She said
Have you ever been to Southland Mall?
Sorry, I'm spying on your book.
(at top of the page I was reading,
the character is killing time at the mall
waiting for a call from his doctor
about the results of a MRI)
I said no, where is that?
She says In Hayward,
it's like a zombie mall
there's hardly anyone there.
No, I've never been there.
(and I have a flashback of George Romero's
Dawn of the Dead which takes place
almost entirely in a well lit modern mall,
zombies wandering through the aisles
between the mannequins)
Then she says, My father sells strip malls,
he's in commercial real estate.
I say oh, she says
sorry to interrupt your book.
Now the bus has made the turn
onto California Avenue
past the chapel which sits
surrounded by acres of bulldozed earth
which will become the new neighborhood.
California Avenue is pocked and patched
and plated so roughly that the bus
judders and shakes so much that
the words on the page jump too much
to read. I close my eyes.
On Avenue H, we pass between
the boarded up World War II buildings
where sailors were trained for combat
in the not-so-Pacific Ocean.
She gets up at 13th and says
Have a good day, enjoy your book
if you're ever in Hayward, check out
Southland Mall, and gets off the bus.
The guy in the book finds out
that he has a brain tumor.
Slow growing and probably not
malignant but unrelated to the hearing loss
that was the reason he went to the doctor.
He forgets to buy the toys
he intended to buy for his sons,
which is just as well because
they are often disappointed
with his choices. He wonders
if he's a bad dad, but is calmed
by the thought that their mother
will take good care of them
if he should die.
I get off the bus at Avenue B.
I'll read the rest of the story later.
As I walk home, my shadow is long,
it reaches all the way across the street
matching me pace by pace.
I'd like to believe I'd have been
a good dad. I might even
have chosen good toys at the mall.
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