I was sweating heavily by the time we reached the doors. The cool air and marble floors were a relief. I had picked a good place; there was hardly anyone else here. Some angry women with small children. Bitten-looking men who didn’t look like they had anything else to do with the day.

There was a big plastic board with a map on it, and I stood in front of it for a while trying to make sense of the floor plan. But I was too anxious and it all dissolved into lines and colors (those were the days before I had the bug man and the pills). Lauren was no help, she was all over the place, peering this way and that, trying to look at everything at once.

I went up to a lady in a brown uniform, with a badge on her chest, and asked, “Excuse me, where is Contempo Casuals?”

The woman shook her head. “That store closed down,” she said. “Years ago, as I recall. Why would you want that?”

“My daughter, she’s thirteen,” I said. “She wants to get some clothes.”

“And she asked for Contempo Casuals? Has she been in a coma?”

The woman was being very rude so I walked off. “They don’t have that store here,” I told Lauren.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Isn’t this great, Dad?” Her voice was loud and I saw one of the tired mothers look over at us.

“If this is going to work, you have to be smart,” I told her. “You don’t talk. Keep close, no tantrums, do everything I say. Deal?”

She smiled and nodded and didn’t say a word. Lauren has her faults but she’s not slow.

We walked along the storefronts, looking at all the stuff. There was so much to see, we could have spent all day there. Piano music came out of the white pillars and echoed on the marble floor. There was a fountain playing somewhere. I could tell Lauren loved it, and if I’m honest, I did too. It was great to just walk around together, out in the open, like a regular father and daughter. I got us an Orange Julius in the deserted food court. Burned sugar and soy sauce fought uneasily in the air. The tables were all messy like people had just left, burger wrappers and plastic forks and crumbs all over the place. But there was no one in sight.

We went into an empty, echoing department store and I picked up some socks and undershirts. All boring white for me, pink and yellow for Lauren. The undershirts had unicorns on them.