He saw her at the mall.
The thing he most wanted to see and most dreaded.
At the mall of all places. Nobody goes to the mall anymore.
He thought about dashing into a nearby store to avoid being seen. Perhaps pretending to be a mannequin or, if fate decided to provide an appropriate toy store, he could hunker down into the stuffed animals ET style. So even if he was discovered, he would look adorable.
But he didn’t. He wouldn’t initiate contact, but he would be open to it.
Her name was Ame. Pronounced like aim, not Amy. Aim being paradoxical given that her parents did not plan to have her in the first place. A byproduct of sin. The Greek word for “sin” is hamartia, an archery term for “missing the mark.”
Ame… born into irony.
She preferred to be obsessed with how many words rhymed with her name. “It has to mean something,” she would claim.
“In the game, my dad came. Blame and shame and nothing would ever be the same.”
He watched her from the second level, looking down on her. Transfixed. Hoping she wouldn’t smile and send him spinning back into whatever it was they had shared. It was all he could do to stop himself from bellowing “I’ve missed you like crazy” at the top of his lungs, then he remembered how she would only play Monopoly if he agreed ahead of time not to buy Boardwalk… even if he landed on it first. Plus, very few situations are improved by shouting the perfectly obvious.
“Ame is my name. A dame and a flame you can never tame. Bound for fame and acclaim.”
As annoying as these observations had been at the time, he had to admit that there were a shitload of words that rhyme with Ame. He noted that she never bothered to include lame or maim. As he watched her, the words proclaim and reclaim sat front and center in his head.
The others girls beneath him walked but she floated. Glided. She still glowed. A few times, he worried that she would look up and catch him staring at her but he was willing to take the chance. In reality, he had very little choice. She was the one that all the love songs were about.
But that’s rarely enough, a yawning chasm between what it could have been and what it became, so he knew that he should keep walking.
So he did. Slowly.
It wasn’t until he got home that it occurred to him that maybe she saw him too… and kept walking.
That’s the problem with malls these days; you can never find what you’re looking for.
“The story of love is hello and goodbye… until we meet again.”
—Jimi Hendrix