Page 48 of This Love
“There aren’t any roads in the air on Schitt’s Creek!” This couldn’t be normal.
“That show is set in a very tiny town,” he said. “Only cities have elevated roads.”
We turned right, and a huge building loomed in front of us, stretching on and on with parking lots the size of my entire neighborhood around it.
“What is this?”
“Barton Creek Mall,” he said. “They’re showing Superman. Plus, there are restaurants and stores inside. You can see a lot of things at once in a mall.”
Mall. The word was familiar. I had a vague sense of the mall being a good place. A fun spot to go. But there were no malls in Schitt’s Creek either. And I couldn’t picture one.
“Nobody has talked about a mall at the diner.”
“They are a dying breed,” Tucker said. “Northcross Mall is gone. Highland Mall became part of the community college. We only have Barton Creek Mall and Lakeline Mall left.”
“Why are they dying?”
“Online shopping has hurt them. There’s a lot of empty indoor space that has to be maintained in a mall, which makes them expensive. Things like the Domain and the Hill Country Galleria, where the shops are all outside, are more popular.”
I peeled my sweating thigh off the vinyl seat. It was seriously hot outside today, and Tucker’s car hadn’t cooled down much despite the air blowing on us. “Why would anyone want to be outside when they could be inside?”
“That’s a question I often ask myself. I love malls.”
Tucker parked the car, and we walked the long stretch to the big glass doors. People streamed into the building, which had two levels.
We entered next to a long desk with movie posters on screens above it. I spotted Superman, as well as the Naked Gun movie Tucker had mentioned.
“Thirteen dollars to see a movie?” I asked him. “I only get four dollars in tips at a typical table. So, I have to serve four of them just to watch a movie?”
Tucker walked up to a screen and tapped the glass. “Life is expensive.”
“Maybe we should walk around. That doesn’t cost anything, does it?”
He paused. “We can do that. But we can afford a movie.”
“Do you make more money than four dollars a table?”
“We have a budget that shows how much we earn and how much everything costs. We could look at it when we go home.”
“Okay.”
“Should I buy tickets?” he asked.
I stuffed down my concern. Tucker surely knew what we could do. “Yes. Okay.”
But when we went inside and I saw the prices of drinks and popcorn, I said, “No way. I bought popcorn at the store. It was five dollars for six bags. They are charging ten dollars for one!”
Tucker laughed. “Pretty much everyone agrees with you there.”
We walked along a long hall to the door with the number that the man checking our tickets said was ours.
Inside, the air was frigid. After the hot car ride, it was pure bliss.
We walked up a ramp, then I stopped so suddenly that Tucker almost ran into me.
“You okay?” he asked.
But I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was a TV screen, but it filled an entire wall. I turned to him. “How did they make it so big?”
