Two people sat in the booth next to me, set ing down some rental videos on their table. That’s when I realized the connection: say the window of the corner video store. This particular Two Boots location also had a video store at ached to it.

I dashed over to the video section like it was the bathroom after I’d accidentally ingested some Louisiana hot sauce on top of my calzone. I immediately went to where The Godfather was. The movie wasn’t there. I asked the clerk where I’d find it. “Checked out,” she said.

I returned to the G section anyway and found, mis-shelved, The Godfather I I. I opened up the case and—yes!—another Post-it note, in Snarl’s scrawl:

Nobody ever checks out Godfather I I. Especially when it’s mis led. Do you want another clue? If so, nd Clueless. Also mis led, where sorrow meets pity.

I returned to the clerk’s counter. “Where does sorrow meet pity?” I asked, fully expecting an existential answer.

The clerk didn’t look up from the comic book she was reading under the counter. “Foreign documentaries.” Oh.

I went to the foreign documentaries section. And yes, next to a lm called The Sorrow and the Pity was a copy of Clueless! Inside the case for Clueless was another note:

I didn’t expect you to make it this far. Are you also a fan of depressing French lms about mass murder? If so, I like you already. If not, why not? Do you also despise les lms de Woody All en? If you want your red Moleskine notebook back, I suggest you leave instructions in the film of your choice with Amanda at the front desk. Please, no Christmas movies.

I returned to the front desk. “Are you Amanda?” I asked the clerk girl.

She looked up, raising an eyebrow. “I am.”

“May I leave something for someone with you?” I asked. I almost added, Wink wink, but I couldn’t bring myself to be that obvious.

“You may,” she said.

“Do you have a copy of Miracle on 34th Street?” I asked her.

three

–Dash–

December 22nd

“Is this a joke?” I asked Amanda. And the way she looked at me, I knew that I was the joke.

Oh, the impertinence! I should have known bet er than to mention Christmas movies. Clearly, no invitation was too small for Lily’s sarcasm. And the note:

5. Look for the warm woolen mittens with the reindeer on them, please.

Could there be any doubt what my next destination was supposed to be?

Macy’s.

Two days before Christmas Eve.

She might as well have gift-wrapped my face and pumped the carbon dioxide in. Or hung me on a noose of credit card receipts. A department store two days before Christmas Eve is like a city in a state of siege—wild-eyed consumers bat ling in the aisles over who gets the last sea horse snow globe to give to their respective great-aunt Marys.

I couldn’t.

I wouldn’t.

I had to.

I tried to distract myself by debating the di erence between wool and woolen, then expanding it to include wood vs. wooden and gold vs.

golden. But this distraction only lasted the time it took to walk the stairs from the subway, since when I emerged on Herald Square, I was nearly capsized by the throngs and their shopping bags. The knel of a Salvation Army bell ringer added to the grimness, and I had no doubt that if I didn’t escape soon, a children’s choir would pop up and carol me to death.

I walked inside Macy’s and faced the pathetic spectacle of a department store full of shoppers, none of whom were shopping for themselves. Without the instant grati cation of a self-aimed purchase, everyone walked around in the tactical stupor of the nancially obligated. At this late date in the season, all the fall backs were being used. Dad was get ing a tie, Mom was get ing a scarf, and the kids were get ing sweaters, whether they liked it or not. I had done all of my shopping online from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. on the morning of December 3; the gifts now sat at their respective houses, to be opened in the new year. My mother had left me gifts to open in her house, while my father had slipped me a hundred-dollar Bill and told me to go to town with it. In fact, his exact words were, “Don’t spend it all on booze and women”—the implication being, of course, that I should spend at least some of it on booze and women. Had there been a way to get a gift certificate for booze and women, I was sure he would have made his secretary run out and get me one over her lunch break.

The salespeople were so shell-shocked that a question like “Where do I nd the warm woolen mit ens with reindeer on them?” didn’t seem the least bit strange. Eventually, I found myself in Outer Garments, wondering what, short of an earplug, would count as an Inner Garment.

I had always felt that mit ens were a few steps back on the evolutionary scale—why, I wondered, would we want to make ourselves into a less agile version of a lobster? But my disdain for mit ens took on a new depth when looking at Macy’s (Macy’s’s?) holiday o erings. There were mit ens shaped like gingerbread men and mit ens decorated in tinsel. One pair of mit ens simulated the thumb of a hitchhiker; the destination was, apparently, the North Pole. In front of my very eyes, a middle-aged woman took a pair o the rack and placed them in the pile she’d grown in her arms.

“Really?” I found myself saying aloud.

“Excuse me?” she said, irritated.

“Aesthetic and utilitarian considerations aside,” I said, “those mit ens don’t particularly make sense. Why would you want to hitchhike to the North Pole? Isn’t the whole gimmick of Christmas that there’s home delivery? You get up there, all you’re going to nd is a bunch of exhausted, grumpy elves. Assuming, of course, that you accept the mythical presence of a workshop up there, when we all know there isn’t even a pole at the North Pole, and if global warming continues, there won’t be any ice, either.”