#kla1991

She’d know this road any day and twice around Christmas, because it was the road that takes her to her augmented Warehouse family, and the lodge in which they spend the few days between Christmas and New Year’s, just the core of them, the Warehouse's Gang of Eight, the longest serving members of the Warehouse to date (if only one dared to call Mrs. Frederic “a serving member” without being killed by the caretaker’s icy daggers’ worth of a stare).

Myka clenches her teeth with a small wince and a barely audible grunt, as she realises just how uncomfortably her body had wedged itself between the armrest and the door while collapsed in a sleepy state.

Helena glances from the driver’s seat. “Good afternoon, my darling,” she whispers sweetly without taking her eyes off the road. “Are you feeling rested?”

‘Rested’ hints at having had a peaceful sleep, which would not best describe Myka’s frame of mind, conscious, semi or otherwise. She recalls her dream, the submarine, the giant squid-like creature. The flailing. So much flailing. “I think so,” she mumbles while promising to herself, this is the last time I believe Pete when he talks about the merits of graphic novels.

“No flailing-limbed hellscape adventures?” Helena persists, but gently, smile still sweet and caring.

Myka tries to think what makes Helena ask that very question, but she’s too tired to get into any of that, and would really rather not bring back images she’s still trying really hard to remove from her consciousness, so she deflects. “Afternoon?” She straightens in her seat, as much as her seatbelt allows. “How long have I been asleep for?”

“Enough for the time to tick past midday,” Helena enunciates through a bright smile.

Myka hears the arrogance in Helena’s answer, and even though she thinks she’s choosing not to engage, her ego gets the better of her. “I was wide awake when we drove through Boulder,” she retorts.

Helena bites her lips shut to strangle a chuckle, and looks in the rear-view mirror, at Leena, who is smiling sweetly in the back seat, knowing full well where Helena is going with all this.

Helena raises her eyebrows with a question, and Leena shakes her head lightly with an aloof smile of her own.

“Wide enough awake to greet the surprise passenger we collected?” Helena is all but mocking.

Myka squints and pouts, sourly pushing breaths through her nose, knowing Helena could feel her piercing, probing gaze.

“You can look in the back, if you like,” Helena looks at Myka briefly, still not taking her eyes off the road for more than a second. She knows better than that.

Myka’s eyes still fixed on Helena, she breathes evenly, weighing her options. Does she play the game? What are the odds she’s made a fool of - again? What will be the implications if she was?

But again, her ego gets the better of her and she fixes her stare at Helena’s profile as she recalls driving into Boulder. She recalls driving through the centre of town. She recalls pulling into the Target parking lot, for them to get the last of the supplies required for the next few days of festivities. She remembers staying in the car while Helena went in. She recalls the number of doors she heard and felt shut. She does not recall any voices whatsoever. She remembers checking with Helena that the online order was fulfilled, and that Helena confirmed, and she remembers clocking the “Thank you for visiting! Come back soon!” sign on the 119 West as they left town.

So while she has absolutely no recollection of anyone else joining them in Boulder, Helena’s tone certainly insinuates that they have. Unless, of course, the whole of it is just one more of Helena’s games, the kind that Myka never seems to win, no matter how hard she tries. The kind which sole purpose is to poke fun at her, and then become the running joke for their stay, until New Year’s Eve. It’s become a tradition now.

“Remind me again…” Myka asks, her voice steeped in sarcasm, “Where’s the fun in going through these complicated, ridiculous mind games?”

“Whatever do you mean?” Helena gasps, mock offended.

“It feels like a lot of trouble for you to go through just to tease me,” Myka gripes, ill-humoured, “and there is absolutely no fun in that.”

Helena’s cheeks flare in an instant at the thought of teasing Myka. Granted, perhaps not the sort she’s presently engaged in – the taunting, mocking, jape-hooting sort of tease currently underway, but rather one of a much more intimate kind.

Teasing Myka happens to have become Helena’s favourite pastime over the years they have been together. Helena’s investment in this hobby was such, that one might consider granting Helena the degree of Mastre of Tease. Helena’s practice had long since surpassed the realms of small-hand craft and launched itself into the realm of Art. High Art, as well, depending on Helena’s investment in the aesthetics of her scenes of seduction and ecstasy.

And now her neck blushes a bright red and she begins to perspire as she hides a small squirm as she drives, because a handful of such scenes flash before her mind’s eye, and - goodness gracious - they still have a hold on her.

She collects herself with a shake of her hair. “Your accusation is nothing if not hurtful, my love,” Helena looks at Myka again, feigning mild emotional bruising. “Honestly, darling, take a look in the back,” Helena motions with her head swiftly.

Myka examines scenarios and calculates probabilities: scenario one: she looks back and sees nothing - in which case, Helena wins, and will mock her for falling prey to the ploy; scenario two: she looks back and sees one of her friends, one of her family - in which case, said mystery person would have been party to the exchange the whole time (even by staying silent), showing participatory culpability, and Helena wins again, and Myka will be mocked by both Helena and the traitorous friend; scenario three: she doesn’t look back at all. In this case, Schrodinger’s Hitchhiker is both in the back and not at the same time, and it will be up to Helena (and/or the quantum-state guest) to alter the state of the traveller by observing it, which leaves Helena only 50% chance of winning (if Helena was telling the truth), and Myka with a 50% chance of not being mocked at all (if she wasn’t).

Given the three scenarios, it’s clear which one she will opt for, even though the odds are overwhelmingly against her. “How do you always get the better of me?” Myka asks in a huff and slumps back in her seat.

“Oh,” Helena breathes and she catches Leena’s eyes in the mirror. “Because if I don’t, the tentacles will.”

And Leena silently, gently, touches the tip of her index finger to the back of Myka’s shoulder, and Helena nearly tips the car off the road due to Myka’s ear-splitting shriek and lunge to the footwell of her seat.

   II.

 The morning after Myka gets to have her comeuppance as they all gear up for a day in the snow. Helena despises dressing in layers, more so when the layers are predominantly synthetic fibres, and compounded by the graceless, utilitarian design of outdoor apparel and what she considers an abominable glut of zips.

After breakfast, when everyone disperses to their rooms to change, Helena is eerily silent as she puts on the under-layers and tops, only hissing hateful barbs whenever she does or undoes a zip, hoping the dreadful shrill sound of the plastic fastening will mask her curses.

“Can I help?” Myka asks and her face contorts as she pointlessly attempts to stop herself from smiling - from snickering - at Helena’s miff.

Helena turns her head sharply, her eyes spitting every bit of venom as her lips did not a fraction of a second ago. “No, thank you,” she mutters ominously, knowing full well that she is yet to pay for yesterday’s tentacled joke. So if she were to suffer the cold due to a mishap of the garmentary sort, she would rather it be done by her own hand, rather than Myka’s, and thus claimed to be payback for a Helena’s well executed practical joke, even if she does say so herself.

With that, Helena turns back to re-zipping the waterproof trousers at the hip, then zipping the ankle zips, then unzipping them (thinking she will need to open to do her ski boots up), then walking two steps towards where her coat is, then grumbling at the trousers, which (according to Helena) in their current state, are plotting to see her tumbling down the stairs or a hilltop or a cliff, so she seethes as she zips the damn things again, to take battle with her gloves and coat.

“You know, for someone who’s so dextrous, you sure are struggling with something so basic,” Myka comments.

Helena wants to say ‘Zip it’, but her disdain to the fastening method is too great for her to use it metaphorically. “I know you are finding this comical, Myka, but you know that all this…” she gestures loosely at herself, “clothing,” she utters, with notable scorn, “is nothing short of the first circle of hell for me.”

Myka watches quietly, doing her best to make not a single sound, all the while reminding herself to stop finding Helena so endearing in her anger, because she is missing out on opportunities to get back at her.

Claudia’s call from the bottom of the stairs shakes the tense silence. “Will you two knock it off for, like, an hour, so the rest of us can have fun with you?”

Myka can’t help the sniggering snort that escapes her.

Helena exhales tensely, attempting to calm herself.

“We’ll be down in a minute, you guys,” Myka shouts back, which irks Helena even more, as she now loses her concentration altogether. “We’re having some glove issues,” she giggles.

“Love issues?” Claudia pretends to not have heard very well.

Helena looks at Myka, all but breathing fire, and stiffly points to the door. “Out with you,” she spits.

Myka bites on her lips and tiptoes to the door. “You sure you don’t nee--”

“Out.” Helena emphasises the ‘T’, and Myka slips out the door, closing it silently behind her, only to rush down to where Claudia is biting on her mittens and Steve is smothering himself with a scarf - all in a futile effort to mute their laughter.

   III.

 Full retribution, however, doesn’t come until the day after. The team take turns with each other’s favourite sloped activities: snowboarding, skiing and sledding, as they do every year. Helena struggles with these, as they all involved what she had considered high-speed, low control activities, which were neither her forte nor her favourite.

So she spent the past year campaigning relentlessly to add a biathlon course to their list. She wanted to have one choice she thought she would excel at. Helena is, after all, an exceptional marksperson (even if she does say so herself, again...), and cross country skiing is just about the legitimately slowest way to move across a snowy surface, bar, perhaps, having your toboggan pulled uphill by a small child.

The team’s stance on the matter was less than enthusiastic. They didn’t really like the idea of having to brandish weapons while they were on leave. Helena thought that Steve, with his ATF training, would appreciate an opportunity to train in a more relaxed environment, but to her surprise, he took a particularly harsh position on the matter, which may (or may not) have been at Myka’s behest, to give the tall agent means to get back at Helena for something she will have undoubtedly done to her by that point in their annual trip to the Rockies.

After half a day’s worth of mastering the slopes, Myka finds Helena sitting on a wooden bench outside the visitor’s centre, after a failed third attempt on a children’s training course. Helena doesn’t notice Myka heading her way, due to her aggressive shaking of her skiing gloves. She had managed to get snow in both her gloves during her last, and rather spectacular tumble.

Myka’s skis crunch against the packed snow as she breaks a few feet away from a preoccupied Helena. She kicks the bindings loose with ease and lifts her kit from the snow. “Was it really that bad?” she calls as she walks closer to the bench, lifting her goggles up, revealing a faint ski tan.

Helena looks at Myka, trying to hate her for how at home she seems to be in this harsh, frozen, alien environment. But the twinkling smile in Myka’s eyes and the sunburn-come-frostbite on her cheeks and nose just make her so devilishly adorable. “I had just managed to aptly calculate the velocity, when there was an unexpected vector change with significant mass ---”

“Well, dash my wig, Peter,” Claudia exclaims as she grinds her skis to a halt nearby, and comes off her skis so quickly it looks as though she bounced off them, “the surface of the snow does not appear to retain its shape!”

Myka bites on her lips and looks down, knowing that the rub is not only about to land harshly, it is also about to be dealt by people other than Myka, and not orchestrated by her. Whatever Pete and Claudia come up with in a moment, is all them, a fact that will, not doubt, double the insult value.

“I shall hypothesise that the warmth of the sun and possibly other people’s movement across it may be the cause,” Pete puts on his best worst-British accent.

“I shall hypothesise further,” Claudia begins scratching a formula into the snow with her ski pole, “that these are the conditions necessary to maximise the flailing rate on a positively tentacle-y fall."

Pete bursts out laughing and Myka just about manages to keep her composure, while Helena slams her snowed gloves on the bench and walks over to Claudia. As she walks past Myka she slips on an icy patch and instinctively grabs on to Myka, who instinctively grabs on to her, only to grunt in frustration, straighten herself and pace determinedly towards Claudia, where she can scrutinise the maths.

She inspects Claudia’s work for a few minutes. She mumbles to herself, points to the snow, scribbles meaninglessly in the air, only to look at Claudia (who’s smug as a St. Bernard who’s got the Brandy), jeer “Damn you all to hell,” and fall flat on her backside as she walks back to the bench.

   IV.

 For New Year’s Eve, the penultimate day of their stay, the Gang of Eight invite significant others to join them. These are rarely romantic partners, but rather family members and good friends - people who may not know the specifics of the Warehouse, but know the people involved and know by now not to ask too many questions.

It is always assumed that Myka and Helena - a self-contained Warehouse unit - do not bring significant others, something Helena finds irritatingly assumptive.

"I still think it is unfair that if I wished to invite someone here there would be raised eyebrows," she complains from behind the closed door of the bathroom, where she's been holed up for over 45 minutes.

"I don't think anyone will really care, Helena," Myka answers, distracted, making use of this rare idle time to play an arcade game on her phone. "If anything, the guys will probably be more worried about what your inviting someone else means for you and me," she continues absent-mindedly.

"What was that, darling?" Helena asks, raising her voice.

Myka lets her phone fall in her lap and thinks about what she just said. Fearing it will open a can of worms, she changes her tack. "Since when do you care about rules? And what do you care what other people think, anyway?" she says, notably louder. "And when will you be finished in there? I need to get this stupid tuxedo on,” worried she will be late to open the festivities of the evening, seeing as she’s the host.

At the end of each of their annual retreats, the Gang elect the host for next year’s NYE celebrations, as they do the theme for the soiree. This year, Myka chairs the events, which theme is The Twenties (pun intended), and as the ringmaster, so to speak, she must dress for the role, in keeping with the theme.

Even though Myka appreciates the wealth of source material she could draw from (a narrow waisted gown of the 1820s, or an extravagant silk and velvet coat with sleeve trims of golden lace from the 1720s; A Puritan suit of the 1620s or early Tudor dresses with oversized, puffed sleeves), there is only one fitting option for her, given she is the MC.

With a nod to the 20s of the previous Century, she has traditional White Dress tuxedo, with a white bib-fronted, wing-tipped collared shirt, a white bowtie, white low-cut vest and slim waisted, high-cut tailcoat with velvet lapels.

Myka loves a tuxedo once it’s on her. It inspires slick sophistication in her which she otherwise struggles to embody. But once in that shirt and bow tie and tails - the dashing, smooth charm is effortless.

Helena likes her in a tux as well, and she has a plethora of hard evidence to prove it. Some of that evidence is in the form of a paper trail, when she had to pay for damaged returns (which is also the reason why the tuxedo Myka was waiting to put on was her own). And other evidence were the physical sort that would heal within 4-7 days (depending on the depth of bruise or scratch).

Myka’s lips curl to a sweet, nostalgic smile, remembering the last time Helena enjoyed her in her tux, which makes it easier for her to focus on how the evening will end - not only because it will be most pleasurable (irrespective of how the party actually goes), but also because she hates the beginning of it. Much as she loves a tux, she hates putting the damn thing on. The shirt is always too stiff and the bow tie is always a battle, and she always gets frustrated and sweaty doing it up. It's a lot of hard work, but the prize, she knows, is worth it.

And that's why she's eager for Helena to get out of the bathroom already, so she can get the crappy portion of tuxedoing out of the way.

She isn't at all prepared for what Helena has in store for her, though.

Helena opens the bathroom door, hiding behind it. "Are we ready for the grand unveiling?" she asks mischievously.

Myka knows she isn't ready, and her anxiety turns up a notch as she begins to contemplate the many ways in which Helena is about to prank her. Out of the thousands of possibilities, she's just about ready to put her money on a tentacle-inspired hairdo and that terrible corset Helena wears when she wants to assert her superior mechanical skill and historical authenticity.

And in all that, Myka wishes that they didn't keep this silly tradition they've picked up over the years, whereby they treat each other as colleagues when they’re out here, with the Gang, between Christmas and New Year.

This tradition started halfway through their first trip, when everyone in the Gang, Mrs Frederic included, had commented on how together-y Myka and Helena were. It was then that they mutually agreed that for 4 days every year they will treat each other the way they treat the rest of the Warehouse Family - with great care and affection, and with an equal measure of banter and playfulness.

Myka steels herself with a long breath, preparing for the climax of this year's running joke.

But then Helena steps from behind the door.

And Myka forgets to breathe out the air she inhaled to steady herself.

Helena wears a tuxedo that matches Myka's, white vest and bow tie and velvet lapels and all. She wears her hair down, a giddy smile and only the faintest hint of makeup.

Myka's reaction is precisely the one Helena had hoped for, so she takes two sauntering steps towards Myka as she bites seductively on her lower lip.

Myka's jaw drops.

"Do you approve, darling?"

Myka tries to speak but can't, now that Helena's stepped even closer to her and placed an open palm on Myka's chest, just above where her heart is pounding like a roll of drummers.

"Are you well, love?" Helena asks with a smattering of concern. Perhaps she overdid it? She'd always fancied herself a suave debonair, and she knows just how much Myka fancies her when she's at her most dapper. "Is the outfit too much?"

"Uh… nuh… no," Myka manages to utter. "The outfit is…" she tries to come up with words to describe just how utterly perfectly, deliciously, amazingly, stunningly mesmerising and sexy Helena looks that very moment.

Helena would have liked to hear the excess of superlatives of how breath-taking she looks, but she doesn't need to. The sheepish grin stamped on Myka's lips and the rose tint that her cheeks don are all the signs she needs to know that every bit of Myka approves.

"This is not what I thought you'd have on," Myka smiles, bewitched and bewitching, and bites on her own lip while placing her hands on Helena's hips, wanting to kiss her so badly.

"Dare I ask?" Helena's voice drops as she brushes her nose against Myka's.

Myka chortles lightly and leans into her lover's irresistible touch, not at all wishing to entertain any memories of the multi-limbed creatures that haunted her in the past few days. "I thought you'd stick to our holiday tradition."

“Neither can you,” Myka informed back, aiming for straightforward “snide.”

“And I never want to hear you sing again,” Helena continued.

All Myka could come up with in response to that was an inadequate “Ditto.”

Helena sniffed. “You just wanted the last word.”

Myka pointedly let Helena have that last word. To make her stew in it. In the ensuing silence, she continued to drive. On this last leg home from a retrieval, late on Christmas Eve—their very first Christmas Eve—the air between them was frostier than the South Dakota winter outside the car could ever dream of matching.

She was under no illusion that Helena cared at all about anybody saving the Queen, and she herself, while reasonably patriotic on the American side of things, hadn’t sung her way through that song since her childhood. She knew this dispute was ridiculous, and she suspected Helena knew it too. She suspected also that they both understood they were developing a pattern: A period of calm—a deepening of accord—that would sooner or later, particularly in the adrenalin-ebb aftermath of a dangerous retrieval, dissipate into some minimally motivated squabble, the respective sides of which they entrenched themselves into with such commitment that it seemed there could never be an unentrenching.

*

An early instance: Myka had threatened to storm out of their shared hotel room because Helena had mulishly refused to concede that it had been foolish to open a bottle of mini-bar water for which they would be charged five dollars.

“Go right ahead,” Helena had “suggested,” so Myka did.

In the lobby, she’d run into Pete, who wasn’t storming anywhere, just looking for free snacks. “See?” Myka demanded of him. “Like a normal person.”

“If you were normal, you wouldn’t be out here with me. ’Cause you’ve got a hot girl in a hotel room, and I know things got a little uh-oh chasing that guy today, but you’re both still in one piece.”

“Maybe not for long.”

“You volunteered for this.”

“No I didn’t. Artie said ‘Pete, Myka, Helena, get on a plane for Montgomery, Alabama,’ and so we—”

“You know that isn’t the ‘this’ I meant.”

Myka did. But she hadn’t volunteered for that “this” either. Nothing about her response to Helena was voluntary. Nothing about it had ever been voluntary.

“Fights and all,” Pete added. “After the thing”—he always called the barely averted explosion of the Warehouse “the thing,” and so did Claudia—“you could’ve let her leave. You could’ve made her leave. She would have done anything you said.”

“Not anything,” Myka said, to be contrary.

“Maybe you don’t remember how she’d hardly even sit in a chair without your say-so. Oh, but wait, I think I know somebody who remembers everything, some tall lady with a lot of hair, name rhymes with Opelika... hey, that’s you!”

“Shut up. It wasn’t... that simple.”

“It is now.”

She crossed her arms at him.

He sighed. “Lemme show you: ‘Sorry, baby,’” he said in his “Myka” voice, which was terrible. “Me too, darling,” he then said in his “Helena” voice, which was even worse. As himself, he finished, “It’s like you’ve never been in a relationship.”

In a conversation in which Pete had said several annoyingly true things, that one was the most annoyingly true. But: “It’s like,” she conceded, and he slapped the side of her head, very gently.

“Hot girl hotel room,” he said.

When Myka went back to that hotel room, the hot girl said, “I’m sorry,” as if she’d received the same instructions from Pete. “I was precipitately thirsty.”

“I’m sorry too,” Myka told her. “I was precipitately miserly.”

Myka kissed the hot girl, the hot girl kissed back, and they fumbled their way to fine.

Until the next trivial-yet-entrenched tiff... because apparently, peace was for normal people.

*

Normal people. When Myka and Helena finally made it back to the B&B, Leena, Claudia, and Steve were doing reasonably convincing “normal” impressions: drinking hot chocolate, eating cookies, and playing board games. They seemed to be playing all the board games; Leena was replacing the lid on Monopoly, which she set aside, reaching for the next box in a towering stack. “Chef’s-kiss timing,” Claudia told them. “I just bankrupted these two pathetic poser slumlords, and we’re about to start Sorry. It’s funner with four, so siddown, and you two can be a team.”

“Or not,” Myka said, glancing at Helena, who glanced back and gave a definitely not yet inhale-exhale. “Why isn’t Pete playing?”

“We’re supposed to tell you it’s because he’s doing some last-minute Christmas shopping,” Steve said.

Myka was about to ask, “This late at night?” but Claudia supplied, “Except it’s really that he goofed off today and didn’t finish inventory and thought he’d get away with it but then Artie called and yelled at him.”

“And you left him alone to keep working on it? It’s the night before Christmas, and—”

Claudia waved her hands. “And all through the Warehouse, not a creature was stirring, I swear.”

“Besides,” Leena added, “he’s a grown man.”

“Who always ruins Christmas!” said Myka.

“Always almost ruins Christmas,” Claudia corrected.

Myka demanded, “Is there anything about me that says ‘I like a close call’?”

All eyes turned to Helena, then back to Myka.

*

Of course Helena had been part of the closest of calls, and Myka hadn’t liked it at all: nothing but the outcome. The Warehouse, the saving of it, yes, the thing—but the real outcome had been the aftermath at the B&B.

That outcome was real, but it was also a dream, one that Myka had dreamed more often than she would ever have confessed to pondering in her heart, this dream of being alone with a present Helena, no disastrous endpoint looming. The dream-logic of it: I can touch her? And Myka put a hand to Helena’s elbow. Reached and did that. Helena looked at the hand, the elbow. She looked in Myka’s eyes then and said, “Don’t spare my feelings.”

Feelings? Are you really you in your skin, Myka wanted to ask. Is this your elbow. Instead, because she needed to know, she murmured, “What do you want.”

Helena didn’t say words, but she made a noise that evolution had found fit to preserve from a deep, animal past, a guttural push of sound through the throat-column: it told Myka everything. Told Myka: “Everything.”

No speaking then but by bodies, a language of desperation and culmination. Helena had a mouth that could be met by Myka’s own, clothes that could be removed to reveal a palpable body, with every response of that body real under Myka’s hands. Myka held her eyes closed for much of that night, lest sight confuse her about presence and its proof, lest she fail to attend to what her eyes could never offer: The fleshy heaviness of a tongue in response to her own. The soft give of a thigh interior under her insistent thumb. The steady pressure of a body that pushed back. No empty air, no absence; only presence.

No question marks intruded on their immediate intimacy, their immeasurable, embodied relief. Two days prior, Helena had been a sacrificeable hologram, but all at once she was Myka’s living, breathing, at-last lover. All destined... like meeting at gunpoint.

That night precipitated a fast fall into full couplehood, with seemingly little conscious choice on either of their parts. As inevitable as the gunpoint meetings, the wrenching betrayals, even the miraculous redemption.

But nothing good can possibly be so simple, Myka told herself. Or so inevitable.

“Is that what you believe?” Myka imagined Helena asking this, Socratically. She’d had so many internal conversations with Helena that she found the habit—probably a bad one—difficult to break.

“I’m tired of belief,” Myka told her beautiful, imaginary Socrates. “Sometimes I want to go back to my regular non-Warehouse life, where belief didn’t matter.”

Helena said, still in Myka’s head, still Socratic, “Or did you merely act as if it didn’t matter? Artifacts were born. Religions carried on as they do. Your ignoring belief had no effect on any of it.”

“My not ignoring it has no effect on any of it.”

“So you yourself, regardless of attitude adopted, cannot affect belief.” Socrates paused. Smiled. “Or that which is inevitable.”

Myka did, in such moments, briefly wonder why she needed the real Helena around, if the one in her head was such a reasonable facsimile. A hologram could have done that job just as well.

But the answers, the “here’s why,” came fast and thick, and Myka rejoiced that they could. The real Helena could make Myka laugh an easy laugh, because circumstances were not as they had been with that hologram, when laughter was an impossibility. The real Helena could touch Myka’s neck—not wonderingly, as Myka had known that elbow—but instead quick and hot, in that way that said “we have been intimate recently and will soon again be.” The real Helena could fall asleep and in relaxation display a face so devastating in its symmetry that Myka was inclined to regret not being Michelangelo, so as to recreate it in appropriately tributary marble.

Strange, though, or probably just ridiculous, to feel that your romantic relationship had made more sense when one of you was a hologram.

Myka should have expected Christmas, also a fraught inevitability, to loom as an existential test—yet another existential test—of that relationship.

She should have expected also that when this new existential test was administered, Pete would be the one helping to shove answer sheets and no. 2 pencils into their hands.

*

“Might be a close call or two in Sorry. Sorry!” Claudia cackled. “Anyway, go put your stuff away so we can get our Sorry on. Also our merry. We might even sing.”

“Or not,” Myka said again, and this time she got an eyeroll in response rather than meaningful breathing. An improvement? Hard to tell.

“Nobody’s required to sing anyth—” Leena began, but then she sat up very straight and cocked her head. “Do you hear that sound? Or I guess I mean, do you feel that sound? It’s not singing.”

Helena moved her head too, and not in a way Myka recognized. “I do feel that sound. In fact I believe I know that sound.”

“I do too,” Leena said.

Steve squinted. “Feels like... a weird earthquake? Is it happening all over Univille?”

Claudia said, “This is the kind of thing they blame on us even when it isn’t us. It’s why they look at us weird at the supermarket.”

“I can’t feel anything,” Myka said. “What is it?” She looked first to Helena, who was shaking her head—not at Myka, not with anger, but as if she might be able to find the right shake to rid her ears of the sound, or the feeling, or whatever it was.

“Agitated artifacts,” Leena said, performing a very similar shake. “They... rumble.”

“Agitated artifacts,” Myka repeated. “Pete’s alone at the Warehouse, it’s Christmas, and artifacts are agitated. Okay.”

Naturally, Pete chose that moment to march in, proclaiming, “I hope everybody’s ready to apologize to me.”

Steve asked, “Why should we apologize?” Now he was shaking his head too.

“Because everybody always says I ruin Christmas.”

Helena said, “As I understand the situation, the salient fact is not that they say you ruin Christmas. The salient fact is that you do ruin Christmas.”

“Almost,” Claudia corrected again. She canted her head, righted it. Canted it again.

“But this time I saved it.”

“By agitating artifacts?” Myka said, but of course he would think that. Probably encouraged them to have a party...

“More so by the minute, from the sound of things,” Leena told him.

“What? No! That isn’t what I did!”

“The artifacts are telling a different story,” Helena noted.

Claudia offered, “It’s more that they’re humming it real low. Like some geologic event that worked its way into a Björk track. Or vice versa.”

Myka—very calmly, she believed, under the circumstances—said, “What. Did. You. Touch.”

“Nothing, Mom,” he said, and his tone caused Myka to spare some sympathy for Jane Lattimer. He then said, as if it were some magnanimous confession, “Okay. Fine. I did, but I gloved up.”

“What did you touch after you gloved up?” Leena asked. “And why?”

“It was like it tapped me on the shoulder...” he began.

Still canting her head, Claudia muttered, “Sallah flashback, Sallah flashback...”

“And said ‘hey big guy’...”

Steve said, “This is already a longer story than I feel like it should be.”

“And told me it had to go the Christmas aisle...”

Myka had had enough. “If you don’t spit it out right now, I personally will Heimlich it out of you. Joyfully. WHAT had to go to the Christmas aisle?”

He turned to her and gave a palms-up shrug. “You know I don’t know anything about classical music.”

She reached to the table for the nearest board game, to throw it at him, but Helena preempted that move by saying, “Judging from Myka’s face, now is not the time for non sequiturs.”

She probably couldn’t have done much damage with a travel-size Aggravation anyway, but travel and aggravation made her think, in Helena’s direction, Oh, now you can read my face. An hour ago in the car, not so much. Then she sighed internally. Or maybe, an hour ago in the car, too well.

Pete was continuing, “But the Messiah had strong feelings.”

“Oh no,” Leena said, and Myka knew that Leena saying “oh no” in that particular way meant she knew something, and the something she knew wasn’t good, but Pete kept on, still enthusiastically proud of himself: “So I gloved up, took it where it wanted to be, and then came home. Because it isn’t Christmas till I’ve won the Trivial Pursuit Star Wars Classic Trilogy Collectors’ Edition!”

“Do I seriously have to remind you I’m the reigning champ?” Claudia demanded. “What you’re saying is, it’s never gonna be Christmas.”

“Not for a while yet,” Leena said, “because we’re going back to the Warehouse. Because I’m pretty sure I know what’s happening.”

“Why do I have to go if I can’t hear whatever it is?” Pete whined.

Myka told him, “I can’t hear it either, and it’s your fault.”

“Your ears are your own problem.”

“I might Heimlich you just for the fun of it.”

Steve said, with concern, “I’ve heard that ribs tend to break.”

Myka nodded. “Exactly.”

“Santa would not approve of that attitude, young lady,” Pete chided.

“All I do is lug around stockings full of coal,” she said. “Do your worst, Santa.”

She made the mistake of glancing at Helena, whose face betrayed a responsive ripple of disquiet. Exactly the wrong sentiment for ending a fight, even a foolish one, Myka realized: imply that nothing you carry with you is what you want. “I didn’t mean...” she began, but Claudia was demanding of Leena, “How do you know what’s happening? And what is happening?”

“He put the Messiah sheet music in the Christmas aisle,” Leena said, with what Myka considered enviable patience.

“You say that like it means something!”

“It does mean something,” Leena said. “You’ll see. More importantly, you’ll hear.”

*

At the Warehouse, when they reached the floor, they were greeted by... “Curtains?” Steve tried, because that was what they were. Tall, cream-colored damask curtains with a green floral pattern. Freestanding, blocking their path. Insistently blocking their path.

“For all of us!” Pete tried back. “Dun-dun-DUN!”

“No...” Leena said. She regarded the curtains. “I know who you are,” she said, and Myka found herself unsurprised to see the curtains rustle at that, as if in appreciation. Leena then said, “And now I know exactly what’s happening.”

“A play is beginning?” Helena suggested.

“Not quite, but you’re in the neighborhood. Surely somebody other than me knows who these curtains are really for.”

Pete leaned close to the curtains, then jumped back like they’d bit him. “Oh my god. Now that I look close—the von Trapp kids!”

“Good boy,” Leena said.

“I thought we were calling him a grown man,” groused Myka.

“Leena is providing positive reinforcement,” Helena said. Pedantic, as if Myka had never heard of such a thing.

“I know she’s providing—” But she shut herself up, sighed in frustration instead.

Leena made sure everyone was wearing gloves, then said, “Claudia, keep your goo gun in your pocket; we might find more of them taking their frustrations for a walk.”

“So do we just put things back where they belong?” Steve asked. “And they calm down and the rumble-chatter stops?”

“Any that got themselves where they aren’t supposed to be, we take them back. But here’s what else we have to do.” She paused. “Sing.”

“No,” Myka said, and “no,” she repeated. She chanced a glance at Helena, but she had closed her eyes and seemed to be pre-massaging a headache out of her temples.

Leena appeared not to have heard Myka, for she went on, “We’ll deal with the curtains first. Next, the Messiah goes back where it’s supposed to be—because that’s what started it all. After that, I think Claudia should tell us what we need to do.”

“Oh god,” Claudia said, sounding just about as dread-filled as Myka felt. “This is Caretaker practice, isn’t it?”

“What if it is?” Leena asked.

“Ugh. Thanks, Pete.”

He said, “Maybe it tapped my shoulder because it thought you needed Caretaker practice.”

Myka snorted. “Maybe it tapped your shoulder because it could tell you’re an easy mark.”

“Hey!” he protested.

“Particularly at Christmas.”

“Hey!”

Leena said, “I think the Messiah might have sensed you’d be an easy mark... mostly because you want to make everybody happy. Particularly at Christmas.”

“See? Leena understands,” he taunted Myka.

Myka once again considered the Heimlich.

They escorted the curtains back to the musicals section, passing by Ginger Rogers’s dancing shoes, and Myka was unnervingly tempted to put them on and bleed her way backwards and in high heels out of the entire situation as Leena explained, “People repurpose ‘My Favorite Things’ as a Christmas song. The curtains find that... troubling.”

Pete scratched his head. “I guess I don’t really get that. Isn’t it kinda great?”

“Wait,” Claudia said, “and this might not even be practice: I think I do get it. How they feel. So let’s say you’re you.”

“I’m me,” he said. “Gotcha. Awesome. Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Exactly. But what if some holiday thingy came along and made like it was changing you into something else? They’re afraid we’ll put ’em in the Christmas aisle, and they don’t want to be there. Unlike the Messiah, I guess. Am I wrong, Leena?”

“You’re not wrong,” Leena told her, smiling.

“I feel that too,” Steve agreed. “They’re... afraid? Afraid it’ll diminish them. They’ll be about Christmas and that’s all. That’s why they’re so agitated.”

And so the curtains were serenaded with words about raindrops, kittens, kettles, mittens, and all the rest.

“Are they happier now?” Pete asked. “Do they not feel so bad?”

Leena, Claudia, Steve, and Helena all nodded, if not entirely vigorously. Helena said, “Marginally happier. Not knowing the song, I of course couldn’t participate. I hope they aren’t offended.”

But she hadn’t seemed apologetic at all while the singing took place. In fact she’d smirked. So Myka murmured, “Thrilled, more likely.”

Helena pretended to ignore her but also bared her teeth, minimally, in Myka’s direction, as she said, “Popular culture, alas, remains a largely undiscovered country.”

“It’s just one song,” Claudia said. “You’re getting your head around more stuff all the time! Take the Muppets.”

“Last week’s Christmas special,” Helena said, and Claudia nodded. Myka knew they’d been going one per week, because that was as much as Helena could take, whereas Claudia would have set up a holly-jolly IV drip if she could. Helena continued, “The one you called a ‘crash course’ in several shows’ worth of puppets?”

Claudia nodded again, even more enthusiastically. “Muppet Family Christmas! And now you’re up to speed, so for example when I say ‘Oscar,’ you say...”

“I still fail to understand how the large bird, which seems more accurately a costume than a puppet, qualifies.”

“The answer we were looking for was ‘the Grouch,’ so maybe we’re not quite as far along as I thought. I’m not going to bother with when I say ‘Fraggle,’ you say.”

“Consumer of the structures built by the devoted little workers who wear hats.”

“Aaaand that’s why not. Although your essay answer isn’t wrong.”

“Thank you,” Helena said, performing her funny little bow that struck Myka anew, each time she saw it, as a Victorian tell.

*

In fact, Myka had come home from the Warehouse just as that “crash course” was ending: Helena, as always after such a lesson, looked bemused but relieved, while Claudia was fidgeting with post-lecture satisfaction and, most likely, disappointment that she’d have to wait an entire week till the next one. Myka had asked, “Why does Helena need to know about the Muppets?”

Claudia responded with a puzzled, “Why doesn’t she?”

“Bert, Ernie, and the distinctions therebetween,” Helena said to Myka. “Would that I were you and could retain it all.” She smiled a small “but here we are” smile, and Myka leaned over the back of the sofa and kissed that smile. Because she wanted to; because she could. The smile then widened, and Myka tried not to make the mistake of wondering why every moment wasn’t like this one.

“You two can be pretty soft when you want to be,” Claudia remarked.

Myka had thought, No, we’re not this way when we want to be. It was when they weren’t actively wanting it—or needing it—that this ease stole upon them. But here it was... so Myka kissed Helena again, then asked, “What’s for dinner?”

The asking of that question, in the softness of that moment, had seemed an ideal step forward, one not about destiny or fraught inevitability, but balance and consistency. And then Myka did make the mistake: Why couldn’t every moment be like that? What was it that disturbed all the other moments?

*

Now, as they all headed for the Christmas aisle, Pete pulled on Myka’s arm and held her back a bit from the rest. “You mouthed the words,” he accused, very quietly.

“So what if I did? You know I can’t sing.”

“Maybe it makes a difference. H.G. said the drapes were only marginally better.”

“She didn’t sing either, by the way,” Myka pointed out.

Apparently her feelings about that were clear, for Pete said, “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“I meant you and H.G. Incidentally, you walk a little bit like Big Bird.”

“We’re fine. Incidentally, if you got a chicken bone stuck in your throat I wouldn’t be at all upset about what could happen while I was saving your stupid life.”

“I sort of feel like if she choked on a chicken bone, right now, you wouldn’t want to let anybody else do the rib-breaking.”

Myka almost said a dark “you bet I wouldn’t,” but then she realized: “I think that’s always going to be true.”

Pete nodded. “Kiss her, kill her. I get it.”

Unless he was talking about vibes, he didn’t get it, not fully—Myka herself didn’t get it fully, and in everybody’s defense there was a lot to be got—but it was Christmas-sweet that he got as much as he did. She said a mollified, “Look, just don’t make me sing, okay?” Because if there was anything Myka was sure she and Helena definitely did not need right now, it was a replay of “you can’t sing” and “neither can you.”

“No promises, partner. When Leena says ‘jump’ I say ‘my knees are shot.’ You, on the other hand, when she says ‘sing’? Better say ‘how high.’”

“This is kind of a ‘my knees are shot’ situation,” Myka observed.

“What’s the matter with your knees?”

“Never mind.”

And then they reached the Christmas aisle. About which Myka felt, and felt she had a right to feel, a certain amount of post-traumatic stress.

“If you touch anything,” she told Pete, “I will turn your ribs into chicken bones.”

“That makes no sense.”

“And yet you understand me perfectly.”

He took a step away from her. “In a very mobbed-up way, yes I do.”

Helena, Claudia, Leena, and Steve had ringed themselves around a shelf, and Myka peeked over Helena’s shoulder. Only in the Warehouse, she figured, could a piece of music manage to project the idea that it was pleased with itself.

“It’s gloating at me,” Pete complained.

“It did make you do what it wanted,” Steve pointed out.

Claudia said, “It’s like it knew we’d show up right at this moment.”

“I’m pretty sure it did,” Leena said.

Myka, still at Helena’s shoulder, felt a tension in the body that was not quite touching hers. She felt a tension, too, in words that were not quite meant for her to hear as Helena murmured at the music, “What else do you know...”