Ten minutes before closing, the Cashier had already begun counting the minutes until she could go home.
The toy store sat on the edge of a shopping center outside Kansas City, wedged between a discount shoe store and a pet-supply warehouse. By early December, almost every surface inside had been decorated for Christmas.
Plastic garlands framed the registers.
Paper snowflakes hung from the ceiling.
A mechanical reindeer near the entrance nodded its head every thirty seconds while playing the same four bars of a holiday song that every employee had learned to hate by Thanksgiving.
The evening rush had finally disappeared.
Only two customers remained.
One mother was negotiating with a four-year-old over a stuffed dinosaur.
An exhausted grandfather stood in the board-game aisle reading the back of three different boxes with the hopeless expression of a man who had no idea what his grandchildren liked.
The Cashier glanced at the clock above the customer-service counter.
8:50 p.m.
Ten minutes.
She began straightening the impulse shelves beside her register.
Batteries.
Candy.
Tiny plastic figures.
Gift cards.
She was twenty-five, with dark hair tied into a loose ponytail and the red store vest employees were required to wear over whatever clothes they had come in with.
She had worked there for almost eighteen months.
Long enough to recognize most kinds of holiday customers.
Grandparents who bought too much.
Parents comparing prices on their phones.
Teenagers pretending they were not buying stuffed animals for girlfriends.
People who waited until Christmas Eve and became angry when the toy they wanted had sold out three weeks earlier.
And resellers.
She especially disliked resellers.
Every holiday season, people came in and bought entire shelves of whatever toy happened to be difficult to find, then listed the products online for double or triple the price.
The store technically limited certain items.
But not all.
Princess dolls were not restricted that year.
They had been popular, but not impossible to find.
At least until that week.
The Cashier was putting a pack of gum back into place when the automatic doors opened.
Cold air swept into the store.
She looked up.
A man walked inside.
The first thing she noticed was his size.
He was enormous.
Not bodybuilder enormous.
Older, heavier, broader.
The kind of man who looked as though every doorframe had been built slightly too small for him.
He was probably around sixty.
Maybe a little younger.
Maybe older.
A long gray beard covered most of his lower face.
The hood of a faded gray sweatshirt was pulled over his head beneath a worn black leather motorcycle vest.
Tattooed hands emerged from the sleeves.
One tattoo stretched from the back of his right hand toward his wrist.
Another disappeared beneath his left cuff.
A metal wallet chain hung against dark jeans.
Heavy boots struck the tile with slow, deliberate steps.
The Cashier glanced through the front windows.
A large black motorcycle stood near the curb.
Of course.
The man did not look around.
Did not ask for help.
Did not browse the holiday displays.
He headed straight toward the princess-doll aisle.
The Cashier watched him disappear between shelves.
One of the floor employees walked past her carrying a return.
“Five bucks says he’s looking for an action figure for his granddaughter.”
The Cashier smiled.
“Maybe.”
Two minutes later, the floor employee came back.
Her eyebrows were raised.
“Nope.”
“What?”
“Princess aisle.”
“So?”
“All of it.”
The Cashier frowned.
“All of what?”
The employee pointed.
The Biker emerged from the aisle.
His arms were full of pink boxes.
Not two.
Not three.
A tower.
The Cashier counted automatically.
Six.
He placed them carefully on an empty display table near the register.
Then went back.
Returned carrying four more.
Then two.
Twelve princess dolls.
Every one left on the shelf.
The boxes were nearly identical.
Each contained a blonde princess wearing a different colored gown with interchangeable shoes, a little plastic crown, and a miniature brush.
The Biker stacked them beside the register.
The Cashier looked from the dolls to him.
Then back.