station set up shop to compete with the older one, setting pay-at-the-pump and instant submarine sandwiches against grit and a mechanic. A roadside ice-cream stand opened up within view of the traffic light to compete with the Jolly Milk, which was a mile away.
In 1993, a Wal-Mart was built across from the mall, and editorial writers at the local paper threw up their hands and gave up the region to multinational trade death. Hardware stores on main streets everywhere closed. Clothiers despaired. Purveyors of grocery shook their fists at the heavens. One small man with a tire store next to the bank in Oil City committed suicide. By 1995, the Yates Mall, once heralded as the advance guard of civilization, closed in deference to the big-box cavalry across the street. The building emptied, was boarded up, and a permanent sign was erected out front: SPACE FOR LEASE. 1000?500, 1500?500, OR WHATEVER.
Naturally, the local high schoolers took it over as a make-out zone. Before the mall, they had an abandoned railroad car off a siding on the other side of the river, past Franklin, but you had to walk half a mile to get to it, and while there were mattresses, there were also snakes. The Yates Mall was better, because it was bigger, and a parked car in the lot was inconspicuous because the theater was still open for one showing a day. Of course, there were also more dubious operations being enacted inside the shell of Yates Mall than just the pregnancy roulette. Sometimes the players in these games overlapped, the meth dealers and the amorous teens, the amorous dealers and the meth-ridden teens. After a couple of years, there was a lot of junk on the floor.
Maxon and Sunny were sixteen when they first entered the closed part of the mall. It was Saturday and they had gone to a matinee, legitimately parking Sunny’s little car in the parking lot, leisurely strolling into the theater. Sunny had a pocket bottle of vodka in her bag, and during the movie she applied herself to it earnestly, until by the third act she was loopy and groping.
“Maxon,” she whispered loudly. “Maxon, let’s go to the Bon-Ton afterwards.”
Going to the Bon-Ton meant slipping away to any number of hidden locations within the abandoned mall, tucking oneself and one’s partner into a corner, and doing it. Maxon knew this. The Bon-Ton happened to be the biggest empty department store, but it wasn’t the only one. There was also a Sears and there were many other smaller stores. In Maxon’s mind, the mall was a rabbit warren, with bunches of little rabbits stuffed into holes rutting at each other. Maxon couldn’t imagine doing that with Sunny. They were boyfriend and girlfriend. They kissed and pressed their bodies up to each other. But to be naked, in a closet, pushing into her wetly, he could not imagine.
“No,” he said. “You’re drunk. Let’s get out of here. We can go to the A-frame before we go home.”
The A-frame, still as abandoned as it was when Maxon was a little boy, was their own secret shack. But they didn’t use it for sex. They used it for sobering Sunny up, cooling Maxon off, escape.
“No,” she insisted. “I want to go to the Bon-Ton like the other kids do. Why can’t we? What’s the big deal?”
She went off into a fit of giggles and bent over in her chair, in the dark. Her hand clutched his thigh and squeezed, traveled up a few inches and squeezed, up and squeezed, and then it just stayed there, her fingers tapping up and down.
“Fine,” he said.
They staggered out of the theater, one of several couples intent on the same mission, veering quickly right when the rest of the moviegoers veered left and out the doors. The kids split up, each couple taking a separate hallway as if by mutual assent, and Sunny grabbed Maxon’s hand and pulled him firmly along.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“Renee told me where to go,” said Sunny. “Come on, hurry. It’s a secret.”
At the back of a store that had once sold wooden crafts and furniture created by local artists, she yanked open a door and led him through it. There was no light, but Sunny rummaged around beside the door on the inside, found a flashlight, and flicked it on.
“I found it!” she said, as if to herself.
She slammed the flashlight down on the desk, pointed upward, and a warm yellow light illuminated the room. It was bigger than Maxon had anticipated. Maybe it was the office and the stockroom. There were rows of metal shelves along one wall.
“Take your clothes off,” she told him. “Come on, come on. No, wait, wait a minute.”
From her pocket, Sunny pulled out the vodka, half empty, an incense stick, and a condom. She pushed the incense stick into a groove in a ceramic holder there on the desk, lit the end of it, flicking impatiently at a lighter that was already there. The smell of bergamot bloomed in the corner, pushing back the mustiness a little, but there was still a chill. In the corner was a pile of body pillows, scavenged from leftovers at Sears, and there was a stack of sheets, some still wrapped, some just folded, some discarded in a pile in the other corner. The room was fifteen feet by eighteen feet. They had been standing in it for forty-five seconds.
“That’s good. This is our smell. This is us now. Right now,” said Sunny. She took a big sturdy drink of the vodka and smiled, her face lit from beneath, every tooth shining. Then she yanked her jeans off and left them on the floor, threw her hoodie and T-shirt down next to them.
“Come on, Maxon,” she urged him.
When she was standing there in only her cotton panties and her white cotton bra, she pushed the door closed with a solid thud, and Maxon was inside the room with her. Inside the room where the kids went to have sex, there were Sunny and Maxon, about to do it.
“This is what happens,” said Sunny, giggling. “This is what happens, this is what. Happens. What happens, what happens, what happens.” She was drunk. Maxon knew it. She grabbed the waistband of his jeans and ripped them open, dragging the denim down over his legs. He felt his legs automatically kicking his shoes off by putting each toe on the opposite heel, pulling down. It was as if the feeling of his pants around his ankles just made them behave this way. Then she pressed her hands into his chest and pulled off his flannel shirt.
There they were, him in a T-shirt and boxers, her in her underwear. It could have been any other time. They could have been somewhere in the woods. This was not unfamiliar, this was not yet unsafe. There was a chance she would chicken out of whatever she was planning for them. He could run away. He could take a picture, right now, before it happened. But she was in a hurry, and jittery. She grabbed his hand and led him, zombie-like, to the pile of pillows.
“Shut up, Maxon, you’re so chatty,” she said, her feet prancing a little as she pulled him over and pushed him down on the pile.
“Lie down on your back,” she said. “And don’t worry. I know what to do. Renee told me.”
He knew he should not be here. He knew it could be a bad moment. It could not be good. And yet, as she stood there in the golden light of someone’s old flashlight, humming to herself as she pulled off her bra, as she crawled over to him like an animal, where he lay on the pillow, as she fell into his arms, he could not leave her or stop her. She was on top of him, the little tips of her breasts against his chest, her hands beside his shoulders, pressing down into the pillows, and she put her mouth up to his ear.
“I love you, baby,” she said into his ear, her breath causing electrical ripples down his body. He felt the familiar triangle light up between his hips and his groin, very fast, like a jolt. She put her mouth on his neck beneath his jaw, on his collarbone, on his sternum and his ribs. This was a kiss followed by another, each one small and chaste, but quick, like kissing hello. There was none of the wetness he dreaded. There was no terrible sweating. His body was cold, chilled, except for the places where she touched him, where her lips engaged with his skin. There were little hot marks left on him, like thermal imaging, his body blue, and mouth shapes in orange and red punctuating it. She moved down, kissed the points of his ribs where they arched over his belly, her elbows dropping to support her, her butt rising in the air as she leaned back and down. She giggled, pressing her face against his belly, tickling.
She kissed his hipbone, then with her cheek rubbed against the inside of his boxers. She pulled the fabric down with her teeth so his penis came out through his fly. Her hot breath on him made his hands clench into the pillows around him. His eyes shut tight. He could not think about what she seemed about to do, and he could not stop her. Then everything went from fast to slow as she put her tongue on him. He was hers, whatever she wanted to do to him. A very simple thing, he thought. A very simple motion. He really wanted it. Her hands pressed against his thighs.
Then he felt the hot wetness of her mouth touching it, and gasped. “I can’t,” he choked out. The first thing he had said since the theater. She took her mouth away and looked up at him. He saw her, mouth red, eyes black, framed in his legs, her tawny shoulders raised up like a lion at a kill.
