I do not go to shopping malls, if I can help it. Usually, I can help it, since the stores in a mall, if I need them, can be found with a sidewalk in front. Never a movie in a mall, or a restaurant. Anyway, I needed a particular kind of store today, and there were four of them in the mall, in one place. I had to research an item, so it made logistical sense to do it in one place.
So, I’m walking through the department store, the “anchor,” as the mall people say, when a woman approaches me. I had stopped to look at a bracelet, which was next door to the makeup section on the first floor.
“Would you like to sit down for a perk-me-up?” she asked me, looking serious.
She did not have a white coat on, oddly, like the other makeup ladies. For a second, I wondered if she was a decoy and a thug was stealing my wallet. “You know, a touch up?”
“No thanks,” I said, pressing my purse into my shoulder.
I circled the wristwatch case, seeing nothing, and moving on, into the heart of the mall structure.
“Wouldn’t you like a perk-up?” she asked again, not smiling.
How odd. She asked me twice. There were 8,000 people at the wristwatch case, this being Dallas. I did not need to be perked up, I thought. I am perky. Why did she think I wasn’t? Did I look not perky, not touched up, not, well, cheery and spry?
It was late in the day. I had already been places, done things. So maybe I looked a tad windblown. She didn’t look so hot, I thought, checking the closure on my bag.
“No,” I told her, firmly. I made a beeline for the big hallway outside, with the ducks. There are ducks in this particular shopping place. They climb on a bridge, if you are lucky.
I did not find what I was looking for, after all. On the way back to my car through the department store, I took another route to the door. I kept checking left and right for the makeup lady. Imagine, avoiding a makeup lady. It was time to go home.
Pamela Gwyn Kripke 