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When I was nine, my parents decided it would be a good idea to quit their jobs as green card consultants for the Chinese and buy a pie and coffee restaurant called Mr. K's in the Bend River Mall. We lived in a small town in rural Oregon, and according to my father, the restaurant business was booming due to the influx of Californians. So for eight hours every day, my parents counted grease-stained receipts and watched Curtis flip T-bone steaks and pull little hairs out of the coleslaw salad while they waited for the Californians that never came. At first, my parents wore suits and nice shoes and played the part of the owners, but over time they started wearing the specially made Mr. K's T-shirts and these trucker hats that featured a slice of pie doing the waltz. Mr. K's was full of green vinyl booths and pink-framed Monet posters, synthetic flowers that smelled like cigarettes, and pies that incubated for days under the fluorescent lights of a plastic display case.
My dad had a mustache. My mom put in curlers every morning. For the next three years, I spent nearly every day of my life in a mall. And it wasn't one of those malls with loud music and rides and people getting makeovers and old ladies doing their morning workouts, but one of those malls where you can see from one side to the other and the ceiling is low and dim and the color of dishwater.
Every day after school, the bus dropped my brother and me off at Mr. K's. He'd go to the back of the restaurant to read a horror novel and glare at customers. I never really knew what to do with myself so I'd just go and sit next to Mr. Wilson, the undercover mall cop. He came into Mr. K's every day wearing a tie and a white, ironed shirt and sat down at the same booth by the window that looked into the mall. He ordered coffee, black, with three refills. I liked the way his beard absorbed the coffee like a stain and how his body didn't quite fit into the booth. A slab of his stomach always rested on the tabletop.