Step into the bustling world of Dayton's department store. It's the early 1990s, in a historic downtown on the verge of giving way to suburban malls and the dawning of the internet. Dayton's used to be like one big family. Its patriarchs even provided a nurse for sick employees, but now each worker is merely a number. No wonder Noelle Nichols of Women's Shoes and the others sneak away to find solace -- or a drink or a tryst -- in an abandoned infirmary so hidden the floor has no button in the store's elevator. The discovery of a painting of a store nurse who worked there in the 1940s threatens to expose secrets and change lives forever as the business inches toward demise. -- Back cover.