We walk the mall at seven

The door you want is the one on the north end by the bank branch. Not the main doors. The main doors don't go till nine-thirty and there's always some guy out there at nine pulling on the handle like the mall's going to change its mind for him.

Seven o'clock they let the walkers in. Devon unlocks it. He's a kid, maybe twenty-two, and he's got a thermos on that cart the size of a fire extinguisher, and every morning I say something about it and every morning he says nothing back, which I respect.

A lap on the lower level is four-tenths of a mile. That's what the sign by the guest services desk says and I've never gone and measured it myself, so I'm taking the sign at its word. Four and a half of those gets you just under two miles. The upper level's shorter because of the way it bends around by the theater, so we don't bother with the upper level.

I had the stent put in in the spring of '22. I was out on the driveway with the hose and I had to sit down on the step, and Mona came out and looked at my face and that was that, we were at St. V's before lunch. Dr. Nassar tells me I'm boring now. From a cardiologist that's the whole ballgame.

They had me in the rehab at the hospital first, twelve weeks on a treadmill with the wires stuck all over me, and when the twelve weeks ran out the woman running it said go walk at the mall, everybody does. So I went.

Sam wanted me to get one of those watches that tells you your heart. I've got it. It tells me my heart. I don't know what a man's supposed to do with that at four in the morning.

Forty-one pounds since. I'm on the last hole of my belt. My sons have all decided to tell me I look great. Tony says it every single time he sees me.

The mall's not what it was. JCPenney's still there. Dillard's is still there. In between you've got a lot of brown paper. There used to be a store that sold nothing but hats. A whole store, hats. My middle boy worked one Christmas at the place that did the engraving and he still calls it the worst six weeks of his life, and he's a supervisor now at a plant that makes seals, so he's had some weeks.

You get the same people every morning. There's a pack of women who go around like somebody's timing them and they'd take your ankles right out from under you. There's a fella walks the whole thing backwards. I've never asked him.

Stan I met the second week. He came up on my left by the fountain they took out and asked was I at the Jeep plant, on account of the jacket. Thirty-one years, I told him, mostly on the line. He said thirty-four on the railroad, the yard down by the river, and we finished the rest of it together, and that was October, three years ago.

He's Polish. Seventy in February. His people were up on Lagrange, the whole street was them at one time, and he'll tell you what they did to that church like it happened last Tuesday. I came over in the summer of '76 and worked two years in my uncle's store on Cherry Street before the plant.

We talk about nothing much. His grandson's truck, my gutters.

After, we get coffee. There's a place in the food court that opens early for the walkers and we sit by the windows, which is where the Orange Julius was, and before that it was a place that did a gyro, and now it's four empty stalls and a pretzel. He takes his black. I take mine with one sugar instead of two, and I'd like that noted.

His wife is in a place on Central. Halina. She's been in there since a year ago March and she doesn't know him now, and he still goes over every afternoon at two and sits with her till four. He told me that the first month I knew him, at the table by the window, and then he asked me if I wanted his cinnamon roll.

Mona runs a calendar on the refrigerator with everybody's business on it in four colors of pen. She's had that system since the boys were small and nobody has ever once asked me about it. Sundays are at Elias's, and his wife puts lemon in things my mother never put lemon in, and I eat it. The two little ones have swimming at the Y on Saturday mornings and I take them and stand at the glass with the other grandfathers.

In May we came around past the old Sears. It's been shut since before the virus and they've got the brown paper up on the inside of the glass. There's a card table out front of it where a woman does the blood pressure on Tuesdays. Stan's knee was bothering him that morning so we stopped a minute.

He put his hand flat on my back, up between the shoulder blades, and left it there.

Then we finished. I drove home and cut the grass.

Next morning I was in the lot at ten to seven and so was he. Four and a half. He didn't say anything about it and I didn't either, and neither of us has since.

It's happened a few times more. Not every morning.

Forty-three years in November, and Mona's already picked the restaurant out in Perrysburg. And there's four of them, four boys, and somebody would have to sit down and say something to them. I've been sitting out in that car and I can't get past the first sentence.

He wasn't there one Monday in July. Halina came out of the bed and cracked her hip and he was at the hospital most of that week. I walked it anyway, the whole four and a half. It was my turn to buy so I bought the two coffees out of habit before I'd finished thinking about it. His sat in the cupholder and went cold and I poured it out in the lot at the Kroger on Monroe.

He came back the Monday after with a haircut. I gave him a hard time about the haircut.