It didn't start out as a run. It built up to one. When it started I was alright, glossed over, fine. Doing as well as I ever do. Walking the city, my mind momentarily clear.
     Then someone misadvised me.
     I'm trying to get to a place called Pie in the Sky. It's a day spa or rodeo or scented candle expo, a theme resort or somewhere for old people where there are chlorinated fountains and manicured palm trees and roaming cockatoos, digging for seeds. Where you can hear a Vegas lounge singer if you want, or sit in a plush leather chair and watch the big game on a gigantic flat screen. Or maybe it's a drug rehab center out in sunrise country, or a ranch for rented weekends of the simple life. My friend who works there and has to wear this supergay uniform with smiley faces told me to meet him. I'm new in town, he said to meet him as he's getting off work and we'll go out someplace.
     I still needed to get this town under my belt, so who was I to say no.
     He said ask anyone, they'll be sure to know how to get there. So I ask for Pie in the Sky. A kindly old woman turns up her nose at my accent and asks me to repeat, but then she smiles, 'glad you asked.'
     I might have checked a map but spoken words speak louder than words embossed on a colorful pamphlet from a kiosk surrounded by Clinique ciphers and manned by a chattering smile. So I asked, thinking maybe in this land there are still people with voices who can answer. I start following her directions, the path she pointed out, zigzagging her hand-another way in which a map leaves a lot to be desired. But this person was a crook. One of Them, not one of us. Look where she sent me.
     I walk through the entrance to a large, elaborately decorated shopping mall. The kind of mall where obese people in Eminem T-shirts loiter, drinking slurpees and making cell phone calls, but also the kind where the stuff is out of everyone's price range. An everything-under-one-roof mall, a partial museum. No wonder the streets seemed deserted. Heavy metal is pounding as I walk in, but it soon changes to Bach as I enter a new section. It keeps switching. I can't imagine I looked like I was in the buying mood. Which means that whoever let me in knew I was lost from the get-go.
     So I go in and think it must just be straight through because what I heard about this mall from the kindly stranger was nothing at all. So it must be insignificant, a thoroughfare that just replaces the sidewalk for a bit and then genteelly draws to a close. Pie in the Sky must be nearby because she didn't give any more directions. So I start strolling straight. I hit an angled embankment that leads into another concourse. Shops that I both know and don't know-labels I grew up with, grew up in, but would never, now, buy. I turn. When I found her standing out there, was she waiting for me or minding her own business? If you can't trust people and can't read maps you'd better not leave home.
     I walk back in another direction-not the direction I came from, a different direction-this place is multi, omnidirectional. I'd like to feel exonerated, striding proudly by, not stopping to read the free-standing advertisements of Christmas sales and twofers, but it's looking like I'm going to need to ask someone again. Well, maybe not yet.
     I can do this. Pie in the Sky fades in significance. Now all I'm trying to get is out. To prove that I can. These people are just like me but older. They're making the best of it while I'm flailing, floundering. Might as well shop, if you're stuck here. There's bound to be something tucked away among these mountains of merchandise. Maybe the misadviser I asked misadvises everyone the same, routes them in here like a sheepdog.
     Or have my thoughts already gone fecund, after less than a week in this town? Perhaps there is no conspiracy, no opposable togetherness to shake a stick at. Baking smells rise from the open center concourse. I could follow that smell.
     I could set my sights on nothing beyond locating whatever is baking and getting some. I need to ask someone.
     'What do you mean out?'
     'I want to leave the mall.'
     'Why?'
     'I have some business on the other side.' This isn't exactly true. I missed my appointment half an hour ago. My friend must have given up waiting, if he's not upstairs watching me on closed circuit TV, congratulating himself on another job well done, another one Trapped. Anyone could be in on this. Is there no AC in this country? Is there no heat? What is the temperature? Maybe I should turn around and leave the same way I came in, forgoing the other side. But my mind is filled with the image of escalators overflowing with a constant torrent of camera-toting Bermuda shorts, pouring in so thickly that fighting my way back up would be impossible. It'd be like trying to ride East through the Gold Rush.
     She doesn't seem to be catching on. 'Is there another exit? Into a parking garage, a lot, a set of auxiliary shops, perhaps?'
     'Exits are for emergencies only.' She looks wall-eyed at my distress.
     I don't want her calling mall security. I try a different tact. 'Which way should I go?'
     'For what?'
     'To get out.'
     'Get Out! is that way.' She points, swims her hand in the air as if every destination were networked through a system of invisible hooks, fingers pointing never entirely by their own volition. There must be summer school courses on why malls are designed with bending corridors, so you can't see more than sixty feet ahead of or behind you. So you actually have to walk up to the next bend to see what's around it. On the corner is a Santa with a microphone plugged into a guitar amp. It's a chocolate and postcard store he's employed by. He's reading 'we have heaps of lovely chocolates for all your gift-giving needs! Come in and try a free sample! Take home an FREE box of homemade bon-bon's with any purchase over $30! Come on in folks, these offers won't last!' He sounds like a priest, stands like he knows it. His voice is persuasive.
     I remember that I'm still talking to this girl at the kiosk. I know better than to argue. She is not on my side. So I follow the fish as best I can. The people do not look gleeful, are not on a spree. They look dutiful, serious, like this here is them getting something done, like they're going to reward themselves with some relaxation after they leave. Like this is a day's work. They motor by with monomaniacal determination-that one store, that one present, a grandchild left unattended in the food court-or they drift by as if underwater, moving their heads at snail's paces side to side, motivated by a lilting current, trailing frozen coffee drinks in plastic cups. Not a single straight back-torsos roughly parallel to the ground, heads peeking up to survey the scene, see if any major stairwells are approaching. Bent over worse if there are shopping bags as weight. They don't pay me much mind. I decide on a good pace. I feel sorry for the kids pitching for charity: a fundamental misunderstanding of the climate here. I'm not about to stop and hear how many children died in Africa-how can I? Right now there is no Africa, there is no death. The place is designed to numb the outside, make it fade into damp memory. That's why there are no windows.
     The charity-job kids look so at me hopefully, someone their age with a bit of a swagger, someone who looks just as stultified and nervous as they do. They have looks on their faces like maybe we could help one another make a grand exit if we just joined forces.
     When the clientele goes up and down the escalators they do not walk, do not treat them as super-stairs: they stand stock still, allowing the floors to be rearranged with no sensation of movement. The more serious shoppers take up their own step, placing a weighty bag by their feet. These are mostly older ladies reeking soft and powdery, clutching their purses with elbows through the straps and hands back around to grab even more tightly-after you lose so much, I guess, as my mind wanders from my task, you try to hold on to what you have left. The way they clutch those bags is probably the least sexual gesture I've ever seen. It's almost androgynous, like you picture women in the fabled Future Without Men.
     Everyone that isn't old and clumsy is moving so quickly and with such hostile determination that I have to wonder what they're all late for, what's going on in the city that requires so much indistractible attention. People bump into me and turn around, holding their palms at fighting angles, like, 'what? You got time to spare?'
     I don't want to get worked up, but I don't want to dally, so I get worked up. I settle upon a brisk walk, slow enough not to turn heads, fast enough to make my remaining time here minimal, if, as I hope, I am actually headed toward a point of egress.
     I begin to bob in and out of self. One of me goes on swatting the crawling skin, but others remember that I used to love these places, when I was bought things, side holster cowboy guns and whale-painted dump trucks, before I was tall enough to see the looks on people's faces.
     I get nauseous with no hint of vomit. It must be near here. Perfume and cologne, cleaning products, inch-thick makeup, sweat, frying food court delicacies, extra greasy because a morning of hard shopping is reason enough for a break, at noon, a bellyful of donuts or doughy chicken. A rubbery wad of mucous forms in my throat. Are all the packages in these slick, glossy bags the same ones that end up at tag sales years down the road? How else do they manage to put it all away? Don't we have a landfill problem?
     My eyes are peeled for the door. All I see is a blue-tinted skylight, painted that color, not a sky-light. Is that muzak or just the syncopation of exasperated mothers yelling at their exasperating, greedy children, who yell back?
     The angles of the corridors are gentle enough that it's impossible to visualize the larger shape of the place. I, coming out of some broad tradition of moodily urban self-defeat, suspect Circle. Might I even be wending my way steadily inward, toward the secret nerve center of the complex, some spirally heart, getting not only not closer but actually farther and farther from any hope of triumphant escape?
     What would make it easier to not consider would be the very soon appearance of a large automatic door leading into not-here.
     I see a flickering shadow on the ground, as from a neon sign running in place. It says, backwards, 'Get Out!' in huge outline letters. I stand under it; think perhaps it's a state-of-the-art teleportation device. If that were what it took to return me to street level, I'd be game. I've been over an hour in here. I've read the same blurbs thirty times, seen the same photogenic faces beaming from innumerable angles. If only I could set my mind to Escape, pry my eyes from the nubile hair color models and the smell of hot pretzels. I could use a cup of tea, but there'd be nowhere to drink it. I could use some morphine but I'm sure the specialty shops are sold out so close to Christmas.
     I do not teleport. If this were a teleport device it would require a credit card.
     I look above, at the sign that's flickering down on the mirror-shiny tile floor. 'Get Out! Gadgets and Costumes You Just Won't Believe!'
     The scene turns macabre without warning. That I'm me, that I'm here, that this is happening and that 'happening' is something, sails away. I feel like an exhibit in a zoo, demonstrating a novel nervous tic.
     I spill onto a bench, look at the malnourished Africans, shrug in perplexitude, perhaps the least qualified Samaritan in the whole complex.
     Macabre doesn't convey the full sense of what this is. I wouldn't want to convey the full sense. I didn't want to have the full sense. It's like macabre plus speed, excessive energy, a freaky, claustrophobic excess of light and motion: macabre with none of its majestic solemnity.
     It was the turning out of 'get out' to refer to not an exit but a joke shop that was the first step toward building The Run. The first time I began to sense that I was being made fun of. That's how I lost my cool. My people can't be reached. I'm being toyed with, defenseless, an easy target. I break into an indoor run. A determined jog maybe, a superfast walk. I still don't want to attract attention. The bag-toting denizens seem to be minding their own business a little less assiduously. I feel their stares, asking 'what's the hurry pal? Stay awhile, try some almond and jojoba oil soap, treat yourself to a new polo shirt, a pair of alligator skin shoes, a cup of melted dark chocolate, your very own Mont Blanc to sign your will with.' It's getting hard to gauge distance. I have no criteria for choosing where to run. 'Say, friend, what's the meaning of your damned hurry? You got better places to be?'
     There is a complex grid, a zigzagging path one moves along to travel in crowds without assaulting passerby, a slow trading of places. To follow it here would shuttle me between Borders to Givenchy over to Starbucks and back, over to another Borders. Instead I push right through, demanding a straight course in the direction I'm heading. Since I might be going in the wrong direction it seems fair to ask that I be allowed to go in it without obstruction. I haven't started to shove through, but I'm beginning to jostle.
     The way that they all stand stock still on the escalators is unnerving. They're setting the pace in here. Any means of rapid personal conveyance will immediately attract attention. It will insult everyone.
     A deep breath just makes matters worse, as it's the air as much as anything that I'm trying to flee. I keep looking behind me. I want them to keep their bags away, closed, not try to stuff me in there with their silk undies and crystal champagne glasses. I want them to keep their mouths closed, to stop salivating when they see the panic and helplessness in my face. I'd break a window if I saw one. No, I think. I'd punch the window but it wouldn't break-that'd be too easy. I'd be crowded around, ostracized, ogled, snapped photos of. They're all staring now, but it's because I'm running. Fast walking, no matter how fast, didn't cut it. Somewhere behind Toys R Us I hear airplanes taking off and landing.
     In the blur of running a few things catch my eye. Vintage English tweeds, shiny leather shoes, 1920's era typewriters, but I keep running. This is no time for stopping, no way to carry anything even if it were good. When exactly would I know if I were running along a spiral toward the center? Would there be a monument or an obelisk there? A brain in solution, leering through a glass eye, winking at me?
     Maybe the whole mall is the center of something on an even grander scale. I'm not yet at the stage of throwing the elderly out of my way, but I'm getting there. It's burned past macabre. This is a macabre you can't leave-macabre panic, that doesn't hang back and subtly creep; this is quicksand: you can't scream because it gets in your mouth.
     I don't trust the signage. It sells false hope: 'Peace of Mind,' 'Sweet Dreams,' 'Calm and Cozy...' There are free maps but they have no 'you are here,' so just they make it all the more macabre. What is that gadget you use for your heart that makes it keep working?
     There is no way to check the time. The batteries on all my devices have run down to nothing. Who might I SOS to, if I had a radio? No way to know how big this conspiracy is. Who let me out on my own in the first place? It's getting more and more crowded. Could mean there's an entrance nearby, or these shops are more sought-after than the ones before, or each person is now counting double or triple in my about-to-pop eyes. I'm trying to teach my lungs to filter out the cologne and use the clean air, but they're slow learners. No one can believe I'm running-why would I be? Aren't there movies where people get stuck in a mall overnight and make a life for themselves with a few friends and sheets and pillows, electric water boilers, roll around on inline skates and frolic in lawn pools, and then don't want to leave come morning?
     I entertain the notion of changing my dialect to John Hughes and strolling past the pizza shops and megaplexes, soliloquizing about the fading era of 80's Americana and suburban teenage nihilistic innocence, slowing down the afternoon's tempo. But I can't catch my breath. Keeping running is the only good idea I have.
     Again I consider retracing my steps, now wistfully, having missed my chance by far. But to turn back would still be an abuse of narrative, an act of disrespect against the one-way onward thrust of time. I want to Progress through this place, even if the exit is indistinguishable from the entrance. Even if it loops around.
     Every two seconds there are people in uniform trying to hand me coupons and leaflets and raffle tickets. I blow past them, sometimes prying their hands from my shirt. Sometimes two or three will descend on my at the same time, shoving all-you-can-eat vouchers against my chest until I tilt in my shoulders and hurl my weight onward. I'm wriggling, twisting my hips, almost tripping over my pant cuffs and shoelaces, letting out a consistent low whine, a sort of communal 'I'm sorry' to everyone I bump into. One of the guitar amp announcers notices my flight and starts narrating my progress for the listening pleasure of the entire mall. Crowds with fried dough and milkshakes and pita pockets congregate around me, whispering to one another and pointing. The announcer speculates as to who might be chasing me.
     Maybe they think I stole something. Eight or nine burly security guards barrel down the hall after me, bellowing into their walkie-talkies. Of course I can't stop to explain and of course my continued running will corroborate their suspicions, egging them on. More announcers jump on board as I leave the first one behind. I try to schematize this place from the turns I've made, but I can't hold the image. It's complicated, perhaps holographic. I don't dare look up-I don't want to see a hundred floors bearing down on me. I want to adjust the contrast in my eyes so everything stops blinding me, but the controls are broken.
     It slides into crisis, is no longer at all macabre: it is a full-fledged disaster, a moment I just don't want to be here for. Alarms are going off, the guards are shouting, my knees are about to give out, shoppers are grabbing at me, from over my shoulder this kid is still saying "now sir, surely you'll agree that AIDS is everybody's problem?" Nowhere anywhere is there an exit. There's an escalator up ahead but I have no doubt that it just leads to more levels. Maybe there's an optimal path for maximum metaphysical satisfaction, starting on one level and working your way up, ascending toward Grace. I can't fight if they catch me. They've called their buddies and now the buddies are approaching from the other side, coming to surround me.
     There is a crowd forming, to watch but also to help cage me in, to see what a cornered animal looks like. Could I strangle or eye gouge even one of them before I got tazed and handcuffed?
     Just at that moment I look to my left and see a small hatch. It says 'For Emergencies Only.' I pull it. It sets off a wailing siren, calling even more police. But also it sets in motion a slab of marble wall between Emporio Armani and Chanel. It slides into the ceiling revealing a narrow passageway.
     I shove into it sideways just as a pig hand reaches for my shirttails. The siren wails and wails. The passageway is six feet long, a dim bulb burning overhead. There are switches and dials and control panels on the walls, a fire extinguisher, a call box. I push past and there, just in front of me, it is.
     A heavy steel door painted jet black, with white block letters that say 'Emergency Exit Only. Do Not Open Under Any Circumstances.' The cops are lined up at the mall end of the corridor, the crowd behind, snapping photos, fanning themselves with napkins.
     I catch my breath, spit some snot onto the ground and slam into the door with everything I've got. It doesn't budge. The cops are yelling through a bullhorn. I grab a fire extinguisher, heft it over my head and bring it crashing down on the latch. It cracks open, spewing white powdery mist in my eyes and nose.
     The latch hiccoughs and clicks open, a fraction of a degree. I look through the fumes at the cops one more time, then hurl the extinguisher at the ajar door one more time.
     It swings wide open and the extinguisher is sucked out of my hands. The shouting of the cops sounds far away. I grip the steel railing as I too am almost sucked out.
     Beyond the door is only wind. A gaping milky expanse, vaporous, frigid, whipping hair and collar around my ears. I can feel my feet sliding. It's thick, gaseous, the kind of space that planets are born from, destroyed into. It doesn't surprise me that this is all there is. I wasn't expecting a city street. I look down and it just goes on and on and on. We are floating. The mall must extend right off the edge of the land, the earth nothing but a foundation. How else could it be so big?
     But this is too optimistic.
     My devices have all stopped working and I lost the time. They must have dismantled everything since I've been here. Or finished dismantling it.
     Perhaps that old woman knew, was only trying to save me, get me indoors before I too was dismantled.
     So this is all there is. The wind wants me, the mall wants me. I'm choking on a fire extinguisher. They yell, say I'm under arrest, the crowd hoots and hisses. The wind grips my ankles and pulls, freezes the hair up to my knees. There aren't any stars. I can still see the empty extinguisher falling and floating away, getting tiny.
     My feet are sucked out, I'm holding on to the rail but my fingers can't take it much more.
     I clutch tightly for a second, momentarily get a grip. I buy myself one last moment, the day's only purchase.
     Then I decide.