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get him to go away this afternoon, but he said he has to give me my heart’s desire first.” She looked up at Fred, who was cautiously sniffing one of the organic ornaments. “Didn’t you find out anything on the Net?”
    “I found out there are a lot of loonies with computers. What
are
these?”
    “By-products of the Brazilian rain forest.” She stood up. “I told him my heart’s desire was for him to leave, and he said I didn’t know what I really wanted.”
    “Which is what?”
    “I don’t know,” she said. “I went into the living room to answer the door, and he said that luckily he knew what I wanted because he was a spirit, and I told him to stay right where he was, and he disappeared.”
    “Show me,” he said.
    She took him into the living room and pointed at where he’d been standing, and Fred squatted down again and peered at the carpet.
    “How does he disappear?”
    “I don’t know. He just … isn’t there.”
    Fred stood up. “Has he changed anything else? Besides the tree?”
    “Not that I know of. He turned the TV on without the remote,” she said, looking around the room. The shopping bags were still on the coffee table. She looked through them and pulled out the video. “Here. I’m your Secret Santa. I’m not supposed to give it to you till Christmas Eve, but maybe you’d better take it before he turns it into a snowy owl or something.”
    She handed it to him. “Go ahead. Open it.”
    He unwrapped it. “Oh,” he said without enthusiasm. “Thanks.”
    “I remember last year at the party we talked about it, and I was afraid you might already have a copy. You don’t, do you?”
    “No,” he said, still in that flat voice.
    “Oh, good. I had a hard time finding it. You were right when you said we were the only two people in the world who liked
Miracle on 34th Street.
Everybody else I know thinks
It’s a Wonderful Life
is—”
    “You bought me
Miracle on 34th Street?”
he said, frowning.
    “It’s the original black-and-white version. I hate those colorized things, don’t you? Everyone has gray teeth.”
    “Lauren.” He held the box out to her so she could read the front. “I think your friend’s been fixing things again.”
    She took the box from him. On the cover was a picture of Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed dancing the Charleston.
    “Oh, no! That little rat!” she said. “He must have changedit when he was looking at it. He told me
It’s a Wonderful Life
was his favorite movie.”
    “Et tu, Brute?”
Fred said, shaking his head.
    “Do you suppose he changed all my other Christmas presents?”
    “We’d better check.”
    “If he has …” she said, darting into the kitchen. She dropped to her knees and started rummaging through them.
    “Do you think they look the same?” Fred asked, squatting down beside her.
    “Your
present looked the same.” She grabbed a package wrapped in red-and-gold paper and began feeling it. “Evie’s present is okay, I think.”
    “What is it?”
    “A stapler. She’s always losing hers. I put her name on it in Magic Marker.” She handed it to him to feel.
    “It feels like a stapler, all right,” he said.
    “I think we’d better open it and make sure.”
    Fred tore off the paper. “It’s still a stapler,” he said. looking at it. “What a great idea for a Christmas present! Everybody in Documentation’s always losing their staplers. I think PMS steals them to use on their Christmas memos.” He handed it back to her. “Now you’ll have to wrap it again.”
    “That’s okay,” Lauren said. “At least it wasn’t a Yanomamo ornament.”
    “But it might be any minute,” Fred said, straightening up. “There’s no telling what he might take a notion to transform next. I think you’d better call your sister again, and ask her to ask the Maharishi if
he
knows how to send spirits back to the astral plane, and I’ll go see what I can find out about exorcism.”
    “Okay,” Lauren said, following him to the door.