I have been left in the car. In the back seat. The doors are locked and the child locks set. I could clamber into the front seat to make my escape, through the front door, or even drive away as the engine is on to keep the air conditioning going. Really, being here is my choice — I really, really, really did not want to go inside. The thought of the aisles of lingerie with the spider straps ensnaring me or the shapers, rubberized like this car’s black tires that sit on the sizzling blacktop, instigate nightmares. To get anywhere else in the ten thousand square feet of floor space, bigger than my school gym, I would have to negotiate those racks of lace and padding. Except for the luggage, just to the left of the entrance. There I could play with the zippers, guess which is the smallest I could fit inside, or try cruising the display area in a four wheel, hard-shell, roller. The people in the luggage area are often sad. Not the glamorous world travelers the luggage tags imply, but people just moving across the street – needing something more dignified than trash bags to show their departure is a willful act and not forced.

Is that Sarah? With her sister? I could have gone in. Left, to the luggage, left at the side wall and slink past the women’s fitting rooms. Still closed for COVID, I’d be safe from the traffic of customers with arm loads of clothes, or worse, a swimming suit, but wary of a half-dressed woman in the aisle trying to shimmy into something to assure herself of the fit. I like to feel I’d be the super-spy scurrying, surveying, then a quick lunge to a covey. For me, however, I’d feel like an exhausted climber struggling from one-safe spot to the next, all a tingle for unexpected disaster, most likely caused by my own choices and competence. Either way, if I made it suave or sweaty to the home goods section in the far back, I would be safe. There is always a chair there. Or at worse an ottoman, like the pink shag one kicked around the floor, giggled at for looking like an oversized furnishing for Barbie’s dream house, with a yellow and red markdown tag signaling desperation to find a home. But I won’t be relaxing in that chair to be discovered by Sarah. I am here in the car.