West On Willow

We were in an exurb out west where everything was massive. The Potbelly’s had a spire and a bell tower. The Harley-Davidson dealership stretched across a city block; it looked like a well-maintained storage facility. Not a single pedestrian could be glimpsed. The crosswalks were a football field across to the other side, the left turn signals arbitrary and vaguely malicious. Fleets of blacked-out SUVS sped past, suburban moms cloistered in like visiting foreign dignitaries.

 There were small wooden sticks sprouting up in a pebbly open field, markers for a new development. There was an empty office building just past the slumping fencing of the open field; a designated green space for a championship golf course to be called The Hidden Links. The whole dreary expanse was a facsimile of a vibrant commercial center. It probably looked vital in its blueprints, the scale more forgiving.

 The movie complex (to use the word theatres would have been absurd) resembled a mega-church. Cairns marked its entrance. Undoubtedly its inhabitants followed a charismatic strain of Christianity. The men grew goatees. Sixteen of the screens were showing romantic comedies, the other six action movies adapted from comic books.

 America was hurting.