The store manager slides this morning's video cassette into the tiny machine in her office. The man on the screen explains, step-by-step, just exactly how to arrange yesterday's shipment of aubergine loafers. The manager keeps half an eye on the video as she counts the tills. Outside the store, retiree power-walkers glide past the newly naturalized cleaning lady with her enormous blue motel cart, glide past each other passing greetings, advice, and coffee. The night security guard holds the door open for a husband/wife team in matching purple jogging suits, and then steps back out into the cold. He drives circles around the parking lot, peering into the darkness to make sure none of the employees park in the spots reserved for paying customers and their carefully dressed offspring. The employees wear heavy coats for the long walk, and they try to walk together. Ahead of them, lone shopper finally finds an open door and slides into the artificial warmth of the still-unlit atrium. She paces for awhile, then takes a sentinel post outside her favorite store, peering in at the tired young employees as they clean and fold. She shouts questions at them when they walk too close to the gate, but they ignore her with careful smiles and turned backs. The walkers, completing their course, pass her by also.
By the time someone turns on the atrium lights, the walkers are gathered in the food court, destroying the work of their walking with pastries and yogurt; they don' t mind eating breakfast surrounded by the noxious fumes of the fried chicken stand. The chicken stand workers pretend they're still asleep as they lower the meat into the grease. Little bubbles splash up around their hands, making ugly red marks in the skin. The first rays of dawn inch up their backs like cautious spiders, but the food court workers are unaware of the sunrise and the shoppers that follow just behind.
The first shoppers are gaggles of women with big purses and sleeping children attached to them at various points. They are waiting at the registers with return items before the woven steel gates are all the way up. They have complicated exchanges and discount cards and questions, and a schedule to keep. By noon they will be gone, replaced in the shops by those women whose children are too young to go to school--the ones who can't afford to lose the few precious hours of sleep they snatch away from their families on weekday mornings. These tired mothers are here more for the company than they are for the merchandise. They flirt with the college boys who work in the trendier stores. The boys flirt back a little, and play with the children while mom takes a quiet moment in the dressing room.
These women, too, wind their way to the food court. They order turkey sandwiches and do-it-yourself salads with special diet dressing, and jealously ogle the pre-pubescent bodies of the food court employees. They look sidelong at each other and smile, grateful for the moment of understanding. After lunch, the new mothers trickle home to put their children down for a nap, leaving an eerie silence in their wake.
Four cleaning women attack the most popular women's restroom, working faster than a racetrack pit crew as they ponder aloud the habits of people who know someone else is coming through to clean up after them. A security guard stops outside the door to listen to them before he makes his way to the shoe store to visit his favorite sales girl on her lunch break. He talks to her about going to grad school, about getting out of this damned mall. She thinks of her husband, who is studying to be a doctor--a man needs a good woman behind him if he wants to get places. Suddenly, she wishes the guard would leave.
The shoe girl keeps an eye on the door for the teenagers who will be arriving soon. They're prone to stealing, but with mom's credit cards, they are also the store's biggest source of revenue. Besides, some of the older ones have worked retail during the summers, and they tend to be a little more respectful of the employees than their parents are. The younger ones wear more makeup and travel in bigger , single-sex groups, a condition which leads to tense and exciting moments when a herd of girls passes a herd of boys and they stare each other down like rival armies. Every brief encounter constitutes a skirmish, after which both sides retire and regroup, then circle around to meet each other again. Guards follow close behind, waiting like coyotes for one of the herd to fall out of line. With only a few hours left to get on with the business of flirting, the children are largely unaware of their uniformed escort.
The hours pass quickly, the teenagers head off to dinner, and the executive crowd lays siege of the mall. They rip through the shelves like a flock of termites, trying to make good use of the final shopping hour. They shout at the sales clerks to show each other how important they are, as a form of flirting, like the junior high kids would do if they didn't have a curfew or a conscience. Half an hour after closing, the last of the executives finally head off to the bars and leave the late-night employees to clean up the carnage. The unluckiest employees suffer through several hours of folding, cleaning and packing before they stumble into the parking lot. On the way out, they wave tired goodbyes to the floor cleaners, who scramble to finish the job before dawn. In a few short hours, it will be time to start over.