Time.
I can’t remember if I slept like a baby, if I slept like a log, if I slept like a hopeful romantic on the night before meeting the girl of dreams for lunch at the mall in hopes of kindling a romantic blaze that would consume them both for eternity, or if I slept at all. Whichever it was, I was up at eight in the morning and singing in the shower. The whole night was a haze. I remembered the call, the plan, and that was all. Then I remembered that I had left Foster on hold but that he was a fairly forgiving sort and he would be more than understanding… he would be happy for me. I was belting out Unchained Melody, or at least the parts I remembered, while a steady steaming stream turned my body red. I love my shower. The only thing I’ll give my apartment is the shower. The endless hot water tank coupled with constant pressure, and our own addition of a multi-adapting showerhead, made mornings easier to wake up to… especially when most days offered little to encourage getting out of bed. Today it was just an added ecstasy. It was one of those mornings where I left the bathroom door open and the light off so that the accumulation of moisture wouldn’t cause a short in any of the track lighting… a painful lesson to have to learn. I washed away two weeks of worry and anticipation, a lifetime of longing, any bodily filth, and forty-two minutes in that shower. I emerged fresh, clean, and ready to tackle just about anything.
Just about.
I fixed a big breakfast but only ate half of it. I couldn’t sit still enough to eat. I was thinking of the best way to appear before her highness. What to wear, how to wear it, how to gel and mold and manipulate the matted mess atop my head… maybe it would be best just to cover it up. No… that would give an impression of carelessness and I cared, or wanted to give that impression anyway. I even accessorized… I even wore my watch. Not that it would do me any good. My watch was only right twice a day.
I was out the door of my apartment by ten in the morning (according to the microwave) looking as good as I thought I was capable of looking. I ran all the way to the bus terminal. The bus terminal happens to be located at the southern most perimeter of the area that is ‘the mall’. I was there by five after with two hours to kill. I figured I wouldn’t look so desperate if I kept her waiting a whole five minutes after noon… but if I couldn’t hold out I only had an hour and fifty-six minutes.
The funny thing about killing time is that it usually appears to be the other way around. Every minute picked away at me. If you can occupy yourself then you can succeed, but I would not be occupied or distracted. I tried, but I just don’t like malls. They’re engineered to drive cattle through… and they are very effective. I wandered around and the seconds gathered. I stopped at windows and kiosks and displays and soon minutes had passed away. Just as I rounded a corner by the food court and saw a perfectly good line to stand in and get the better part of an hour under my belt, time struck back; the Gap was right there. The coffee vendor I was loitering at was located not fifty feet from the nearest styling Gap-clad mannequin, and through the panes of postered glass I could see Angelica, standing behind a register ringing in a purchase, the smile on her face didn’t seem quite the same, but after two weeks without it, it was a mighty sip to swallow. So much so that I began to choke on it. All of a sudden as I stood in line I inhaled and that was it… nothing would come out. I coughed and hacked and coughed some more, I got weird looks, and one well-meaning gentleman behind me patted me gently on the back and asked me if I was alright. I teared up in response.
“That’s not how you do it… back up mister.”
Now I was gathering a little bit of attention. A heavy-set woman emerged from the flock that had gathered around and she wound up. The sound that was created when she struck my back reverberated throughout the cathedral skylight center of the surprisingly acoustic mall surroundings, creating a rather unexpected effect. A few kids skipping school ran for their lives at the shock wave that straightened my spine and made me cough all the louder; others came to see the spectacle. Luckily one was a doctor.
“What the hell are you doing to that boy? Step aside.”
“Like hell, who are you to be tellin’ me what to do?”
“I’m a doctor, and I’m going to save this young man’s life.”
Something in the way he said that made me feel uncomfortable… I tried to gather myself in a few short gasps and would have pulled through if I hadn’t fell further apart. I think it was his little black back that did it… or more his eagerness to try out what was inside. And the fat lady wasn’t about to be ousted so easily.
“Look!”
She saw my erratic attempt at breathing and pointed at me.
“He’s hyperventilating! Hurry doc, I’m a nurse… I can assist you.”
“Fine, suit up.”
It was rather impressive that the doctor managed to cram two scrubs as well as gloves and all of his surgical tools so neatly in his satchel… but I didn’t have the time to comment on my thoughts.
“You… hold him down he may resist.”
It was just my luck that a man who could have wrapped Lou Ferringo around a tree was watching… my attempt to resist was thwarted before it began… but keep in mind I would have put up a better fight if I’d taken a proper breath in the past few paragraphs…
“Scalpel.”
I resisted, breath or no breath.
“Dammit! Hold him down! Nurse, a general anesthetic… stat!”
“Ow!”
That was me. I don’t know if it was the nurse jabbing me in the buttock, the doctor stabbing me under the ribs, or the giant contorting my torso, maybe it was a combination, but something hurt. That it was me and that it was the only noise I made to offer my opinion in their little foray didn’t cause a moment’s hesitation in their procedure. Everything went black.
“Are you gonna get something?”
My battles with time always have casualties. Sometimes I emerge with physical or emotional scars… but I’m usually put through some intellectual ringer or mental strain. I’ve learned to take account rather subtly. As I pretended to scan the options chalked up on a blackboard before me I made sure all of my appendages were there by shifting my weight and patting myself down in search of my wallet. (This was really to look for bruises or scars but I don’t think I betrayed as much.)
“You’ve been gawking at the board for five minutes. I’m as patient as the next mall employee but if you don’t either order something or leave right now I’m going to call security.”
I panicked and began to actually read the limited menu for what I thought was the first time.
“That’s it smart ass… security it is. Those no loitering signs aren’t there for pictures.”
He waved and pointed while he was talking, so before I could ask him what that was supposed to mean, some gigantic toy cop had me in a full nelson.
“What’s the problem?”
It was the grappler who had subdued me in my choking fit… funny how our own subconscious minds toy with us sometimes.
“Loitering.”
He looked disgusted as he said it, like I‘d just been caught teaching children how to fly off the grand canyon, even if they were brats who pushed gifts aside at Christmas calling out ‘next!’ before contributing to unnecessary noise by kicking a younger sibling seated next to him. Who‘d only wish he could learn to fly and would be quite content if someone had the heart to take the time to teach him. But children can’t fly, the clerk actually knew as much, thought little of this, and stared at me as though I had just confessed to practicing it. If I could have seen the guard’s face I’d have known he looked much the same.
“I’ll deal with it.”
He forced me to the nearest exit… which happened to be right through the Gap. I looked over to see the forced smile of customer service engulfed by an expression of embarrassed, irate, horrified, nauseous, anxiety. I liked her smile better… even the forced, fake, facsimile reserved for customer service.
When we got outside he pointed.
“Go.”
“Where?”
“I don’t care, as long as it isn’t here.”
“How long?”
“Two days.”
Under any other circumstances I would have laughed and pleaded for a month. Today I cried; the man behind the counter took pity on me.
“Whoa, buddy… take it easy, I’m sorry… take all the time you want. I’ll just… help the next customer.”
The bloated nurse pushed me aside… unintentionally I’m sure; she probably didn’t know that it was a fundamental law of Physics that no two objects could exist in the same space at the same time. Her space just kind of made mine cease to exist and I found myself beside her. She looked over at me as though a gnat had flown by her and she wanted to swat it. She looked right into my eyes, and her countenance changed.
“Oh, you sweet thang!”
She was surprisingly agile for one of such proportions. She had the back of my head in one or her padded paws before I had sufficient time to scream… and by the time I had had sufficient time, it was smothered by her ample bosom.
“Don’t struggle sugar… we was meant to be. That’s plain as day. I didn’t think I’d ever find my sweet little dollop of whipped cream but here you are… right ready to dip into a pot of coffee…”
Luckily I snapped out of it before I ventured to find out what that meant or where it was going. Six short minutes had elapsed since time got the better of me… and I had to counterattack quickly or I was a goner. In frustration I pocketed my watch; it didn’t seem to be helping much today anyway. I wiped away the remnants of the tears that escaped during episode two… or was it three? I had lost count, and I ventured into the bookstore. It was beside the Gap… but by far the safest place to be.
“Can I help you?”
She had a nice voice… but I wasn’t about to get caught looking, not in my present mental state; who knows what dreams may come…
“Just looking.”
I was actually wondering rather aimlessly through the countless accounts of… well, everything. I managed to hover ever so briefly by the magazine section… just long enough see who the recent cover girls were… not that the selection changed with much frequency. The men’s magazines had a healthy smattering of well-adorned (or unadorned) flesh… so did the women’s magazines. None of them had Angelica though, so I wasn’t all that allured. I made my way to the classics and the clock struck twelve. Twain, Dickinson, Dickens, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Pope, Austin, Swift, Locke, Descartes, Plato, Augustine, Mill and hundreds of others… immortal, immovable, irrevocable. The thoughts, and feelings, and lives that these people penned were absolute, and had only what was there, within themselves, to lean on for defense. They were my refuge because it was in picking their minds I escaped my own picking on me. One o’clock passed.
“Is everything alright?”
“Quite.”
Paris is in ruins and an innocent man sacrifices himself for an unrequited love. Everything was far from alright but that was centuries ago. Programmed responses. I put down the tale. I picked up another. I wandered through Rome, Venice, and Verona, castles, caves, forests, a graveyard, and an ocean, all at the hands of a dramatist.
“Are you sure there’s nothing I can help you with?”
“Un-huh…”
I went from title to title to author to genre and back and forth from mythology to fiction to philosophy and drama, even poetry tasting a smorgasbord of isms, ideologies, conventions, what have you. It wasn’t until three o’ clock that I figured out the world was against me. My greatest friends, those who wrote down their stories before me, had stabbed me in the back with the deadliest weapons they could muster. I looked at my watch. It was still dormant. I didn’t know my fault until I asked the poor girl who kept trying to help me what the time was.
“It’s ten minutes after three.”
She said it laughing.
I don’t need to tell you the word that backed up its way into my head. I dropped the Penguin Classic I was musing over onto the floor and I ran. I tried to cut the turn out of the bookstore too sharply and ended up sliding on the linoleum. The high pitched squeak alerted security as to my whereabouts. I got up and hightailed it to the Gap entrance. A couple of thirteen-year-old girls screamed when I startled them. Security began running. Angelica wasn’t at the register; she wasn’t on the floor. With my capture inevitable I figured what the hell and I checked the stockroom. No luck.
“Where is she?”
“Who?”
“Angelica!”
“She got off…
I’m frantic…
“When? When! How long ago?”
“I dunno… like, ten minutes…”
The target of my inquisition fielded my questioning with remarkable ease, as though it were an everyday occurrence. I was about to comment on her service, but I was had. There was no use resisting. Time had coupled with the mightiest weapon it could have, at least given the circumstances, a uniformed high school dropout that could crush beer cans on his forehead and me underfoot. I was defeated. There’s nothing worse than authority in the wrong hands, and that thickheaded, thick-chested, toy cop was definitely the wrong hands. When I was kicked out this time, I didn’t bother to look where I was being directed or ask for how long. I just left. I was in no hurry. I was headed back. Back to life before. Back to monotony and misery and…
“Frankie!”
I looked every which way as fast as I could and crumpled to the ground because I hurt something doing so.
“Phil! Are you ok?”
I must have cried out when I fell because she came upon me quickly and with concern that turned to smiles when I smiled at her. I winced getting up. She held my arm.
“Are you ok?”
She was laughing.
“I’m Fine… I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
Love keeps no record of wrongs. Foster showed me 1 Corinthians 13 during our last coffee session. If the whole Bible were like that I would have converted.
“I missed you at work… I mean I didn’t miss you… I was there… I was there the whole time. I’ve been at the mall since ten. I just… lost track of time…”
“I know. I saw you reading.”
She was still laughing.
“You did?”
Laughter. Sweet joyous laughter… and a nod.
“What’s so funny?”
“I asked you three times if I could help you with anything and you kept brushing me off. I took my lunch without you at two. I was hungry. Then I saw you get yourself thrown out.”
I must have reddened because her laughter resumed with newfound vigor.
“You won’t be visiting me at work for a while…”
“What’s my sentence?”
“That? Don’t worry about it. I smoothed things over there… I just don’t want to be seen with you in public.”
“Oh.”
A lengthy silence followed. It was actually just time exacting its power over me because I had hardly taken a breath before I asked her.
“So how about dinner?”
“What?”
“Lunch is a write off… and I still want to talk to you. How about dinner?”
“Sure. But you’re not going like that.”
We walked back to my apartment. Laughter and silence consuming any time communication would have taken. No complaints here.
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