Cutting across the sidewalk in front of me, she dashed into the shop at closing time. The girls behind the counter frowned. One–with long corkscrew curls–was counting receipts. The other–with short black hair–was folding flimsy scraps of silk into squares and putting them away in drawers.

The shopgirls complained when she entered–they were closing–but she flipped through the racks anyway, finding a lingerie set in her size that she liked.

“I’ll just be a minute,” she said, slipping behind the curtain to the dressing room. The shopgirls rolled their eyes.

“A hot date,” said the one with the curls.

“You can always tell,” said the one with the short hair.

They giggled and went back to folding and counting. I snapped their picture through the plate glass window and thought of the post that I’d write about shopgirls who hate last minute shopping.