two

Chapter 2

Cole Barrett's phone buzzed.

Wendy.  

Maybe she was texting to apologize. To explain. Tell him it wasn't what it looked like. He reached across the passenger seat and glanced down. Just for a second. Just long enough. 

A figure appeared in his headlights. Too low for a deer. Too quick for a dog. 

“Ahhhh!”

He stomped the brakes. The steering wheel wrenched in his hands. Trees flashed across his windshield. A directional sign whipped past. The Bronco hopped the curb, shot between two trees, and stopped just short of a light pole. He sat there. Listening to the rain tapping the hood. The wipers swept back and forth. Back and forth. The rhythm was soothing, almost hypnotic. His eyes followed the blades until the world beyond the windshield began to blur…

He planned to surprise his wife with an early return from his school conference, Häagen-Dazs, and news of his new position. Instead, she surprised him with a startled look, tangled sheets, and a new position of her own.

His friend looked up.

The room tilted.

He stared at them as if he were watching a scene in a movie. Then he turned and walked out. 

He threw himself into the Bronco, slammed the door, and sped away. The road out of Edgewater Shores narrowed to a single lane before crossing Lewis Creek.  The 1946 bridge was made of old wooden planks laid end to end, each tire producing a hollow knock, a tired groan, and the occasional sound that made Cole wonder if the bridge was actually alive. The railing was low, scarred, and battered by decades of glancing blows. Everyone in town knew what a direct hit would do. 

You’d go straight into the creek and out toward the Chesapeake Bay. 

Every year, the town voted on replacing the span with a modern drawbridge. Every year, the measure failed by one vote.

His vote.

Cole’s argument: The old bridge preserved the town’s history and kept its “waterfront charm.” Never mind that rusted bolts, nostalgia, and barnacles held the charm together. The Bronco rattled across the planks; another thought occurred to him. If he hit the guardrail straight on, fast enough, would it hold? Would it drop you into the dark water below? His hands tightened around the wheel. For one terrible second, he considered finding out. Then something inside him pulled back. Not fear. Not exactly. His hands stayed at ten and two. The Bronco stayed in its lane, as if guided by a steadier touch than his own. 

By the time he reached Forest Drive, he had no idea where he was going. He took turns without thinking. Back roads blurred together. Sharp left. Rolling right. Another right. One of those damn traffic circles. He kept driving, the turns coming and going without leaving much of an impression. The wipers dragged back and forth in the same tired rhythm.

Then one of them squeaked.

…Cole blinked. He looked through the windshield, trying to figure out where the hell he was.

He knew exactly where he was.

The parking lot of what used to be the Annapolis Mall stretched out, empty and dark. No child. No animal. He should drive away. Instead, he started circling the garage, up one ramp and down the next, taking turns without thinking. This place had once been his second home. He and his friends had raced bikes through this garage, chased girls through the food court, and spent their first paychecks here. He had eaten toothpick-sized chicken samples from Chinese restaurants, played arcade games until his fingers ached, and spent entire Saturdays accomplishing absolutely nothing.

It had been perfect.

Now the garage was a hollow skeleton of concrete, faded lines, and empty spaces.

Cole passed the old entrances. Anchor stores stared back like ghosts. The movie theater stood on the far side, letters peeling, the marquee long dark. He eased the Bronco up another ramp. The garage swallowed the engine noise.

He slowed.

Moonlight slipped through a break in the upper wall. A clearance bar hung low from the rafter. One chain was slightly longer than the other, and the post beneath it was chipped and scarred from the glancing blows of SUVs.

Cole looked up.

MAX CLEARANCE — 6'8"

He blinked.

Max Headroom — 6'8"

For half a second, the sign wasn’t a sign. The words rearranged themselves. It was an old television glow, a stuttering face, a voice skipping like it was trying to say something twice.

He blinked again.

Just a sign. The ramp curved ahead. A moment later, the garage spit him out into the rear lot. Rain drifted across rows of empty spaces.

He was turning toward the exit when he saw it.

A light.

Behind the mall.

Back where the delivery trucks once idled. Where employees slipped away for smoke breaks. Where things happened that management never wanted to know about.

The part of the mall no customer was ever supposed to see.

The bones.

Cole slowed. It shouldn’t be on.

He turned the wheel. The Bronco rolled up on the old dumpster area. He stepped out into the drizzle and gently closed the door. The sound carried anyway. He stood still. The air smelled faintly of garbage and diesel exhaust. As if the mall hadn’t forgotten what it used to be.

Ahead, the service entrance door stood open. 

Of course it was.

Cole walked toward it and looked down—a telephone book.

He pulled it free. For a moment, he just stood there holding it. He’d forgotten what they felt like. Not the weight. The importance. Every person. Every business. Every friend. Compressed onto pages so thin a person could be erased with one quick tear. Answers lived inside it. Numbers. Places. You held one in your hands, and the whole town knew your name.

Then nobody needed them anymore.

Almost overnight they became jokes. Booster seats. Makeshift flower presses. Christmas trees made from folded pages.

The light above him flickered. Cole slowly put the phone book back. He stepped through the doorway. He never looked behind him. The hallway stretched ahead, cinder-block walls swallowing what little light remained. For a moment, it felt longer than it should have been. He chalked it up to the darkness. To everything that had just happened.

Cole kept walking.  A glass door appeared. Above it hung a white sign with black letters:

**EMPLOYMENT**. 

He slowed. His mind slipped backward. The classroom. The first week of school. The ritual he repeated every September, when he would write a Mark Twain quote on the board:

*“The secret of success is making your vocation your vacation.”*

He’d always liked that one. The sign felt as though someone had put it there specifically for him.

For a moment, it was easier to believe he was dreaming. Any second now, he would wake up in bed with Wendy beside him. He just needed to do something dreams didn’t allow.

Get angry. Punch something.  Everyone knew dreams don’t let you punch hard enough. You swung and your fist moved through molasses.

Cole looked at the glass. “Go ahead,” he muttered. He pushed open the door.

A faint blend of toner, floor polish, and artificial pine greeted him. The employment office looked as though someone had closed it in 1986 and forgotten to come back. Brown paneling. Mustard-colored walls. Plastic chairs lined against the walls. Artificial ficus plants standing stiffly in their pots. Retail posters hung in precise rows, each one spaced like stations of the cross on the walls of churches. At the center was the mall’s current promotional campaign: a blonde with big hair, zebra-print leggings, and a bigger smile loaded down with shopping bags, one leg kicked back as she balanced an exaggerated stack of packages on her heel. 

A slogan read: 

*Shopping should be fun again!*

Cole stared at her. “Good luck with that.”

Near the back, a Culligan water cooler stood with a large upside-down jug he hadn’t seen in years. A coffee table occupied the middle of the room. Trade magazines were fanned across it. Retail Week, Chain Store Age, Shopping Center Today, as if someone might actually read one. A Newton’s Cradle clicked softly. Back and forth. Back and forth. Cole watched the silver balls swing.

He moved toward the attendant window. A clipboard sat beside a small banker’s lamp, its pull chain swayed gently. He resisted the urge to tug it. Once. twice. A hundred times. Behind the glass, the chair was empty. A sweater was draped over the backrest. On the desk sat a cluttered Rolodex, an electric typewriter, a can of Fresca, and an ashtray filled with stubbed-out cigarettes. At the far end of the office, near a utility sink, a Keurig coffee machine hissed faintly. A drinking bird dipped its head.

Cole stopped.

More smells. This time coffee. A chill slid up his spine. Can you smell in dreams? See in color? If this was a dream, it wasn’t behaving like one.

Taped to the glass was a handwritten note: 

Back in fifteen. 

Please complete application on clipboard below.

He picked it up and crossed to a small laminate desk. Déjà vu settled over him. Not the subtle kind that quickly passes. The heavy, sinking kind that stayed. 

He had been here before. 

Same chair. Same room. Same hum of ceiling vents. Same Bic pen in his hand. Same stapled packet. Same clothes on his back. He looked down at the pen before he could think; it moved. His name. His address. All in his familiar handwriting. He watched himself check boxes without consciously choosing any of them.

Then the déjà vu fractured.

A question he didn't remember appeared at the bottom of the page.

What is your biggest regret?

Cole stared at it. “Seriously?”

The Newton’s Cradle clicked behind him.

Back and forth.

Back and forth.

He looked up. On the wall hung a felt letter board behind glass, the kind churches and civic halls used…in the eighties. 

Some of the letters were backward. Others were upside down. Numbers had replaced 

The sign read:

**MALL JOB 0PEN1NGS – N0W H1R1NG**

            F00d Court Worker – C1nnab0n

	**Security Patrol – Segway Unit**

	**Ass1stant Manag3r – Kay-Bee T0ys**

	**Manager – V1ct0r1as Secr3t (Shhhh)**

•       (Appl1cants must adh3re t0 brand baut7 standards)

• Manager – Sam G00dy

• S3as0nal – The GAP

• Cvst0m3r Service Desk- Mall

• H0urly / S3as0nal – B. Dalt0n B00ks3ll3r

           Cole stared at the board. The mistakes were too deliberate. Someone was trying to be funny. Or someone was trying very hard to look like someone who was trying to be funny.

Then he saw it.

His first job. 

The Gap. 

For a second, the office disappeared. He could hear the music. See the denim. The bright lights. The smiling models telling everyone to fall into the Gap. He could almost smell the store. He looked back at the application. It no longer felt like he was applying for a job. It felt like he was answering a callback.

Forty years later.

The mall felt unmoored from time, as if someone had cut it loose in 1985 and let it drift. Stores still hiring for customers who should never come.

Cole signed his name across the bottom. He left the date blank. He carried the clipboard back to the counter. The Newton’s Cradle clicked. Back and forth. Then stopped.

Cole turned. Across the room, a door he hadn't noticed before was opening. Slowly. A fluorescent light above it flickered. Before he could talk himself out of it, he stepped through it.