Waste
I wake up in a plastic ball pit. Like at Chuck E. Cheese or something. But I don’t know where I am right away. Except I’m deeper in the ball pit than ever before, like I always wanted to be as a kid and more than I want to be as an adult. It isn’t very deep.
I climb out and see a security guard patrolling the floor. He startles at my presence. The show is over, sir. It’s too late. This place is already doomed. Unless he just wants to rumble.
I fall back into the pit because why not. I’m already here. My fall is somewhat graceful. I can tell it moved him, this security guard. Okay, I went a little overboard with it. Simply for the sake of entertainment value. As I turn to find an exit, I give him a face like I’m readily available to do this professionally. Stunts at various ball pits across the country. The works. Who knows, he might have connections. In the ball pit scene, I could become a public persona. I say all this with one face.
The problem started last week. We heard the kind of news that makes you take a good look at what you’ve done to get here. Like you’re some kind of cautionary tale in a health pamphlet. But there’s no medical explanation for unleashing this kind of destruction. It’s out of our hands.
Nobody knew what lay under the old mall. So when the city took over and marked it for demolition, we sent for help. Stop in the name of love. Of nostalgia. Of commerce. Of those cookie cakes with the electric blue icing billowing in soft ridges to form messages of congratulations, of births, of events that are not usually violent in nature—with only a few exceptions. I won’t get into that time Joey had too much to prove at his laser tag birthday party. He should be the one to come clean about that. I don’t care how old he is. Leanne’s vision is still perfectly good, and that’s what matters now.
What we know so far is that the mall’s days are numbered. The city says so. Some of us tried demonstrating and all manner of shouting in public to change their minds. Some of us even dusted off our desktops, connected it to dial-up, and did some digging. Argued that the mall contributed positively to the neighborhood, that it instilled a sense of a triumph in the human spirit for those who entered its double sets of doors. Our findings might as well be pixelated table scraps to the officials, though.
A townie named Mark wasn’t willing to let this go. He insisted that they had shredded our report in secret. That it was all a cover-up. A bloodbath waiting to happen. And we know enough not to reason with him. Reason doesn’t occur to Mark. Ever. It doesn’t factor into his decisions. His mom was a lifer at the manufacturing plant who liked to say she was just passing through. Because really, when aren’t we just passing through? Mark once skinned an opossum only to look at it. A (questionably) healthy curiosity ruled him. He still thinks we can make this problem go away.
I get my bearings. Looks like I was a part of some hopeless protest last night. An all-hands lock-in at the mall where anything goes, and anything most definitely went last night—the last night this building will ever see. Traces and trances return to me without asking first. I find a nice shaded corner of the parking lot to piss in. Today there is no burning sensation. Today is a good day.
Not to be dramatic, but to most people I have vanished off the face of the earth. I made quite a name for myself in certain circles of society and then I left. Don’t ask me why. And I arrived here, absorbing into the general population like nobody’s business. Because it isn’t anybody’s business.
As we assemble in the east parking lot behind orange cones that form the safety zone, it’s worth noting that nothing brings people together like tearing stuff apart. If you live in this town or the tri-county area for that matter and you have working eyes (or one working eye, like Leanne), then you’re here.
Mark arrives late after tacking up photocopies of our mall report in all the familiar places. He’s got a telephoto lens strapped around his neck, and he will take pictures of you unannounced.
“This isn’t over. Heads will roll,” he whispers while jockeying for a prime viewing position.
Before it was condemned, Mark bought the mall’s old department store space even though he is a self-employed accountant with a modest clientele, so he could use the overhead speaker for “announcements.” He said whatever he wanted into that speaker and nobody could stop him. He didn’t question whether what he had to say was interesting. Until the city rode in. While rummaging through the department store’s storage closet, Mark unfurled what looked to be an ancient scroll announcing a special BOGO event. There was nothing special about those specials. Rumors have circulated that he laminated the sale scroll and hung it on the ceiling right above his twin bed for no particular reason.
Then Macie parks her Audi at a safe distance. Her face is on every milk carton in town, not because she was ever missing but because she owns the dairy. Common decency means nothing to her. I toured her house when it was on the market a couple months ago. There were nude portraits of her in each room. Even Macie’s enemies admit she has well-defined abdominal muscles.
Mark’s going around asking if people want to see his party trick, which is him doing their taxes and a kegstand simultaneously, but no one is taking the bait. We’ve already heard it before.
I decide there’s only one way out of this.
“You know, Mark, I’m thinking about going into finance, too. You could say I have a growing interest in growing interest,” I say through gritted teeth.
Maybe common decency is no longer possible for any of us.
What is common, anyway? And how does one go about finding oneself? And what about UFOs?
These are the questions I’ve queued up to distract Mark, but the city has decided to get it over with already, and I’m not really one for stall tactics.
Right when the building is reduced to rubble, I’m tying my shoes. I miss the best part. What a waste of waste.
If there’s one thing this town understands, it’s that you can get used to any circumstance. Mark thinks he’ll never forget the look of that overlarge heap of scrap metal and asbestos, but he will. When the citizens look back on this, they’ll only be able to picture what exists in its place. And they’ll think the new thing is so great. In the meantime, let people believe they care. It’s easier that way. Mark will be laminating a new artifact, and then like the mall itself he will sort of implode. Before he can even figure out the capabilities of a fiber optic cable, he’ll be pulling back the shower curtain at night for fear of finding his very own self there waiting in the tub. Probably. I can’t say for sure.
As for me, it’s time to stop hiding. Anonymity has never really worked out for me. This is the deal. I hear the city is hiring.