The Girl in Gift Wrap

Paul Hemphill

He worked in Men's Shoes and she worked in Gift Wrap, and he considered it the best part-time job he had ever had during any Christmas holiday. All day long, while he fitted feet to shoes and she wrapped Christmas gifts, they were no more than thirty feet apart. There were only thirty feet separating him and the most beautiful girl he had ever seen, and maybe it would have been better if he had a job on another floor, because the thought of being so close to her but never having spoken to her was driving him out of his mind.

The first thing he had noticed about her was the way she looked at the customers with her eyes. They were the most beautiful eyes in the world. They were dark blue, a very dark blue, with long, black eyelashes protecting them. He would go home every night remembering how she teased people by looking up at them through those long, black eyelashes. Her hair was black, too, a silken, shimmering black streaming down over her shoulders. And her face was soft and white, and her figure was like a ballet dancer's, and every day she wore baby blue or desert tan or mint green to promote all of this to the fullest. Here he was, working thirty feet away, and he did not know how much longer he could stand being so close, yet so far away. It really was a wonderfully painful kind of job, being in Men's Shoes while she was in Gift Wrap.

And now it was the last week before Christmas. He knew he was going to have to find some way to talk to her before they both went back to school, if she went to school at all, and he did not know how he was going to do it.

Once, he thought he was in love with a girl in high school. That was his senior year. All year long he tried to sit near her and her dates during the football and basketball games, and he even prayed he would be in the same classes with her. She had a lot of dates, and this discouraged him, so he never got around to asking her for a date. It wasn't until he had graduated and gone to college that he learned why she had been so popular, and because he had not dreamed she was that kind of girl, that made him feel even more awkward. But now the Christmas holidays were almost over. The crowds of shoppers were thinning. Those who came now were men buying at the last minute for their wives. There were only three more shopping days until Christmas. Three more days to do something. And he chose to make his move on her coffee break.

The snack bar where she always went for her break was not crowded. That would make it easier for him. He had waited for her to leave, and then he had followed her, and when she took one of the stools at the counter he took another, leaving one stool between them, and after their snacks had come, he cleared his throat and said. "Well, it's almost over now."

"Yes, and I hope I never see another package," she said. "I work in Gift Wrap."

"I know. I work in Men's Shoes. Next to you," he said. She seemed friendly enough. And her eyes really were beautiful.

"Ah, do you go to school?" he asked her.

"No, I'm just trying to make some money for Christmas."

"Yeah. Me, too. I'm in college."

"What are you studying?"

"Engineering. I'm going to be an engineer."

"That's wonderful. That's a good profession, isn't it?"

"It sure is," he said, looking into her beautiful blue eyes.

She said, "What's Santa Claus going to bring you for Christmas?" She laughed, a very nice laugh, when she said it.

"Oh, I don't know. Clothes, I guess. How about you?"

She answered so quickly and easily and pleasantly. That is what made it hurt. "An engagement ring," she said.

"Oh," he said. And he went back to Men's Shoes, and she to Gift Wrap. She was only thirty feet away. There were three miserable days to go.

From Writing Day by Day. ed. Robert Atwan & William Vesterman New York: Harper & Row, 1987.