By Ric Perrott

Christmas lights on Broadway hung like frozen fireworks above the sidewalks, where dark wool coats, matching fedoras, and bright shopping bags streamed in currents beneath a pewter sky. The promised snow had failed to materialize; instead, a uniquely New York winter light—sharp and metallic—sliced through the plate-glass windows of Gimbels department store. Inside, vast banners urged shoppers to seize the “Best Prices of 1962!” as warmth and commerce tangled together in a seven-story monument to aspiration.

This holiday season had transformed the place into a cathedral of calculated cheer. Thousands of golden bulbs cascaded in perfect strands from the ceiling, creating a canopy of artificial stars reflecting in the polished marble below. Mannequins posed in stiff tableau, plastic limbs advertising familial joy, while speakers disguised as cherubs dispensed Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” for the tenth time today. Hand-blown glass ornaments imported from Vienna adorned the traditional, eighteen-foot tree that commanded the central atrium where shoppers moved with the distracted intensity of people fulfilling obligations rather than satiating desires.

Down the escalators, past the twinkling jewelry displays and the gentlemen perched on velvet ottomans outside fitting rooms, the store unfolded into the second floor’s women’s accessories and fragrances, where ladies pursing identical red lips offered paper strips dipped in eau de parfum to passing customers who mostly declined via apologetic smiles. Nearby, a silver plastic reindeer stationed beside a mannequin in a cashmere wrap tilted slightly to the left, as though it might topple over from exhaustion.

Behind the longest counter, two young women stood in the store’s uniform—black dresses trimmed by narrow white collars, a costume of servitude and authority in equal measure. Doris, twenty-six and a veteran of the floor, leaned her hip against the register to ease the pressure on feet that had been standing since nine. Six years in the same spot had taught her where to position herself to catch the occasional blast from the heating vent without being visible to floor supervisors. Her colleague, Pauline, twenty-one, maintained the posture she’d learned during orientation, spine straight, hands clasped, eager to assist.

Doris surveyed the Wednesday crowd using the calculating gaze of a card counter. She knew at a glance which browsers might become buyers with a little encouragement. Such discernment was both her gift and her curse—she could separate the cash from the coats before they’d even shaken the winter chill from their shoulders. Yet the skill failed her whenever she’d turn it on herself, leaving her staring into the display glass with a disquieting blankness.

She glanced at Pauline. “They’re just killing time before the matinee. This place is total antsville.”

Pauline efficiently aligned the silver bracelets beneath the glass, while Doris calibrated her smile for an older woman examining a pair of leather gloves; the corners of her mouth lifted mechanically, eyes remaining as flat as the frozen puddles outside. When the woman wandered away, the smile dropped like a curtain. From the top of the escalator, a figure in forest-green wool ascended the steps. Her eyes caught Doris’s, prompting a smile and a wave. Doris returned the greeting in a reflexive nod of professional courtesy.

“There’s that woman from last week,” Doris said, tilting her chin toward the escalator. “All show and no go. Seven scarves I showed her. Seven. Navy, cranberry, two different plaids, a paisley—she kept saying the colors were wrong, the fabric scratched, it made her neck look short.” Doris’s voice carried the weight of someone recounting a natural disaster. “Forty minutes of my life, Pauline. Forty minutes of yes, ma’am and let me check on that while she hemmed and hawed like she was buying a Chevrolet instead of a ten-dollar piece of silk. She said I smelled nice, though, so that made it all worth it. What a drag.”

Pauline clicked her tongue, a sound like ice cracking. “They think we’re just mannequins that breathe. Like we exist to serve their indecision.”

“They don’t think about us at all,” Doris corrected, watching the woman drift past them, her unhurried deliberation a specific brand of irritant.

She stopped at a display of ornamental letter openers, choosing one—silver-plated, bearing a small pearl inlay—and examined it, applying the thoughtful attention one usually reserves for diamonds. Her gloves, removed for closer inspection, lay folded neatly over her forearm.

“It’s a letter opener,” Pauline murmured. “They all do the same thing.”

Doris leaned in, voice dropping to match Pauline’s. “Maybe she’s the type who chases the postman. You know, writes to everyone she’s ever met and expects a reply. My aunt’s like that—sends Christmas cards to people she sat next to on a bus in 1956.”

“No, that’s not it.” Pauline said as the woman replaced the letter opener and moved to a display of small crystal animals. “Look at how carefully she’s shopping. It’s a gift, but a cheap one. Something she can wrap up that looks nice but doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.”

“For who though?” Doris’s eyes followed the woman. “Neighbor? Office Secret Santa?”

Pauline sharpened her assessment. “Sister. Probably older, unmarried. The kind who decorates her pad with little glass figurines and doilies under everything. They exchange the same ten dollars every Christmas, buying each other useless things that collect dust.”

The woman selected a small crystal bird—not much larger than a walnut—turning it to catch the light.

“Ain’t that a bite,” Pauline said, touching her cheek as if to confirm her youth was still intact. “Imagine that being your Christmas. No husband, no kids, just exchanging dust-catchers with your sister.”

“She probably works as a secretary,” Doris continued, a peculiar tightness grabbing her chest. “Thirty years at the same desk, taking notes for men who started after her.”

“Wonder if she ever had chances,” Pauline said. “You know, not to end up alone. Wonder if she made choices she regrets.”

Two women approached the counter, distinct as night and day: a blonde draped in a cherry-red mohair coat sporting pearl buttons the size of quarters, and a brunette wearing a simple navy peacoat—her husband’s no doubt—that had seen better days. Mohair veered toward Pauline while Peacoat headed straight for Doris.

“Excuse me,” Peacoat said, her voice carrying New Jersey in its vowels. “May I see that silver bracelet? The turquoise charm.”

Doris’s smile was born of professional swiftness. “Of course.”

She lowered herself to one knee, careful not to catch her stockings on the rough underside of the display case. She’d laddered one a week ago and had to toss it. Even her discount left them too expensive to squander.

The bracelets lay in neat rows against black velvet, their silver links catching light from the strategically mounted bulbs in the case. Doris slid her fingers around the requested piece: an inlaid snowflake dangling from a delicate chain.

As she retracted her hand, the glass reflection played a markedly different scene. Pauline bagged Mohair’s silver teardrop earrings, which normally cost $9.95, but Pauline’s mouth formed the words “fourteen ninety-five” with an expression of warm customer-service grace. Mohair counted out three crisp five-dollar bills.

Doris froze mid-squat. In the reflection, Pauline deftly worked the register drawer like an expert magician performing sleight-of-hand. Honest Abe’s face disappeared into the pocket of her uniform—not the prominent pocket, but a smaller one she’d clearly sewn herself along the inside seam.

“Miss? Is something wrong?” Peacoat asked.

Doris blinked. “No, I’m—” Her mouth had gone inexplicably dry. “One moment.”

She retrieved the bracelet and rose to her feet like someone emerging from deep water. Her hands fastened it around Peacoat’s wrist—while her mind calculated frantically. Five dollars. A day’s wages. A week of lunches. Theft.

“It’s beautiful,” Peacoat said, turning her wrist in the light. “But I think it’s too big.”

“We could remove a few links,” Doris said, though her mind still lingered in the reflection.

Peacoat declined, smiled, and handed the bracelet back. Doris turned as Pauline closed the register, and their eyes met across three feet of glass and air—a small distance that felt like a chasm. Pauline’s face registered a flash of panic before settling into something more complex.

Doris rearranged the display of leather wallets, sorting them by color. Five dollars stolen. So casual. How long had she been doing this? She glanced at Pauline, who examined her fingernails with exaggerated interest, a flush creeping up her neck to stain her cheeks. The piped-in music filled the emptiness through its relentless “pa-rum-pum-pum-pum.”

A dowdy woman tromped over, wearing a camel-hair coat that desperately needed a shave. “Excuse me, do you have these in burgundy?” she asked, holding up a pair of black leather gloves.

“Right this way, ma’am,” Doris said, sliding deliberately in front of Pauline. “The winter colors are just around here.”

Doris led the woman to a display across the aisle, spine as rigid as the mannequin flaunting the hot pink pillbox hat beside it. Behind them, Pauline’s hands trembled as she wiped down the already clean glass of the display counter.

When she returned, Pauline adjusted the silver tissue boxes, feigning detached indifference. “What do you think you’re doing?” Doris whispered, lips barely moving.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Pauline replied.

“Don’t.” Doris fired a glance colder than the parking meter outside. “I saw you take it.”

Pauline’s shoulders, set in brittle defiance moments before, collapsed, and her eyes fell to the counter as if it had fractured right in front of her. A middle-aged man in crooked wire-rimmed glasses approached, inquiring about a compact for his daughter. Pauline stepped forward. “Certainly, sir. I can help you.”

Doris hovered behind while Pauline’s hands moved too quickly—dropping a beveled compact the man caught and returned, his face a mask of embarrassed courtesy. Her performance frayed at the edges: smile too wide, laugh too loud.

The man took his packaged gift and departed while Doris cornered Pauline between the register and the gift wrap. “Why shouldn’t I report you?” she asked, voice low but clear as the crystal ornaments dangling from the garland above.

Pauline’s face crumpled like gift tissue.

“Because I’m pregnant.” She pressed her hand to her mouth, eyes flooding, and fled toward the employees-only door at the rear of the floor, leaving Doris standing next to the bombshell she’d just dropped. The music droned on, and Doris looked down at the register, then back to the door. Whatever she’d expected Pauline to say, it certainly wasn’t that.

***

The employee break room. A cheerless box closed in by walls the color of nicotine stains. The lights stuttered overhead, casting the complexion of day-old bread onto everyone beneath them, while a dusty plastic wreath hung crookedly on the wall.

Pauline hunched over the Formica table, shoulders trembling under her uniform, a handkerchief balled in her fist. Doris had been ready to march her into Mr. Franklin’s office, had even rehearsed the speech—but now?

“You’re what?” Doris asked, sliding into the chair opposite. The vinyl seat was cold through her stockings, and a garter clip pinched her thigh.

Pauline looked up, and the lights caught a tear track. “Pregnant.”

The word hung in the air like cigarette smoke, and somewhere beyond the door, Nat King Cole crooned about roasting chestnuts.

“How?” Doris asked, then shook her head. “No, I mean—I know how, I just…what happened?”

“Remember the dreamboat I told you about back in September?” Pauline dabbed at her nose. “Went to a party with him. Friend of a friend. We got drunk. I let him screw me in the back seat of his car.” Her voice thinned to a whisper. “Didn’t think any more of it until I missed…you know. The doctor confirmed it Monday.”

Her face collapsed inward, and Doris leaned across the table. Her fingers stopped an inch from Pauline’s wrist, hovering, before finally settling on the girl’s pallid skin.

Doris leaned forward until their foreheads nearly touched, searching Pauline’s swollen eyes. “You’re not keeping it?” she breathed.

Pauline shook her head, the movement almost imperceptible, and fresh tears spilled down her cheeks.

“My friend Cheryl, she had the procedure done last year.” Pauline’s voice emerged thin, barely audible over the hum of the refrigerator. “Two hundred dollars, but she’s okay now.” Her fingers picked at a loose thread on her uniform. “I don’t have that kind of money.”

“Do you have anything?”

“Eighty-five bucks,” Pauline stated flatly.

The five-dollar bill made terrible sense now—the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle nobody wanted to complete. The realization settled, and Doris’s shoulders drooped.

“You could have told me, you know?”

Pauline looked up, incredulous. “Oh, right. That’s just the sort of thing you regularly share at lunch.” Her voice cracked.

“I didn’t mean—”

“What am I supposed to do? Tell my parents?”

“If you got caught…”

“I don’t have a choice, Doris. What are my options? Wait until I start showing and then get fired? Get kicked out when my mother finds out? End up at a home for unwed mothers?” Pauline huffed out a bitter laugh.

“There are people who can—”

“Can what? Take advantage of me? Tell me that Jesus wants me to keep the baby? I’m nobody, Doris. Just a body behind a counter. Replaceable. I needed the money, so I took it. If you have to report me, then do it.”

The break room door swung open. Rayanne from Housewares paused at the threshold, eyebrows rising at the scene.

“Everything okay?” She adjusted her name tag, eyes darting between them.

“Her grandmother passed,” Doris said, the lie arriving easily. “Got the call this morning.”

Rayanne’s face arranged itself sympathetically. “Oh, Paula, I’m so sorry for your loss.” She lingered awkwardly for a moment before retreating, the door sighing shut behind her.

Pauline looked up, reddened eyes wide. “Paula? A year and she still doesn’t know my name. And why drag my gran into this? She’s doing just fine in Schenectady, thank you very much.”

A laugh escaped Doris, sudden and unexpected as summer thunder. After a moment, Pauline joined her, the sound hollow but genuine, and the coiled tension between them unspooled.

Doris glanced at the wall clock, its round face dispassionate and mocking. “Clean yourself up. We need to get back out there before Mr. Franklin notices.”

Pauline dabbed at her face. “You—you’re not going to report me?”

Doris studied the girl’s terrified face. Mascara trails down her cheeks looked like tiny roads leading nowhere. She thought of the register and its temptation, of the five-dollar bill that represented both crime and desperation. Her hand found Pauline’s shoulder, feeling the bone beneath the thin fabric.

“Let’s get back to work,” she said, and walked out.

***

The counter glittered under the artificial stars as Doris held her post. The throngs had thinned while they were gone, and fewer shoppers crowded the aisles, but those who remained moved with the focused intensity of people running out of time. Pauline arrived minutes later, her face freshly powdered but still puffy around the eyes.

Doris monitored the register drawer each time Pauline opened it. Had it always clicked shut that way? Five dollars at a time would take a while. A hundred plus to go—how many sales would that take? How many customers overcharged?

“She’s still here,” Pauline whispered, nodding toward the fragrance counter where the woman in forest-green stood examining several bottles. “Guess she’s really making a day of it. Probably the most excitement she’ll get all year.”

Doris’s laugh came automatically, but her thoughts drifted to Richard. It would be three years next month. He’d talked about marriage once, back when Kennedy was inaugurated. Now, he talked about the expense of a family, about waiting for promotions that never materialized.

“She’s going for the Evening in Paris,” Pauline said, voice brittle. “Bet it’s for her cousin, the one that’s prettier and got all the dates while she sat home feeding the cat.”

Doris wore Evening in Paris. She’d discovered it as a teenager, drawn to the stunning cobalt-blue bottle while sneaking into her aunt’s bedroom during Thanksgiving. She’d dabbed it onto her wrists, breathed in the floral fragrance, and was smitten.

“Wonder what poor sap is getting that for Christmas,” Doris mused, hoping Richard had actually listened last month when they’d discussed potential presents. He’d failed spectacularly last year when he got her a blender and called it “practical.”

“I bet her children never call,” Pauline said, voice low and sharp as a stiletto. “Can’t you just see it? Her sitting by the phone in some musty apartment, the flowered wallpaper faded, waiting for a ring that never comes?”

Doris nodded, imagining her mother’s face on Sunday nights—that expectant disappointment when none of her daughters phoned. What if she ended up like that? What if Richard never proposed? What if—the thought emerged unbidden—she’d found herself in Pauline’s predicament, without even the promise of a ring to soften the blow?

A janitor wheeled his mop bucket past, leaving behind the astringent scent of pine cleaner, and Mr. Franklin, their floor manager, straightened up their already-perfect displays. Doris’s feet throbbed in her black pumps. She’d shifted her weight from one hip to the other so many times that both sides now ached equally.

“Excuse me, dear.”

The woman in the forest-green coat stood before her, holding a small package wrapped in silver paper, a sprig of holly tucked under its ribbon. Pauline let out an almost inaudible gasp beside her.

“I wanted to thank you properly for your help last week.” The woman’s voice had the polished edges of a proper upbringing, but without the usual condescension. “Your patience went truly beyond the call of duty. My daughter is going to love the Paisley scarf you selected—she has a dress that will complement it perfectly.”

Doris blinked. The woman wasn’t supposed to have a daughter. She was supposed to be a childless spinster…with a cat.

“A small token.” The woman extended the package. “Of my appreciation.”

Doris’s hands moved automatically to accept it. “I—thank you, that’s very kind, but customers aren’t supposed to—”

“It’s Christmas,” the woman said, her smile as warm as cinnamon. “Rules can bend a little.”

“Merry Christmas,” Doris managed.

“Merry Christmas to you both.” The woman nodded to Pauline before walking away. Her gloves—not so dated after all—were elegant against the wool of her coat.

Doris stood static while the silver package warmed her hands as though it contained something alive. The woman’s green coat faded down the escalator, swallowed by the crowd, and following it was the architecture of assumptions Doris had constructed, leaving only the truth. A daughter. A paisley scarf selected thoughtfully. The crystal bird for someone else entirely—someone real, someone loved.

The Christmas lights felt overly garish, and the music unbearably loud. Each observation she and Pauline exchanged had been a small cruelty dressed up as wit. Something shifted in Doris’s chest, a sensation like wiping the snow from a windshield.

“Well?” Pauline leaned close. “Aren’t you going to open it?”

Doris tugged at the ribbon with numbed fingers, and the sprig of holly fell onto the counter. Inside lay a cobalt-blue bottle of Evening in Paris.

The glass caught the light, twinkling strands of blue on the counter, and Doris’s throat closed. Her perfume—the one she’d worn since high school, the one she dabbed behind her ears every morning before the crosstown bus. The woman had noticed. While Doris had been pulling scarves from drawers and silently cataloging every imagined failure in this woman’s life, the woman had been listening and paying attention to her. Treated Doris as a person worth remembering, worth thanking, worth this small and perfect gesture.

“Don’t we feel like wet rags now?” Pauline clucked her tongue, voice tight.

Doris’s face went slack, and the color drained from her cheeks as though someone had pulled a plug.

“Cover the register,” Doris said, clutching the bottle. “I’m taking ten.”

She threaded her way across the floor. The little blue bottle was heavier than it should be, like it had been meant for someone else to carry.

Doris slipped behind the fragrance counter like a woman keeping an appointment. The smell of a dozen random fragrances assaulted her.

“Hi Marge, settling in all right?” she asked, nodding to the tall blonde holding an aspirator. Marge was relatively new to Gimbels but understood the hierarchy of department store politics well enough to step aside. Doris slid between her and the register, moving as one who knew all the boundaries of the store and exactly when they could be crossed. “Just need to process a quick return.”

She reached beneath the counter and extracted a carbon-copied form she knew by heart. Her fingers found a pen in the cup beside the register, and she filled out the boxes swiftly: date, item, price, reason for return. She wrote “unwanted gift” in the last field, though the truth was far more complicated than the small box allowed room for.

Marge raised her hand, and Doris turned to meet her eyeline. “First employee return?” Doris asked. “I understand. I’ll be out of your way in no time.”

Doris popped the register, swapped the form for fifteen dollars, and her hip knocked the drawer closed. She passed the perfume to Marge, who held it in both hands as if receiving something sacred.

“Restock this for me, would you, dear? You’re doing great.”

Doris strode back to accessories with purposeful steps. The three bills felt insubstantial between her fingers—far too light for the weight they needed to carry.

Pauline wrapped a wallet for an elderly woman, her posture perfect but face hollowed. The transaction completed, the customer departed, red-and-gold bag clutched to her chest, wearing a holiday smile.

Pauline’s eyes still held shame and the particular desperation of having so much to lose when Doris stepped behind the counter, caught Pauline’s hand, and pressed the bills into her palm, fingers folding over, closing her hand around the money. “It’s not enough, I know.”

Pauline stared at her fist, then at Doris. Understanding bloomed across her face like frost on a windowpane. “Doris, I can’t—”

“Just be careful,” Doris whispered, then winked. “Someone is always watching.”

The words held between them—a warning, yes, but also an acknowledgment of a shared secret. She knew the math—it would take weeks of scrimping and stolen fives to bridge the gap.

Pauline’s chin trembled, and she flung her arms around Doris in a fierce embrace, right there in the middle of the glittering accessories department, a drowning person clinging to driftwood.

“Merry Christmas,” Doris said, patting the younger woman’s back.

Above them, the Christmas lights hummed, casting their golden net over the aisles. Beyond the tall plate-glass windows, New York City continued its winter dance, indifferent to the small mercy playing out on the second floor. Doris adjusted her dress, the ghost of Evening in Paris still clinging to her fingertips—a wisp of a luxury she’d traded for something genuine.

December Girls ©2025 Ric Perrott. All Rights Reserved