The Price of Copper

I picked at the already peeling steering wheel, watching the last of the mall’s occupants shuffle out into the remaining vehicles scattered throughout the parking lot. Streetlights fluttered, making the starless night appear menacing.

A craving for sleep stung with each blink of my mahogany eyes, emphasizing the inadequacy of my midday nap. It was almost a month straight and this schedule had only gotten a little bit easier. A woman with three school aged children hurried to their car. They followed behind her like baby ducks. The woman spotted me observing them and immediately pulled her kids in front of her defensively, picking up their pace through the parking lot. I rolled my eyes; I had heard every “creepy-white-windowless-van” joke in the book.

Just then, a metallic thump! on the van’s sliding door interrupted my thoughts. The entire interior and exterior of the van was covered in an array of paint splatters, dents, and scratches already, but those came with the job. Maybe it was the lack of sleep, or possibly just an overall disgust with how many careless people infested the planet, but that single thump! convinced me to fight the culprit. I didn’t care if it was an old lady or a big guy with a gun in the other car. Swinging open my own door, I made my way around to confront whoever the unemployed idiot, piece of sh-.

Surprisingly, on the other side of the van there was not a car at all. Crouched and unable to contain their amusement, was my dad, Manny and his henchman Ricardo, holding a wrench in his calloused hand. Two employed idiots, I was half right. Ricardo tapped the side of the van again, amplifying their laughter at my expense. I attempted to hide my anger, postponing my inevitable blow up for another occasion, knowing a reaction would only further fuel the joke.

Ricardo was not conventionally the type of person an employer would be eager to keep on the payroll, but he always showed up for work, hungover or not. My dad was not far off in character from Ricardo; the only difference was that he had a wife and kids holding him at least somewhat accountable for his drinking. He could only go so far on a bender.

“Relax Jr!” My dad mocked, placing his heavy hand on my toned shoulder. Dad’s belly bounced as he let out his last few chuckles, his white shirt was tight and wrinkled free from years of outgrowing. Shrugging it off, I slid open the cargo door to begin unloading equipment. Tonight, we were starting a new section of the mall. Part of me dreaded it, but every new section was progress towards the end of what felt like a never-ending maze of walls, floors, and ceilings.

Each of us with our hands full, carried in tools, ladders, drop cloths, and buckets. Between the three of us, it took nearly 3 roundtrips each before we could get started. Each walk from the Van to the new section, we passed dark showrooms, stores with metal grates pulled over their windows, and empty chairs and tables. The occasional security guard or custodian would pass us, paying little mind to what we were up to. I watched my reflection in the glass windows as we passed, admiring my lean frame and the contrast between my 30-year-old body and those of my dad and Ricardo's, whose were almost 30 years my senior. I tried not to judge them too hard; I feared that time and karma would catch up to me someday and my reflection would demonstrate a cruel collaboration that my own son might cringe at. They both walked and talked loudly, their voices, footsteps, and clanking tools echoed throughout the empty mall.

The section we were starting in was 3 floors, each overlooking a huge marble fountain in the heart of the ground level. The ceiling above the fountain was intimidatingly high, covered in honeycomb looking sky lights. I felt my stomach twist at the realization that my dad and Ricardo were not going to be willing to go that high on the lift. Whether it was because they were too heavy, scared, or lazy, it didn’t make a difference. I was going to be the unlucky one burdened with it.

At this point I had been working for myself for several years, teaming up with my dad for larger projects here and there. It was mentally exhausting to play employee after being self-employed for the most part, especially when these two didn’t view me as an equal in any capacity. To them I would always be Jr.

Together we laid the drop cloths, draping the smooth, marble tile with blankets caked in paint and debris from nights prior. With great care, we covered light fixtures and kiosks, securing the edges with tape. All the while, my dad and Ricardo carried on conversating loudly. After so many years of working together, it boggles my mind that there’s still anything to discuss. Not that their rambling ever consisted of anything worth discussing, but regardless they insisted on beating dead horses, telling the same jokes, and sharing the same memories, repeatedly like a record player designed specifically to shorten my life span.

As I begin painting a beige wall, I do my best to busy my thoughts with the future, where I want to go, things I want to do, and how I’d get there. This job was just for now, I couldn’t be doing this in my 60’s like dad and his dad, and so on. Truth is, like everyone else, I wanted to get rich fast and for as little effort as possible. “Why couldn’t I have been born into nepotism?” I thought as my paint roller splattered tiny freckles across my tan skin. I don’t even bother wiping them off, there will be more.

“Don’t worry about the walls, we’ve got them. I need you to take the top so we can knock that out.” Dad says, rolling up to me on a large diesel-powered lift. I could just hear him over the sound of its motor; the fumes instantly made me short of breath. “This thing is putting out too much exhaust! We can be using it inside!” I protested over the motors hum. “The battery powered one doesn’t go high enough, hurry up, Jr.” Dad called back, struggling to climb down from the paint spattered platform. The slight peek of his butt crack from the top of his painter pants instantly enraged me. Tossing my roller down onto the drop cloth in a childish act of rebellion, I climbed onto the platform easily, showing off my healthy, young joints and ligaments. For a moment my nerves about the height had subsided, being replaced with the irritation I had anticipated.

 I steered the lift to the first honeycomb sky light, parking the tires as close as possible to the base of the fountain. From the ground, looking up, the skylights seemed directly lined up overhead, but I knew it’d be somewhat askew once I got up there. I was trying to avoid having to move the lift once I was already extended upwards. The machine jolted and the motor accelerated as I ascended towards the ceiling of the mall. My hands grew moist on the controls, and my anger gradually subsided the higher I got. I had been coming to this mall since I was a kid and knew every inch of the directory by memory. This view was foreign. I did my best to direct my eyes upward, ignoring the nauseating sway of the machine as it rose.

Higher and higher until each window appeared colossal, while my dad and Ricardo became microscopic. The fumes from the exhaust made their way up to the ceiling to accompany me, neither of us having a route to escape the heights.

“Hey Jr,” my dad called out, “they said there was a leak somewhere in that area by you. If you see it, patch it up right, don’t just paint over the water damage. Yeah?”

I rolled my eyes with zero intention to answer him, he knew I could hear him. He also knew I knew better than to paint over a spot with water stains on it. Almost immediately I spotted the leak, unfortunately it was going to require some fixing, only extending the amount of time I’d have to be on the lift. A few feet over from the brown stain was an air vent, an obvious cause for the leak. In most cases I’d just seal a rusted, old air duct with some silicon and call it a day. Hopefully this is not any more complicated than that.

I carefully extended the lift a few more feet over the fountain below, feeling it bob and sway with each push of the control lever. The physics of these machines never made sense to me, how can they extend out without tipping over? The base couldn’t be that much heavier than the rest of the machine, could it? Realizing I was holding my breath, I exhaled, releasing the lever just below the unsightly stain on the ceiling. With a shaky hand, I seized a small hand saw from the selection of tools in a basket on the safety rail and began cutting a square opening around the spot.

Measuring around 3 feet on each side, the hole was plenty big enough for me to climb up and assess the air ducts inside. I placed a small flashlight, a tube of silicon calk, and a wire brush just inside the hole and reached for the lever to get myself as closer to the ceiling. Rising only a few more inches upward, the lift began to sputter, notifying me that it had reached its limit.

“You’re as far over as you can get down here, son. How much farther do you need up there?” My dad enquired.

“Maybe another foot, I can make it though.” I called back.

Steadying my feet on the rail of the lift, I pulled myself up into the ceiling, careful to put my weight only on the framing within the narrow opening. The air was stuffy and stale, still, a welcomed break from the exhaust I was choking on prior to this. I felt around for the flashlight and turned it on with a click.

Just as expected, the vent was a mess of rust and white build-up from condensation dripping. Holding the flashlight sideways in my mouth, I began scraping at the vent, trying to smooth its corroded surface as much as possible for the silicon. Out the corner of my eye, the beam of my light made something glisten. I retrieved the small flashlight to investigate the source of the glare.

Only a few feet away, was a massive spool of copper wire, partially concealed in a bed of fluffy insulation. The twine appeared to be about the thickness of a pencil, solid all the way through. There had to have been around 50 feet left on the abandoned spool. All I could see in the dust and grime of the ceiling were dollar signs. I knew of a scrap yard that paid by the pound and never asked any questions.

Totally forgetting about the leak, I changed directions, crawling towards the spool on the other side of the hole. My excitement was blinding; the greed even made my mouth water; it might as well have been a spool of gold. Just then my knee crashed through the ceiling, and it was all a blur. The florescent lights of the mall were blinding as I burst through the ceiling. I didn’t have time to worry about hitting the lift, or worse, the ground. I didn’t even have time to scream or flap my arms in an attempt at flying.

Then there was a thud, and pure silence. The water from the fountain was warmer than I’d expected it to be. My vision struggled to make its way back to me, I was unsure if I landed face down because it was so dark. Seconds went by and I realized I had been screaming; my hearing grew stronger by the second and I forced myself to take control again.

Oh my god, I fell. I fell?

“Dad?” I called out, receiving no reply. Frantically looking around, splashing the water from the fountain in my search, I realized I was alone.

“Dad!!” My voice echoed though the hallways. It was then that I realized the mall was completely deserted. The dark stores were free of mannequins, and racks. There were no benches or tables. No signs or kiosks, Even the lift, drop cloths and all our equipment was gone.

I rose from the water. The room spun around me as I tried to get my footing. Once I made it out of the fountain, I peered upward, unable to locate the hole I had cut or the one I had created when I fell through.

“Dad? Ricardo? What’s happening?” I wailed. At a crossroads between 5 sections of the mall, I tried to find any signs of life. Each hallway appeared exactly like the others, empty, stretching on for miles. Without reason, I found myself running in one direction at a full sprint. Everything looked close to how it was supposed to be, but there were eerie differences I only noticed the longer I looked. None of the stores had doors, the lights overhead cast no shadows, and the tile that was once a speckled granite was one giant, continuous tile with no cracks or scuffs.

After running in one direction for too long, I looked back to see the fountain only a few stores behind me. I hadn’t made it anywhere. Accepting defeat, I returned to the direction I had started, running again for several moments before realizing the fountain wasn’t getting any closer.

Out of breath, and on the verge of frustrated tears, I backed up against the closest wall and slid down, concealing my face in my knees. “This can’t be real!” I cried out with helplessness and disbelief.

Wiping the tears from my eyes, I lifted my head and spotted a white staircase that wasn’t there a few moments ago. My heart filled with hopes of finding a way out, I jumped up and took steps two, even three at a time for several minutes before arriving at the fountain again where I had started.

“How?!” I was confused and horrified to find myself there, turning back to find the staircase was gone.

For what seemed like hours, days even, I ran around the mall, taking staircases when they presented themselves, jumping through hatches that appeared on the floor, climbing ladders that appeared on the walls, falling through holes and venturing through doorways. Each route deposited me right back to the fountain, every single time. I had begun to accept that I’d never make it out.

With each passing hour, the white of the walls seemed to strobe brighter. The lights beamed more intensely. The once cool air conditioning became a fridged bite at my skin. I dreaded the sensory overload that awaited me after more time inevitably passed.

I eventually felt slower and heavier. Each of my senses grew more unhelpful as I ventured through the maze. I required more breaks, slumping down for longer periods each time I passed through another entrance or exit. I was forced to blink several times and rub my eyes aggressively to notice a new way out. They were getting so hard to keep open; I can’t keep my eyes open anymore. What’s the point?

“Jr! Wake up, son!”

My eyes shot open. I heard dad’s voice clear as day.

Lifting my face from the cool tile, I forced myself to crawl, unable to get to my feet. Drunkenly, I staggered back to the fountain once more, collapsing weakly every few feet like a wounded animal. Before I reached the openness of the crossroads, a hole opened on the floor before me. This one was different than the ones before. Usually they were white and perfect, like everything else in the mall. This one was jagged, like it had been ripped onto the floor.

I quickened my crawl, using every ounce of energy I had left, fighting through my numb limbs and blurred vision. As I nearly reached the opening I began to hear muffled voices, cries of panic, and sirens in the distance. The closer I got, the clearer they sounded.

“Is he dead?”, “Let the EMT’s through! Everyone, get back!”, “He’s gone Manny, let them take him.”, “My son. No, please! This can’t be real! Jr, wake up!”, “Sir, we need you to move.”

Without getting too close, I peeked over the side of the ledge apprehensively, my heart hammering in my chest. My eyes widened in disbelief at the scene displayed 3 stories below.

Face down in the fountain, I laid motionless, surrounded by a mess of drywall, insulation, and the copper spool. My dad, soaking wet, was pulled from me by Ricardo and a few mall custodians. There were police officers and security everywhere. The paramedics were rushing in with a gurney. Multiple onlookers stood frozen, spectating, just as I did.

Again, I felt the floor—or the ceiling—beneath me begin to crumble, sending me free falling to a familiar demise below. This time it was much slower, almost peaceful. The closer I got to my body, the better I felt. My limbs lightened up, the icy cold melted from my bones, my vision became clearer with each blink, and the static in my head faded. Once more, there was a thud, followed by pure silence. Was that it this time?

-

“Oh my god, he’s moving!”, “Son? Can you hear me, Jr?”, “How did he survive that?”, “It’s a miracle!”, “Praise God!”, “You’re going to be alright kid, help is here!”