Northwoods Mall, summer 1992... Prelude to a date.....Dawn Michelle (a.)

This is my first official date.

I spend the morning looking into the bathroom mirror as if it were some sort of window. I grapple the cylinder of Aqua Net and attack what is left of the ozone above my scalp in noxious sprays. I pick up the yellow comb leftover from the late 70’s and, with adroitness, begin chiseling away.  I am trying to sculpt  a plateau on top of the brow of my forehead.  I pick and dole. I am thinking about Dawn Michelle who has the most exquisite vocabulary of anyone I have ever met. I am looking into the mirror trying to see Dawn, her lemon-hued hair forming ellipses and question marks as it drips into her shoulders and off the dew of her bangs.

The plan has been pre-ordained.

After mom drops Hale and myself off at the Mall we descend down into the garish catacombs of Aladdin's arcade. I give Hale 10 dollars worth of  tokens informing him that I am to meet a girl and that he needs to chill for a couple of hours monopolizing the thoroughly air-conditioned after noon by pumping copious amounts of quarters into Street Fighter II. Hale bobs his head from shoulder to shoulder as if in a dandruff commercial and says that he really doesn’t mind at all.

He asks if it is with that girl I met while doing the Music Man.  I tell him mmyeah.

“I thought you guys were going to thee fair.”

Every time David Hale says the word the, a in very King James Old Testament variation, it sounds like thee.

“We were. Only now we are going to thee mall."
            
“You don’t mind that I’m ditching you. I mean, I have to meet this girl.”

Hale always wears a t-shirt that looks like he is on a party bus headed towards a Jimmy Buffet concert sponsored by either Capri Sun or Captain Morgan.

“Is it alright? I mean, the money and everything. Is everything cool?”

Hale nods several times. I half expect him to tell me that I owe him only he doesn’t.  Instead he inquires how long I will be.

"I don't know. Maybe forty-five minutes. We'll probably just walk around for a while and talk."

                       

 

From a distance the mall looks like a bunch of random shoe boxes incongruously heaped together forming a diorama of  makeshift consumerism; a grade school child's attempt to construct the acropolis out of leftover holiday cardboard.
 
Inside the mall there are always a group of 30 plus senior citizens wearing nylon sports suits  power walking  as if with time-qualifying intent, scrutinizing the interior of their wrists to verify MPH, forming orbital ellipses around the neon satellites of commerce.

There is Christian Brother Leather which sounds like a place where middle-aged conservatives thoroughly versed in the New Testament go to get spanked. There are two book stores but only Walden books upstairs sells RPG merchandise and has a comic book kiosk.  B. Dalton’s downstairs has a Self-Help section with two rows of Sex manuals, including several shrink wrap editions of the  Kama Sutra.

There is Gumballs which sells gummy larva and hard candy and Spencer's which sells adult gifts and ribbed  prophylactics and  day glow font coffee cups showcasing inappropriate office humor. There are two music stores that are located almost directly on top of each other in which the cassettes are imprisoned in horizontal plastic Guillotines  badged with a surreptitious magnetic strip that need to be routinely swiped and desensitized at the counter after purchase. Half the store still sells vinyl while the other are selling skinny boxes shaped like skyscrapers containing Compact Discs, sales of which, over the last 12 months alone have quadrupled.

 The two major retail stores sit pregnant on both ends of the mall. It is like JC Penny and Montgomery Wards are trying to gnaw at each other, meeting half-way in a futile attempt to jointly swallow Famous Barr, which is stranded in the middle of the building. Near the entrance there are always a surplus of middle aged ladies with bad perms and nametags holding clipboards taking meaningless surveys when you enter the building.  There is Pearle Vision next to Kaybee store on the lower North West level. There is a store called the GAP where everyone seems to be shopping even though the clothes are retiree golf course-khaki and rather jejune.

There is Jeans West and County Seat which markets identical flannel shirts and jeans whose corporate motto seemingly has something to do with making the patron look as much as Mary Anne from Gilligan’s Island as is humanly possible.  There is Coach House Gifts and Payless Shoes and a botanical closet simply labeled FLOWER GARDEN  and a shop that is somehow affiliated with Bradley University which sells team logos and variegated sweatshirts with Greek emblems stitched in the center and 25 cent fountain sodas in nondescript Styrofoam cups.

In the center of the mall there are two escalators roving in different directions like a chrome water fall.

Having entered puberty less than one complete presidential term ago it is almost rather impossible to gaze at a woman ferrying a peppermint-striped Victoria secret sack and not ponder, at least fleetingly what she looks like unbuttoning her blouse and recrossing her legs while  performing a rendition of Happy Birthday Mr. President on a Kazoo. 

 In the South-Western side pocket next to JC Penny’s there is Swiss Colony, which almost incongruously looks like a half-abandon sow farm marketing Norwegian jam and all things  lactose inducing and curdled.  There is Wicks and Sticks selling mason jars stuffed with succinctly smelling wax. 

There is Sun Coasts movie store that specializes in VHS of forgotten television series and life-size James  Dean cardboard cut-outs  posters flitted against the back wall and a translucent pop corn machine fraught with buttery kernels that no one seems to use. Next to Sun Coasts there is Gloria Jeans marketing deep roasted coffee beans in diminutive bags of aromatic tackle above emerald carpeting and an espresso machine that looks like it was culled and burnished from the interior engine of a Model-T ford.

I am next to the payphones.  I am floating. Patrons pass me like stringless kites. There is always clatter of what sounds like jelly shoes scuffling across the almost obscenely disinfectant floor. From down the hall I can hear Hale challenging someone in Street Fighter Two telling them to use the Contra up up down down left right left right code to perform some arcane sort of Jump kick.  I am waiting. Commerce and reality coalesce and brush past me in atomic waves. I wonder if I will recognize Dawn when I see her. I wonder if she will still find me intriguing or if our conversations are only limited to the dusk-ridden wings of Children’s theatrical productions.   For a minute I wonder if she will show. I wonder if she forgot. I wonder if she called my house at the last minute cancelling, apologizing, saying that she is sorry that she couldn’t make it.

I told Dawn I would meet her near center ct, down from Aladdin’s arcade, near where the pay phones are located.

 I am waiting. Senior citizens keep walking, pumping their elbows like pistons, pissed that I am getting in their way even though I am waiting, wondering if she will show, hoping that I didn’t use Hale, hoping that Hale isn’t bored.

Because I am near sighted the world is a pointillistic ocean. There are  dolphins flouncing out of stalks of corn.  Faces hovering past me much in the same fashion I hovered across the leafy avenues of my soporific paper route hours earlier. In the summer time the mall functions as a giant air-conditioning unit that purrs.  Eskimos would seem aptly in place engendering igloos at center court. I am thinking about how transitional this summer has been and about the incipience of high school and how, for the last two months, I invested so much pent up emotion salivating over Statcia and how, even though it didn't work out, even though I felt like a eunuch and totally unloved when I discerned she was running around with the male Lead, somehow all the emotion and yearning I invested in drooling over her all those early mornings when lost in the hurt of the ascension of the sun wasn't wasted.

Somehow it all lead to rise of a new Dawn.

The payphones are across the sunken court from Famous Barr, in front of Structure and Express which for some reason employs Doric columns in their window units to market a more European flare.  I think about  Bob and Frank and how they commented that they saw me running down Sterling and stated that I had sexy legs and then elbowed me in the ribcage and laughed. I think about the blonde and brunette haired girls looking at the center of my body and giggling as if my fly was unzipped while a comic book dialogue bubble of Newport cigarette smoke exited the front door in a heaving bulge.  I think about how it has been almost a week since I last spotted Dawn walking to her friend Dawn’s vehicle with little Betsy when I said goodbye to her in the parking lot of Shakeys and just when I am reaching in my pocket frisking for quarters, thinking that perhaps maybe I should give her a call I hear my voice. I swirl around as if lost. With my glasses doffed and in my side pocket the visages optically swimming past me look like Muppets until they are three feet ahead and I can make out slight twinge of facial expression. Briefly I wonder if I should call before a voice cuts in the air caroling behind me. 

She doesn’t call me Charlie.

She calls me Dave.

We greet each other with a tight hug.

                                                                     ***

 Forty-five hundred miles almost exactly straight east of Peoria on the latitudinal arc of the planet the La Sagrada Famila in Barcelona Spain is architecturally configured nothing like Northwoods mall whatsoever although parts of the Nativity façade  possesses the same honeycomb hue as the outside of JC Penny.  The front of Antoni Gaudi’s masterpiece looks like seven neighboring blue collar church steeples were apocalyptically pricked and goassmered in a sinewy web of melted caramel, petrified in praise and worship to a Catholic Deity inscrutably located somewhere above.

The structure torches the skyline with elongated spires, which, when completed will consist of 18 in summation, each spire, a vertical scepter emblematic of the 12 disciples, the four scribes of the gospels, the Virgin mother, and the tower of Christ,  each pinnacle richly adorned  with pyrite and galenea crowned with succinct animals, eagle, a lion, a batch of unsqueezed Eucharistic grapes, Christ in the center, a  plus-signs flooding t-shaped shadows of grace on the fellow edifices perennially screeching, stems of exclamatory wonder aerially acquiescing into the concentric blush of antiquity.

The interior of the Basilica is a sylvan forest of galactic glens, Edenic bark furled from the Tree of knowledge, Redwood columns forming a kaleidoscope of braches pillared into the hybrid nave of the ceiling accented with  tobacco colored tendons spiraled into the nautical hive applauding  hyperbolic paraboloid and with grace into the synaptic overhead catching prisms of light, shades of copper mingled with golden stretches of autumn kissed by the placid rising of the Mediterranean  Sun.

The helices of Heaven.

The secret geometry of angels.

The helicoid flutter capturing the transitory beauty of reality.

A blinking entrapment in the centerpiece that is time.

Often overlooked is that the construction of the Basilica is that is has been perhaps the longest incubation of any architectural achievement with construction commencing in 1882 when Gaudi made 3-dimensional models of his vision and the cornerstone was christened. Gaudi lived in abject poverty. When they found his body he wasn’t initially recognized at first because of his shabby attire and was passed over as being a vagrant.

 On the lack of progress towards his masterpiece he would often say that my client is not in a hurry.

His client being God.

                                     

During the Barcelona  Olympics the steeples will be a ubiquitous sight, handcuffed by the conjoining multi-colored O’s forming the Olympic emblem a tympanic toll accompanying the opening broadcasting followed by the streaking sight of the spires of La Sagrada Famila applauding the skyline, offering a prayer to the welkin of all eternity.

When the building is completed in 2026, exactly century after Gaudi’s untimely and some say conspiratorial demise, the building will be the tallest House of Worship sprouting out of the crust of planet earth.    

                                                                               ***

"I almost didn’t recognize you outside stage-right of Heaven, I mean the theatre."

Dawn smiles and blushes. She says hello by asking how’s it going. She tells me that I smell nice. I respond by bartering back the same olfactory assenting comment. Dawn says good, she hopes so because she showered today.

It  has been five days since I have seen her. I wonder if this is a bona fide date or if this is just two friends meeting to aimlessly saunter around the extremely air-conditioned disinfectant linoleum rink of the mall.

“It’s nice talking to you without having to worry about my cue. "

Dawn asks me if I feel nervous. I tell her no.  I tell her that I was really looking forward to seeing her again.


She smiles.  She is wearing  the cracker-barrel cap she stole from the production of Music Man and denim bibs.

"Just in case I brought the make-up in the car if you want me to do your face cause I know it must seem awkward to you chatting to me sans makeup."

I smile.

 

There is a friendly banter back and forth as we greet each other.  I keep cracking witticisms that in retrospect are unfledged and not very funny and Dawn keeps looking down and smiling and then elbowing me and then looking down again.

We walk with no resolute destination in mind. Power walkers keep huffing past us with Drum major steps as if trying to out-gait death.

After five minutes we have repeated the sentence “it is really good to see you again,” at least five times like a round between us.

“It’s been a crazy week. After rehearsing non-stop for a month and a half it’s like we were a recently launched fourth of July firework and then we exploded into overhead pedals and for one second everyone was oooohing and awing and teary-eyed and practically saying the pledge of allegiance now we are no more."

Dawn blushes.

 She says that is really poetic.

I ask Dawn how lil’ Betsy is doing. Dawn says that she hung out with Betsy’s sister Dawn the other nights at Lums on Knoxville but that it was way past Betsy’s bedtime.

We walk past anorexic mannequins in the window of Eddie Bauer that looks like they were manufactured out of recycled drywall.

I ask her how Dawn #2 is doing.  I make it a salient point to mention that I know she doesn’t like me. Dawn says that it’s not that she doesn’t like me, it is that I just kinda rubbed her the wrong way the first night she was doing my make-up.

“Plus I think she was envious that Betsy was always was always crawling over you. They have a rather typical sibling relationship. Half the time I think Dawn just kind of thinks Betsy a pest.”

I tell Dawn that that kid is adorable. Dawn says that she is but she can be annoying sometimes because she’s the baby of the family.

“That kid is adorable.”  I say. Dawn looks at me and smiles.

We walk past the orange and beige colored lockers. Foot Locker is going selling the hell out of British Knights.  We walk past the photo booth machine where last month the mall Mounties arrested a high school lad from Metamora for taking a picture of his genitals and then “accidentally” leaving the pictorial bookmark on the counter of the Christian Bible retail store upstairs.

 We walk past what used to be Skewer Inn, the restaurant coerced to shut down by the health department after a patron died from eating a tainted mushroom.  We walk passed the Hardees that used to be Farrells Ice cream where the interior looked like a psychedelic turn of the century carousel and the employees dressed up like they were auditioning for Coney island backup in  a barbershop quartet.  Outside of Hardees the only place to sit down and grub is the wooden children’s playground of Garcia’s Pizza in a Pan and  some Adult restaurant near the upper level Famous Barr entrance that is the only licensed establishment to sell alcohol. 

Sneakers scud and squeak in aching falsetto across the noticeably disinfectant floor. Even past the food court there always seem to be the smell of freshly cooked pretzels wafting in the air.

The mall has two fountains that look like blueberry Jello molds. Dawn is talking.. I am wearing my purple shirt and high tops. I want to look exactly like the older brother on Blossom. I can’t stop wanting to be around Dawn.

We walk past Becky's Bakery and Fannie May’s chocolate .

We form a circle-eight infinity sign with our path, irking the power walkers who seem to be trying to meet some kind of speed time quota.

The mall police have wet sandpaper skin and look like coniferous green Mounties ready to impart an ‘only you can prevent’ lecture in fire safety every time you cross their path.  We walk past J&R’s music. Music Land is upstairs

Normally after we walk around the top of the mall we dip down the chrome stairs of the escalator.

Dawn is sipping on a Mt. Dew. I ask her if she is hungry or if she needs anything. She tells me she is fine.

“I  was at Bradley library all morning doing research for speech and then on the way here I stopped at Hardee’s because I wanted mashed potatoes and gravy.”

 “You stopped and just got mashed potatoes?”

Dawn smiles. She says that she only ate half of it. I notice that her Mt. Dew is reduced to half-melted slurp as we able past what passes as a food court.

 Can I buy you another Mountain Dew?” I inquire, pointing to Garcia’s Pizza in a pan. Dawn smiles and says that I don’t have to. I insist. Dawn says thank you. She says that this is Mt. Dew number 4.

"How many Mt. Dews do you normally slurp through in a day?"

Dawn looks back at me and laughs. She tells me that she is a hardcore addict. She tells me that I don't really want to know.  She takes a slurp of her libation and then points as if she is on the prow of a ship and has just spotted land.

 .

“Let’s go in here.” She says, grappling the interior white of my arm and giving me a little tug.
                      

                                                                ***

On Christmas day 1973 the songwriter  born with the name Farrokh Bulsara in the British protectorate of Zanzibar, born in a Zoroastrian  zephyr  under the symphonic drizzle of the African stars, handed a Christmas thoroughly wrapped Christmas gift to his girlfriend Mary Austin, which, after undressing it in giddy holiday anticipation realized the box contained another box which was another box which upon unearthing that a smaller box which, inside, was a ring, to which she would say yes, say yes to marrying her best friend, even though in a way she somehow already knows.

There engagement would remain in abeyance. She would wear the ring.

 A few years later the  songwriter would tell his best friend that he had something to tell her that would irrevocably alter that nature of their relationship forever. He squeezed the wedding china of her hand and informed her that he was bi-sexual.

She squeezed his hand back replying simply, “Freddie, I think you are gay.”

The dual souls embraced. The two would remain best friends in the opera of this world and the next.

                                                                   ***

“There’s a certain sort of person that works in a music store.” Dawn Michelle says to me, as we enter Musicland

"Some have dyed-hair thoroughly gelled and sculpted to look like it was blown drive off the ends of an air craft carrier. Some wear nothing but tie dye and hemp and bathe in a waft of psychedelic incense in lieu of showering. Other’s wear all black and have every inch of their anatomy tattooed or pierced."

 There’s a certain sort of person who works in a Music store.

Dawn makes a mental note to acknowledge that her older brother is a corn-chip and used to work in the Co-op in evergreen Square.

“There’s a certain sort of person that works in a music store.” Dawn Michelle says to me again.

We walk through the labyrinthine aisles of the music store. . Dawn is introducing me to bands I have never heard of before. Bands with names like Erasure and Yaz and Siouxsie and the Banshees and Throwing Muses. It is the summer of '92 and everyone is blaring Nirvana. Everyone is suddenly alternative. Everyone is accepted. The pocket calculator  four-eye dweebs adorning the hallways of John Hughes films are forming thrash bands with accordions and argyle sweaters and kicking major ass.

“I love that you turned me on to Depeche Mode. Every time I listen to Just can’t get enough I picture you laughing uncontrollably at Stage Two.”

“Dancing?”

What?”

“You said you picture me laughing uncontrollably at Stage 2. Not dancing.”

The two of us smile.

We continue to talk about music. I tell her that I have basically spent the last five years listening to gangsta rap but somehow, I got into Enya because my best friend’s sister who is five years older and has long dark hair would come home after her date at three in the morning and put on Watermark and he thought it was the coolest most serene thing ever.

Dawn mentions again that she never heard of Enya until a movie called LA STORY came out and she was just in love with the carols of her voice.

 “Yeah, her music was also featured in a movie called Green Card which my parents love."

                                         


 Dawn is sifting through receptacles of sound. She is holding up Cd's I have never heard of before. The Pixies. The Sundays. Talking Heads. The Kinks. The Violent Femmes.  The bulk of the bands she is into seemed to be introduced by an article. She holds up a new Midnight Oil CD that has Anasazi emblems on the cover. Dawn tells me she isn’t really into R &B  or soul but that she likes Tribe called Quest and PM DAWN, which of course,  coerces me to make a lame analogy saying PM Dawn is my favorite time to kiss , especially under the moon.

She blushes. She continues to flip through CD.s’.  She  pauses and jilts. Her lips shuffle out an audible gasp.

“I never though I would find this. It’s really rare.”

Dawn picks up the vertical rectangular cardboard CD case and holds it in the fashion of a wand, before stating in almost jubilant exclamation that she can't believe they have this. This album is really rare.

“Freddie Mercury was gay though.” I tell Dawn as if she had no clue, sounding pedantic. “He died of the plague.”

“He was so talented. He such a gift to humanity.”

I feel older. There is money in my wallet. I want to buy a musical tiara for my Queen.

“It's yours.” I say. My first official date. My first official gift.

 Dawn responds back with a what.

 “I'll buy it for you. I want to. No prob."

                                                                          ***

The songwriter born under the symphony of the stars would go on to sell hundreds of millions of albums. They would play his songs as standards in arena sports. He would inspire. He would give. On his 41^st birthday a hedonistic rock-star gala transpires in the Ibiza with a cake constructed to look like the  a Basilica in Barcelona. The cake fell apart.

Everyone huzzahed in happiness and drank and broke their chalices in drunken joy.

 

                                                                          ***

 After I purchase the disc for her Dawn says that she needs to excuse herself for a second and use the restroom. She tells me that she will be right back and that I can just stay and peruse the CD.s’ I go back into the store. The clerk behind the desk is wearing a  tie so skinny it could pass for Karen Carpenter.  He has hair that is gelled and sculpted to the right side of his forehead, casting and umbrella shade of his brow.

I pick up the new release buy the CURE which everyone is ranting about. The album cover itself resembles squinting sperm oscillating around the ovum of the earth, afraid to penetrate the aquatic atmosphere of the cosmic egg into a synthesized zygote of sound. It looks like it would feel right at home outside the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

The freak behind the counter smiles at me.


 “I’m looking forward to listening to this Cure album, I’ve never really listened to the Cure."

I tell the cool worker behind the counter that I am really into Depeche Mode and I hand him the cassette.


 " I'm looking forward to it, even though they look like Edward Scissor hands."

The cool guy behind the counter smiles at me as if he is deaf.

Dawn returns back she is still carrying her Freddy Mercury CD she is sipping from another Mt Dew, which makes five.

“Hey, you didn’t have to do that, I would have purchased another soda for you.”

Dawn looks down. She tells me that she knows.

“You’ve already bought me a CD,” She says, sounding guilty. I tell her it is no big deal.

She takes a slurp as if to say thank you.

Before I know it she reaches down and gives my hand a little squeeze.

As we leave I look back at the cool guy who sold me the Cure’s latest release.

There’s a certain type of person who works in a music store.

                                                                         ***

It is kismet and we find ourselves here, in the early 90’s, bearing this flesh, with a male-baton lanced between our loins, and a beautiful girl who doesn’t need rescuing, and a life that, like Superman, we find all around us, not knowing exactly what to do.

                                                                          *** 

We walk past Chess King (Dawn, telling me she doesn't get my Bobby Fischer clad in hip hop garb pawn to rook joke). We walk past a shack that sells makeshift jewelry and a shop that makes press-on t-shirt emblems.   We traipse past a sunglasses kiosk. Without asking I get her another Mt Dew. She looks down and smiles before thanking me, informing me that the Freddie Mercury CD was enough.

We turn and walk into the direction of JC Penny’s, Dawn scrutinizing the back of her Fred Mercury CD pointing out songs she knows.  Somehow I have become a devout interlocutor. Somehow I want to analyze and strip, I want to pin the narrative of her existence on an operating room table and dissect her; I want to know everything about her.

I tell her about my paper route. I tell her that I get up at 4:30 every morning, pinch up the trussed bundles, count the papers and then deliver them to almost 100 houses.

“My dad helps me usually in the winter time. In the summer time it is all mine.”

She smiles.  I tell her that I have had it since Columbus Day, three years ago. It doesn’t even occur to me that she would have been starting high school around the same time, I applied for the job in what seems like another lifetime ago.

 “How about you?” I inquire, alluding to part time jobs.

 Dawn states that training for speech is pretty much her full time job.

She tells me that she worked for a page for the health department last year and two students who donated blood ended up being HIV positive only , because of some sort of waiver, the school was not allowed to notify them. She tells me that she is for contraceptive in schools and that she is pro-choice and that she volunteers at Planned Parenthood several times a week.

When I ask her if she is religious she tells me that she is spiritual and that she hasn’t been inside a church in ten years.

“I mean, I don’t go to church, but I still pray though. I think prayer is important even if you just acknowledge that you are supplicating to something inscrutable and greater than yourself.”

“Religions a big part of my life” I tell her, adding that I went to a Lutheran grade school. Adding that my parents and family do much of the music

Dawn doesn’t judge. She says that she thinks religion can be healthy.

We both nod. Dawn takes another elongated swig from  Mt Dew #6 via a straw.

 

I ask Dawn if she has any plans for college.

 
“I'm really looking forward to this poetry class at Bradley. It should be really beneficial for speech next year.”

I ask Dawn if she is into Sports. She says not at all.  We do a routine loop on the upper level, swerving around to the escalators in the middle of the mall heading down. As we pass the spring good store I ask Dawn if she is into sports.

She says not at all.

"I don’t follow too many sports except for basketball. Jordan’s the greatest to have ever played the game. If you live in Illinois and he is playing for your state you have a civic duty to cheer. It’s like if you lived in London when Shakespeare was writing and performing his plays."


Dawn looks and says yeah, but there’s a lot more to life than sports.


“I’m really looking forward to the Olympics in a couple of days. I’ll be pretty much glued to the television, especially when they showcase track and field.  And the gymnastics. And the dream team. My best friend David Best is getting  something where we can watch every basketball game live as it happens."

Dawn calls the dream team tyrannical and cooperate fascists. I tell them her that every other country uses professionals in sports.

“Yeah, but they are billionaires. They have endorsements out the ass.  They have more money than any of us can possibly fathom combined our wildest conjecture."



I smile. She says it would be like if she went to state in speech and she had to compete against Jacobean actors who have mastered the Alexander technique. I have no clue what she is talking about. I still have forty bucks in my pocket plus the extra twenty that Bob and Frank gave me gratis.


Dawn takes a slurp  She says sorry. She says that its sports, its really no big deal.


“I love listening to your perspective,” I tell her, adding that she is brilliant.


Next to the fountain that looks like a blueberry-avocado Jello mold. We lounge our arms over the brown railing and look at the coppery reflection of scattered currency blinking at us from below.

"I read in the Journal Star that the manager of one of the book stores got in trouble because she drained the fountain and cashed in on all the loose change. Apparently she just thought people were making a wish and didn't realize that the mall mounties donate the change to altruistic causes."

I reach into my pocket and fish out a fist of random coins, tossing them in the air above watching them land in isolated plops in the center of the fountain below.


I turn to Dawn. There is a gravid lull in our conversation. In the fountain our reflections look like we are trapped, trying to escape from the gelatinous prison of a potluck Jello mold.  

 I fell like I should say something profound. I place my hand over Dawn's.

"So, are you having a good time on our official date?"

From inside the Jello mold I can see Dawn's distorted visage look down and blush.

"Actually I have a confession for you," Dawn says, I have no clue what she is talking about.


"When I left you in the music store I went to call Dawn. She wanted me to call her after we had hung out for an hour. She insisted. She said that if our dalliance wasn't up to par we would devise some excuse and I would leave."

"What did you tell her?" I ask, still looking into the rippled of our enjoined reflection below. I can feel Dawn slide her arm between my forearm and elbow in escort stance,

"I'm having a great time." Dawn says. In the reflection I can see her smile.

"It's funny because when I called Dawn I could hear Betsy on the other end of the phone. Purportedly she has been drawing pictures of you."

"What?"

"With crayons, she's drawing stick-figure pictures of you with her coming up to the cap of your stick figure knee looking up and smiling." 


"I miss that kid. I'm gonna go back to Shakeys and get that Manatee with the sunglasses that she drooling over.". 


 Dawn takes another abbreviated slurps and then smiles before pointing into the direction of the adjacent Toy Store while dragging my arm.

“Lets go inside, it will, be fun.”

                                                      

                                                                           ***

Four years later, fifteen days after Magic Johnson held a pressed conference the songwriter lay in his bed dying of the virus. He had refused his meds to accelerate his departure.

 He was emaciated.

As he lay  weathered  it was hard not to seem him on a musical throne.

He had a private funeral.

He gave his ashes to the girl he proposed to all those years ago.

He told her to burry them somewhere deep in the blanket of the planet.

A place known only to her and the seasonal tempo of the earth.


A place never to be found.

                                                                              ***

In Kay Bee Toy store one aisle is entirely pink flooded anorexic plastic dolls.  There is another aisle with video games and an NES power glove on display. There is a camouflage aisle with GI Joes and Transformers and an aisles dedicated to board games and one to stuffed animals.   The toy store seems to be selling the hell out of Super Soakers. I think about the time last winter when we had an all-out super soaker war in Patrick’s basement with the lights out at three in the morning and Patrick urinated in his tank and shot at his Dad at three o’clock in the morning who had come down stairs telling us to keep it down thinking it was Tim, fired away and then got grounded.

There is an aisle flooded with Treasure Trolls. Dawn stops and looks at them as if were cooing at newborns in a maternity ward.

"Those things are disgusting.”  They look like someone got a failed sex change and then grew iridescent colored pubic hair on their genitals."

Dawn smiles.  Our hands still form a badged starfish of flesh.

“They look like punk leprechauns someone accidently took a leak on during the St. Patty's day parade."

Dawn Michelle again tells me that she thinks they are so cute.

“They’re disgusting,” I add again, with disdain

“They are so cute.” Dawn says again, sounding almost like a valley girl.

I continue on with my rant. I tell her that it looks like a slightly balding and middle weight fat man squatted on a Mogwai on a recent trip to the proctologist and they unearthed it from his ass with the jaws of life.

Dawn blushes.  There is something about the way she states they are so cute that sounds like she is about ready to adopt a  battered puppy for humanitarian purposes. As she reaches to pick one up the entire display topples into a water fall of skittles. Treasure Trolls are scattered on the burgundy carpet. At least fifty. It as if they heard my jests and have decided to attack us with Treasure Troll vigor.

 A look of keen embarrassment floods Dawn’s face. She looks the other way.

“Lets get out of here,” I tell her, as we high-tail it out of Kaybee Toys.

We Run like hell.

                                                              

                                                                  ***

The next day of practice Coach times us. We release ourselves floating over the 3-mile course at Madison Golf Course. Coach runs with us the entire time.  He is in his mid –thirties. He is a paradigmatic Nike shoe icon of health. He is a member of Illinois valley striders. He accumulates victories in local 15 k.'s, where he avg.’s a pinch above five minutes per mile.

Seven of us show up for practice. While the high school where Dawn Michelle attends will have close to sixty kids who compete in each race, we are one short of the eight mandated to form a team.

This is the course my second cousin Todd Brooks dominated. The freshman record he set around the time I was in preschool.

The course at Madison park starts near hole 3, close to Krogers in Madison park. It then veers so that it flanks the contours of western half of the course. We run down several galloping hills skidding the contour, near the woods with the police firing range Patrick, Tim and myself broke into three years ago to collect bullet shells. The course then takes an almost 90 degrees right at hole 4, following the russet brick uppity shire of Manual Parkway until it reaches the corner of Sterling, where traffic divides the golf course and the cross-country takes a hard right, the one mile mark being midway  half way down the Sterling stretch, Coach looking into the white of his wrist, yelping out that we have eclipsed the first mile at around 5:30 as we continue pummeling our elbows,  taking another right, curving behind the ELKS club, behind the club house, pushing forwards running along the  plank of the South Side, the ameliorated crackle of gun shells underneath, the almost plateau-like flattop of Manual High visible behind a glen of telephone wires, the steeple of Christ Lutheran church visible past that. 

We are running.

The lead pack consisting of Peacock, Munoz, and myself taking another right at the entrance to Madison Park shopping center near where we started, the second mile mark.  We are just under 11:00 minutes. Our bodies ache. Peacock is next to myself and Coach. Munoz, our unofficial captain is lagging back.  I think to myself that this would be a hell of a 3200 meters.

One mile left, repeating the initial stretch veering again towards Manor parkway but only heading a third of the way down before pivoting at the flag and shooting into the direction of the clubhouse green again, hustling through the actual golf course.  It is an all out sprint.  By the time Randy and myself can see the finish line it is obvious that Munoz has fallen back.  Glancing behind the shoulder the rest of the team follows like broken carts on a train track leading nowhere.  We continue to thrust our limbs. We have fallen off course but we still reel forward. Both Randy Coach and myself finish the course at 17:34. A respectable as hell time. There is a glint in Coaches eye.  If we can keep these times up the whole season we can compete with anyone  in conference.

At the end of the race we keel over and take deep breaths, sweat snowboarding down the raspberry-hue countenance of our brow.

The remainders of the runners filter in.  Munoz is about 45 second behind us. Quaynor and Lontai run together avg just over 6:15 per mile. The team is small but solid. There is an athletic adhesive; a solidarity to our team.



  Our first official meet is still just over a month away.

My cousin's freshman record was 16:45. If I continue to train I should easily have no trouble obtaining that. And my name will be on the records board next to the rubber gym.

I have yet to start my first day of high school and already I am gunning for immortality.
 




                                                                                                                   ***

The last half hour Dawn has Mt. Dew #8 in one hand in she is groping me in the other. We continue to circumnavigate, occasionally holding hands, seeing a reflected leer of our bodies in store windows, past the glare of Mannequins.

She thanks me again for the CD. She tells me that I really didn’t have to do that.

“It was my pleasure. Freddie Mercury is pretty cool.”


We walk past several stores with engagement rings showcased in the front windows. We walk past Florsheim shoes.  Dawn mentions again that she is excited about started her poetry class next week at Bradley. I think about Laurie while I was waiting for the bus to go to ICC.  Briefly I think about Pam and how I never got a chance to thank her.

I roll my eyes up into the back of my skull.

"What?"

Dawn can see me lolling my eyes I think about how everyone I have met this summer is taking a poetry class.

I think about how everyone seems to have a story inside of them except for me.

“No!” I tell Dawn again, rather vehemently. "I hate poetry. I hate everything about it."

Dawn calls me a cynic. She calls me a linguistic xenophobe. A metaphorical misogynist. When I tell her I have no clue what she is talking about she reaches over with her non- Mountain Dew wielding hand and gives my fingers a little Squeeze.

 
We sit down in the smoking benches that looks like a oak pentagon with one side missing for access. Whenever we come to a group of chairs Dawn Michelle always sits on the top of the chair with her legs planted on the seat we're patrons normally sit.

 We talk politics. The headline in the paper I delivered eight hours earlier read A NEW BALLGAME in bold font , showing Bill Clinton waving to a throng of supporters accepting the democratic nod for president. I ask Dawn who she thinks she will vote for.

"I turn 18 in December, exactly one month after the election. I really wanted to vote this year."

I ask Dawn if she could, who she would vote for.

“Normally I would find myself voting for Bush but this year I say that I would have to go with Clinton." Dawn notes. I ask her why.

“He just seems to be more hip when it comes to issue. I mean, AIDS, drugs, economics. I really think he is the way to go. I don’t think Bush can relate to people who make less than six-figures a year. Much less those who are gay or those who are in the arts.”

I nod my head, not sure what I am nodding at exactly.  My parents are staunch Republicans. We had a sign up in our front yard extolling president Bush during the Gulf War.

Dawn states that too bad Perot dropped out because she really thinks its time we had a third party.

I nod my head. I look at my Cure CD.

"You really have turned me on to a bunch of cool new tunes I never would have heard of otherwise."

I tell her thank you. I tell her that I listen to Depeche Mode every day.

"Well, you were already into enya. You already had pretty good taste."

“The thing is,” I tell Dawn, I can tell she wants to grope my hand. “It’s weird. I was in this contest to win this trip to England. It wasn’t a raffle or anything. In a way it was kind of a big deal. You had to get all dressed up and give a speech and everything. It was in coordination with Peoria Journal Star and PARADE magazine in New York. I was in it the last two years’. The first year I honestly didn’t have a clue what I was doing. Last year though,  I thought I was going to win. I felt that I just nailed my speech. There were a lot of local prominent celebrities and city employees and I don’t know what I do that I didn’t win, only I gave everything that was inside my chest.”

Dawn is looking at me as if I am a wounded pet.

“Last year, and I know this sounds stupid, but I almost felt preordained to win. I had to give this speech and I rehearsed it every night and it felt like I would be flying off to Paris in a few months and every time I would rehearse my speech I would listen to Caribbean Blue. I would listen to Enya over and over again. It’s  like her musical was some sort of a snorkel and I could sniff  and puff the atmosphere of Paris whenever I  turned on the cassette. "

Dawn looks at me again.

“It crazy. It’s like Enya was somehow orienting me in my speech. The more I listened to her I was somewhere else and my life had purpose and meaning.”

Dawn looks down. I am huddled on the wooden planks of the smokers nest.  Dawn Michelle’s porcelain uppity British chin is perched on the top of my head. 

“Do you think you will ever go to France?” Dawn inquires before stating that a cool English teacher at her high school always takes a group of kids to Rome every year.

“I don’t know,” I say, looking down.  When my eyes glance back up I see my David Hale, lumbering in my direction, taking slurps from an icy concoction he purchased at Gloria Jeans. As seems to be habit Hale orders some experimental thoroughly caffeinated concoction with three shots of espresso that looks like it is mixed with diesel, takes a swig and then hands it to me.

When I take the initial swig Dawn Michelle looks at me like I am blowing bubbles into a tub of motor oil.

I introduce Dawn to Hale and vice-versa.

“So this is the infamous fellow Dave.”

I amend by stating that there is three of us. Hale states that he really isn’t friends with Best cause all he ever does is wear madrigal pantyhose and sing so high it sounds like someone just kneed him in the pecker.

Dawn laughs. She states that she has two best friends also named Dawn and that sometimes the three of them don’t always get along.

“Actually there is also Patrick, once you meet him, you never forget him. Trust me.”

Dawn laughs. I tell Hale don’t forget Tim. Hale refers to Tim by his last name and then says that Tim doesn’t count. Upon hearing his last name Dawn says that she knows him.

“Yeah, we went to Washington together for a couple of years. He was always drugged up on Ritalin and would sometimes bark between classes. We called him the Schnauzer."

Hale begins to laugh  uncontrollably.

We walk towards the payphone to call my parents informing them that I’m with Hale and won’t be back this evening.

 As I am talking on the phone I can hear Dawn laughing at Hale’s anecdotes.

“Listen, I got a go have dinner with my folks? Call me this weekend?”

I tell her I will.  As we are walking towards the door I find my fingers salted and pretzeled by her squeeze.

“I really had a good time today Dave.”

She calls me Dave. She says that she really likes me a lot. I respond saying the same.

 We are holding hands one moment and then the next we flip like hinges into the others' direction. Our arms dip and then buckle behind each others back respectfully. We are holding each other. I can smell the drips in her hair.

 It smells like baby shampoo.

The sun is squinting through the opening doors. The floor is the color of apricot Snapple.

I wonder if Dawn wants me to kiss her.

 I wonder if I am moving too fast.

I  reach out and, as if sniffing a gladiola,  drill my nose into the top of her brow, my lips, touching her forehead.  I count to three before letting go.

We hug each other again.

We let go. Dawn does a cadet-like swivel.

“So, Hale, it was really nice meeting you.”

 Hale bobs his head up several times and says the same as they shake hands goodbye. Dawn points back to me.

“And you, call me tonight? ‘Kay.”

 "Three MacGyver tings.”  I say. Hale looks at me bemused. Dawn begins to laugh.

 “Yes, Three MacGyver tings would be fine.”

                                                                                 ***

Mary Austin leaves the house surreptitiously groping the ashes of the greatest performer of all time cupped in her hand like the holy grail. She is followed by no one. It is routine.

No one sees her. No one knows what she is doing.

She is a whispering cloak. She is an evaporated breeze. She is going about her daily business. She is ho-hum.

She is thinking of him.

She thinks about the first time they kissed. She thinks about his persona on stage and how after rocking an audience sometimes he just wanted to be left alone with her afterwards.

She thinks about opening box after box like babushka dolls and finding a ring and saying yes.

She thinks about the legions of fans kissing spray-painted missives of gratitude and thanks on the back of her property in Kensington.

But mostly she thinks about him.

She wonders why this voice a meteor shower of vocal assonance had to leave so soon.

She plants his ashes in the blanket of the earth in a place known only to her.

She sees a starling.

She has kept her word.

 

                                                                    ***

“You know, that is one really nice lady.” Hale says, commenting that he really likes her.

“Yeah, she’s polite. She’s really intelligent and laid back and she’s cool.”

 “I like her,” Hale says again. “She’s not like a lot of others girls. She’s not hung up on herself.”

"Yes," I say, reflecting at my reflection in the tiny windows in the middle vector of the mecca of commerce thinking about how lucky I am to have somehow found her after all this time.

 As we are reflecting a blue station drives by. Several bleeps echo past us. It is Dawn waving goodbye.

 She is waving at us.

The afternoon sun is a bleeding overhead yolk.

Hale’s sister has been driving for two years. We are waiting for her to pick us up.

 “This has bee a crazy summer. I mean, when we graduated from Christ Lutheran two months ago I never would have anticipated any of this would happen.

“She really is a beautiful lady.” Hale is says again, referring to dawn as a lady before inquiring what we plan for the upcoming weekend.

Hale suggests that maybe after we leave the mall we can go do Maid-rite and a movie or something.

                                  

It is Friday. It is hard to believe after all of this that the weekend is here.