Kill the Mall Read online

  ALSO BY PASHA MALLA

  The Withdrawal Method

  All Our Grandfathers Are Ghosts

  Why We Fight >…>

  Quran Neck

  People Park

  Erratic Fire, Erratic Passion (with Jeff Parker)

  Fugue States

  PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF CANADA

  Copyright © 2020 Pasha Malla

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published in 2020 by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto. Distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.

  www.penguinrandomhouse.ca

  Knopf Canada and colophon are registered trademarks.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Title: Kill the mall / Pasha Malla.

  Names: Malla, Pasha, 1978- author.

  Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190152672 | Canadiana (ebook) 20190152680 | ISBN 9780735273498 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780735273504 (HTML)

  Classification: LCC PS8626.A449 K55 2020 | DDC C813/.6—dc23

  Text design: Lisa Jager

  Cover design: Lisa Jager

  Image credits: (mall) © Rashevskyi Viacheslav, Shutterstock.com; (horse) © Grove Pashley, Getty Images

  v5.4

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  Sometimes you hear a xylophone deep in the forest and you know that things are just not right.

  —JAMES TATE, Memoir of the Hawk

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Pasha Malla

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Part Two

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Part Three

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  About the Author

  Let me be clear: I love the mall.

  A mall’s smell is a safe, sanitary one of judiciously filtered air and factory-fresh, unsullied clothing. It is the smell of nothing, yet nothing smells like a mall. The light is mild and even. There are no shadows in a mall. Its bathrooms are cleansed at regular intervals and verified on a timetable by diligent specialists. And food courts, which offer a bounty of choice to the hungry shopper, are the perfect place between purchases to grab some spaghetti or a submarine (sandwich), a cup o’ soup or a lavishly buttered muffin. And then you station yourself amid the grid of symmetrical tables and devour whatever it is.

  Malls often feature a central clock and/or fountain, an excellent location to stage a rendezvous. At every entrance colour-coded maps organize the stores by genre. Should you be perusing these maps, your own location is even revealed by a helpful “here’s where you’re now” icon. Not that getting lost in a mall should ever be traumatic, even to a child or foreigner. For how can you be lost anywhere so wonderful? It is fine advice, should you find yourself lost in a mall, to simply remain in place and wait for rescue.

  It’s true that in a mall you can be anyone, whether that’s another body in a crowd or someone unusual balancing a bag of meat on his nose. Few locales provide such favourable circumstances to observe humanity and its various gaits. What joy it is to occupy a bench and view the crowds as a uniform mass heaving past like the unrelenting sea or time itself, or else to appreciate each person for his or her individuality: this one’s legs are a little bandy, that one’s eyes darting about with the virulence of a lunatic—what will she do, punch a cashier? Wait and see.

  When the furor of it all proves too much, simply retreat to a change room. These are quiet, secluded places equipped with locks and mirrors for private self-evaluation. You try on a new outfit in there and turn one way, then the other, glimpsing yourself over your shoulder, and think: yes, perfect fit! And if not, many other clothing options are available, perhaps even the same garment in a more merciful size. You should never be ashamed of your body.

  Malls are unparalleled for their accessibility. Frequently serviced by major bus routes, they also provide motorists ample parking in street-level lots, underground garages or multi-storey complexes with twisting driveways, like a roller coaster with less screaming—just don’t forget your ticket, lest the mechanical arm trap you forever. Inside, a limited number of wheelchairs are available for provisional loan to the invalid and elderly.

  Simply put, malls are where dreams come true. You enter with a notion of how the visit might transform your life, and reemerge more pleased, and bettered, than you could have ever imagined. Salesclerks are great. For example, they are capable of producing a telescopic claw for fetching items from the higher shelves, or a ladder. Based on their training, they will offer counsel such as “Excellent choice, madam,” or “I wouldn’t dare if I were you, sir.” And the selection! Unparalleled. In a mall, if you don’t approve of the goods in one store, there’s always another to cater to your tastes. On and on you go. And in the event that you can’t find what you’re after, some retailers will even permit special orders—a terrific excuse for a return trip.

  All in all, I can think of no more civilized place on earth than a mall to shop, work and play. And now, by the divine miracle and generosity of your remarkable institution, for two months also to live. I truly hope that you will consider the enclosed application for this new residency program with as much thoroughness as I have expressed here re my feelings re malls. Which I, desperately, love.

  Yours in trust,

  THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE RESIDENCY were this: 50% of the time I was meant to be “engaging the public” and the other 50% “making work.” Also, every week I was obliged to submit a Progress Report, culminating with a Final Report upon the termination of the residency, at which point the work I’d been making was also to be completed. How I was meant to be “engaging the public” was not specified. Nor was the type of “work” I was meant to be “making.” And since I’d no idea how to go about “engaging the public” or “making work,” it seemed impossible to gauge my progress, let alone craft reports on such a thing. How would it all end? In disgrace.

  So on the first day of the residency a sort of pre-emptive humiliation tortured my spirits as I piloted my bicycle across town to the mall, which sprawled at the edge of the suburbs like the last standing outpost of some lost civilization. My application had been accepted via a simple one-page letter that outlined the preceding requirements and a date I was to show up and a date I was to leave. In addition to a small rucksack of clothing and hygiene equipment, this letter, tucked into my shi
rt pocket for safekeeping, was the only personal item I brought that morning. It was, after all, my ticket inside.

  After chaining my bicycle to a conveniently located rack, I was greeted at the south entrance by the mall’s caretaker, a woman named K. Sohail, per her nametag, who wore a beige uniform, a peaked cap, a monstrous ring of keys on her hip, and a perturbed expression, as if I’d interrupted something significant, or at least habitual. It suggested that my presence was, immediately, a nuisance. With an apologetic wince I pressed my Acceptance Letter to the glass and waited for K. Sohail to give it a once-over before she unlocked the door and permitted me inside.

  Following a brisk, wordless handshake, with the squeak of her sneakers and the jingle of her keys echoing down the empty halls, K. Sohail led me to a store retrofitted with a small bathroom and a sleeping nook tucked behind a screen. She gestured vaguely toward a desk at which, I assumed, I was expected to produce the alleged work that would comprise 50% of my time; “engaging the public” would apparently happen out in the mall, among the masses.

  Even in the abstract, “engaging the public” was a source of distress: I’m at my best at a remove, naturally more observer than mingler, and not much for small talk. Socially, I often sense that I’m disappointing people. But now, confronted with the very spaces in which I was meant to be fraternizing, the impending mortifications were all too vivid. I could think of nothing more dreadful than stalking the mall, arresting shoppers mid-purchase to engage in that brand of casual banter which, as I understood it, confers neither complete disinterest nor alarmingly intimate confession, but a generically moderate politesse that terrifies no one, and in fact somehow promotes camaraderie and goodwill. Such a thing requires an interpersonal dexterity, and perhaps personal dexterity as well, that, then as now, I’ve never been able to achieve. So I could predict the mall’s patrons fleeing my “engagements” with disquiet—and possibly panic.

  Acceptance Letter aside, it seemed unlikely that I was the right person for the job. In fact I could sense K. Sohail already sizing up my fraudulence, perhaps even forecasting the first travesty of a Progress Report she’d collect from me—and share in disbelief with her colleagues: Behold this buffoon! Did she have the power to terminate my residency? As always in moments of disgrace, in a sort of ingratiating mania I began to grovel. To not just acknowledge my inadequacies but to exploit them for pity.

  I opened with some basic arithmetic.

  Did the terms of the residency, I asked K. Sohail, not fail to account for time spent sleeping, eating and in the bathroom, activities that comprise about 40% of an average day, figuring eight hours for sleeping, an hour for eating and forty-five minutes for various ablutions and expulsions? Unless that 40% was meant to double as time spent “engaging the public”—if I was meant to be on display while, say, bathing—and “making work,” whatever that might entail. But if not, the residency allotted only 60% of my time to divide between “engaging the public” and “making work,” or 30%, then, each. Which was a far cry from the 50-50 split outlined in my Acceptance Letter, I told K. Sohail.

  K. Sohail scratched her arm, glanced over her shoulder, straightened her belt.

  Wasn’t it, I continued, gesticulating madly, a concern that I would be spending more time performing unsanctioned activities than either of the two requirements of the residency? What if this sort of lawless behaviour were grounds for disqualification, I proposed to K. Sohail. It was an invitation to admit that the entire arrangement was a farce, but also an appeal to her humanity: No, I hoped she’d say, don’t be silly, you’ll be fine; you are fine.

  Instead she showed me her watch.

  The mall opened at nine.

  It was quarter to.

  Then, in what could have been an act of obligatory hospitality or a slyly cruel attempt at further humiliation, exposing me to every inch of the corridors that I would imminently debase, K. Sohail offered to let me tag along on her morning rounds.

  What to do but obey?

  Her sneakers proclaiming authority with each squeak, my own loafers pattering wretchedly behind, we passed shuttered shops yet to open for the day’s trade: a jeweller; a plus-size clothier; a shoe store; a hairdresser replete with tri-colour pole. (Blood and bandages, I thought grimly.) In the centre of the mall was a handless clock that towered over a dried-up fountain; beyond it was the food court, but this we skirted to escalate to the mall’s second level. At the top of the escalators was a vitrine dominated by sunflowers pressing their fat heads to the glass—like prisoners watching us pass.

  K. Sohail took me down a narrow corridor to her office, a closet-sized room with a desk and a chair and a sink and some cleaning supplies, including a mop standing upright in its bucket, and an entire wall of closed-circuit TVs. On one of these TVs was the space assigned to me for the residency. The view scanned left to right and back again. I’d not noticed a camera previously. As I watched, the image crackled and fizzed. K. Sohail rapped the set with her knuckles. For a moment, a strange, weblike threading drizzled over the screen, as if a spider were casting its net over the camera lens. But then the picture jumped and cleared, and my living quarters returned, static and empty.

  I sensed the caretaker waiting. The tour appeared to be wrapping up. Yet the way she lingered suggested that something remained unfinished. A formal expression of gratitude? A blood oath? Payment? I’d brought no cash, only plastic. Would she “take a card”?

  But then a new horror dawned on me: what if the appropriate closure to the tour, with the two of us packed into that snug little room, bodies close, was a bout of lovemaking? Perhaps right there, on the floor of K. Sohail’s office—“sealing the deal.”

  I turned from the monitors, dreading that I might discover K. Sohail unfolding a cot in the corner of the room, unbuckling her belt, preparing to have me.

  But she was already gone, squeaking down the hall to the service elevator.

  I joined her as the car arrived with a bang. Using a leather strap, she hauled open the doors, which parted top to bottom like a mandible. In we climbed and descended. I noticed, apart from two buttons conventionally marked 2 (for the second floor) and G (for ground), a third button with no corresponding symbol, blank as a lozenge stuck to the steel panelling. Before I could ask K. Sohail where it led, she was heaving open the doors and leading me past a room heaped with garbage into the main thoroughfare, where the first few patrons were filtering in from outside.

  The mall was open for business.

  My residency had begun.

  QUICKLY IT BECAME CLEAR that this was not a top-notch mall.

  The hour crept past ten and still most, if not all, of the stores remained unopened, with their security doors bracketed in place and the lights off inside. Their names, decalled or embossed above the doorways—Sugarhut, Hap ’n’ Stance, Pet Realm—seemed to refer to enterprises long bankrupted or abandoned, empty save a few barren shelves and skeletal display racks. Also, most of what I had assumed to be customers were in fact people using the mall as an air-conditioned thoroughfare to locales beyond. From my quarters I watched them pass without so much as a glimpse at me and what I was (or wasn’t) doing, moving with the focused transience of people with other places to be; their minds, I sensed, were already there.

  That said, this obliviousness was preferable to someone actually stopping outside the residency space to have a look, zoologically, at me. When this did finally happen, I began to shuffle my materials around as if I’d been caught in an organizational interlude. Even so, this spectator, a woman in an ornate, luridly floral hat, kept peering in—watching me with, I assumed, expectations. So I shuffled things around some more, wondering how long I would have to maintain this ruse before “getting back to work” when I’d never been working in the first place. (What would that entail? A dance?)

  At last the ornately hatted woman gave up and moved on, but not before I heard her sigh. In disappointment, I i
magined. Or perhaps pity.

  For lack of any other purpose or function, I decided to write down this episode: my first experience “engaging the public,” as it were. I became so invested in chronicling what had happened that I failed to notice that the ornately hatted woman had returned. When I looked up she was watching me again, but now with something like intrigue. Hunched over the table, scribbling away, I likely appeared to be “making work.” I acknowledged her with a curt nod and then returned to this supposed work, one eyebrow cocked to convey diligence and focus as my pen flew over the page.

  After a while—satisfied, presumably—the woman left. I sat back from the desk, my hand cramping faintly, and turned the episode over in my mind. Not only had I staged a tantalizing performance for which a patron had returned for an encore, I had also fulfilled both requirements of the residency: “engaging the public” (the ornately hatted woman’s rapturous spectatorship) and “making work” (writing up the episode). Then a revelation struck. I had in fact, to borrow an old idiom, killed three birds with one shrewdly hurled stone—for what was the document sitting before me but the beginning of a possible Progress Report? With a slash of my pen, the episode with the ornately hatted woman became The Episode with the Ornately Hatted Woman, transmuted from a faintly mortifying occurrence into a document of the very same. I was awed by my own ruthless efficiency and tact: my Progress Reports could double as my “work”!

  By then it was lunchtime and, as you can imagine, I’d worked up quite an appetite.

  I left my quarters and headed over to the food court, where, my Acceptance Letter claimed, I would be entitled to three meals a day, free of charge, as a condition of the residency. Unfortunately the only open restaurant, or food stall, was one staffed by a team of teenagers roasting chickens. In an electrified wall-oven, rows of the things twirled sluggishly, sizzling and brown and lacquered with grease. One, please, I ordered from the teens, and a chicken was liberated and hacked into portions and presented upon a mattress of shredded leaves. To drink: iced tea.