Shopgirl

tuesday

IT IS NOW THE MIDDLE of November, and the smell of Thanksgiving is in the air, which means that Christmas is waiting in the oven. The increasing number of browsers forces Mirabelle to forgo her favorite position of leaning over the counter on her elbows, something she can get away with only when there are absolutely no customers in sight.

She skips lunch because she has to visit Dr. Tracy to renew her Serzone. He asks her several questions that she correctly answers, and he writes out the prescription. She feels relieved, as her supply seems dangerously low, and is glad to have the prescription overlap by several weeks instead of four days. She worries about unforeseen events like the doctor suddenly having to be out of town, leaving her short. She also renews her prescription for birth control pills, which she takes not especially for birth control but more for her period, which in the past has been uncomfortably nonperiodic.

The rest of the day at Neiman’s seems like purgatory as tonight there is no Art Walk to look forward to; there is nothing. Her plan is to read, perhaps draw, or find an old movie on the classics channel. Maybe she can put together a phone call between herself and Loki. By the end of the day, her lower back aches and her soles burn. She prepares the register a full half hour before closing, knowing there are to be no more customers. All she has to do when six o’clock strikes is press one button and the register is closed. She is satisfyingly out minutes early, and in her car.

The streets of Los Angeles are starting to crowd regularly now in anticipation of the holidays. Even the shortcuts are clogging up, and Mirabelle uses the time in her car to plan the coming months. From Christmas Day to New Year’s Day she will be in Vermont visiting her parents and brother. She already has the airplane ticket, bought months earlier at a phenomenally low price. Thanksgiving is still open, and she knows it needs to be filled. To be alone on Thanksgiving is a kind of death sentence. The year before it had been commuted at the last minute by a visiting uncle who happened to be in town and who invited her to a small gathering at a restaurant, and then hit on her. This had been a particularly grim evening as the dinner company had also been lousy. They were a stuffy group who were having steaks and cigarettes, who were united by a rare quality on this day: they were thankless. The seldom-seen uncle on the mother’s side then drove her home, high as a kite, and under the pretense of fingering her pretty necklace, laid the back of his hand on her blouse, then asked if he could come in. Mirabelle looked at him dead in the eye and said, “I’ll tell Mom.” The uncle feigned ignorance, drunkenly walked her to the door, returned to his car, put it in reverse when he intended drive, and fled.

Mirabelle suddenly finds herself home, having no recollection of any detail of the drive from Neiman’s. She parks her car in the spot reserved for her in the clapboard garage. She lugs a bag of groceries, her purse, and an empty cardboard box up the two short flights to her insular apartment, which hangs in the air over the city of Los Angeles. At the top of the steps, she fumbles for her key, and as she sets the bag down to get it from her purse, she sees a package propped against her front door. It is wrapped in brown paper, sent parcel post, and sealed with wide packing tape. It is the size of a shoebox.

Mirabelle uses her shoulder to jar open the front door, which has been sticking slightly from the week’s rain. She puts the package on the kitchen table, double dips some dry cat food into a bowl, and checks her messages. She has none. She sits at the kitchen table and with a pair of scissors cuts off the package’s dull outer wrapping. Inside is a pale red gift box, wrapped in an expensive white bow. She cuts the ribbon, opens the box, and sees a layer of tissue paper. There is a small note card on top, sealed in an envelope. She holds it up and studies the front, then turns it over and looks at the back. There are no revealing marks or brand names.

She parts the tissue, and inside is the pair of silver satin Dior gloves that she sold last Friday. She opens the note and reads, “I would like to have dinner with you.” The bottom of the note is signed, Mr. Ray Porter.

She leaves the box on the kitchen table in a disarray of tissue. She backs out of the room and circulates nervously through the apartment, returning several times to the vicinity of the box. She doesn’t touch it for the rest of the night, and she is afraid to move it because she does not understand it.