Bowling Diarrhea

There is one customer here. 

A middle-aged, potbellied Hispanic man is sitting in a black pay-per-use massage chair. He’s crying, holding his cell phone inches from his face. His case is one of those floppy leather wallet hybrids. It looks like he’s tearfully examining a pumpernickel sandwich. The loud tin of its speaker reveals the reason for his tears. He’s watching a telenovela. 

Telenovelas are Spanish-language soap operas, usually recorded in Miami. Like English-speaking soaps, but with more collagen and cowboy hats. At full volume, I can hear the entire dramatic scene: 

Carlito, a daredevil hunk, was in a horrific racecar accident. He’s half-suspended over a hospital bed in a full-body cast. His ample-assed fiance, Cynthia,  is calling off their engagement while he’s comatose. She can’t be married to a broken man. 

The Boulevard Mall, like Carlito, has been ghosted, and not by just one important person. All of them. One by one, all of Carlito’s pals and lovers say goodbye…even Mrs. Fields and Auntie Anne.  

lo siento Carlito…

Cynthia’s voice echoes in the empty mall. It softly carries me to a memory of 2004…I’m doing some last-minute Christmas shopping here. I’m on my way to a store called, Things Remembered. A store that sold objects that you could have engraved with custom messages. Like a silver flask for your buddy, etched with the name, “T-BONE”. 

Cutting through the food court, I see two friends that, unbeknownst to me, I’ll never see again.  Billy and Mike. Like true Mallrats, they’re fueling up at Panda Express before a proper romp through the shops. They’re seated beneath a giant paper mache pizza. 

Billy is a jacked white kid who dresses like Puff Daddy. Fresh in mildly futuristic early 2000 sports brands like Nautica and FuBu. His shoulder is covered in a tribal tattoo he got in Canada when he turned 16. It’s flexing as he pokes his fork into his orange chicken combo. He seemed to be ignoring Mike, who was much more chatty than him. 

Mike is arguably the best-looking kid in my high school. A frosted tip Hollister type who always wears a smirk of cute confusion. A love child of Macaulay Culkin and Justin Timberlake. A Popped collar around a seashell necklace, roughed up jeans with many holes. 

His act worked. In 2003, on Siesta Key, I watched Mike seduce an entire motorcade of girls that just arrived from Ohio on spring break, like a clean-shaven teenage Moses crossing the sea with a throng of babes. Effortlessly he doubled the fun for everyone on our trip. We had no game, but Mike provided it in bulk. 

I never saw Mike or Billy again. A few months ago, someone told me that I could go to a website called, Facebook, and check up on them. So I did. 

These days, Mike is a fashionable evangelist. He supports tight jeans, v-necks, Matthew, and Luke. Billy became a rugby coach, and despite his fitness, he almost died from COVID. He is doing better now. I saw a video of him doing a bench press wearing an oxygen line that clips to his nose. 

Carlito… mi amor…

The only other soul in this building is a cell phone case peddler. He is sleeping at his kiosk, slumped forward, with his winter coat zipped to the top of his head. He looks like a decapitated scarecrow. I have no choice, I ask him a question. 

“Do you have a case for a 10-inch iPad Pro?,” I ask. 

He unlocks a silver bolt holding two panes of display glass together and shuffles through a stack of outdated models and patterns. With perfect English-Indian formality, he asks, 

“Excuse me, sir, do you have the iPad with you?” 

A reckless proposal. Bring an iPad here? This place is on the brink. If  I click “purchase now” on Amazon, just one more time, this mall will implode like the Titanic submersible. He doesn’t have what I need. I gotta get it online… don’t blame me. 

One-click didn’t kill this place.  A thousand clicks did. 

…adios Carlito…

I don’t remember what I bought years ago at Things Remembered, but it doesn’t matter. The entire surface of this mall is etched with memories. If you dig deep enough, you just might find them: 

Hidden in the pine bark mulch of McDonald’s. Shining in the gemstones of Natural Wonders. Under a shoe beside the big red firetruck. Next to a penny in the water fountain. Sitting on Santa’s lap.

Maybe even at Spencer’s Gifts. Hiding in a slender box discreetly labeled as a ‘personal massage wand’.