Today there’s a free concert at The Shoppes at Heritage Trail, our town’s only mall, because its owners are trying to do some damage control after last week’s “incident.” The mall is a stone’s throw from a forest preserve and last Tuesday a wolf wandered over and walked right through the sliding doors and into JC Penney’s bedding department, hopped up on a Sealy Posturepedic and took a nap. It must’ve looked pretty cute because the customers didn’t freak out or anything. They just posed with him on the bed for some camera phone pictures, gave him bunny ears and pretended like they were howling, stuff like that.

Anyway, the wolf eventually woke up and bit an eight year-old’s throat. Luckily, an off-duty cop was checking out a comforter around the corner and still had her service revolver on her, shot the wolf in the face before it could do too much damage. The kid’s neck is all torn up, though, will need a million skin grafts so that it doesn’t permanently look like pastrami. His grade school is having a bake sale to cover some of the medical bills. Nobody talks about the wolf, how his head exploded like a water balloon and brains splattered all over a duvet. Just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

***

When I enter The Shoppes I immediately notice the metal grates. They’re pulled down over the entrances of the some of the stores because their tenants up and split, figuring they’re better off in a less dangerous mall in a much nicer town. Behind the grates there are guys in powder blue jumpsuits removing fixtures and loading them onto dollies. I can barely hear myself think over the sound of the power drills.

I follow the neon orange “Free Concert” signs until I get to the food court. There’s a makeshift stage set up directly across from the Panda Express and there are about a hundred or so fans milling about up front. I find a place in the back of the crowd watch a tech guy set up what appears to be a smoke machine.
All of the sudden the lights kill and the hundred of us start clapping and whistling. The woman next to me is tearing up. She leans over to tell me that she bets it’s Usher, that she just has a good feeling about this one. Then the performer takes the stage. He’s not Usher. He’s an R&B singer, but his name is C.J. Something, a local. I recognize him from the billboards off of I-57, the ones for the Kia dealership in Chicago Heights. In person, he looks just like the ads. He’s wearing his trademark sunglasses, wifebeater and platinum chain with the state of Missouri hanging off the end because he’s originally from St. Louis.

C.J. Something takes his place in the middle of the stage and when he asks us to make some goddamn noise, we do. He tells us that he’s honored to be here with us at The Shoppes, that he’s blessed to be thriving in a recession. He urges us to continue shopping, to keep supporting our local retailers and go about our business as usual because if we don’t, fear wins. Then he takes a knee and crosses himself and soon he’s flanked by two women in fishnets and black leather hot pants. We hear the intro to his newest single, “(Girl I Gotsta) Pound Dat,” the moans of a woman having an orgasm. The beat kicks in and the women start groping C.J. Something, their hands working their way down his chest to his dick, as he sings the first verse.

The crowd loves C.J. Something and is dancing and singling along to “Pound Dat” and it’s like the wolf attack never happened. I watch as somebody in a Jamba Juice polo shirt starts passing out free samples; this makes things even better. I smile because I can’t remember the last time I saw so many happy people and before I know it I’m swaying and nodding my head up and down to the beat.

C.J. Something is well into the chorus and is begging the girl in the song to let him pound that, to let him smash that until the break of dawn, when we hear the feedback. It’s super-loud and high-pitched and everyone’s wincing and covering their ears. C.J. Something stops singing and dancing and motions to somebody off-stage. A guy with a Bluetooth and a ponytail messes with some audio equipment, twisting knobs and pulling cords and such, and then it’s silent. The crowd starts booing and the ponytail guy immediately gets up on stage and takes the mic from C.J. Something, assures us that he has his best men on the case and that the concert will start back up in a few minutes.

C.J. Something cuts him off, though, grabs the mic back and tells The Shoppes to go fuck itself, that the mall will be hearing from the Law Offices of Ronald L. Kaplan real soon. Then he drops the mic and walks off stage and a security guard drapes a white towel over his head and that’s it. Show’s over.

When the lights come back on I notice tiny plastic Jamba Juice cups all over the floor. A Mexican guy in a Bulls hat is trying to sweep them into piles but people keep walking right through them as they leave the food court, walking off in different directions. I feel sorry for him so I tell him as much, mouth the words I’m… Sorry… real slow so he can understand me if his English isn’t so good. He looks at me and shakes his head and says maricón to himself, just keeps sweeping.

I stop off at Auntie Anne’s for a hot pretzel on my way out. As the woman drops my Plain With Salt into one of the little wax-paper bags, I remind myself to find my Spanish-to-English dictionary when I get home.

***

The Pace bus is crowded, packed with old people on their way back to Lakeview Terrace, the retirement community off of Route 45. The only open seat is next to a guy wearing a leather bomber jacket and a navy-blue baseball hat that says The Check is in the Mail in yellow embroidery. When I sit down, the guy immediately introduces himself. His name is Milt Sandoval and he just caught the early bird at Nick’s, had himself a real nice surf ‘n turf. Real nice, he says again. I tell Milt that I just saw a concert at The Shoppes and he tells me that he read about it in the Daily Southtown, knew that a big-shot colored guy from the city was in town. I consider telling him that no one says colored anymore but I don’t, figuring he already knows and doesn’t care.

Milt asks me how the concert went, if I enjoyed the show. I tell him about the feedback and C.J. Something threatening to sue The Shoppes and he just laughs. He asks me if I think Sammy Davis, Jr. or Dean Martin would threaten to sue The Sands if their sets went south. I tell Milt that I don’t know, that the Mob would probably handle that for them.

Milt laughs again and tells me that I’m all right. I remind him of his grandson, Rory. Then he tells me not to waste my time hanging out at some piece-of-shit mall all day. There’s a whole world out there and it doesn’t give a flying fuck about fancy sneakers or gadgets for your car that tell you where to turn, he says. A map was good enough for Patton and it should be good enough for everyone else.

I see my stop light up on the screen at the head of the bus so I pull the cord. I tell Milt that it’s been nice talking to him, which is a lie. Milt smiles and shakes my hand and tells me to remember what he said about not wasting my time. He tells me that when he was my age, he was in Morocco with the Service, chasing trim and killing Krauts. Don’t be a slave to pussy, though, he says. Makes a wise man act the fool.

I thank him for the advice and tell him that I’ll try not to do that. I don’t tell him that I don’t think that’ll be a problem because the only girl I’ve had sex with is Natalie Becker and she moved to Scottsdale two years ago.

As I walk home from the bus stop, I think about how long The Shoppes has, how many weeks it’ll take to fold. I play it conservatively and go with four, figuring the owners and tenants will be haggling over who-gets-what and for how much for awhile. But it’ll happen, eventually. And then we’ll be a town without a mall again.