by Daniel Tarker
“These reunions are always. . .” I tried to find the right word, but it was elusive. Miserable. Depressing. Death-defying. I finally settled on “unbearable.” I raised my plastic cup of microbrew and added, “the only thing that makes these events bearable is the booze.”
Jennifer smiled politely and looked over at our old gray-haired classmates trying to gyrate to MC Hammer like they were all still sixteen. I wondered how many people on the dance floor would be applying hot patches to their lower backs in the morning.
These reunions always made me feel old—but I felt especially old sitting there with Jennifer. We hadn’t seen each other in decades. And yet we felt as comfortable with each other as two neighbors who saw each other driving to work every morning for the past thirty years. The incongruity of this experience—the clear chronological distance in time, coupled with the sensation that no time had passed at all—brought into stark focus the brief expanse of our existence.
“So, we’re going to tear down the old Westlake Mall and build a state-of-the-art sports arena,” I said. “My company is doing some of the contracting work.”
Jennifer looked down into her glass of wine with a melancholy expression.
“Wow,” she said. “I have a lot of memories about that old capitalist hellscape.”
This made me smile. We had come up with that moniker for the mall when we worked there together. Though I must admit that I was surprised by even the little amount of nostalgia she showed toward that brutalist monstrosity. Nothing about her behavior, since we graduated high school, indicated that she possessed any level of nostalgia for our youth. She hadn’t attended any of our previous high school reunions. And from what her brother Frank told me, she barely came home to visit family. “She is a big-time corporate lawyer,” Frank would say. “Making millions short selling companies for hedge fund managers.” I suspected the only reason she was in town for this reunion was because Frank had tragically passed away a couple of weeks before. His wife came home from work and found him, sitting in his John Deere riding lawn mower, having crashed into a tree with a Miller High Life still in his hand. The coroner said it was a heart attack.
“You know what we should do,” Jennifer said, an all too familiar smile spreading across her face—a smile that suggested she was eager to engage in some mischievous antics. “We should sneak off and go check out the mall for old-time’s sake.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s not very safe.”
“Oh, come on. Don’t tell me you’re turning into an old man.”
We were walking amongst the cranes, forklifts, and other demolition vehicles when I decided to ask Jennifer about her marriage. We had touched on it briefly at the reunion as part of the obligatory rundown of demographic details that one shares when catching up with somebody that they haven’t seen in three decades—job, marital status, degrees, kids, number of colonoscopies—but we hadn’t gone into much depth about any of those topics.
“So, divorced,” I said.
“So, widowed,” she countered.
“I asked you first.”
She kicked a pebble over to a pile of debris in the parking lot.
“Well, he looked like Michael Douglas. He was an investment banker. If our marriage were made into a movie, you would probably title it Scenes from a V-Suite Marriage. We both worked so hard at our jobs, we never had time to invest in our relationship. He cheated. I cheated. Lawyers makde a lot of money. I bought a condo. No kids to live in the spare room. You’re lucky to have your son and daughter.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Well, you know, they’re good kids, but fucking expensive. Goddamn, the college tuition. I could have bought them both houses.”
“Losing your wife must have been hard,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. “It was a tough chapter.”
I felt bad for not saying anything with a little more wisdom, but I wasn’t in the mood to go into detail. Luckily, we found ourselves standing at the entrance of the alleyway that led to the old food court. Without the lighting of street lamps and neon store signs, it looked like the opening to a dark and ominous cave.
“Well, look at that,” Jennifer said. “I used to dread walking through that alley.”
Jennifer—or Jenny, as she preferred to be called back then—worked at Schmidt’s German Pretzels, a small stand in the food court that served giant pretzels dipped in the special seasoning of your choice—garlic, cinnamon, or sriracha. Beyond the indignity of smelling like flour and sweat after each shift, Jenny was required to wear a tacky, yellow blouse with a blue apron and baseball cap featuring the company logo—a dancing pretzel named Schmitty.
“It’s like wearing a hat with a giant fucking turd on it,” she once complained over a lunch break at the food court. “And it certainly doesn’t help that the mascot’s name is Schmitty. There’s always a bunch of jerks from the middle school who come by and ask,‘how you doing’, Mrs. Shitty? I’d love me some sriracha on that shit!’”
I laughed. It struck me as funny. She threw an onion ring at my head.
“Yeah, I dreaded walking down that alley, too,” I said.
I worked in the shoe department at Macy’s. From the day I started, I sensed there was something malevolent about the mall. And it wasn’t just the artificiality of the place—the shiny and cheap disposable goods on display in each store window. It was the discovery that I would be selling shoes alongside my PE and Social Studies teacher, Mr. Livingston.
He was a wiry man with black- rimmed glasses and a 1970s porn star mustache. We both felt uncomfortable about working together, but managed the awkwardness by just not talking to each other. “He probably works there because teachers don’t make enough money to survive,” Jenny said when I told her about the situation.
“Maybe,” I said. “He may also have some sort of strange foot fetish. He’s always struck me as being kind of a creepy dude.”
“Can we go inside and look around?,” Jennifer asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It may not be safe.”
“Oh, come on,” she said. “Don’t tell me you’re turning into an old man.”
“Hello,” Jennifer called out, her voice echoing off the bare walls of the food court. All the stalls once occupied by the usual array of franchised restaurants—Subway, McDonalds, Panda Express, 31 Flavors, Taco Bell—were wiped clean of the branded signage and focus group- approved menu displays. “Are there any ghosts here?” she continued, her words disappearing into the darkness—ghost, ghost, ghost.
As we walked through the mall with a flashlight looking into all the empty storefronts, we tried to help each other recall the details of our first date—if it could even be called a date. We eventually found ourselves by the deactivated escalator, fiercely debating how our brief romance began.
“Drama class,” she said. “That’s where we first met.”
“I didn’t even know you knew I existed,” I said. “I just tried to sit in the back of class and pretend to be a coat rack so nobody would notice me.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I noticed you. You didn’t play the part of a coat rack very well. I’ve always thought you’re kind of cute—in a quiet, serial killer kind of way.”
“Really,” I said. “I spent that whole semester berating myself for not having the guts to talk to you. I so wish I could have done that Romeo and Juliet scene with you instead of that jerk Danny Simpson.”
“Me too,” she said. “Danny Simpson had the worst case of halitosis. He almost knocked me unconscious with every stanza that he read.”
Then, one late afternoon, I ran into Jenny sitting on the planter outside of the Toys ‘R Us. She was crying so hard that her mascara was streaming down her face. “Bobby broke up with me,” she sobbed when I asked her what was wrong. She was talking about her boyfriend Bobby Bolden—a swarthy jock who loved to show off his abs by sporting extra-tight T-shirts. “He came by the pretzel stand where I work with that new blonde majorette who just transferred in and said it was time to call it quits. Then the son-of-a-bitch ordered a pretzel with a side of sriracha.”
“What a loser,” I said. “Bobby Bolden wouldn’t know a good thing like you from a bag of burning turds on a doorstep.”
“That’s so sweet,” she said. “I think that’s the sweetest thing anybody’s ever said to me.”
She found a napkin in her purse and used it to wipe the mascara off her face and blow her nose.
“Hey, you want to go watch a movie with me?” I asked. “My treat. I just got paid.”
Jenny looked hesitant. Before she could respond, I jumped in.
“Come on. It’s the new Dracula movie. Francis Ford Coppola. It’ll totally take your mind off that jerk Bobby.”
Jennifer didn’t recall things quite the same way.
“I wasn’t hesitant,” she said. “I remember saying yes, sure thing, and the next thing I knew, we were ordering popcorn and fountain drinks at the concession stand.”
“It was a pretty decent movie,” I said. “Certainly got us excited.”
“Is that the one we started making out at?” she asked.
“Right after the credits started rolling,” I said.
“Are you sure,” she asked. “During our first movie together?”
“Trust me,” I said. “I wouldn’t forget a thing like that.”
After exchanging some of those buttery popcorn-flavored kisses at the movie theater, Jenny and I found ourselves thrust into a heated romance. Well, at least it was heated for me. She had a lot more experience, so maybe it was more of a lukewarm romance for her.
We talked on the phone every night. We met up at the food court during our lunch breaks. And we went out to the movies after we got paid to find the latest horror release, because nothing excites the imagination of a teenager more than sex and death.
And then I did something stupid. I got frustrated. Thinking about it all these years later, I was a complete asshole. Some kids I knew asked me how far I’d gone with Jenny. I told them it wasn’t any of their business. But they saw through that. They laughed and said I hadn’t even made it to second base. I told them Jenny was a modest girl. That really got them going. They laughed like a bunch of jackals.
“She’s not all that innocent,” one of them bellowed. “Bobby Bolden says they went all the way.” I didn’t even question the veracity of their statements. It made sense. It seemed true. So, I began to wonder why she hadn’t gone all the way with me. I knew it was an unfair question to ask, but my raging hormones and dopamine-starved brain overpowered what limited emotional self-regulation systems I’d developed by that age.
So, the next time I dropped her off after one of our horror movie dates, I tried to take it further than just kissing, but she stopped me.
“Why not?” I asked—probably too pathetically, if I’m to be completely honest.
“Because I really like you, Charlie,” she said, squeezing my hand. “I want it to be special. I want it to be something we’ll both remember for the rest of our lives.”
Jennifer and I started climbing the deactivated escalator in the mall. It felt odd and destabilizing, like we were both slightly drunk. I worried how I would explain this to the insurance company if one of us fell and cracked our heads open on the tile floor below.
As we stepped off the escalator, Jennifer took my hand and turned to me.
“So, do you ever think about that night?,” she asked in a flirtatious tone.
“That night?”
“Yes,” she laughed. “You know? That night!”
Oh, yes. I did remember that night.
We were sitting in the food court after getting off a particularly grueling Black Friday shift. Jenny was complaining about all the demanding and picky customers she had to deal with while comforting herself with a bacon cheeseburger. I tried to lend a sympathetic ear, but I was slightly distracted. I’d noticed Mr. Livingston sniffing someone’s brown loafer earlier that day—confirming my suspicions about him—and I desperately wanted to expunge the image from my memory.
Suddenly, Jenny looked at me, licking a bead of ketchup from the side of her mouth, and asked, “You want a blowjob?”
“Huh?” I asked, not sure if I heard her correctly.
“Do you want a BJ?”
Well, I did, but I did not know how to say I did.
She crumpled up the paper wrapping from her bacon cheeseburger and told me to follow her.
I’d never seen Jenny walk with such purpose and intensity before. She led me down a side corridor next to the food court and into the women’s bathroom.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked. Not only did I find the situation terrifying, but I remembered she wanted to save this for a special moment—and I didn’t think a stall in the woman’s bathroom was what she had in mind.
Jenny didn’t respond. She just pushed me into a stall and closed the door behind us. I could hear someone walk out of another stall and start washing her hands. Jenny must have seen the fear on my face. She put a finger over her mischievous smile as we listened to the woman dry her hands with the air blower and walk out of the bathroom.
Jennifer leaned close to my ear. She smelled like raw dough, sweat, and flour–with a hint of cinnamon, which was pleasant.
“There may be other girls in the stalls, so don’t say anything,” she whispered, the warmth of her breath sending tingles throughout my body.
She sat me down on the toilet, unzipped my pants, and knelt in front of me. Now, I am not one who is comfortable sharing intimate details about events like this publicly, so I’ll do my best to describe the relevant details without describing the relevant details. Jenny seemed flattered that I was ready to go right away. And I was nervous because I’d never had anybody do anything like this to me before. I did everything I could not to make a noise as I pressed my hands against the sides of the stall to hold myself steady. I wasn’t sure what to do. My whole body began to feel like it was vibrating. I looked up at the stained tiles, worried I might do something strange or embarrassing. But I couldn’t worry too long because it was all over and I felt a wave of joy wash over me.
“How was that?” she asked.
I could barely get the words out.“Fantastic.”
Her mischievous smile returned.
“Do you want to go again?” I asked. I could tell that I was physically up for another round—maybe two—or three—or—
Her smile abruptly faded, replaced by a grave seriousness. “No, I need to go home,” she said.
“Why? Let’s go somewhere nicer and do it again.”
She shook her head. Her decision was firm. “I have chemistry homework,” she said.
I sensed that rather than bringing us closer together, what we had just done may have erected an insurmountable wall between us.
“Did I do something wrong?” I asked.
She crooked her head, looked at me with apologetic eyes, and kissed me with her tongue.
“How did that taste?” She asked this with a hint of aggression that made my stomach feel queasy.
We heard the door to the bathroom open and someone wearing high heels walk in. The woman went into the stall next to ours. As soon as we heard her sit down, we rushed out of the bathroom and darted through the mall and into the parking lot.
“Why did you decide to do that with me that night?.,” I asked. “It all just seemed to come out of nowhere.”
We were now standing by a window overlooking the construction equipment in the parking lot and the houses and storefronts surrounding the north wing of the old mall. An Amazon truck drove by the Whole Foods across the street.
“Perception is an interesting thing,” she said, turning to look out the window. “If we had this conversation back then, I’d have said I was having a terrible day. I hated my classes. Work was miserable. And then while we were eating our fancy food court dinner, I spotted Bobby Bolden walking by with that airhead majorette. They stopped by the 31 Flavors and started making out while waiting in line to make their order. So, I was like—I’ll show that son of a bitch. I’ll show that Bobby Bolden that I’m nobody’s leftovers. There’s at least somebody who wants me.”
Up until this revelation, the memory of that night in the bathroom had taken on disproportionally mythic proportions in my life. I’d imagined that Jenny had finally seen something so attractive in me that she couldn’t control herself. I didn’t know what this attractive feature could be, but I’d used it as evidence that I wasn’t a complete loser when other women turned down my advances. It’s probably what gave me the confidence to ask my late wife out on our first date.
“Is that why you broke up with me right after? Because you still had a thing for Bobby?”
“Look, I felt just awful about what I’d done,” she said. “You were a sweet guy. You deserved to be with a girl who really wanted to be with you. Not some selfish chick who’s just going to use you for revenge—to satisfy her stupid ego.”
“So, how would you describe what you did now?”
“We were just two kids learning about ourselves,” she said. “And I learned that I could be a real superficial bitch.”
After our tryst in the bathroom, I drove Jenny home and walked her up to her front porch. It was a quiet goodbye, but she let me kiss her. I drove away dreaming about our wedding, our first house, our children, our retirement, our joint funeral after we died of old age at the exact same time, and everything in between. But when I called her the next day, Jenny wouldn’t answer. I tried to talk to her at school, but she would rush past me and say that she had to study for some big test. And when I approached her at Schmidt’s Pretzel Stand, she told me that her dad insisted on picking her up after work from now on because she broke curfew. She wouldn’t even make eye contact with me.
Our whole relationship had come to an end as suddenly and inexplicably as it had begun. I was so distraught about the situation, I even asked Mr. Livingston for advice one Saturday morning while preparing for opening. He sat down and fondled a red Adidas sneaker and started mumbling something about desire always leading to despair. Then he walked into the storage room. I’m pretty sure I heard him sobbing.
“It was a stupid and selfish thing to do,” Jennifer said. ‘I didn’t know what to say to you, so I didn’t say anything.”
We stood by the entrance to what I believe had once been a Victoria’s Secret store filled with faceless mannequins with perfectly shaped plastic bodies in bright and revealing lingerie. I don’t think either of us wanted the night to end like this. If we were being honest with ourselves—which is something adults struggle with even more than teenagers—we wanted something more meaningful than this to come out of our excursion to the mall—otherwise why come all the way out here at all?
“When you’re young like that, you’re fixated on the moment,” she said. “You can’t imagine all the pain and heartache the world has in store for you. You can’t imagine your doctor telling you one day that you’ve got breast cancer. You think your boobs are going to be perky and alluring forever.”
“Did that happen?”
“About a year ago,” she said. “It’s OK. Don’t worry. I’m fine now. Everything has been reconstructed.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know how hard that can be.”
“I know you do,” she said, taking my hand. “I want you to know, I’ve always felt ashamed about what happened. How I treated you. I hope you can forgive me.”
“No worries. Like you said. We were young.”
“I wonder what that bathroom looks like now?”
“Probably gutted.”
“Let’s go see.”
Jennifer again led our way back to the women’s bathroom. She pushed the door open and reached into the dark to search for the light switch. To our surprise, the fluorescents overhead buzzed to life. The room looked dirtier and sadder than I remembered. She walked up to the stall that we had snuck into three decades before and looked inside. The seat of the toilet was broken and leaning against the wall.
“Romantic,” Jennifer said, looking toward me with a wry smile. “I bet you remember that night all bright and shiny, don’t you?”
I shrugged and nodded.
“Not me,” she said, walking over to me. “It’s always been a grimy and dirty memory.”
She turned and walked up close to me. Her energy had changed. There was an intensity in her eyes and body that made me feel both nervous and excited at the same time. The whole room felt surreal like we had just walked into a dream.
“Sometimes I feel broken,” she said. “Like nobody will want me.”
She smelled like vanilla. Her body radiated an intoxicating warmth.
“Do you still find me attractive?” she asked.
I nodded.
She smiled.
Now, again, I am not one to share intimate details, so I’ll try to describe the relevant details without describing the relevant details. Jennifer unfastened my belt, unzipped my pants, and discovered, to both our dismay, that I wasn’t quite ready to perform. She tried to help me, but we both knew nothing wouldn’t work.
“I’m sorry. If we go back to my place, I have some—”
“It’s OK,” she said, like this wasn’t the first time she had been in this position. “It’s probably for the best. Neither of us really know what the fuck we’re doing here anyway.”
She started to walk toward the door, and I grabbed her arm.
“It’s all right,” she said. “We’re both turning into old people.”
I got on my knees in front of her—my knees popping due to arthritis—and I lifted her skirt. She didn’t resist as I slid her panties down around her ankles. “What the fuck are we doing?” she seemed to ask the universe with a macabre laugh.
I felt her fingernails grab ahold of my hair and rhythmically press down on my scalp with each syllable she spoke.
“Yes. Right there, right there, right, right, right… right there!”
Afterward, I rolled back onto the floor and looked up at her. She appeared flush and disheveled as she began smoothing out her clothes and hair.
“So, what now?” I asked.
She walked to the cracked mirror above the row of sinks and removed a stick of red lipstick from her purse. As our desire receded, the illusions it produced dissolved around us. Our eyes briefly met in the opaque reflection of the mirror. They betrayed our years and our sadness. And then Jennifer spun around with a refurbished smile and reached her hand out to help me up.
“Let’s go grab some dinner,” she said. “I’m famished.”
Jans Do
by Jack Dunnett
Daniel Tarker (he/him) holds an MFA in creative writing from San Francisco State University and a doctorate in higher education leadership from Oregon State University. Since turning his hand from theater to prose during the pandemic, his fiction has been published in Lothlorien, Confetti Literary Journal, Marrow Magazine, Once Upon a Crocodile, Aji Magazine, Mocking Owl Roost, Santa Clara Literary Magazine, and Culture Clash. He has also published his research on leadership in multiple academic publications. You can find more at his website danieltarker.com and tarker.substack.com.
Jack Dunnett is a mixed media painter who grew up in the Highlands of Scotland. He obtained his Bachelor of Arts in Painting from Gray’s School of Art in 2017. He currently lives and works in Glasgow.
Ignatian Literary Magazine 