Here She Lies

job — boring beige, neutral and unthreatening — and blew my hair dry. Makeup. Stockings. High heels. Once the job was sealed I would put this outfit away until the next job change. Too restless to wait in the tiny studio, I headed outside.
    Because the hospital was far west, between Ninth and Tenth avenues, I started walking (regretting the heels). I had always enjoyed walking in New York and today in my business clothes I blended easily into the rush-hour montage of people flowing through the urban grid. The morning air felt crisp and exciting. I wondered how long it would take me to feel I belonged here and then, reaching Seventh Avenue and Columbus Circle, I realized how long it had been since I had set foot on this island.
    The old Coliseum was gone, razed, and in its place was a huge, glittering mall. I had heard about the transformation, but this was the first time I had seen it with my own eyes. It was startling and phenomenal. My first impulse was to hate it because it was different,pulling the plug on one of my antiquated Manhattan memories that I had never really cared about but suddenly, when it was gone, I mourned. Then I felt the tug of curiosity and crossed the street. It was not yet nine o’clock, so I still had some time. I pulled open one of the big glass doors and went inside.
    The space was enormous, a granite-and-steel temple to commercialism. I knew shopaholic heaven when I saw it and strolled happily through the lobby past looming metal sculptures of twenty-foot naked giants (yes, real art here: we are more than we buy), gleaming plate-glass windows beckoning with displays of luxury goods, stuff stuff stuff teasing you, just daring you to come inside. I rode the escalator up one flight and saw immediately that the anchor store on the second floor was a large chain bookstore, with other stores flowing off two hallways adjoining a lobbylike gallery displaying more artwork, all with weighty price tags. Another flight up took me to another gallery-lobby with five-figure art and a Samsung store as its anchor.
    I was drawn by a display case in the lobby, the kind of horizontal vista where you might find a whole city in miniature. Upon closer inspection I saw that it was a virtual map. A wave of the hand morphed neighborhoods recognizable by their iconic symbols: a paper food container sprouting chopsticks for Chinatown, a dollar bill for Wall Street, a painted canvas for SoHo, an espresso cup for Little Italy, and so on and so forth up and down and across the city. Technology didn’t particularly interest me, but this was fun and before you knew it I was peering into the store through a glasswall beneath a big sign announcing Samsung Experience. It was a showplace for high-tech gizmos so cutting edge you couldn’t even buy some of them yet: bitsy cell phones and featherweight laptops and massive televisions with precious living rooms you could sit in and actively pretend you were relaxing at home with your very big big-screen TV. When I turned away from the experience I felt a little high, a sensation that turned to dizziness when I spotted... Clark Hazmat?... waving his hand over the virtual map in the lobby. The hair was different, but the laughing-skull tattoo on his right shoulder was definitely his.
    Clark Hazmat. I couldn’t believe it. He had been one of our orderlies in the prison clinic up until just a few months ago. A nice guy, Bobby and I had always agreed — a white-collar criminal, a computer hacker, not a real criminal — easy to say so long as he was behind bars. Seeing him here now, free and “on the outside” came as a considerable shock. My mind skipped like a stone over a crystal lake of political correctness beneath which darker, realer prejudices mingled like drunken harpies — prison prisoner criminal guilty risky scary vulnerable Zara killer murderer following-me dead — until sinking into the depths of automatic judgment. Just like that, I sized him up as a threat, even though in the PT clinic he had been a reliable helper and I had genuinely liked the guy. Everything was context: there, he was safe; here, he was dangerous. Period. And why was he here, anyway? My finger itched to dial Detective Lazare and find out if Clark Hazmat had been on the list of recently released inmates.
    Before I had a chance to slip past him to the escalator, he saw me.
    “Miss Milliken? Hey! It’s me! Clark from back home !” Wink wink. I looked around; there was no one else there.