Water trickled down over a fountain two stories high set in a wide pool surrounded by benches. Open-fronted shops on both levels faced the fountain. Bland Muzak drifted down from the ochre ceiling, as did the peculiar bronzy light; the smell of popcorn, which had struck Jack the moment the glass doors had whooshed shut behind him, emanated from an antique popcorn wagon, painted fire-engine red and stationed outside a Waldenbooks to the left of the fountain on the ground level. Jack had seen immediately that there was no movie theater in the Buckeye Mall. Timmy and his leggy princesses were floating up the escalator at the mall's other end, making, Jack thought, for a fast-food restaurant called The Captain's Table right at the top of the escalator. Jack put his hand in his pants pocket again and touched his roll of bills. Speedy's guitar-pick and Captain Farren's coin nested at the bottom of the pocket, along with a handful of dimes and quarters.
On Jack's level, sandwiched between a Mr. Chips cookie shop and a liquor store advertising NEW LOW PRICES for Hiram Walker bourbon and Inglenook Chablis, a Fayva shoe store drew him toward its long table of running shoes. The clerk at the cash register leaned forward and watched Jack pick over the shoes, clearly suspicious that he might try to steal something. Jack recognized none of the brands on the table. There were no Nikes or Pumas here - they were called Speedster or Bullseye or Zooms, and the laces of each pair were tied together. These were sneakers, not true running shoes. They were good enough, Jack supposed.
He bought the cheapest pair the store had in his size, blue canvas with red zigzag stripes down the sides. No brand name was visible anywhere on the shoes. They seemed indistinguishable from most of the other shoes on the table. At the register he counted out six limp one-dollar bills and told the clerk that he did not need a bag.
Jack sat on one of the benches before the tall fountain and toed off the battered Nikes without bothering to unlace them. When he slipped on the new sneakers, his feet fairly sighed with gratitude. Jack left the bench and dropped his old shoes in a tall black wastebasket with DON'T BE A LITTERBUG stencilled on it in white. Beneath that, in smaller letters, the wastebasket read The earth is our only home.
Jack began to move aimlessly through the long lower arcade of the mall, searching for the telephones. At the popcorn wagon he parted with fifty cents and was handed a quart-size tub of fresh popcorn glistening with grease. The middle-aged man in a bowler hat, a walrus moustache, and sleeve garters who sold him the popcorn told him that the pay phones were around a corner next to 31 Flavors, upstairs. The man gestured vaguely toward the nearest escalator.
Scooping the popcorn into his mouth, Jack rode up behind a woman in her twenties and an older woman with h*ps so wide they nearly covered the entire width of the escalator, both of them in pants suits.
If Jack were to flip inside the Buckeye Mall - or even a mile or two from it - would the walls shake and the ceiling crumble down, dropping bricks and beams and Muzak speakers and light fixtures down on everybody unlucky enough to be inside? And would the tenth-grade princesses, and even arrogant Timmy, and most of the others, too, wind up with skull fractures and severed limbs and mangled chests and . . . for a second just before he reached the top of the escalator Jack saw giant chunks of plaster and metal girders showering down, heard the terrible cracking of the mezzanine floor, the screams, too - inaudible, they were still printed in the air.
Angola. The Rainbird Towers.
Jack felt his palms begin to itch and sweat, and he wiped them on his jeans.
THIRTY-ONE FLAVORS, gleamed out a chilly incandescent white light to his left, and when he turned that way he saw a curving hallway on its other side. Shiny brown tiles on the walls and floor; as soon as the curve of the hallway took him out of sight of anyone on the mezzanine level, Jack saw three telephones, which were indeed under transparent plastic bubbles. Across the hall from the telephones were doors to MEN and LADIES.
Beneath the middle bubble, Jack dialed 0, followed by the area code and the number for the Alhambra Inn and Gardens. 'Billing?' asked the operator, and Jack said, 'This is a collect call for Mrs. Sawyer in four-oh-seven and four-oh-eight. From Jack.'
The hotel operator answered, and Jack's chest tightened. She transferred the call to the suite. The telephone rang once, twice, three times.
Then his mother said 'Jesus, kid, I'm glad to hear from you! This absentee-mother business is hard on an old girl like me. I kind of miss you when you're not moping around and telling me how to act with waiters.'
'You're just too classy for most waiters, that's all,' Jack said, and thought that he might begin to cry with relief.
'Are you all right, Jack? Tell me the truth.'
'I'm fine, sure,' he said. 'Yeah, I'm fine. I just had to make sure that you . . . you know.'
The phone whispered electronically, a skirl of static that sounded like sand blowing across a beach.
'I'm okay,' Lily said. 'I'm great. I'm not any worse, anyhow, if that's what you're worried about. I suppose I'd like to know where you are.'
Jack paused, and the static whispered and hissed for a moment. 'I'm in Ohio now. Pretty soon I'm going to be able to see Richard.'
'When are you coming home, Jack-O?'
'I can't say. I wish I could.'
'You can't say. I swear, kid, if your father hadn't called you that silly name - and if you'd asked me about this ten minutes earlier or ten minutes later . . . '
A rising tide of static took her voice, and Jack remembered how she'd looked in the tea shop, haggard and feeble, an old woman. When the static receded he asked, 'Are you having any trouble with Uncle Morgan? Is he bothering you?'