There wasn’t. He was ordinary in the most common sense of the word, and if it had been a busy night in the store, I’d never even have seen him. So ordinary he’d be invisible. The only remarkable thing about him was that he was a fortyish man in a Sears store on a night when we had stayed open longer than our customers had stayed awake. And that he’d said he needed a silk scarf. Men like him never buy silk scarves, not for any reason.

But he’d said he needed a silk scarf. And that was a double miracle of sorts, the customer knowing what he wanted, and I actually having it. So I put on my sales smile and asked, “Did you have any particular color in mind, sir?”

“Anything,” he said, an edge of impatience in his voice. “As long as it’s silk.”

The scarf rack was right by the register, arranged with compulsive tidiness by me earlier in the shift. Long scarves on the bottom rack, short scarves on the top rack, silk to the left, acrylics to the right, solid colors together in a rainbow spectrum on that row, patterns rioting on that hook, all edges gracefully fluted. Scarves were impulse sales, second sales, “wouldn’t you like a lovely blue scarf to go with that sweater, miss?” sales. No one marched into a Sears store at 8:15 at night and demanded a silk scarf. People who needed silk scarves at 8:15 at night went to boutiques for them, little shops that smelled like perfumes or spices and had no Hamburglars lurking in the aisles. But this fortyish man wouldn’t know that.

So I leaned across the counter and snagged a handful, let my fingers find the silk ones and pull them gently from their hooks. Silk like woven moonlight in my hands, airy scarves in elusive colors. I spread them out like a rainbow on the counter. “One of these, perhaps?” I smiled persuasively.

“Any of them, it doesn’t matter, I just need a piece of silk.” He scarcely glanced at them.

And then I said one of those things I sometimes do, the words falling from my lips with sureness, coming from god knows where, meant to put the customer at ease but always getting me into trouble. “To wrap your Tarot cards, undoubtedly.”