I was giving out hand sanitizer packets in my elf costume when I saw her.

I loved working at the bookstore, but I hated wearing that damn elf suit every year. As a redhead, I felt that the candy-striped stockings and the jolly bright green of the coat were not the right colors for my complexion. That year I topped it off with a COVID mask of the same uncomplimentary green, right in the middle of my face. The fake, long ears itched and the bells on my shoes jingled when I moved. It also didn’t help that my name, my actual real name, was Cinnamon. How could someone named Cinnamon, my boss argued, refuse to be Santa’s elf?

            Then she walked by, and I wanted to burn that costume. She wore a Frieda Kahlo T-shirt and blue jeans. Her mask said, “Coughy filter,” and it had a cartoon coffee cup on it. Her hair was a chaos of long, dark curls, she wore green, horn-rimmed glasses, shouldered a messenger bag, and was clearly not headed for the bookstore.

I squeaked out a “hi” as she approached. She didn’t slow her roll, but smiled with her eyes (no, really, I could tell), and walked right on past me to the coffeeshop two stores down.

I watched her until she disappeared into the shop. I didn’t even give a sanitizer packet to the lady who stepped inside the bookstore. When I realized my mistake, I broke after the customer. My job was to greet holiday customers, make sure they were masked, and politely insist that they wipe their hands before they came in. It was literally the only thing I was responsible for that day.

“Ma’am,” I said, stepping in front of her.

She yelped, not expecting an elf to pop out of nowhere and yell in her face. But it was a good thing I stopped her. Her mask hung so far below her nose I could see the pink of her lip.

“Sorry,” I said. “Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas,” she said, hand at her chest.

I held out the sanitizer packet. “Santa would like you to have a safe and happy holidays.”

“Oh,” she said.

“He would also like you to wear your mask over your nose and tug it securely around your chin. Like this…” I pinched my nose and pulled the bottom of my mask further past my chin.

“There’s a Barnes & Noble around here, isn’t there?”

Before I could answer she called me a Nazi and left.

“Geez,” I said, staring after her.

“Is that happening a lot?” my boss, Barry, asked me.

Barry stood behind the checkout counter, reading a book. He was a friend of my dad’s. Their heads came to the same shiny, bald peak and they wore the same mustache, though Barry’s was covered by a candy cane-patterned mask.  I’d known Barry for as long as I’d known anyone.

“That’s the first time anyone’s called me a Nazi,” I said.

“I mean, are people leaving when you tell them to wipe their hands and wear a mask?”

“Not too many.”

“Good.” Barry sighed, his mask ballooning and falling back. “We need the business.”

There were only a few people in the store. It was a weekday but there were usually more shoppers so close to Christmas.

“Everybody keeps touching everything,” I said, eyeballing a lady who ran her fingers along the book spines the way people do when they’re searching for a title. I trembled, as if germ-infested fingertips were running along my spine.

“They have to,” Barry said. “You know how important it is to flip through a book before you buy it.”

Before the pandemic, Barry and I used to scoff at people who bought books online. Buying a book, we felt, took more than reading a review or a blurb about the plot. A book had to feel right in your hands, the art on the cover and the font setting the tone for the world within. Like lifting the lid to a pot and smelling supper before spooning it into your bowl.

Since this was a new and used bookstore, each tome had its own smell and feel to it depending on how old the copies were. The older ones were softer, sometimes with inscriptions from people long gone, their dedication, “To gorgeous George, love Phyllis,” perhaps the only evidence left that they were here.

The silver bells jingled on the door.

“Better get back out front,” Barry said.

I hurried to the next customer.

I stood outside for two more hours before the woman in the Frieda Kahlo T-shirt passed by again. This time she said, “I like your ears.”

“Oh, they’re not real,” I said, touching one.

She laughed. “You mean you’re not a real elf?”

“Thankfully not.”

“I was hoping you were. I’ve never met an elf before.”

“I like your T-shirt. Are you the real Frieda Kahlo?”

“I am, actually.”

            “Ha. I suppose I’m the real elf of Bell Street Books.”

            “Of what?”

            I pointed to the wooden sign above me, which signaled the store named for the street.

            She adjusted the bag strap on her shoulder. “I’ve been meaning to go in there. How’s your fantasy section?”

            “Good and nerdy,” I said.

            “By nerdy do you mean a good variety or one hundred and one different editions of Lord of the Rings?”

“Can you really have too many editions of Tolkein?”

Her eyes squinted and her mask rose slightly. That’s how you know someone’s smiling. “What’s your name?”

“Cinnamon.”

“Haha, is that your elf name?”

“No. My parents are bakers. I got a sister named Ginger and a brother named Clove.”

“So that’s your real name? That’s amazing.”

“You want to come in?” I was going to tell her that I would show her around the fantasy section. There weren’t any other customers inside at the moment. But what if other people came in? What if she saw me freak out because people were standing too close or breathing all over the books? “Nobody’s in there right now. You’d have the shop to yourself.”

“A whole bookstore to myself,” she mused. “That is tempting but I have to run. Another time.”

“Wait,” I said. “What’s your name?”

“It’s not as cool as yours.”

“I doubt that.”

“It’s Beatrice,” she said. “Bea.”

It was the most beautiful name ever.

I didn’t see Bea again until the Saturday before Christmas. The store was crowded as it could get, or rather, as crowded as we would allow. Pandemically speaking. That morning I was not only the sanitizer police, I was keeping a tally of how many people were in the store on a clipboard. If there were too many patrons, I had to hold up the line and let them in one at a time. When Bea walked up we were already at capacity.

            “Cinnamon,” she said.

            “Bea.”

            “I thought I’d come check out that Tolkien collection today.”

            “You’ll just have to wait a few,” I said. “The store’s full.”

            She cocked her head to one side. “How many people are in there?”

            “A good bit.”

            “Anyone in the fantasy section?”

            “I don’t know. We’re not grouping them by sections. It’s just however many is in the store.”

            “What if I knelt down and walked around on my knees? Would I count as half of me?”

            “You’d have to not breathe.”

            “That is a problem.”

            “You could hang out here a while,” I said.

            The bell on the door rang and a man wearing a cap with reindeer antlers shuffled past me with a bag full of books.

            “My spot opened up,” Bea exclaimed. “Come in with me.”

            “I can’t, I have to keep counting.”

            I wish I could have gone in with her. She was so cute the way she bounded in to meet the books.  But there were so many people in there all breathing, all spitting when they talked. Like talking to panting dogs with no self-control. Thank Jesus Barry had let me stay outside.

            She was in there a while. People came in and out of the store. When no one was waiting outside, I looked through the storefront window. It was a good scifi/fantasy section vantage point because it took up the right side of the back wall. Bea was reading something, leaning on one leg with the other slightly bent. I checked back a little while later and she held the same position, only the other leg was bent.

            If it had been months earlier, she could have sat in one of the big, cushy chairs that we kept in that area. All of the chairs were in the storage room, waiting for a time when people could sit in them and breathe easily.

             She finally emerged, but with no bag in her hands.

            “There are two I can’t decide between,” she said. “I can only do one. I have to think about it.”

            “You could get the other one at the library,” I said.

            “I will. I just need to figure out which one I want to live on my bookshelf forever.”

            “That’s a lot of pressure for one book to live up to.”

            “It is, though,” she said. “Think about it. It sits on your shelf and it becomes part of the collection that people look at when they come over and size you up. I used to go out with this girl who had a bunch of get rich quick scheme books. I lost my credit card later and she said she didn’t take it, but I swear she did. And whenever I meet someone who doesn’t have a bookshelf or only has the paperbacks that they were forced to read in high school, we usually don’t connect. Don’t you look at someone’s books when you’re getting to know them?”

            “Yeah. But I guess getting to know someone right now is a little bit weird, anyway. I don’t think I could walk into someone’s house that I don’t know no matter what their shelves look like.”

            “I guess so,” she said. “Well, I’ll be back to pick out one of those books.” She pointed to my clipboard. “You can scratch me off.”

            A little while later, Barry poked his pointy head out the door.

“It’s your lunch break,” he said.

“I don’t need one.”

He walked over to me. “I have to give you one by law. You want to get me in trouble?”

“I won’t tell the cops.”

“You okay?”

“I told a beautiful girl that getting to know someone right now is weird.”

“That was dumb.”

“It’s true, though,” I said. “You don’t know, you’re married. I can’t even go into the shop with all those people without hyperventilating. How am I supposed to date a stranger?”

“Good point. Who is she?”

“She hung out in the fantasy section for a while today.”

“The girl with the green glasses?”

“Yeah.”

“You are dumb.”

“Thanks, Barry.”

“Why don’t you take a break, kiddo? Sit down for a while.”

“She said she’d come back. I don’t want to miss her.”

“What are you going to tell her?”

“I don’t know.”

I didn’t have to figure it out. She didn’t come back that day. Or the next. I didn’t want to miss a single shift for fear of missing her. And then, four days before Christmas, she appeared.

She carried bags with store names on them. I read them the way I would have read her bookshelf – to size her up. She’d been to a music store, a pet store, and a candle shop.

“Do you ever have a day off?” she asked.

“Sundays, usually. But I work those sometimes too. I love being here.”

“What do you like about it?”

“Same thing my parents love about baking – the smell.”

“Mmm,” she said, with what I imagined to be a delicious smile beneath her mask. “I’m a makeup artist. I don’t love the smell, but I like making someone’s face look like something else.”

“You do movies and stuff?”

“Yeah. And haunted houses and weddings. Anywhere I can, really. It’s been hard finding work lately.”

            I imagined leaning in close to someone’s unmasked nose and dabbing it with a brush.

            “Hopefully, things will get better soon,” I said.

            “I’ve decided what book I want. That’s one good thing,” she said, and walked inside.

            A few minutes later she walked back out.

            “Someone bought it,” she said.

            “Oh no.”

            “It’s just an old book, it’s not like it’s a popular new thing.”

            “What is it?”

            “A Wizard of Earthsea by-”

            “Ursula K. LeGuin,” I said.

            Bea paused. “Yes.”

            “I can order you a copy,” I said.

            “It wouldn’t be the same,” she said. “This one had an inscription. I don’t remember what it said exactly. It was from an aunt to her niece on her birthday, years and years ago.”

            “Do you want to have dinner with me?” I asked, without even thinking.

            As soon as the words popped out of my mouth, I was both elated and filled with dread.

            “Like on a date?” she asked.

            I nodded.

            “I thought you said it was weird to get to know someone right now.”

“I don’t want to stop getting to know you.”

She giggled like a young girl.  “Um. Can I see your face?”

            “My face?”

            “Yeah, can you take off your mask a second? I just want to know what you look like. And maybe I can show you what I look like?”

            “I see what you look like.”

            “Yeah, but what if you don’t like the lower half of my face? What if I’m a troll and you wouldn’t have asked me to dinner if you knew that?”

            “I doubt that. I…can’t take off my mask. There are a lot of people walking by and it makes me nervous. In fact, I don’t even know how I would take you out and still be distant.”

            “That would be difficult,” Bea said.

            “Germs freak me out. I mean, not all germs. I didn’t wear a mask before the pandemic. I don’t live in a bubble or anything. I’ve just become a germaphobe in the last year.”

            “Well,” she said. “Would you be okay with just hanging out? Not like a date, but just to talk about books or something?”

            I wondered if she could see that I was shrinking inside. “Sure.”

            She gave me her number.

            I was determined to repair my blunder. The next day I asked her if she wanted to get coffee and go for a walk, but she was busy. She couldn’t hang out the day after that either. Or the day after that. She promised that it wasn’t that she didn’t want to see me, but I was beginning to think she was just being polite. That confused me. She’d seemed like a pretty direct lady.

Christmas came and went, and I hung up my elf costume for the season. I waited for her to pass by so that I could show her what I looked like in my Bell Street Books T-shirt and regular human ears. She didn’t show, though.

On the afternoon of New Year’s Eve I was in the storeroom opening a box we’d just gotten in. I pulled back the flaps, closed my eyes, and breathed in the books. When I opened my eyes again, there at the top of the bundle was a hardcopy of A Wizard of Earthsea.  I flipped open the cover and saw a scrawl of blue pen from almost fifty years ago that said, “To my darling.”

I grabbed the book and found Barry out front.

“This is weird,” I said. “The book that Bea wanted just came in.”

“That’s not weird,” Barry said. “I ordered it.”

“Barry.”

“Go give it to her,” he said.

            I called Bea right away.

            “I have something for you,” I said. “Can I come drop it off?”

            “Well. No.”

            “No?”

            “I didn’t want to say anything until I knew, but I got a test the other day. It came back positive.”

            “What.”

            “That’s why I haven’t been going anywhere. I’m sorry, I just didn’t want to freak you out. My roommate was exposed to someone at work who had it so we both went to go get a test. Hers came back negative. Mine didn’t.”

            “Do you feel okay?”

            “Yeah, I don’t feel any different. My roommate’s coworker is pretty sick, though. I can’t go anywhere for a while.”

“It’s New Year’s Eve,” I said, as if she didn’t know.

“I know. I kind of wish I’d bought more books now.”

            “Well, I have something that might help. What’s your address?”

            “I can’t visit with you,” she said.

            “I know. I just want to bring something to you.”

            When I got to her place, I knocked on the door and then gave it a wide berth.

            “Which one is your window?” I asked when she answered the door.

            She didn’t look sick. It was strange to see her moving around and talking normally knowing that she had a deadly disease.

            “Why?” she asked.

            “It involves what I have for you.”

            She pointed me to the right direction and I stood a good ten feet from her window. She lifted the blinds and said through the screen, “What are you doing?”

            I reached into my backpack and held up the copy of Earthsea.

            “It’s not the same one you wanted at the store,” I said. “But it’s pretty good.”

            She smiled. “You found a copy.”

            “It has an inscription and everything. I thought I could read it to you.”

            “It’s not safe to come in, Cinnamon. I don’t want to get you sick.”

            “I know,” I said.

            I nestled in the grass, laying the book flat against my folded legs.

            “‘Chapter one,’” I read, as loudly as I could through the mask. “‘Warriors in the Mist.’”   

            As the sky got dark, I read by the light of my phone. I closed the book as it got closer to midnight and we watched the fireworks together – me on the grass, her from the window.

Eventually we saw each other without our masks on, but not through her quarantine. We didn’t miss each other, though. I read to her through the window the next night. And the next night. And the night after that.