Mind the Gap by Angela Townsend

There are facts as cool as gravity: If you drop a jam lid, it will fall jammy-side down. Humans make many myths. The guy who takes senior photos will be the single creepiest guy your senior has ever met.

He may be a family man. He may be a Benedictine oblate. But when he arrives at the local high school, he transubstantiates into the sliest salamander this side of Eden.

There is reason to believe this man is capable of bilocation, a power usually reserved for Sicilian saints and lower hoodlum demons. How else to explain his presence in every zip code, every September, world without end?

He came for Eastbrook High, and he came for Westbrook High, and this all came out at the Delphi in between: the Crystal Park Galleria, Gap store #1102.

Biz was amused. “You know how they say there are boob guys and leg guys? He was a total shoulder guy. On and on about my ‘lovely knobs.’ It would be adorable if it wasn’t ghastly.”

Befitting a Barbara who goes by “Biz,” the happiest Gap associate did not expect much from senior photos. “They’re for grandparents and future embarrassment.” She continued unfolding the boot-cut jeans, for the grander purpose of re-folding the boot-cut jeans, as instructed by the bad manager. “I really don’t care.”

I cared, and I’d caught myself believing the guy when he called me “little Audrey…Hepburn reborn!” He bounced like an amphibian to a late ‘90s soundtrack.

“Did you ever notice that Shaggy is both ‘Mr. Boombastic’ and ‘Mr. Lover’?” The guy turned up his boom box. “Which one is his true identity?”

Let this be the one picture I like. This is important.

The guy took his final shot, erupting in a vaguely vulgar sun salutation. “BOOM!”

“Boom?”

He shot me with his finger guns. “You just blew yourself away.”

“I wanted to take twelve showers,” I told Biz. The bad manager had ordered me to watch for unsavory characters with “bumper bags,” duct-tape lined instruments of theft and debauchery.

“Oh, these guys are harmless,” Biz cackled. “They probably have day jobs as accountants and take school photos so they can pretend they’re Sting for twelve hours a year.”

 “Taaaantric,” Aaron oozed past. Aaron looked like Chandler from Friends and was the good manager at Gap #1102. Aaron never asked us to unfold folded jeans, and he made us all open-faced peanut-butter-and-pickle-chip sandwiches after our double shifts on Black Friday. Nine out of ten employees admitted they were, indeed, bangin.’ Seasonal employee Jesus dropped his on a cashmere sweater, and the bad manager reported Aaron to some sort of Gap Pentagon.

But Aaron kept his job, and the bad manager fired Jesus, and here we all were, making sense of gelatinous men with cameras.

It was an important night, which was why Aaron had scheduled his favorites. The Friday after Thanksgiving, every Gap received the sacrament of Winter II.

Winter I, October’s child, had come in taupe cardigans and jaunty boat-neck sweaters. Winter I did not know the cold, much less the questions. Winter I could afford beige. Biz, all blond and not-Barbara, looked amazing in Winter I.

Winter II was for those of us who forgot our lines, the grasping Greek chorus of frizzy girls. Winter II was lilac snowflakes and magenta identity. Winter II was the good fairy’s kiss. Winter II was the Gap’s most lucrative moment all year.

Winter II was where I’d first read the myth and wondered if it might be true. Fat at twelve, I felt like a siren in the right powdery sweater. Hairy at thirteen, I felt sleek in the right snowy turtleneck. A true believer at sixteen, I wondered if I could feign sufficient “lovely” to land this job.

Everyone knew that Gap #1102 only hired beautiful teenagers, the better to sell its promises. If Gap #1102 hired you, no one could ever call you hideous again, not even the reptile between your ears.

I had admired Gap sylphs since I first realized I was too sticky to be stunning. I had drawn bad self-portraits, wondering if the right pastels might create an illusion. I had a 4.2 GPA and eyebrows like an abominable snowman. I had a scorecard of zero boyfriends.

I landed the job I did not merit, courtesy of Aaron. I now had a 40% discount on Winter II. I had a recommendation letter I could pull out of my dark-wash pocket. Daisy Barlow had been declared lovely.

I had no illusion that the myth would hold outside the Crystal Park Galleria. Once we hit the parking lot, Biz was blond, and I was hairy, and all the good fairies fell to the ground. Only amphibians paid to prance would call me beautiful.

Inside, I had a preposterous crush on Adam Hutch, whose name was never spoken by halves. He was trained on register and never had to fold or unfold jeans. No one knew from whence he came or where he went, but he was at least twenty and smiled at me as though I was a worthy helipad for his blue eyes. He said I looked like a cat, which was even better than looking like Audrey. He asked for a copy of my senior photo. He was the source of our collective Amen, “bangin.’”

Days off were bangin’. The discount was BANGIN’. Poor Jesus had been bangin’, though not even Adam Hutch could save him.

Tonight, we were tasked with saving our small patch of the world. Winter II was due. The cold could furrow its brow and freeze all the frogs in all the ponds, but the colors would prevail. Christmas would come again.

We locked the doors at ten, and the bad manager and most of the seniors punched out. “You know how important this is,” the bad manager glowered at Aaron. They had worked together since they were in high school. She liked him less by the hour.

“It’s a night for miracles.” Aaron nodded. “Maybe Jesus will come back.”

Adam Hutch had vanished into the bowels of Gap #1102, where plastic cartridges were hard-wired into the wall. Some Gap United Nations carefully selected our music each month, and by and large it was benignly bangin’, but “man cannot live on singer-songwriters alone,” Adam Hutch lamented. Only he knew how to remove the cartridges without causing some sort of international incident. The sound of Queen filled the store.

“You’re a crazy little thing in love with Adam Hutch.” Biz was never one for mist or myth.

“Stop it.”

“He thinks you’re cute.” She laughed. “Now I want to see you think you’re cute.”

“What?”

You don’t name yourself “Biz” without confidence in your powers. She just laughed.

“It has begun!” Father Christmas had bilocated into the body of Aaron, now pulling a flatbed cart of expectations. “Bring forth the sword of justice.”

Biz had the box cutter, and Aaron tossed her a granola bar. “Fortify thyself, my liege.”

But she pressed it into my hand. “I think this is Daisy’s night.”

I never opened boxes. Like Adam Hutch, self-respect, and the Holy Spirit, the hoodies came from somewhere beyond my sight. Also, I had a history of walking into banisters and wounding myself while making sandwiches. My varsity sport was “remaining generally ambulatory.”

“Not sure I’m a boxcutter girl,” I warned.

Adam Hutch appeared to be warming himself over the primordial fire of cardboard. “You’re a boxcutter babe, is what you are.”

Biz slapped my back so hard, my legs jellied. Aaron nodded. I begged the box to yield to the blade. We all breathed in the incense of bubble wrap and…beige.

There was not a snowflake in sight. Aaron was not worried. “Ah. It’s the Berber fleece.” He pulled out a shaggy tarp that looked like the pelt of a football mascot.

“Is that a garment?” I scoured it for an opening.

Aaron yanked it over his head. “It would fit all four of us, but yeah, it’s some kind of pullover.” He pulled out the Winter II Guidebook. “See, Berber fleece.”

“Perfect for your next trip to Mongolia!” Adam Hutch hugged a pelt passionately. “You’ll be the hottest yak your yurt has ever seen.”

Aaron laughed. “Yeah, I don’t think we’re gonna sell a lot of these. Next box!”

We held our breaths for the sound of angels and the sight of snowflakes. I split the shipping tape.

Biz tugged at the contents. “Berber fleece.” She pulled one over her head, becoming Aaron’s golden consort.

“We weren’t supposed to get two boxes.” Aaron looked less like Chandler and more like Woody Allen. “Daisy, open another box.”

I became the boxcutter babe, slashing horrors. Berber fleece. Berber fleece. Berber fleece.

We had received eighteen boxes of carpeting material the color of oatmeal.

Adam Hutch was wearing three, with a fourth around his head as though he were a Tuareg herdsman. Freddie Mercury was carrying on about fat-bottomed girls. Aaron was not laughing.

“This is a disaster. I’m going to lose my job.”

“Aaron, it’s not your fault.” How could he think it was his fault? “They just made some kind of mistake, and—”

“You don’t understand.” Aaron held a Berber fleece as gingerly as a carcass. “I’ve been on thin ice for months. You guys love this job, but I actually need it.”

“They’ll make this right.” Waxing motherly was my second Varsity sport. “You’re the anchor. You’re the best thing that ever happened to the Gap. You’re the reason every good high school kid in four districts, plus Adam Hutch, wants to work here more than they want to get into Yale.”

Aaron started to smile, but Biz had no stomach for myth. “Actually, most of them want to work here because it makes them feel pretty.”

“I feel pretty,” Adam Hutch reported.

 Aaron sighed. “I know.”

He did? “You do?”

“Daisy, I was insecure…once.” Aaron couldn’t even finish the sentence without laughing. He threw a Berber fleece at my head. “We all think the Gap can make us glorious.”

“I am glorious,” Adam Hutch corrected.

“Well then use some of your glory to call Gap Headquarters.” Aaron was back on his feet, equal parts Chandler and Woody Allen and Father Christmas. “They must have an emergency line for situations like this.”

“You know I want one of these now,” Biz admitted, fingering a yak skin. “I want to go back and have my senior pictures re-taken wearing one of these.”

“Bangin’!” Adam Tuareg Hutch was his default happy. I wondered if he was God’s silliest angel, and therefore the most powerful.

Aaron kept his job, and three hundred sweaters arrived by priority mail. I couldn’t bring myself to give Adam Hutch a tiny rectangle of my face. I was neither feline nor Hepburn, just vision under jazz eyebrows.

I had survived the Night of the Berber Fleece.

Old myths were thin and brothy, but oatmeal stuck to my ribs. I made peanut-butter-and-pickle sandwiches for the anthropology department at Yale. I came back to visit Aaron every Christmas. I bought a pink box cutter. I blew myself away.  

Angela Townsend

Image by Michal Jarmoluk from Pixabay – a pile of folded Denim jeans