While Alan, Farooq, Aleph, and Smooshy went the way of the winding path on the outskirts of the mall toward Sephora, Viral found himself standing meekly next to Gyn. The morning sun had barely broke above the clouds to the east, and the blacktop lot of the mall felt eerily empty. When Avril took another call on his cell from the bus rental claims adjuster, Viral extended his arm toward the mall's entrance.
"Shall we?" he asked.
Gyn watched Avril walk into the empty lot, one hand holding his cell to his ear, the other waving an imaginary lasso above his head. Viral didn't like the way Avril's tight buns looked attached to the hips swinging inside the state trooper's khaki shorts. He disliked it almost as much as the squeak he thought he heard Gyn make as she watched Avril argue, gesticulate, and strut.
When Viral cleared his throat, Gyn's attention turned and she saw Viral's chivalrously presented gesture. Her eyes followed the direction of Viral's arm toward the mall's sliding doors. She shrugged and began walking toward them. Viral waited for her to look back at him or at least acknowledge his hesitation with a sound -- not even a squeak; even a harumph would've sufficed. But Gyn continued past the painted yellow curb, on to the concrete sidewalk, and into the shadows thrown by the eaves of the Potbelly's closed until 9:30 am. The petulance in Viral demanded that he sit cross-legged in the parking lot until Gyn returned to ask him what was wrong. But the slowly thawing libido he had cryogenically frozen since it threatened to distract him from SAT prep fastened his eyes on what he had heard Farooq call Gyn's thinly visible panty-line.
The West Gardenia Mall just outside Cherry Hill, NJ was the forgotten step-child of malls in the Dele-Jers-Ania, tri-state area. Once the hub of upwardly mobile yuppies looking to fill new condos with starter-home Crate and Barrel sets, the Garden, as it had been locally known, had turned less into an Eden and more into an Eid.
As more South Asians poured into the surrounding suburbs and townships, feeding the expanding needs of a metastizing pharmaceutical-industrial complex, the West Gardenia Mall began to sprout an eyebrow threading boutique, hookah/vape shop, and Haldiram grab-n-go for every Gap and Gymboree. In little more than a decade the Garden had gone from hosting a Barney's Coop as its flagship to serving as a giant food-court for the 4-hour Tamil action movies that dominated at its multiplex.
Once past the sliding doors and into the mall's rear atrium Viral could smell the cumin and curry powder in the recycled air pumping through the rusty grates aligned near the floor along the tiled walls. A few feet in front of him Gyn had stopped at a kiosk showing a map of the place. She rubbed her bare arms as she read through the kiosk's legend, and as he approached Viral could see the tiny hairs standing on end near her elbows.
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YOUR ARE HERE, the map said next to a green dot someone had covered with a bindi. "We can walk this way toward the Holister," she said, drawing her finger across the plexiglass, careful not to touch its surface. Viral reached into the pocket of the mesh shorts he'd found in the grab bag of clothes from Goodwill Monica and Avril had dropped at each of their rooms the night prior.
"Pump?" he said.
Gyn looked at the small vial of hand sanitizer he held toward her and smiled.
"Don't mind if I do," she said.
Viral hit her with a dab then topped his own palms off with a dip. They awkwardly smiled at each other as they rubbed their hands together with the anti-bacterial lube. Viral saw the sunlight peeking through the mall's skylight glint off the cartilage ring in Gyn's right ear.
When they turned the corner from the hallway that led from the entrance to the main body of the mall, Gyn let go an audible "wow". She covered her mouth with her left hand and touched Viral's arm with her right. Viral felt the bite of chill that must have given Gyn goosebumps.
"It's beautiful," Gyn said. She walked to the wrought-iron edge of a garden more wild than one Viral expected to find in a zoo. Looking up and down the thoroughfare of the mall Viral wondered what commercial engineer approved so much real estate in a mall for an indoor garden fit for a bio-dome.
Perched on the lower rung of the ornately decorated gate, Gyn reached for the edge of a leaf hanging from a twisted, red, hickory branch. She plucked it and brought it to her nose.
"Maybe we shouldn't disturb things," Viral offered, but Gyn was lost in ablution.
"I've never seen one kept inside before," she said. "They must spend a fortune on water."
Looking up toward the skylight crusted with what seemed like years of bird poop and dead mosquitos, Viral figured the Hindustani management company saved on its watering bills by ignoring the cracks that likely leaked profusely during rain. He brought his eyes back level with the hickory in time to see the curly whisps of Gyn's messy ponytail disappear over the black railing surrounding the foliage.
"Umm, Gyn?" he asked.
"Down here!" she called.
Viral approached the railing and looked over its edge. The ground on the inside of the perimeter was on keel with his feet, but where he stood on formica-slated concrete, Gyn knelt in dark, rich loam. She had a handful of it held between her fingers, and she seemed blissfully unaware of the stains on her white blouse. The painted red nails of her toes peaked out from beneath the coal-dark soil like rubies on a jungle floor.
And her green eyes sparkled like jewels of equal value as they looked up and met Viral's. The smile she gave unlocked a chest he hadn't known he held inside his heart. As the day's sun moved to cast its glow more keenly through the chapped skylight of West Gardenia, Viral felt he'd crossed a threshold, perhaps the one between love and lust.