I hate crowded malls, but mall smell makes my toes curl. The scent of new clothes, sneakers, food, and expensive perfume fuse together to form a veritable aromatic aphrodisiac. A hypnotic scent that strikes me and unsuspecting shoppers at Lecnac Grove Mall with the smell of American capitalism. The babble of hundreds of voices reminds me of the whirring sound of a seashell pressed to your ear. The shrieking of a random toddler's voice interrupts the otherwise peaceful ambient noise.
Guys like me, we enjoy days like this. Days when we radio DJs can bask in the spotlight of a grand-prize giveaway. Where radio listeners gather for the chance to win a grand prize. The old adage "many will try but few will win" holds true today. Tens of thousands of texts from office workers blowing off their conference calls and Zoom meetings. Delivery drivers pulling over at some random parking lot while their customer's food grows cold and stale. College students skipping class, huddled in their dorm rooms, listening impatiently for keywords to text. Stay-at-home parents letting their babies marinate in soiled diapers for an extra few minutes because an obscene number of free shoes is totally worth it. And today, my station, Nexus Radio, will give away twenty-thousand dollars’ worth.
"AC!" a voice calls to my left. A short brunette waves at me, revealing a tattoo that snakes along the inside of her forearm. She's flanked by two kids wearing matching "My Mommy Rocks" T-shirts. "I thought that was you."
She approaches, dragging the two little stinkers by the wrist, their mouths outlined in blue from the cotton candy they're holding. They wave the white wands of cavity-inducing confection about, their eyes transfixed on the little indigo puff at the tip.
"Hey."
"I called your show last week. I'm Judy the HR lady," she says.
"Yeah, I remember you."
In my experience, when someone says, "I remember you," they don't remember you. But most of the time, I actually remember. My points of reference generally include scent—if unpleasant—and voice. Especially if said voice is abnormally raspy, like that of someone who smokes three packs of cigarettes a day and sounds like a serial killer on the phone.
"You're still the adult in the office?" I ask.
"Duh." Judy winks. Her laugh is interrupted by a cough that sounds so painful it burns my chest. "Adults in the office don't get trashed at company parties and end up with accidental face tats."
We share a laugh, snap a selfie, and I continue on my way. Past an overpriced dress shop with the judgy mannequin staring a hole in me. Past a calendar booth with a thousand different types of calendars, mostly of the canine variety. Past a greeting card store with oversized plush animals in the window—nothing says "I'm a try-hard who's only out for one thing" quite like a $250 koala wearing a T-shirt that reads "You are koalified to hug me."
Getting to meet Nexus listeners who call into my show feels a lot like meeting a long-lost relative. Speaking on the phone, texting, tweeting, and commenting on Instagram posts is one thing. Sharing hugs and high fives in person is another. And spending five hours a day, every week, in a padded room is enough to make even the most antisocial radio personality change their ways. Especially after a pandemic.
As I stroll through the forest of families, strollers, shoppers, and oversized shopping bags, a train crosses in front of me.
Chooooo-chooooo!
The rainbow-colored cash cow on wheels with a white foam cloud atop the engine chugs along. Screaming little humans powder the seats next to begrudging parents. Mostly dads. Their soulless eyes, mapped with lines of red from sleep deprivation, stare forward in a trance while their mouths remain gaped slightly open, waiting for someone to insert the barrel of a gun. Their once-clean college shirt, now tagged with the toddler graffiti of fruit punch, is their white flag of surrender.
"Hear that?" I ask the lady next to me. College age, perhaps. Wearing a ball cap with a braid bleeding downward out the back, yoga pants, and a baseball-style jersey with pop star River Bronswell's face on it. Once considered "the poor man's Shawn Mendes," River catapulted into superstardom with his single "Dead Inside." And now, he's unavoidable. Rumor has it that seals and penguins are more likely to avoid certain death at the hands of polar bears if the stations in Antarctica play him nonstop. But I digress.
Chooooo-chooooo!
She raises an eyebrow at me. "The screaming? Yes, unfortunately."
I wag a forefinger in disagreement. "Wrong. Birth control."
She smiles and laughs as it takes a moment to understand what I mean. Her laugh reveals the most perfect dimples. Dimples I've declared—to myself—that I must see in an environment outside of work. Like, a date or two. Or ten thousand.
My dad's a doctor. One day at brunch, the old man and I had our eyes on the same woman. A dimpled dame wearing tight jeans and a shirt that read "Nobody Cares, Work Harder." "When the zygomaticus major is shorter than normal," he said to me with a mouthful of smoked salmon, "you get the precious crater we call the dimple."
"Your zygomaticus major pulls well," I say.
She wrinkles her nose and rears her head back.
"Your dimples. I...I like your dimples."
The wailing wah-wah express interrupts the uncomfortable silence that sullied my well-intentioned compliment.
I clear my throat. "Here comes another sound," I say with a hand cupped to my ear. "The sound of ten dollars getting flushed down the toilet."
The train passes and the security guard lets us through. She rushes away.
"You here for the shopping spree?" I ask.
She stops and turns. Smiling, she answers, "Yeah. I am."
Good. Plenty of time for me to make up for this painfully weird exchange. Can't have people thinking that AC lacks social skills. I grin. "Me, too."
"Hey, you're that AC guy from Nexus, right?"
"I've been called worse. What should I call you?"
"Bobbi. With an 'i.'"
I hold back a giggle and bite my tongue, stifling my involuntary urge to blurt out the first thing to come to mind. Something one of my old neighbors once said. "Women whose names begin with 'b' and end with 'i' tend to be strippers. Bobbi, Brandi, Bambi, Britni, Bibi, so on and so forth."
Shoppers' bags bounce off my legs as we navigate the jungle of consumerism. A tiny old lady springs up from a massage chair amidst the sea of frantic shoppers and shoves a flyer in my face. "Gee, thanks," I say to the lady, who by now has walked back to her table next to her chair. "Care for an overpriced massage on a raggedy chair?" I ask Bobbi with a wink as I fold it up and put it into my back pocket.
"You might not remember this, but—"
I remember exactly where this is going because her voice sounds familiar. So I run interference. "Nice River Bronswell top. You going to his show this summer?"
"If I do, it'd be the tenth time I saw him," she answers.
"Wow, mildly obsessed," I say. My eyes squint. I stop walking and she does, too. Lowering my head, I scan my eyes from side to side and lean in, asking, "You're not on any watch lists, are you?"
Bobbi stiffens. Her eyebrows arch up and her mouth opens.
Something tells me I crossed a line. "Okay, no watch lists."
"As I was saying," she says in a don't-you-dare-interrupt-me-again manner. "We talked for a couple of minutes last month."
I bite down on the lower corner of my lip and stare away in anticipation of her next comment.
"You said the hardest thing about playing a River Bronswell song on Nexus Radio was making sure his fans could finish cleaning the litter boxes for their eleven cats before it ends."
Diarrhea of the mouth, incoming. "To be fair, you look like you only own seven."
Not everybody likes my sense of humor. But luckily, Bobbi play-slaps my arm and reaches inside her purse. "Mind if we snap a pic?"
"Without me? Rude!" shouts a raspy voice. It belongs to another woman of about the same age. Slightly taller with a larger-than-normal smile and blinding white teeth. She, too, is wearing a River Bronswell top. It reads, "I like River Bronswell, donuts, and maybe two other people." Her blue hair and bangs remind me of the kind of gal who in 2020 would have accused a six-year-old boy of trying to kill her if his mask wasn't covering his nose. Definitely my best bro Cade's type. And now, I can already see us on a double date. If I don't make this even more awkward.
"There you are," says Bobbi. She motions toward me. "This is that AC guy from Nexus Radio."
"Lyla," she says, extending a hand. "Lyla Stanton. I don't really listen to the radio, but nice to meet you."
I return the gesture and say, "Well, I'm happy your friend does."
"Me, too," replies Bobbi, offering a fist bump to Lyla. "'Cuz we might be winning us a bunch of shoes." They make the universal symbol for an exploding fist bump.
They share a giddy giggle. Bobbi shoves an elbow into my side. "Wish me luck?"
Someone wish me luck. I'll need it if I want her number, and my breakfast has quickly turned into a DEFCON-1-level halitosis catastrophe.
Protip: Never eat onions before working at a large event if you tend to forget breath mints.
"We gonna snap that picture or not?" she asks as we approach the Nexus Radio booth in front of the Neat Feet Boutique.
"Right, of course," I reply, cupping a hand over my mouth and exhaling into it, then sniffing for bad breath. Not ideal. But at least it didn't make me faint.
Bobbi swings an arm around my waist and another around Lyla's neck. She yanks me toward her as I place an arm around her shoulder. Any other time, the sweat seeping out of my pores, through my fingers, and down the palm of the hand on top of her T-shirt would have me worried. But after feeling her hand slide slowly off my waist to unwrap her arm, not so much. "Cute!" she exclaims, looking at her smartphone.
"Use a filter on me. I'm not wearing enough foundation," says Lyla, unimpressed.
Bobbi scoffs as she shoves her smartphone into her purse. "Whatever, you're flawless as always."
"Both of you are," I say with a thumb in the air. "After this is over, we can share makeup tips and put them on Tik Tok."
They reply with a blank stare.
A line starts to form around the Nexus Radio booth, listeners participating in one of Lecnac Grove Mall's biggest contests of the year. "I'll leave you two to decide between Juno and Clarendon," I say. "But if you want my professional selfie opinion, always go with no filter."
Bobbi tosses me a coltish side-eye. "Yeah, what he said. He's the professional, after all."
The Nexus Radio staff, led by Darby Winston, greets me with a mic and clipboard. The team calls her the resident firecracker. The getter of shit that needs to get done. I call her my fourth favorite redhead, right behind Ed Sheeran, Wendy, and Carrot Top. I pay attention to her instructions like a sleep-deprived high schooler pays attention in first period chemistry...I don't. "Then you have to blah blah blah." Not because I'm some spoiled, know-it-all radio personality who's only working the event for the extra money and free food afterward. But because every time I look up to greet a friendly face, I'm met by the hugest brown eyes and dimples. Bobbi's.
My stomach twists, and I'm not sure if it's because of my breakfast or Bobbi—hopefully, it's the latter. It twists like the first time I set foot in the control room of a radio station. The rows of blinking lights, the volume needles, the microphones. The five computer monitors. The multiple clocks. Clocks that count up. Clocks that count down. It was like a spaceship I never thought I'd learn to fly. The equipment was intimidating. Bobbi's intimidating.
And she has me zygo-hooked.
