Food Court

The cleaning lady leans on the counter to talk to the high school girl who works at the deli. As the mall shoppers finish their dinners and the workers clean up, new tables and chairs are brought in and covered with tablecloths. Lighthouse candle holders and napkin rings on every table. Buckets for vacation raffle tickets on a church-supper table outside the popcorn store. People in gowns and tuxes coming in to replace me in my jeans and sweatshirt and the other mall-goers in their newsboy hats, sheepskin boots, shiny hairsprayed hair. A man directs another who is moving the new cars that have been parked on the mall's main floor. There's a sense of pleasant activity -- the food court workers getting ready to go home, the store workers folding sweaters on cardboard cards, making sure each corner is square, each pile is of equal size. The caterers ready to start their night's work. The rich dressed up, excited to see each other and maybe to compare gowns and careers. There's a boat show at the convention center. We would have gone, just to see the big boats, see what a boat show is exactly, but tickets were fifteen dollars apiece.

We buy a bag of popcorn and go out into the cold night, to get a frozen pizza at the 7-11. And when I come home and ask L what I should write about today, he says, "write about the mall, about the guys moving the cars and the lighthouse stuff." So I do, I write it without knowing my place in it all.