Outisde, the air hisses lowly, twin sets of red taillights follow each other along the clogged road toward the mall. Scattered fragments of conversations from ambling pairs headed toward the front doors, a man huffing on a cigarette walks by, questioning directions from the triangle lodged in his ear.
In the vestibule, the closest thing there is to silence. The small square flanked by wooden double doors gives off only the faint hiss of a distant air conditioning unit, ruffled pages from the woman leafing through a vegan cookbook.
Open up those double doors though, and the sound softly blooms, building up to a crescendo when you hear a toddler aimlessly wailing somewhere near the back. The last few seconds of a played out Beatles song, yeah yeah yeah yeaaaaaaah…Then the beginning of another, the compressed whoosh beginning of “Come Together” as it segues into the bass line we’ve all heard, covered by Aerosmith, accompanying video game ads. The small boy on the left thumbing through a Garfield collection turns to no one and says ” Hey mom, it’s that song you like from the commercial!” Not seeing her, he goes back to the book. The music’s background noise really, it’s the wafting bits of conversations and subdued bustling that generates the most noise. At the information desk a phone rings unanswered, its mobile counterpart chirps away somewhere else, unseen. ON the left is the cafe, mostly people staring at laptop screens, white buds in their ears while their elbows rest on stacks of magazines. THe girl behind the counter asks what size, then about a membership. The sound in here is all generated by people, excluding the soft volume of the loudspeaker music, now vaguely exotic tones that offend and interest no one. An elderly couple in the mystery section, at first they seem to be an actual couple but a few seconds of eavesdropping gives the impression that the man is accosting the woman with his tastes and opinions.
“Chandler is Hammett light. Sure they were only a few years apart but Sam Spade is clearly a predecessor for Philip Marlowe, except with a better name.”
The woman nods, says nothing.
“Of course these days it’s hard to find anything like either of those, people keep saying Leonard, I keep wondering what happened to Conan Doyle. Although over here, if I can find it…” He moves to another section of the bookshelf, the woman seems reluctant to follow. Lots of excited children. Two women walk by with a pair of kids each, talking to each other, they’re in possession of some marvelous ability that allows them to drown out the sound their children make, they sound like an overcrowded classroom when the teacher’s stepped out for a few minutes. A well-meaning mother with a sullen teenager, one earbud dangling around his waist: “I don’t know why you didn’t tell me earlier. Lord of the Flies? Is that what you said? When’s it due? Why didn’t you say something before?”
The droning sitar on the loudspeaker suddenly cuts off. “Would the customer looking for the arabic-english dictionary please return to customer service?”