In 1987, the Yates Mall was built at the crossroads of Route 8 and Highway 32. There was a traffic light there, the only one for many miles. In the middle of some cow pastures, down the road a piece from Bickton and about two miles from Pearl, a mall was built and it had a Sears at one end and a Bon-Ton at the other. At this time, there was a gas station at the corner and a lumber mill next to the mall and that was it. People came to the mall blinking, putting their hands in front of them to make sure they didn’t walk into any windows. They found a fabric store, shoe shops, an eyeglass store, a pharmacy, a small cafeteria, even a cinema with two screens. People said that Yates County was finally civilized. The local paper said that such crassly generic consumerism would kill local commerce and crush the mom-and-pops in the oily boom towns around.
Over the next few years the intersection blossomed. It found added to its commercial enterprises a Home Depot and a Burger King. Then a small and disorganized amusement park. Soon a newer and more sparkling gas station set up shop to compete with the older one, setting pay-at-the-pump and instant submarine sandwiches against grit and a mechanic. A roadside ice-cream stand opened up within view of the traffic light to compete with the Jolly Milk, which was a mile away.
In 1993, a Wal-Mart was built across from the mall, and editorial writers at the local paper threw up their hands and gave up the region to multinational trade death. Hardware stores on main streets everywhere closed. Clothiers despaired. Purveyors of grocery shook their fists at the heavens. One small man with a tire store next to the bank in Oil City committed suicide. By 1995, the Yates Mall, once heralded as the advance guard of civilization, closed in deference to the big-box cavalry across the street. The building emptied, was boarded up, and a permanent sign was erected out front: SPACE FOR LEASE. 1000×500, 1500×500, OR WHATEVER.
Naturally, the local high schoolers took it over as a make-out zone. Before the mall, they had an abandoned railroad car off a siding on the other side of the river, past Franklin, but you had to walk half a mile to get to it, and while there were mattresses, there were also snakes. The Yates Mall was better, because it was bigger, and a parked car in the lot was inconspicuous because the theater was still open for one showing a day. Of course, there were also more dubious operations being enacted inside the shell of Yates Mall than just the pregnancy roulette. Sometimes the players in these games overlapped, the meth dealers and the amorous teens, the amorous dealers and the meth-ridden teens. After a couple of years, there was a lot of junk on the floor.
Maxon and Sunny were sixteen when they first entered the closed part of the mall. It was Saturday and they had gone to a matinee, legitimately parking Sunny’s little car in the parking lot, leisurely strolling into the theater. Sunny had a pocket bottle of vodka in her bag, and during the movie she applied herself to it earnestly, until by the third act she was loopy and groping.
“Maxon,” she whispered loudly. “Maxon, let’s go to the Bon-Ton afterwards.”
Going to the Bon-Ton meant slipping away to any number of hidden locations within the abandoned mall, tucking oneself and one’s partner into a corner, and doing it. Maxon knew this. The Bon-Ton happened to be the biggest empty department store, but it wasn’t the only one. There was also a Sears and there were many other smaller stores. In Maxon’s mind, the mall was a rabbit warren, with bunches of little rabbits stuffed into holes rutting at each other. Maxon couldn’t imagine doing that with Sunny. They were boyfriend and girlfriend. They kissed and pressed their bodies up to each other. But to be naked, in a closet, pushing into her wetly, he could not imagine.
“No,” he said. “You’re drunk. Let’s get out of here. We can go to the A-frame before we go home.”
The A-frame, still as abandoned as it was when Maxon was a little boy, was their own secret shack. But they didn’t use it for sex. They used it for sobering Sunny up, cooling Maxon off, escape.
“No,” she insisted. “I want to go to the Bon-Ton like the other kids do. Why can’t we? What’s the big deal?”
She went off into a fit of giggles and bent over in her chair, in the dark. Her hand clutched his thigh and squeezed, traveled up a few inches and squeezed, up and squeezed, and then it just stayed there, her fingers tapping up and down.
“Fine,” he said.
They staggered out of the theater, one of several couples intent on the same mission, veering quickly right when the rest of the moviegoers veered left and out the doors. The kids split up, each couple taking a separate hallway as if by mutual assent, and Sunny grabbed Maxon’s hand and pulled him firmly along.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“Renee told me where to go,” said Sunny. “Come on, hurry. It’s a secret.”
At the back of a store that had once sold wooden crafts and furniture created by local artists, she yanked open a door and led him through it. There was no light, but Sunny rummaged around beside the door on the inside, found a flashlight, and flicked it on.
“I found it!” she said, as if to herself.
She slammed the flashlight down on the desk, pointed upward, and a warm yellow light illuminated the room. It was bigger than Maxon had anticipated. Maybe it was the office and the stockroom. There were rows of metal shelves along one wall.
“Take your clothes off,” she told him. “Come on, come on. No, wait, wait a minute.”
From her pocket, Sunny pulled out the vodka, half empty, an incense stick, and a condom. She pushed the incense stick into a groove in a ceramic holder there on the desk, lit the end of it, flicking impatiently at a lighter that was already there. The smell of bergamot bloomed in the corner, pushing back the mustiness a little, but there was still a chill. In the corner was a pile of body pillows, scavenged from leftovers at Sears, and there was a stack of sheets, some still wrapped, some just folded, some discarded in a pile in the other corner. The room was fifteen feet by eighteen feet. They had been standing in it for forty-five seconds.
“That’s good. This is our smell. This is us now. Right now,” said Sunny. She took a big sturdy drink of the vodka and smiled, her face lit from beneath, every tooth shining. Then she yanked her jeans off and left them on the floor, threw her hoodie and T-shirt down next to them.
“Come on, Maxon,” she urged him.
When she was standing there in only her cotton panties and her white cotton bra, she pushed the door closed with a solid thud, and Maxon was inside the room with her. Inside the room where the kids went to have sex, there were Sunny and Maxon, about to do it.
“This is what happens,” said Sunny, giggling. “This is what happens, this is what. Happens. What happens, what happens, what happens.” She was drunk. Maxon knew it. She grabbed the waistband of his jeans and ripped them open, dragging the denim down over his legs. He felt his legs automatically kicking his shoes off by putting each toe on the opposite heel, pulling down. It was as if the feeling of his pants around his ankles just made them behave this way. Then she pressed her hands into his chest and pulled off his flannel shirt.
There they were, him in a T-shirt and boxers, her in her underwear. It could have been any other time. They could have been somewhere in the woods. This was not unfamiliar, this was not yet unsafe. There was a chance she would chicken out of whatever she was planning for them. He could run away. He could take a picture, right now, before it happened. But she was in a hurry, and jittery. She grabbed his hand and led him, zombie-like, to the pile of pillows.
“Shut up, Maxon, you’re so chatty,” she said, her feet prancing a little as she pulled him over and pushed him down on the pile.
“Lie down on your back,” she said. “And don’t worry. I know what to do. Renee told me.”
He knew he should not be here. He knew it could be a bad moment. It could not be good. And yet, as she stood there in the golden light of someone’s old flashlight, humming to herself as she pulled off her bra, as she crawled over to him like an animal, where he lay on the pillow, as she fell into his arms, he could not leave her or stop her. She was on top of him, the little tips of her breasts against his chest, her hands beside his shoulders, pressing down into the pillows, and she put her mouth up to his ear.
“I love you, baby,” she said into his ear, her breath causing electrical ripples down his body. He felt the familiar triangle light up between his hips and his groin, very fast, like a jolt. She put her mouth on his neck beneath his jaw, on his collarbone, on his sternum and his ribs. This was a kiss followed by another, each one small and chaste, but quick, like kissing hello. There was none of the wetness he dreaded. There was no terrible sweating. His body was cold, chilled, except for the places where she touched him, where her lips engaged with his skin. There were little hot marks left on him, like thermal imaging, his body blue, and mouth shapes in orange and red punctuating it. She moved down, kissed the points of his ribs where they arched over his belly, her elbows dropping to support her, her butt rising in the air as she leaned back and down. She giggled, pressing her face against his belly, tickling.
She kissed his hipbone, then with her cheek rubbed against the inside of his boxers. She pulled the fabric down with her teeth so his penis came out through his fly. Her hot breath on him made his hands clench into the pillows around him. His eyes shut tight. He could not think about what she seemed about to do, and he could not stop her. Then everything went from fast to slow as she put her tongue on him. He was hers, whatever she wanted to do to him. A very simple thing, he thought. A very simple motion. He really wanted it. Her hands pressed against his thighs.
Then he felt the hot wetness of her mouth touching it, and gasped. “I can’t,” he choked out. The first thing he had said since the theater. She took her mouth away and looked up at him. He saw her, mouth red, eyes black, framed in his legs, her tawny shoulders raised up like a lion at a kill.
“Come on, boy,” she said, and as her mouth closed over him again, it felt so good. Moments later, he silently ejaculated, managing to get it out of her mouth first.
“That was awesome,” she said cheerfully, pulling herself back up next to him. She reached across him, pulled a folded sheet from the pile and tucked it over them. Her cheek against his shoulder, her arm under his neck. He was warm, warmer than ever, and floating. They went to sleep, her from liquor, him from being at peace.
THEY WOKE UP TO the sound of the door opening. As Sunny’s eyes opened and she remembered, slowly, where she was, she saw the outline of her friend Renee and two guys in the door. Renee was reaching around on the floor for the flashlight. Sunny took in the sight next to her, Maxon asleep in his boxers and T-shirt. She saw her own panties still in place. Her plan had failed. At least I got my bra off, she thought. Maybe we even kissed lying down. He was deeply asleep, his mouth open. She pulled her arm from under his neck and his head lolled off to the side. Strange. She wondered if he’d had vodka, too.
“Hey, occupado!” she called to Renee.
“Sunny? Is that you? Where’s the fucking light?”
“I don’t know,” Sunny said.
“I got a Maglite,” said one of the boys, and Sunny recognized the voice of Adam Tyler, a football player.
“Why didn’t you say so, asshole,” Renee said, and snatched a flashlight out of his hand, turned it toward Sunny.
“Hey,” she said as the light hit her eyes, pulling the sheet up and around her. She stood up and hopped over to her clothes, began to put on her jeans under the sheet. The bra would just have to stay here; no way was she giving the football team a show. That was Renee’s job anyway.
“Get going, sister, this ain’t a motel,” said Renee affectionately.
“Wait a minute,” said Adam Tyler. “Isn’t that Maxon Mann?”
Sunny looked over at Maxon. He was now sitting up perfectly straight.
“Whatcha doing here, Mann, don’t you know this is the honeymoon suite?”
Adam punched his buddy’s arm and his buddy punched back. Renee was holding the flashlight so it pointed toward the ceiling.
“Shut up, Adam,” she said mildly.
Maxon stood up and spread his hands amicably.
“Hey, Tyler,” he said, “I didn’t realize you lived here, man. My apologies. And my compliments.”
“Fuck you, nerd,” Adam shouted, lunging forward, menacing Maxon with his fists. “I don’t live here, I fuck here. And you don’t fuck where I fuck, okay? So take your bald bitch and go down and poke her in the bathroom, where shitheads like you belong.”
Sunny did not see Maxon coming toward Adam, but she heard the sound of his fist landing on Adam’s head. When the buddy jumped into the fray, planting a firm fist in Maxon’s kidney region, Maxon began to fight for real, and Renee pulled Sunny out the door, leaving Adam’s flashlight on the floor, still lighting up the scene. Behind the door, there were sounds of a raging typhoon.
“Come on,” said Renee. “We have to get help. They’re going to kill him.”
“They’re not,” said Sunny, panting a little as they ran down the mall, zipping up her jacket. “Don’t worry about him, worry about them. Seriously, trust me, he is in no danger.”
There was a time when Maxon had been put to the ground by two brothers, fighting him. Then it took three brothers, and then four. Since the growth spurt, there had been no bruises. Either he was winning all the time or his body no longer responded to punishment. It was as if he didn’t even feel pain.
She let Renee go. She slowed to a walk, headed for the door. Outside the air was fresh. She got into her car, wishing for a cigarette. She also wished for a drink of water and a couple of Advil. When Maxon emerged from the mall a few minutes later, and sauntered across the parking lot, he was neatly dressed, his face wreathed in a carefree smile. He popped open the door and folded himself into the passenger seat.
“Did you kill them, Maxon?” she asked him, starting up the car.
“Nope,” he said. “But we can use that room whenever we want.”
“Baby, you know,” said Sunny, “I like drinking but I am never going to do it unless I have you around to protect me. And I don’t think we should go back to that room.”
They never did go back to the honeymoon suite at the Yates Mall. And even during her years away at college, Sunny never drank without Maxon there to protect her. And that was true all through their lives.
IN THE STUDIO OF WNFO News, Sunny sat in the same white wicker chair as before, folded her feet the same way, laid her hands on the side of her pregnant belly. But now her head was bald, and her eyes were red from crying. Showing up on television as a bald woman was something that she could do for Maxon, whether it mattered or not. Whether or not, for him, there would ever be an opportunity to watch the tape. Seeing her sitting next to Les Weathers, with no Maxon on the other side, it would be clear to everyone in the world that Maxon was gone. The special symmetry was missing. There was an absence in space. The camera closed in on just the two of them, Sunny and Les, and when Les began the interview, the cameraman pulled the shot even tighter, on just their heads. Two heads, talking on television, one blond and one bald.
Sunny had had a dream, and in the dream, she was wearing her mother’s clothes. The clothes were tight and didn’t fit her pregnant body, but she was wearing them anyway, and carrying her mother’s purse as well. She was wearing her mother’s walking shoes, and dealing with the aftermath of her mother’s death. Seventeen copies of the death certificate, a decent obituary, cremation. And as she was discussing the details of the memorial service with the rector of the church, her mother walked into the room, clearly alive and not even sick. There was a large shining lump on the mother’s head, as if she fell out of a tree and forgot who she was, accidentally went into a coma and died from cancer, and then remembered who she was and fully recovered. And what Sunny felt at that moment, when she saw her mother walking into the room, was anger. Why did you put me through all that? she asked her mother. The sickness, the sores, and pulling the plug? Why did I have to do all that by myself, when you were perfectly well enough to do it with me? But the mother was transformed. Having been fake-dead, she was now somehow above reproach, and wouldn’t even respond.
“Sunny Mann,” said Les Weathers. “First let me say that I am sorry about what’s happening to you now, and I appreciate your coming in to share your experiences with us once again.”
“Thank you for having me,” she said.
“Around the world, and certainly here in the U.S., everyone has been watching the story so carefully. But just to fill in our viewers, your husband’s rocket has been hit by a meteor and all communication with the astronauts has been lost. How are you holding up?”
And Sunny managed to answer, “I am doing okay. I am taking it slowly, one thing at a time.”
Sunny told about how she had found out, what she had been thinking. She explained that she really wanted Maxon to be alive, and the whole crew to be safe, and Les Weathers told her that he did, too, they all did, everyone in the whole world. After the interview, someone came to take Sunny’s mic from the back of her shirt and unpin it from her collar. Les Weathers stayed on set with her as the crew peeled away. Soon they were sitting there, still in the wicker chairs with no one else around.
“How are you doing, really?” Les said.
“I don’t know. It’s pretty awful,” said Sunny.
He put his hand over hers, and she watched the two hands fold together, the way human hands naturally do.
“I hope you realize,” he said, “that we are here for you. We are all here for you. Especially me.”
“Okay,” she said. She swiped at her eyes with one sleeve.
“I’m right down the street if you need me.”
“Thanks.”
“And if he doesn’t come back, Sunny,” Les went on, leaning in toward her ear. She could feel the warmth from his body, different from the heat of the lights. It was a moving, breathing warmth. “If he doesn’t come back, I know this is not the right thing to say, but I’m saying it anyway: If he doesn’t come back, I want you to know that I don’t mind about the baldness either. I don’t mind.”