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the drawing of the MacGuffin showing how to detach the silencer from the gun.
    â€œNo toxic waste,” Nolan said. “It’s a Mac One.”
    He slid the instructions back in the box. “Two thousand,” he said, and then Trudy heard somebody say, “I’ll be damned,” and turned to see Reese staring at her from the front of the checkout line.
    â€œYou found it,” he said.
    â€œYes.” She turned back to Nolan as he closed the box again. “No. I’m not selling it. This one is Leroy’s.” She checked to make sure the MacGuffin was still in the box, complete with hand grenade and gun, and then her cell phone rang.
    She fumbled the boxes until she could hold both of them with one arm, looked at the caller ID, clicked the phone on, and said, “Hello, Courtney.”
    â€œDid you get it?” Courtney said, and Trudy pictured her, sitting on the edge of her Pottery Barn couch, her thin fingers gripping her Restoration Hardware forties black dial phone, every auburn Pre-Raphaelite ringlet on her head wired with tension.
    â€œSort of.” Trudy looked through the plastic window on the front of the Mac box at the fat little homicidal doll. “Damn, he’s ugly.”
    â€œWhat do you mean, sort of? Did you get him? ”
    The line moved and Trudy stepped forward, bumping her shopping bag into the woman in the bobble hat.
    â€œI’m so sorry,” she said as the woman turned. “Really sorry.”
    The woman smiled at her, motherly in a knitted cap with red and green bobbles, her arms full of teddy bears. “Isn’t it just awful, this Christmas rush?…”
    Her eyes narrowed as she saw the MacGuffin. Animals in the bush probably looked like that when they sighted their prey. Trudy clutched the MacGuffin box tighter.
    The woman jerked her face up to Trudy’s. “Where did you get that?”
    â€œIn the back, shoved behind some other boxes.” Trudy tried to sound cheerful and open. “Boy, did I get lucky.”
    The woman’s chin went up. “That’s not this year’s.”
    â€œNo toxic waste.” Trudy nodded. “Well, you can’t have everything.”
    â€œI’ll give you a hundred dollars for it,” the woman said, her eyes avid.
    Piker. “No, thank you.”
    â€œWho are you talking to?” Courtney said, her voice crackling with phone static.
    â€œA lovely woman who just tried to buy the MacGuffin from me.”
    â€œNo!”
    â€œOf course not, but listen, I’ve got last year’s model. The Mac One. I don’t think—”
    â€œEvil Nemesis Brandon is getting this year’s model. The Mac Two. With extra toxic waste.”
    Trudy shifted her weight to her other foot. “Okay, this ‘Evil Nemesis Brandon’ stuff? You have to stop that. Do you want Leroy thrown out of kindergarten for calling names?”
    â€œEvil Nemesis Brandon’s mother knows we don’t have a Mac,” Courtney said. “I saw her today at Stanford Trudeau’s Christmas party. She said if we hadn’t found one, Brandon would let Leroy borrow his last year’s doll.”
    â€œOkay, she’s a terrible person, but you have to stop calling her kid names.”
    Trudy shifted the boxes, trying not to drop either one, and the eyes of the woman in front of her followed the Mac box. A man with a cap with earflaps, standing in front of the woman in front of Trudy, looked back idly and then froze and said, “Is that a Major MacGuffin?”
    â€œLast year’s model,” Trudy said to him, and shifted the boxes again. It’s like being on the veldt. Gazelle vs. lions.
    The woman in front of her stepped closer, and Trudy backed up and bumped into Nolan.
    Lots of lions.
    â€œDo you have any idea how humiliating that was? ” Courtney was saying. “Do you have any idea—”
    â€œWell, that’s what you get for going to a