The Mall (6 page)

Albert laughed, his fingers connecting with the hard yet pliable object sealed in the zip-lock baggie in his pocket.
 
The scene was already fading like a bad dream, like it had never happened at all, in fact.

Then Vernon said something that remained with him long after the conversation had ended and they had gone along their separate routes.

“Fate will take care of their kind soon enough.”

“Mommy, are we just going to leave Grandma Charley with that hurt puppy?”

“There’s nothing we can do for it, Cora,” Lara assured her briskly, as she hustled the little girl into the elevator car after her brother.
 
“Besides, it’s not a real dog anyway.”

“It’s real to her,” Cora muttered under her breath and stared down at her faded Willy’s World of Wonder shoes, turning them slightly inward until the frayed toes touched.

Again the flourish of sound from above gently intruded as the doors slid shut.
 
“Which floor please?”

Lara shut her eyes and for a moment her mind was blank.
 
What was left for her to do?
 
She had run out of options.
 
They couldn’t even sleep in the tiny rusted-out Toyota like common vagrants because it was filled with as many possessions as she had managed to ferret away.
 
Everything else was still in the apartment, behind a door with a fresh new lock.

“Which floor please?” the voice persisted.
 
Did it sound just a wee bit irritable, like a salesman running out of patience for a particularly indecisive customer?

“Mom?”
Owen groaned.

“Where is this E-Bot store?” she snapped.

“E-Bot Universe.
 
Level One.
 
Section B-3,” the pleasant yet vaguely disgruntled recorded voice stated.
 
“Do you require directions?”

Directions?
Lara thought.
 
Goddammit all, but I really do need a direction right now.

“Yes,” Lara answered in a tiny childlike voice.

“Thank you,” the patronizing voice chirped back.
 
“Please exit the elevator to your right.
 
Proceed along the red zone corridor to its end and take the Blue shuttle.
 
You will get off at stop number three.”

“You got that, Owen?” Lara asked
,
her eyes still locked shut against the world.

“Red.
 
Blue.
 
Three,” Owen quickly responded.
 
“Got it!”

The car dropped beneath them and with that, the three of them had a destination again, if only temporarily.

Finally, Lara opened her eyes and glanced back at her son, who had the hint of a smirk on his face for what seemed the first time that day.
 
The car cleared the residential level, revealing the mall below again.
 
Mesmerized, he stared down at the action in contented silence.

Owen really was a sharp kid, Lara thought, and those types of children were the ones who got bored so easily.

He made a sound of excitement and grabbed the wrist of his sister, dragging her to his side and pointing excitedly.
 
She let out a gasp and gave a short hop.
 
“Mommy, can we ride the Fairy Wheel?”

“Ferris Wheel,” Owen corrected, without even a hint of derision.
 
Progress, Lara thought.

“I call it a Fairy Wheel because that’s where the fairies live, silly.”

Look at these brilliant, beautiful little creatures, she told herself, another shot of bitterly cold pain piercing her gut once again.
 
It took every ounce of strength she had to keep from crying in that moment.
 
They deserved so much more than she could offer them.
 
What could they have possibly done in this life (or the previous one if you believed in that sort of thing) to warrant a mother such as her?
 
What atrocities could they have committed?

Maybe they just had the bad luck to be born in a world controlled by a God that seemed to work misery the way sculptors molded clay.

Didn’t she owe them the truth, she asked herself.
 
No, she owed them protection, security, and happiness, as fleeting as it was, for as long as possible.
 
The truth, the terrible reality of their situation, would come later.
 
Now, they simply needed to be happy.

Suddenly, intruding upon her thoughts like a small mechanical dog tugging on the cuff of her pants, she remembered to ask the question that had been nagging at her.

“Hon,” she inquired, taking her daughter by her shoulder and pivoting her around.
 
“Why did you say what you did back there?
 
What
burned?”

“Huh?”

“You told me to make Grandma Charley stop,” Lara reminded her gently.
 
“You said that it burned.
 
What did you mean by that?”

Cora stared at her mother blankly and finally shrugged.
 
When she started to turn back to the glass wall of the elevator, Lara turned her back to face her again.

“Did you mean a pain?” she asked with trepidation, trying to keep the fear out of her voice.
 
She didn’t need this, her inner-teenager screamed in petulant rage.
 
“A pain, like a headache, hon?”

Cora nibbled the corner of her lip.
 
“No, more like a belly tingly, just more behind my eyes instead.
 
Like when you go over bumps in the road fast and the car flies,” she murmured with disinterest, her eyes fluttering to the glass wall beside her.
 
“Like when Daddy used to swing
me
high and you would yell at him to stop.”

Lara swallowed the pain back and attempted to get the sudden tide of emotions under control enough to continue when the elevator gave another flourish and the doors of the car slid open, a group of four or five people crowding in around them before they could even escape.

In the brief moment it took to extricate her children and pull them outside, Lara wondered how Cora could remember being swung by her daddy when he had died when she was only two, over three years ago.
 
Could a child’s memory extend back that far?
 
Perhaps this was one of the earliest memories her youngest had of her father.
 
Possibly one of the few.

Did Owen ever think about him, she thought achingly?
 
What kind of memories did the ten-year-old have of his father?

The blunt sadness of these domestic mysteries had yet to wash over her completely before she stepped from the elevator and nearly collided with one of the Mall Bots, this one with highlights of red throughout its metallic shell.

“Are you in need of assistance, ma’am?”

“Can you get me to the Blue tram?”

The red Bot seemed to perk up, its blue eyes pulsing brightly for a moment.
 
“Yes, indeed,” it responded, turning as briskly as any foot soldier to face the east end of red striped corridor.
 
“I would be more than happy to be of service.
 
Follow me, ma’am.”

Cora rushed up until she was alongside the red Bot.
 
“What’s your name?”

“My official designation is RM-321B.”

“Can I call you Red?”

“My designation is RM-321B”

Every third step Cora would have to double-trot-step to catch up with the Bot.

“Can you slow down, Red?
 
I think you’re going to fast for my Mommy.”

“My apologies.”
 
The Red Bot reduced its pace.
 
“Is this acceptable?”

“
It’s
fine,” Lara replied, moving up along the other side.
 
“Where do you go to get repairs?”

“This unit has never needed repair,” RM-321 said with what could almost be called pride.

Jesse shoved through the revolving plasti-steel doors into the CD Connection store, took one look around, and swore under his breath.

Tucking his skateboard nervously under his arm, Chance glanced back over his shoulder at the sandy-bearded attendant with his dusty Vans perched atop the front counter, talking animatedly on the phone.
 
The twenty-something seemed oblivious to them.

“I knew we should have gone to the Galleria,” Jesse grumbled to Chance as he headed down one aisle deeper into the store, reaching out to casually spin a rack of fuzzy key chains emblazoned with band name logos.
 
“They got that ice rink and hot girls like to skate.”

Without thinking, Chance reached out and stilled the spinner as he passed.
 
“The Galleria’s got crazy security, Jess.
 
Worse than here.”

“Chancie, you don’t need security when everything is dispensed by computers.
 
I mean, look at this,” Jesse complained, stepping over to a random section covered in clear plasti-steel broken every few feet with holes large enough to put a hand through.
 
He casually flipped through a row of organized stacks of compact discs and pulled out a copy of Rush’s
Moving Pictures
.
 
A narrow metal slide just wide enough for a single CD case lay below the shelf of CD’s like a rain gutter, where the chosen CD would slide down to be dispensed.
 
Outside the plasti-steel was a slot designated for credit card payment.
 
“No way are we getting anything out of here.
 
It’s Fort fuckin Knox,” he grumbled flipping the CD case away angrily and letting it skitter across the tops of the others until it came to rest several feet away within its clear plastic prison.

“What’s the big deal?
 
You got all their CD’s anyway,” Chance commented, glancing up at the attendant, still absorbed in his phone conversation.

“It’s the principal of the thing.
 
Where’s the trust, huh?”

“C’mon, let’s cruise.”

“Okay,” Jesse sighed, starting down the aisle toward the exit after him.
 
“Oh wait!
 
Lemme check on one more
thing
while I’m here.
 
Get Shaggy’s attention for me.”
 
He spun on his heel and disappeared down the next aisle before the other could protest.

Chance ambled down to the entrance and wandered over to the counter to look through a rack of ink-pen laser pointers.
 
The attendant took one look and swiveled his chair slightly away from him, never pausing in his phone conversation.

Chance took one of the laser pointers and located the tiny adhesive sensor on the bottom-- easily removable with a long nail--that would activate the alarm and lock the plasti-steel door at the exit should anyone try and take it out without paying for it.
 
He knew that like most of the stores in the automated Mall of the Nation he didn’t need an attendant to purchase it.
 
All he needed to do was place the object into the compartment of a price scanning machine and with the swipe of a credit card, the scanner would deactivate the sensor that would set off the front door alarm, allowing the product to be safely taken out of the store.