Time gets stretchy and elastic-y in the mall over Christmas. It’s slowest during late night shopping nights, when the mall starts doing midnight finishes: time basically reaches a standstill. It seems to defy the rule of time. Is that a rule? Like the rule of gravity, but about clocks? Sometimes when my eye starts to do that twitching thing it does when I haven’t been outside in a while, I have to actively avoid looking at the time. If I can’t see it then maybe it doesn’t exist, you know?
It’s always in the movies: characters sitting in offices, or in school classrooms, watching the clock tick. I mean, it starts one of Britney Spears’ music videos. Watching time go slowly. I think they’ve really missed an opportunity though, because I’m sure that time is slowest when you work in retail, especially when you work in the jewellery department, which sells watches. There’s just hundreds of watches ticking away; you can’t not notice time here. It’s here that true boredom really exists.
The price tags for the watches always get tangled and look messy. Tidying these plastic tags is an excellent task to do at night when you couldn’t think, even if a task needed you to. As I was tucking the plastic tags out of sight, while there were no customers, I tried on a few watches, I grabbed one of those stretchy ones, where the watch strap metal has been woven or something. They appealed to polar fleece wearers, in any form. I always felt like there was something honest about them. Some of the fonts of the numbers were so strange, serifs that seemed superfluous: an attempt at elegance within the greater inelegance of the watch.
A customer rounded the corner and locked eyes with me. They looked through me, not at me. Or maybe it was sort of around me. No expression passed their face: I was a fish and they were watching me through the glass bowl. To break myself from their vision, I checked the time on the computer. I noticed it was finally 9:45, I told Natalie I was going to take my break. She made an effort to be the assistant manager, and checked the time. 9:45. She hesitated, like she had power, and then she said, Yeah sure, see you back here at ten o’clock. Maybe, I said. And I took off my lanyard and name badge and stuck them to the metal safe. I also took off my tragic satin blazer, put it in my cubby, and grabbed my bright fluffy cardigan. It wasn’t suitable attire for the kiosk, but it was cosy, and woollen, and had personality, something that was a recurring problem in this job. I slotted my arms through the sleeves, and felt the soft wool against my arms. It would be essential for the staffroom, where the air conditioning seemed stuck on the ‘cool’ setting.
As I closed the kiosk door behind me, I pulled out my phone and headed for the escalator. I had a text. There was a party at a friend’s house, in town. They would be on their way by now, and the stories would be all they talked about for the next week. I couldn’t be bothered replying, or thinking about it yet. It felt so far away. The escalator gave one of those terrifying judders, and I put my phone back in my pocket.
As the escalator neared the top, I watched Linda from the homeware department stand back and assess her latest assemblage of trendy vases and lamps. “Hi Linda, how’s your day going?” I said.
“Just fine” she said, and called me doll, like she calls everyone. She was primping; she had a blue polka dot cushion in one hand and lamp with the same pattern, but inverse, in the other. Each homeware display came with arrangement instructions down to which vase was placed where, so you could go into every Farmers in the country and imagine the very same home.
“What do you think? The brass look is the thing at the moment.” Linda hated having her creative freedom restricted; she was always saying so in the staff room. Towards the end of each trend cycle, I noticed she included more flare.
“It looks so chic,” I responded, turning the i into a long vowel. I hoped no one had heard, and that Linda wouldn’t notice the smirk on my mouth. “Hmmm, I’m nearly there—have a good break, doll!” and she walked off in search of the missing accent.
Two women pushing prams strolled past towards the kids section, the same two women I saw at about 10am. My stomach tensed. I hated to think they had willingly been in this mall for the same amount of time I had been. I told myself they had left for several hours and come back again, but I also knew I was lying. They were wearing maxi dresses that looked like they were picked off a mannequin in a shop window; the two were the same but different. One had zebra print, and the other had leopard print. One had jewels, between the breasts, while the other one was a halter neck. I wondered how they decided which dress to have. One, probably, is more of a leopard than a zebra.
The kids section had been gutted; all that once lined the shelves now lay forgotten on the floor. A kid slipped over nearby and started crying. The difference between the toy section and playgrounds is lost between the bright noise and amount of plastic. One of the toys kept playing, making a scary high-pitched noise that unsettled me. I started down an aisle to try to find it, but immediately stood on the head of a soft toy. I apologised and gave up. It was all going to be tidied by the morning.
C4573d was the code for the staff room door, and there was a special tug and lift thing you had to do to get it to open first go. The door for the staff room was right next to the child’s pyjamas section. I hoped there wouldn’t be many people in the staff room, I wasn’t sure I could cope with staff room niceties. Whenever I entered I always made a beeline for the coffee: Nescafé freeze-dried, as they say—it did the trick. Those special oversized tins lasted a single week with the size of the staff here. Before I opened the door I could hear that it wasn’t empty. I put my polite smile on.
“Susie, right?” I was only a few steps in: I never wore my name badge out of the kiosk so people weren’t sure what my name was, and I was okay with that. Christine was wearing hers. Christine had found her look in the 80s, and it’s likely that after the years of perms, her hair had naturalised the process and self-generated the same effect. Her hair was platinum blonde, the truest kind of platinum, not white, with traces of unassuming yellow. “Yeah that’s me,” I said.
“Grab a plate of food, dear.”
“Oh, I didn’t bring anything, it’s fine.”
“Don’t be silly, it’s been put on by the Farmers head office, everyone is welcome.”
“Oh well, sure, if you’re sure,” I obliged; free food sounded fine by me.
She passed me a plastic plate full of food. “We’re sure, here you go, take the chance while you can!” she hollered towards the table in the middle of the room, where the others met Christine with cheers of agreement.
I made my coffee, in one of those staff room cups. There was a cupboard full of personalised mugs, with patterns and individuality on them, but I couldn’t make that kind of commitment to this place, and people took it so seriously if you used someone else’s mug. I added sugar and milk, and took my plate and coffee to the table. The plastic plate was quivering under the weight of the food I hadn’t chosen. There was a thick slice of ham right in the centre: shit.
The room was wheezing with effort. There were decorations where they needn’t be; I suppose it was nice, but it felt like a veiled reminder that they were part of the destruction of Christmas. There was a box in the middle of the table with Christmas crackers. They were probably ones that didn’t sell last year, or were damaged. Donna offered one end of a cracker to me as a welcome to the table. Donna won a whistle, and the joke read: What do you get if you eat Christmas decorations? Tinsilitis! We laughed, and then turned back to our plates of food.
I blew on my coffee, sipping cautiously, as I listened to the mild chatter that made its way around the table. Who was doing what for Christmas, who had finished their shopping, and who had started their Christmas cooking. I was busy trying to eat around the ham, and avoid things that had touched the ham, and Carl walked in, in his usual loud way.
It looked like Carl was wearing a new suit, almost like maybe he had dressed up nicely because he knew there would be a bit of a do on in the staff room. He had really thought through the tie and shirt colour—pink and green. I’d seen him working here before I did, a good few years before I did, like when I was a kid. He’d been in menswear for quite a few years and fancied himself a bit fancy. God Carl annoyed me. He always had such a smug expression on his face, like he expected everyone to be looking at him.
Christine started moaning about the Christmas carols that were playing, and Carl, who was shoving a ham filled roll in his mouth, volunteered to change the music. He picked Meatloaf. He turned towards the table with a satisfied grin, awaiting the praise that would befall him. In that moment, with bread roll crumbs in the corner of his mouth, I sensed how desperate he was for approval. The resounding irritation paused, and as his eyes moved from face to face, darting for attention, I felt a bit sorry for him. And then Meatloaf started playing, and the sympathy disappeared.
“Oh, now that’s nice, you’ve actually left some food for the others Carl.” Helen entered, and the tension in the room grew. Everyone hated her. Carl rolled his eyes and went out to the balcony for a smoke, and said, “Yeah but there won’t be much left after you attack it Helen.” Then he closed the door before Helen could reply. So she said it to the table of food instead, “It doesn’t look all that nice, to be honest,” as if insulting the food would make her feel better.
I hid the ham under chunks of the potato salad, and ate more chocolate than salad. Christine told Helen to be a bit grateful, for once in her life. Helen was ‘that person’ who moaned about everything—the changing hours, the weather, the manager getting her to sign something, the introduction of a new stock item, the sale tomorrow. She took up so much of the complaining that people started defending the very thing they themselves were originally complaining about.
Everyone started rolling their eyes and ignoring the empty comments she was making about what mayonnaise was used for the potato salad. “I hope this isn’t that Eta mayo, that stuff is so sweet.” No one replied. “It better be Best Foods, although I’m not sure our managers would have splurged on that for us.” They knew she was trying to bait someone, anyone; it was Best Foods, but no one wanted to assure her. I think Helen had been here the longest. I remembered her from when I was really young, when I had no filter and was fixated by her only having one hand. She wore about five or six rings on each finger on her left hand. Making up for the missing hand, I suppose. She did, however, have the start of a thumb, which helped drastically.
Donna, wanting to block out Helen, told us she just couldn’t get over an article on the cover of Woman’s Weekly. She showed me an image, we both rolled our eyes and I grabbed a handful of the lollies from the bowls in the centre of the table. And then grabbed an extra one for Natalie. A text arrived asking if I was going to come to the party after my shift; it was all down to how the Nescafé treated me, really. I looked at the time on the clock, 10:03.
Natalie would be ready to tell me off, she would be watching the clock. The walk back down would take at least another two, three minutes if I saw someone who was looking for a distraction. I excused myself from the table, said to no one, Gotta get back, and tipped my plate of food into the rubbish bin. I washed my cup. Dried it. And restored it to its cupboard of similarly anonymous and generic mugs.
As I walked towards the door I got another message telling me that Paul was at this party but where was I. Paul hadn’t texted me after we slept together last weekend. It was a sheer miracle I had held out from texting him first.
As I got to the escalator I noticed a girl was having a moment over carrying something down the escalator. She was nervous; she was carrying a big box, which housed a new blender, most likely a present for herself. It didn’t look heavy, just an annoying shape and size. I could sort of tell that she wanted to carry it herself, like out of pride. The boyfriend had started down the escalator without noticing she had stopped. She made some strained noise, and he turned around, immediately agitated, and then realised her distress. His face melted with sympathy. As I got on the escalator, and passed this blender girl, I saw the boyfriend get on the up escalator, and head towards her. When I reached the ground, he reached the girl, grabbed the box, and without words proceeded down the escalator. She followed him with a firm hold on one of the handrails. Her eyes were shifty, like she knew people would be watching. She caught my eye, knowing that I had seen it. I flicked her a sympathetic grin. I wanted to run over and tell her about the time I really badly grazed my knees on the escalator, and how ever since then I have to hold the handrails really firmly too. I wanted her to know that it was normal to have moments of burning fear. I did too.
Carl bounded down the escalator behind me, and said, “Not long now till midnight and then we’re free.”
“Until tomorrow,” I said.
“Don’t remind me,” he called back to me. As Carl walked ahead, I saw that his pants were hemmed a little too high at the back; I could see his socks, and they were odd— mismatched, not funky. He walked with a strange gait and I hated thinking about him in any kind of detail. I imagined his sock drawer and all the stray socks that were looking for their partner, and never found them. I wondered where he kept his funky ties, and thought that maybe they were in his sock drawer, rolled up. Or hung up, maybe colour coordinated in his wardrobe. But why couldn’t he keep track of his socks?
When I got back it was 10:06. Natalie was with a customer so her scolding would have to wait, and then hopefully she would see something shiny, and forget. She was busy telling the customer how special a diamond ring was, and she managed to say the same thing three different ways—‘individual’, ‘unique’, and ‘unlike anything else’. She told her it had just come in—it hadn’t—and that the price point was really good; this was true. This woman looked like the most typical jewellery buyer. She had a gold chain around her neck and gold bangles around her wrist—stacks of them. She was wearing thousands of dollars worth of jewellery. Her nails were painted and she had lipstick on. She was shopping for herself; looking for a gift to make her husband or children buy her. I hate hearing Natalie try to sell things to people, she sounds robotic and puts on an unnerving high-pitched voice. I’ve definitely heard her slip into a baby voice when she deals with older men, and I have to walk away. It’s too uncomfortable to witness. The worst thing is that it works.
Natalie starts talking about her diamond ring, like she’s trying to get to this woman’s level. As Natalie points to her own ring, the back room bursts open with a yell, and the security team start their chase. I see the teenagers they’re chasing; they dart away as soon as they hear the feet coming for them. One of them slows to a walk, like he’s not even scared, bro. Natalie and the woman look up, towards the action. Carl wanders over and leans on our counter, telling us he saw all this happen, and he tipped the guards off. He looks off to the side, and smothers a smug smile to show he gets the gravity of this situation. He thinks we’re looking at him; I am looking at him, and he’ll think it’s because I’m impressed. He knocks his fist on the counter, in some kind of final way, and heads off to his counter. The boys are scruffy teenagers; they wear caps and have rat’s tails at the back of their heads. Their backpacks are covered in tags, and their pants hang low on their legs.
I sweet talk Natalie into letting me go 15 minutes early so I can get the bus into town. I tell her my parents can’t collect me and I have to bus, and it’s so unsafe and so late, and that I don’t want to wait the 40 minutes until the next one. She believes me, and I get on the bus to head to town.
I recognise the girl with the blender on the bus; her hand is wrapped in her boyfriend’s. She whispers quietly at him, and he whispers back. I sit two seats behind them. I can’t find my headphones, and text my friends about the party. It sounds like they’re having fun, and I just don’t want to miss out. They tell me Paul is still there. They tell me they told him I’m coming. They tell me he smiled. I tell them to shut up. I think about how hopefully I can stay at his house again, and how maybe he might text me the next day this time.
I apply new lipstick and powder on the bus, and swap my polyester blouse for a T-shirt. The outfit change on the bus is hard, and my body contorts.
The party is like any other one, and I start to wonder why I bothered. I find a spot, on the deck outside, and lean my beer on the banister, and get out my phone. I text Natalie: did you find out what the kids were stealing? The security guards check everyone’s bags at the end of the night, and everyone tries to get the gossip of the day out of them then. I take a sip of my beer, and spot Paul through the crowd. I give him a slow smile; he looks away and quickly looks back. He sips his beer, and starts moving through the crowd. Natalie replies: Just socks and underwear, nothing fun at all. Why bother, lol. See you tomorrow! xoxo.
Paul leans on the banister and says hey, I say hey back, and we smile, and I’m totally lost for conversation. I can’t stop thinking about the boys with the rat’s tails who were just stealing underwear and socks. Paul takes my silence for sexual tension and leans in and kisses my neck. I don’t mind the distraction. His lips are sticky from the beer he’s been drinking. The warmth on my neck feels nice, and I put my hand on his chest; ready to push him away, or pull him in. “Should I grab my bag?” I ask. He nods and sculls the rest of his beer. On the walk to his place he tries to make conversation, and I say, “Don’t talk,” and kiss him instead, and he thinks it’s just how into him I am and I let him think that. I don’t know how to talk about my day, and I don’t want to talk about anything else; I kiss Paul and spend the night not sleeping in his bed. When I leave the next morning, I borrow a black shirt so I can at least sort of pretend I went home. As I leave to get my bus I tell him not to text me and he smiles—he’s relieved and confused and I’m okay with that.