"There was a layaway," she said at last. "Canceled yesterday at close. Lady in Oak Lawn. She called, said her daughter changed her mind and wants a puppy instead. Which God help her." She looked at him. "It goes back on the floor at nine o'clock. First come, first served."
Graham looked at his watch. It was eight-fifty-one.
"Store policy," said Dot, "says I put it on the shelf in aisle nine at opening. Store policy doesn't say anything about who's standing in aisle nine when I do."
She went inside. The door shut.
At eight-fifty-nine, when the brass doors on State Street swung open and the first wave of shoppers poured in, stamping snow, one of them was a tax attorney who took the escalator steps two at a time all the way up to the fifth floor, and turned the corner into aisle nine at a dead run, and found Dot Wierzbicki standing on a step stool, placing a single pink-and-silver box on the top shelf.
She climbed down. She dusted off her hands.
"Look at that," she said. "Somebody returned one."
He bought it. He paid at Dot's register, and she wrapped it herself in Halloran's green-and-gold paper, and on the little card that went under the ribbon, in her careful Palmer-method handwriting, she wrote: HOLD — ELLSWORTH. She handed it to him over the counter.