Cleaning Up at the Avalon Mall

Short Fiction | Linda McMullen

I barely acknowledged the ATM that stood between Brookstone and Papyrus at the Avalon Mall, until it whirred pleasantly and proffered a $100 bill. 

My head swiveled; no one stood near me. Not a soul (or sole) disturbed the fresh wax on the floor, except me and the Keds I’d worn out of the Macy’s. I approached with the wariness of a Star Trek redshirt who’d seen the show before. The machine beeped, encouragingly. No ATM card in the slot—or on the floor. No malefactors’ screwdrivers plunging into the machine’s rich innards. The exposed half of the bill looked crisp enough to filet a tetra. 

Another klaxon: a rich, insistent intonation echoing any mother feeding her toddler broccoli. Go on. I bent, looked closer. I’d read enough fairy tales to believe implicitly in the rule of three (noises), but touching the note with my plebeian hands was untenable. I had only touched the bottom inch of my five-foot CVS receipt; I employed it to extract the bill. The machine went dark. 

A gift. I leaned toward the ATM. “Hey. What should I do with this?” 

The machine reverted to its home screen and remained silent as a Chaplin film. I looked askance at it; if a machine can be said to return a gaze, this one did. 

“OK, I get it. It’s on me.” 

I did consider spending it—but nothing in the Avalon Mall seemed manna-bill-worthy, me included. So, I walked on, contemplating my reflection in the professionally polished floor, the bill hidden within the drugstore receipt labyrinth. 

My stomach proclaimed dinnertime with the gravitas of Lincoln and the urgency of a teenager speeding home at five minutes to curfew. I studied the heavily graffitied adolescent staff at the Steak Escape (Young. Broke. And—desperate?). Waiting for my order-cum-eavesdropping confirmed their paychecks actually bankrolled local cannabis entrepreneurs. Sighing, I inhaled my Grandest Chicken and plunged face-first into the seasoned-salted fries—while rejecting the piano player mauling the Beatles’ greatest hits.

I wandered until grills slid over shopfronts like tattooed eyelids. The cleaning crew emerged like timid Disney
fauna—mop artists, dumpster conductors…

“Miss,” called the floor buffer, an elderly woman deftly wrangling the bucking whirligig of a machine. “Please be careful—you don’t want to slip in those new shoes.”

I would have, too.

I released the CVS receipt, waving off her startled cries of, “Miss, you dropped…”