12.
   The elevator doors opened and I stepped out. I looked across the lobby to the grand mall only to find that Le Soleil was closing early! The lustrous displays under drooping palms were disappearing behind closing doors.

   What kind of tease was this? I had caved in. I had given up. I had thrown myself into the sordid pit of cheap thrills and bitter denial. Now a wall of shoppers marched toward me, their Xanax glazed eyes looking right through me as they clutched their shopping bags full of plastic dreams. I had dragged myself in from bleak reality and offered myself up to the great American sideshow and I get this.
   The mob pushed amoeba like past me, pulsing and throbbing into the elevator, Ritalin addled children and more yapping dogs in tow. They had their fill. They were satisfied. They were somebody now, each and every one. Their credit cards glowed stiff and hot in their purses and wallets. They had strutted and swaggered their way through the halls of the American raison d’etre. They had purchased fabulous things, as colorful and bright as they were utterly and totally useless, wondrous things that would line their cupboards and fill their garages and last hundreds of years. They glanced at me from the corners of their eyes as they passed me, marching proudly in their glittering couture from far off exotic places like China and India and Indonesia and Haiti and Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. I was a pitiful thing, really who had come too late only to have the doors of power and beauty and all that is good close in my face.