Chapter 30
“I should have just kept my big mouth shut.” Casey was angrily putting right the Christmas candles, which had been made to spell Shirty Mare. She’d been tempted to leave them as they were.
“Because that’s worked out so well for you thus far,” Margo called from the Christmas department.
The pointed toes of one of her feet were crushed into the top of a small train carriage, which was being pulled by the model steam engine.
Her other leg pushed out behind her as she whirled around the festive railway track looking like a ballerina in a jewelry box.
The peep-peeping of the little engine as it dragged her around the track sounded like a cry for help.
“I wasn’t being accosted by YouTubers when I stayed silent. You’re going to break that engine,” she added as Margo swooped gracefully passed her again, arms out by her sides as though she was flying.
“I’ll get off at the next stop!” she called as the little engine chugged through a snowy model pine forest.
“Couldn’t we just skip the last glimpse and get rid of the meme now?”
“You know how this works. We made a deal. Five glimpses.”
“But all of this is off the record, isn’t it? You’re in hiding, no one will be any the wiser if you bend the rules just this once!”
Margo prized her toes out of the tiny carriage and wiggled them, the engine taking off at speed as though to escape.
She put her shoes back on and walked over to where Casey was adding more Christmas crockery to the depleted shelf.
“Being ‘off the record’ does not mean I’ve taken a holiday from my code of ethics.
A clear conscience is my only defense against battle fatigue.
If you still feel this way after the fifth glimpse, then I will erase the meme on Christmas night, as per our agreement. ”
Casey shook her head as she lined up the milk jugs, all handles to the left. “I can’t do it all again,” she mumbled. “I just can’t.”
Margo leaned against the display dining table, which Casey had so beautifully styled to best showcase the table settings on offer.
Pumpkin and pecan pies bloomed into life along its length, while a brace of pheasants began swinging from the lamp above it, their colorful plumage brushing the tops of the candlesticks like feather dusters.
“At the risk of sounding like a complete git, I would suggest that last time you didn’t ‘do’ anything at all with regards to the meme. ”
Casey sniffed. “You do sound like a complete git actually.” There was a beat while she thought about Margo’s words. “You think I should have courted the press? Said yes to the interviews?”
“Not necessarily.”
“Then what?” she asked, her voice rising in frustration. “Why can’t someone just tell me what to do?” She sidestepped a basket of clementines, which had appeared at her feet.
“Because it’s your life and nobody else’s responsibility.”
Margo’s diplomacy was infuriating. “I didn’t want a public tit for tat with Sam. I kept quiet because I didn’t want to be scrutinized and bitched about in comments sections. I didn’t want one moment to dictate my life.”
“But it did dictate your life,” Margo said reasonably.
“You cut off all your hair. You gave up your job and your home and your friends. And I know”—she raised her hand to stifle Casey’s objection—“I know that some of those ‘friends’ let you down badly. But you made yourself an island. I understand why you did it, of course, but of all those measures taken, the one thing you never did was fight for yourself. At the book event, you fought back!”
“Yeah, and look where it’s got me.” She began to pull table runners embroidered with mistletoe and red-breasted robins out of a box at her feet and roll them up, tying them with lengths of red ribbon before stacking them neatly.
“So that’s it, is it?” the spirit asked, following Casey’s lead and beginning on the box of matching napkins. “You stood up for yourself once and now you’re going back into hiding?”
Casey rounded on her. “None of this is my fault! I didn’t consent to my image being used as a joke by thousands of strangers.
I didn’t consent,” she repeated, though some of her bluster had been replaced with a familiar hopelessness.
“You make it sound as though I can just take control of my own fate and everything will be hunky-dory, but it won’t and it frightens me to know how little power I have over my own life. ”
Margo sighed. “You’re right to be frightened. Every single human is at the mercy of every other single human. Your very lives are dependent on the beneficence of your neighbor. Isn’t that a terrifying thought?”
“You are not making me feel any better at all!”
“Then look at it from a different angle. Look at the ways in which your experience has shaped you in positive ways: You are considerate, you don’t judge—although there is always room for improvement—you give second chances, you listen. These are good things,” said Margo.
Casey was tired and frustrated. She ran her hands through her hair.
“If I’m so full of good things, then why does the universe keep kicking me on my arse?
Why do the bad guys always win? And I’m not only talking about Sam; I’m talking about the people on your list who get to act like total shits their whole lives and then you come along and save their souls.
How is that fair! How about a little help for the ordinary folks just trying to live their lives?
Why do the bad guys always come out on top? ”
“Pah!” Margo exhaled so loudly that the lamps blinked.
Beanstalks began to climb quickly up and over the shelf unit.
“You think fate favors the fuckwits, eh?” Margo’s voice rose with every word.
“I negotiate with people so morally bankrupt that I can feel their malevolence coating my skin. Why? Because we can’t get the buggers to do the right thing unless they think they’re going to be dammed for all eternity.
Trust me, it isn’t fun. We do it for the greater good.
But you, Little Miss It’s-Not-Fair, you have taken a nugget of my truth and spun it into a narrative to suit your own grievances—sound familiar? ”
The ceiling lights trembled, and cornstalks sprang up through the floor with such force that the floorboards splintered and snapped.
“Okay,” said Casey, by now familiar with how Margo’s crises of conscious manifested themselves.
She shook her legs to loosen the red and orange nasturtium flowers that were twisting around her ankles as she backed away.
“You’re calling me a hypocrite, and that is absolutely fair. I get it, I apologize.”
Margo stood still as the vines and tendrils from pumpkins, green beans, and nasturtiums wound thickly around her ankles and began to climb up her body, slithering and coiling around her waist like so many snakes as they pinned her arms to her sides.
“I make deals with devils every damn day for humanity’s sake, and none of you give a shit!
” lamented the spirit. “I’m feeling very unappreciated. ”
Tears fell down her cheeks as the vines crisscrossed her torso and wrapped around her shoulders. They crept up her neck and finally covered her face and head in green tracery so that she was completely mummified.
Casey wondered if she ought to fashion her a snorkel. “Margo?” she asked tentatively. “Are you all right in there? I’m sorry, okay. I appreciate that you’re in a very difficult position. I give a shit. And I appreciate you.”
“You do?” came Margo’s muffled voice.
“I do.”
“It’s never about the ‘bad guys.’ You understand that, don’t you? In rehabilitating just one tight-fisted billionaire, we are able to procure benevolence and charity for hundreds of thousands of people in need.”
“The greater good,” Casey replied.
“The greater good,” agreed Margo.
“Do you think you might come out from your cocoon so that we can hug and make up? Your ensemble is giving me Body Snatchers vibes.”
The sarcophagus of vines began to shudder and heave.
In another moment two hands emerged and began to tear at the stringy greenery until there was space for the spirit to poke her head through.
“Sorry about that,” she said as she shrugged the plants off her shoulders and shimmied them down to the ground before stepping out of them, her conniption having burned itself out.
“You rather touched a nerve; it seems that I’m still wrangling with the fairness of the greater good myself. ”
“Well, that’s why you’re here, after all.”
“Yes.”
Casey held her arms out. “Friends?” she asked.
Margo’s lip wobbled, and she looked as though she might be about to cry again, but she stepped into Casey’s outstretched arms and the two women hugged. “Friends,” Margo replied in a choked-up voice.
Margo smelled of freshly mowed grass, snapped dandelion stems, and damp earth.
The scent soothed Casey’s jagged nerves, and she felt a rush of love for the highly strung spirit who had crashed into her life.
An unbearable sadness washed over her at the thought that they would soon be parting ways forever, but she was saved from dwelling on it by the incessant buzzing coming from the office.