sunshine, and nicotine made me feel better. I decided against checking the map by the doors when I went back inside. I was having an adventure, why ruin it? There had to be a Virgin or a Tower in here somewhere. Maybe there was still a bookstore. I’d find something to kill the time eventually. I was in no hurry, I thought, pulling the door open and stepping back into the AC. I laughed to myself, at myself, lost and clueless at the Mall. It was hard to believe I’d once spent so much time here that I’d memorized the layout.
Like a lot of other guys at Farrell, my first job was at the Mall. Unlike the other guys, it wasn’t at the McDonald’s. I worked at a bakery, some chain with a fake French name. Of course, the stuff we sold was all prefab, like everything else in a Mall. Everything came to us premade and frozen in big, color-coded boxes. Bagels had blue stickers, cookies had red, bread had yellow. No matter what color the stickers were, though, all the dough was always the same color: beige.
My job on weekdays after school was hauling the boxes out of the freezer, laying the next morning’s bake on metal trays, sliding the trays into the baking racks, and rolling the racks into the cooler, where the dough would defrost by the next morning. Every Friday I’d put on a hat and gloves and organize the freezer by color. It was monkey work, but it made me money, and it kept me out of the house.
When the summer came, I took over the baking, if you could call it that. All I did was roll the racks out of the cooler and into the oven, set the timer, and drink a pot or two of coffee. Maybe give the poor schmuck who took over for me a head start on laying out the next day’s bake. I got grief for it, for being a baker, from my friends. It wasn’t sexy, or tough, but I didn’t care. It wasn’t flipping burgers. And while they jumped from one fast-food joint, or grocery store, or gas station, to another, bored or fired or both, I held on to that same job. By the end of my tenure there, I had my own keys to the place.
The only difficult part was the hours. To have everything ready by the time we opened at ten, I had to be in by four-thirty in the morning—five at the latest. But I got used to it. And starting so early had its perks. Hours of solitude, for one. No one else came in until nine. I liked slipping into the Mall before sunrise. It was clean and dark and quiet. No sunlight yet through the skylights, the escalators still, acres of pristine, faux-marble floors, freshly scraped of gum. There was something pure about the stillness, the silence, the half-light. I hated when the people, all noise and demands and complaints, came and ruined it.
During the summer, I made sure my mother never knew exactly what time I got off work, so there were never too many questions about where I was. If I brought home enough cinnamon buns, she forgot to ask questions altogether. My father always worked until deep in the evening. But I always made sure Molly knew when my workday ended. So the job also bought me a lot of hours with Molly.
The Mall was our default date. When we’d seen all the movies we wanted to see, couldn’t stand another trip to the comic book shops, the Fantastic Store at the train station by her house, Jim Hanley’s Universe at the train station by mine, there was always the Mall. I was already there. It was a short bus ride from her house. It was just a place to do what we liked best, be together.
We wandered its confines for hours, arm in arm, me smelling like French bread, muffin batter under my fingertips, her smelling like vanilla soap and strawberry shampoo. We spent a small fortune, one quarter at a time, in the arcade, typing our initials into the middle regions of the high-score list, me making sure my name was always under hers.
We bought each other peace-symbol pins for our knapsacks and denim jackets, bargain bin cassettes for our omnipresent Walkmen. I bought her posters for her room.
Like a lot of other guys at Farrell, my first job was at the Mall. Unlike the other guys, it wasn’t at the McDonald’s. I worked at a bakery, some chain with a fake French name. Of course, the stuff we sold was all prefab, like everything else in a Mall. Everything came to us premade and frozen in big, color-coded boxes. Bagels had blue stickers, cookies had red, bread had yellow. No matter what color the stickers were, though, all the dough was always the same color: beige.
My job on weekdays after school was hauling the boxes out of the freezer, laying the next morning’s bake on metal trays, sliding the trays into the baking racks, and rolling the racks into the cooler, where the dough would defrost by the next morning. Every Friday I’d put on a hat and gloves and organize the freezer by color. It was monkey work, but it made me money, and it kept me out of the house.
When the summer came, I took over the baking, if you could call it that. All I did was roll the racks out of the cooler and into the oven, set the timer, and drink a pot or two of coffee. Maybe give the poor schmuck who took over for me a head start on laying out the next day’s bake. I got grief for it, for being a baker, from my friends. It wasn’t sexy, or tough, but I didn’t care. It wasn’t flipping burgers. And while they jumped from one fast-food joint, or grocery store, or gas station, to another, bored or fired or both, I held on to that same job. By the end of my tenure there, I had my own keys to the place.
The only difficult part was the hours. To have everything ready by the time we opened at ten, I had to be in by four-thirty in the morning—five at the latest. But I got used to it. And starting so early had its perks. Hours of solitude, for one. No one else came in until nine. I liked slipping into the Mall before sunrise. It was clean and dark and quiet. No sunlight yet through the skylights, the escalators still, acres of pristine, faux-marble floors, freshly scraped of gum. There was something pure about the stillness, the silence, the half-light. I hated when the people, all noise and demands and complaints, came and ruined it.
During the summer, I made sure my mother never knew exactly what time I got off work, so there were never too many questions about where I was. If I brought home enough cinnamon buns, she forgot to ask questions altogether. My father always worked until deep in the evening. But I always made sure Molly knew when my workday ended. So the job also bought me a lot of hours with Molly.
The Mall was our default date. When we’d seen all the movies we wanted to see, couldn’t stand another trip to the comic book shops, the Fantastic Store at the train station by her house, Jim Hanley’s Universe at the train station by mine, there was always the Mall. I was already there. It was a short bus ride from her house. It was just a place to do what we liked best, be together.
We wandered its confines for hours, arm in arm, me smelling like French bread, muffin batter under my fingertips, her smelling like vanilla soap and strawberry shampoo. We spent a small fortune, one quarter at a time, in the arcade, typing our initials into the middle regions of the high-score list, me making sure my name was always under hers.
We bought each other peace-symbol pins for our knapsacks and denim jackets, bargain bin cassettes for our omnipresent Walkmen. I bought her posters for her room.
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