Several people in the Santa line looked up at me, and then at him, and then at me again. A woman with a toddler on her hip said, "Nice catch," and a man behind her actually applauded, three slow claps, the way you do at a ballgame.
The man in the orange hat held the box up, between thumb and finger, like a jeweler. "This?"
"Yes. Please don't move. I'm coming down."
"I'm not going anywhere," he called back. "I've been in this line forty minutes."
The nearest escalator was at the far end of the atrium, by the Macy's that used to be a Bon Marché, and it was the down escalator in name only, because it was clogged from top to bottom with people standing two abreast holding bags, so I took the stairs, which were behind a door marked EMPLOYEES AND EMERGENCIES, which I decided this was. I came out on the lower level by a Cinnabon and ran the length of the atrium past a kiosk selling phone cases and a kiosk selling hand cream and a kiosk where a young man was trying to straighten a woman's hair against her will, and when I got to the North Pole Village I was breathing hard and my mocha had gone over the lid onto my glove.
The line was enormous. It doubled back on itself six times between the velvet ropes, and there was no way to get to the man in the orange hat, who was standing in the fourth switchback, except by going through the ropes or around them, and the entrance to the ropes was guarded by an elf.
She was perhaps seventeen. She had a green felt tunic, red-and-white striped tights, curly-toed shoes, a headset, a clipboard, and the most powerful face I have ever seen on a human being. Her name tag said BRYN, HEAD ELF.
"End of the line's back there," she said, without looking at me. She pointed with a candy-cane pen to the back of the line, which had spilled out past the ropes and was now curving around a bench and toward a Hallmark.
"I'm not in line. I just need to get something from someone who is."
"Everyone just needs to get something from someone who is." She still had not looked at me. "Ma'am, I've had four line-cutters today and one of them was a grandmother with a cane. She hit me with it. I'm not doing it again."
"I won't hit you."
"That's what she said."
"Somebody caught a thing I dropped. Him. The orange hat." I pointed. The man in the orange hat, who was watching this exchange with frank enjoyment, lifted the pretzel cup in salute. "I just need him to hand it to me over the rope."
"Handing things over the rope is a safety issue."