?” Evelyn asked politely.
The cabdriver glanced over her shoulder. “I’m going as fast as possible.”
The cab jolted right, then left, then right again. “That’s not what I said.”
“What?” the taxi driver screamed back.
Clearly, the woman couldn’t hear her over all the honking of other vehicles. “I asked you to please slow down!”
The yellow traffic light they were hurtling toward turned red.
The driver slammed on the brakes. Evelyn, and all her stuff, went flying.
Her pocketbook and her tablet wound up on the floor.
She bent down to save it, gathering up her items, checking they were all okay, before moving them to a safe place between her feet for the rest of the ride.
When she looked up, the taxi driver was grinning at her from the rearview mirror.
“Sorry about that,” the driver said.
Evelyn grumbled, “No problem.”
She probably should have gotten out, called an Uber, taken the subway .
. . but she couldn’t gather the energy. Her headache pain may have been reasonably manageable, but the fatigue that often accompanied her migraines had worsened.
She felt terrible. A bone-crushing fatigue coursed through body until she could feel it in the shafts of her hair.
She didn’t care how poorly this woman was driving, because all she wanted to do was get home.
“I’m not trying to scare you,” the taxi driver suddenly offered up.
“It’s fine,” Evelyn said politely.
“I just need to get you to where you’re going. The wedding guests won’t wait forever, after all!”
Evelyn blinked. “Excuse me?”
The driver beamed happily. “I’m Four.”
No, it couldn’t be.
She decided she would be way better off in the subway.
“No way,” Evelyn said, tugging and pulling on the door handle. “I am not doing this today!”
Alas, the door was locked.
The traffic light turned green. The fourth heartbreak of Hanukkah slammed on the gas and sped up Second Avenue. They had just dipped beneath an overpass near Roosevelt Island when all of Manhattan faded from view. The cars and people disappeared as she was enveloped in a pitch-black haze.
And then, out of darkness, came light.