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There was a bell over the door that dinged as she stepped inside. Ethel cringed at the sound and the sudden glare of light after the dimness of the snow-fogged street outside, and had to smother the instinct to turn around and go back to her apartment and bury herself in her blankets.
"Oh hey!" a woman called before Ethel could get her balance back. "I'll be with you in a sec!"
Too late, then. Ethel hunched her shoulders forward in her coat and looked around.
The interior of the shop was brightly lit and the shelves were neatly organized. The nearest one was books, and Ethel looked over them halfheartedly as a brunette woman carrying a box emerged from a back room and set it on the counter.
"Welcome to the No Bullshit Emporium," the woman said, her voice the same one from earlier. Ethel was vaguely reassured that there wasn't a third person lurking in the back of the store, well, not anyone she'd heard, though there was always the chance that someone she hadn't heard was lurking there, wasn't there? Oh God, now she was going to fall down an anxiety spiral, and she really should have just stayed in bed, but she was here already and the counter lady was still talking to her: "Is there something I can help you find, or were you just browsing?"
Just browsing, the anxiety-ridden core of Ethel's brain demanded she say, JUST BROWSING AND SHE'LL LEAVE US ALONE, but she reached deep into the core of Patience and Self-Respect and All Those Grownup Talents she'd been cultivating for the past few months and said, "I need to buy someone a Christmas present."
"Oh, great! Well, do you know what they like?"
That wasn't the horrible thing she'd been half-bracing for. She'd expected something like "Leaving it a little late, aren't you?" because seriously, what do you expect when you go into the only store open on the block at half past eleven, at night, on Christmas Eve looking for a Christmas present?
So it took her a moment to recover and say, "Um, I... don't, actually. Have any ideas. I mean..."
"Well, you've got plenty of time, so feel free to look around." The clerk waved at the shelves. "You know what kind of stuff we carry?"
"Yeah, like," Ethel looked over the shelf of books she was still standing next to. The first title was "Impress Lawyers at Cocktail Parties, Vol 3". "Stuff that's had all the bullshit and the marketing taken out of it. I've been in once before." She took a deep breath and said, "Mostly it's just you're open. I mean..."
The woman leaned forward on the counter and nodded attentively.
Ethel sighed. "I mean, we hadn't actually talked about getting presents. Or I mean, we had, but we'd told each other not to bother, y'know? I've spent enough shitty Christmases on my own that I've stopped expecting them, to be honest, and her family is all on the other coast, so she usually just sends cards, so we just said forget it, only she came back from New Orleans--she's a stewardress, right, so she gets to spend like half a second in all these really cool places, and Jesus now I'm just babbling..."
"No, it's okay," the woman said, "keep going."
"Right, so she came back and she said I know I said we weren't going to do gifts, and she hands me this mug with, like, voodoo creepers and shit making up the handle and "Black Witch Wants Coffee" on the side, and she just picked it up in the airport because it made her think of me, and now I'm all like fuck, how did she manage to find something which was just stupidly kitchy enough that it doesn't seem like she angsted over it but thoughtful enough that it's perfect enough for my lighter part of my black sense of humor, and now I have to get her something because of the stupid social demand of gift reciprocity, even though she said she still didn't want anything. And because she said she didn't want anything and because this all happened so fast I've been procrastinating until literally five minutes ago, when I threw on a coat and ran down here in my PJ pants because I desperately need to buy my friend a gift so I don't feel like even more of a shitty human being than I normally do."
The woman nodded wisely. Ethel winced and said, "Please forget what I said about not wearing real pants."
"Hey, we have the heat on in here for your comfort and mine," she said.
"Okay. That's cool. Okay." Ethel took a couple deep breaths. "So right, I need a good gift, but like, nothing that makes me look as desperate as I am for diving out of my apartment in the middle of the night."
The woman had a strange smile on her face. "Sounds like what you're looking for is the True Meaning of Christmas."
Ethel blinked. "I thought that was about baby Jesus and something about a manger."
"No, I mean Christmas here, now," she said, "the whole multicultural secular shebang. You know, how we took a Pagan ritual and grafted religious significance onto it, and then smothered all the religious stuff in kitchy commercialism and iconography lifted from ad campaigns and terrible TV movies, and yet somehow everyone finds meaning and comfort in those rituals, whether they do the whole snowed-in-with-family-and-a-Christmas-goose straight out of Norman Rockwell, or they spend their evening alone with a box of Chinese food writing smut for someone they've only met online. It's like everyone has this deep need during the darkest days of winter to share fire and food, even if only metaphorically."
Ethel stared at her for a second. "I guess you can't get much less bullshit than that," she said. "What was that about writing porn?"
"Speaking of gifts some people give, you know."
"Oh, man." Ethel shook her head. "Like, I wish that were my life, that I could give someone a porn story for Christmas. That would be great."
"So why not?"
"I do not have anything in any shape for showing people right now," Ethel said, "Much less for gifting. Man, what I need is, like, something she wouldn't get herself, only not too kitchy, something like..."
She turned slightly and her eye caught on a rack of costume jewelry. Tentatively, she reached into the cascade of necklaces and pulled out a pendant, a silver twist with pink rhinestones dangling from it, just big enough to cradle in her hand.
She flipped it over and read off the back, "You'd never buy me for yourself / I saw this and I thought of you."
"Is that what you're looking for?" the woman said.
"Yeah," Ethel said. "Yeah, something just like this."
"Well, great," she said, "It's five bucks but I'll let you have it for three, okay? Christmas sale."
"Five-no-three is perfect to stay within my still-have-to-bus-to-work-this-month budget," Ethel said. "It really is a Christmas miracle."