In the Lloyd Center, the kiosks selling cell phone plans and zoom copters were already packing up for the night, and the high, windowed atrium was almost empty. Kendra hurried passed the ice rink, which was nearly empty too, hosting only a few elder ly women dressed in peach and seafoam leotards. The smell of Cinnabon was still strong, but fading.

Express was located on the mall’s ground floor, wedged between Portland Smash and Wild Pair. Within the mall’s hierarchy it fell somewhere in the middle, more sophisticated than the teenybop-perish Rave or Forever 21, less timeless than the blue-chip Banana Republic or the Gap. The interior was not bad—it was vaguely minimalist in design, its walls made of raw wood and white plastic, its floor a bleak white-linoleum tundra. Low pedestals displaying the season’s belted shirt dresses, leopard-print pencil skirts, and merino sweater vests radiated outward from a mobile of broken mirror, all the elements combining to suggest, distantly, some New York City nightclub in its dead daytime hours.

From across the mall’s main hallway, hidden behind a rack of basketball jerseys in Champion’s, Kendra watched her boss, Nathan, fluffing the sweaters on the front platforms. How she loathed him. His meaty face shone with sweat, his coarse, wavy red hair needed cutting, and his overfed body looked absurd in the nearly chic ribbed V-neck and cuffed slacks ensemble he had assembled from the Express inventory.

A part of Kendra almost pitied him, too. He was not a smart or handsome man, nor talented in any way. Keeping up with the simple managerial directives from the central office was practically beyond him. But underneath the pity was mainly contempt. Kendra watched as he refolded a perfectly well-folded chimney-sleeve sweater, then shook it out and refolded it yet again. Here was a guy who had been given everything in life—a nice house, good education, cars, video games—and yet somehow he’d utterly failed to capitalize.

Around closing time, Nathan could be counted on to wander off the premises, leaving whoever was on duty to do all the work while he visited the blonde cashiers and stock girls at Nordstrom and Macy’s, in hopes of some unlikely conquest. And sure enough, to night was the same as any. At half past six, Nathan ambled out into the mall’s thinning traffic, took his bearings, and disappeared, leaving the coast clear for what Kendra estimated would be at least twenty minutes.

She was just stepping from her hiding place, though, when someone called out her name.

“Yo! Kendra!”