On Friday, I stopped by Nordstrom to pick up something I had pre-ordered at the Clinique counter. Now, some among my audience may not have the fascination with makeup that I do. I love to mess with color, play dress-up, experiment, prettify, and coo over my vast collection of shades. It’s kind of like shoes, but you can only wear one pair of shoes at a time, you can’t layer them, and they don’t give out free samples of shoes with any shoe purchase several times a year.

This last, most happy advantage of makeup was in fact in full swing Friday, which was why I’d pre-ordered. The makeup counters are a bit like the front row at a particularly good gladiatorial combat (ooooh, note to self - gladius, gladiolus - gladiolus bulbs to be planted in June. Right, I’m back now.), what with the shoving, and well, er, mostly the shoving. Which didn’t even happen at gladiatorial combats as far as I know. This simile has run its course. Reset!

So, gift time at a makeup counter is fraught with peril, with elbowing and careful maneuvering and smiling at the person who says she was before you with a smile made of glistening ivory hatred. Then, when you finally wait, lie, and crunch yourself to the front, you ask for the items you want, which will bring you up to the required purchase amount for the gift, and they’re out of at least one of them, because it is, after all, gift time. So! On a previous trip to the Makeup Mecca, I had taken up a friendly saleswoman on her offer of pre-ordering my items for gift time. My credit card would be charged, the items set aside before the ravening hordes descended, and all would be smooth and quick.

So I assumed it would be, when I swept into Nordstrom on Friday, eying flowery tanktops with lust and sticker-shock. But I was much mistaken. The lady with whom I’d placed the order was not in evidence, and the other ladies could not find my bag. Citing their uncertainty about whether or not my card had been charged, they sent me away with promises of a phone call tomorrow morning.

The call did not come. I called, the woman I needed was busy. She would call me back. I fumed a bit, watching my husband undertake a home improvement project much in the manner of an ambitious horse taking on a granary—with no forethought and every evidence of enjoyment. I ground my teeth a bit, and when, finally, my husband, standing on a chair and staring at a hole in the ceiling and a pile of insulation on the floor, suggested I relax and go back to Nordstrom, I agreed. After all, when, during Gift Time, would anyone have the time to make a call? I have seen the tumult, and I know it well.

I arrived at Nordstrom, that temple of capitalism, and passed into its cool, marble-flagged halls. My saleslady was there, and was, to put it mildly, mortified. She was dreadfully sorry that my pre-order had been mishandled, awfully sorry that I’d wasted the gas on Friday, and terribly sorry that her cohorts had sent me away empty-handed. Accordingly, I was weighed down not just with the cheerful colors and soothing skin products for which I’d come (and the purchase-with-purchase kit I’d been tempted into), but two of the free gift packets, three travel makeup brush kits, two lotion samples, a sample eyeshadow, a headband, a scar-repairing cream, two high-quality large cosmetic brushes, and a Nordstrom pedicure gift set. As she handed me a bag big enough for two pairs of shoes at very least, and I clutched it in front of me like Anne of Green Gables clutching her battered trunk, I stared, dazed. “Uh, you’re kind of leaving me glad there was a mistake,” I observed.

“That is the goal,” she smiled.

Oooooooh, I absolutely looooooove Nordstrom.