"You should get a new job." The girl said. She picked up a mint green enamel pot on the stove top, opened its lid and looked at it, then brought it to him, "This is so cute, isn't it?"
The boy said, "We don't need it."
"We don't have a kitchen." The girl said, "Do you think this could be used on an induction cooker?"
"I don't know. The induction cooker has not been used a few times, and we don't even have oil, salt and vinegar."
"That's all you can buy." The girl said.
The boy did not respond. The girl had turned to look at the bottles and jars containing various spices and miscellaneous food.
"Really, you should get a new job." The girl said, "I should also change a job. I heard that being a buyer is very profitable. I used to have a roommate who earned several times her salary a month as a buyer, and she later quit."
The boy had heard the girl talk about this former roommate, more than once. But he had never met her.
Unfortunately, there was no contact afterwards. The girl said, "Do you think I should go ask her?
The boy said no.
They walked down the aisle and there were a lot of people, as if everyone had nowhere to go on the weekend and came to the mall. Many people were pushing shopping carts, and some had a child sitting in their cart.
The girl waved at the kid, but the kid was too busy biting his fingers to notice her.
They crossed the area selling sofas, the girl was interested in a sofa bed, she squatted down to study how the sofa is turned into a bed.
The boy helped her demonstrate and the girl smiled.
"It's really practical, isn't it?" The girl said, "Friends can sleep when they come over."
The boy glanced at the label hanging over the head of the sofa bed; the yellow label indicated it was on sale, and this one was white.
The girl said, "I didn't say I was going to buy it."
The boy said, "We don't have room for it."
The girl nodded. "But it will come in handy later." She said, "We don't have to buy a very big house, this sofa bed is suitable for a small house."
She looked at each item with interest. Closets, shoe cabinets, TV cabinets, dining sideboards, and desks, dining tables, chandeliers, carpets, sets of tableware, coffee cups, soberware ...... She explained to him which coffee table would look better with which sofa, and for curtains, the color should not be too bright, light gray or dark green, it would look more tasteful.
"I want a whole wall of bookshelves, just like a library." The girl said.
"Good."
The girl was so pleased that she reached out and swirled her right hand into the boy's arm, and the two walked forward side by side, adjusting their position from time to time to make way for the oncoming person on the other side.
They entered the display area of the home furnishings.
"I like this." The girl sat down on a bed in one of the bedrooms. She sat down and then got up and then sat down again, and after trying this several times, she looked up and said to the boy, "It's so comfortable, you come and try it too."
She waited for the boy to come over and sit on the bed with her. But he stood still.
"No need for that." He said.
"You do it!" She gestured to him with her eyes, and everyone else sat down the same way.
The boy then sat down side by side with her.
"I want a bed this big later." The girl lay down, her two slightly dirty sneakers cocked in mid-air.
The boy tugged the corner of her shirt down and patted her thigh, "Let's go, huh?" He said, "Almost done shopping."
The girl sat up. Her hair was a little messed up, and a strand of hair was coming out of the bush like a little horn. She buried her face in the boy's shoulder and put her hands around one of his arms.
They didn't speak or move for a while.
Let's go. The boy said again. There were two men and two women coming this way.
Sit a little longer. The girl said. She went to play with the sweat hairs on the boy's bare arms, and there were many of them, each one very fine. She put the tips of her thumb and forefinger nails together to pluck them, once, and then again, and each time they slipped through the nail. She didn't really have to pluck them.
The boy's phone rang, a muffled vibration that seemed to resonate with the springs in the mattress.
Aren't you going to answer it? the girl asked.
The boy pulled his arm out of the girl's arms, stood up and took two steps farther.
She moved over to the bed and found the label from behind the black power cord of the reading lamp and glanced at it. She thought she would be content to give her this bedroom as it was. Soon she came up with a better idea. When the mall was closed, all the customers gone, all the employees cleared out, all the lights out, he got out from under the bed first and then pulled her out from under it. They lit aromatherapy in the bathroom, played jazz on the bedroom stereo, climbed onto the dining room table to dance, and made love on the kitchen stove. In the morning, after the mall opens, they mingle among the regular shoppers, holding hands and walking boldly to the door, smiling at each other.
The two men and two women looked like a family as they pushed two full carts, and the older woman reached out and pressed her hand toward the bed. It's pretty soft, she said.
The younger man said, "This is not good quality.
The girl stood up and turned through the doorway punched through the side, which looked like a checkroom. She took one less step before turning around and twisted her ankle, which hurt a little. She sat down on a changing bench and rubbed it twice.
Across from the changing bench was a whole row of large closets with full-length mirrors embedded in the doors. She opened one of the closet doors, which was empty, and when she closed it, she saw the reflection of a boy standing outside the next room in the mirror.
She greeted him and the boy walked in.
There were many pillows stacked in the knitting basket next to the changing bench, and she picked out a ginger-checked one and held it to her chest, turned halfway in the mirror and waved it gently in front of him, like trying on a dress. He thought she was going to give him the pillow, took it, immediately found it in the way, and threw it back into the basket. His phone call was longer than she thought it would be.
They started looking at houses last month, and the landlord raised their rent again.
They went to four neighborhoods in different locations and did not see a house they liked, gaining two realizations: first, the house they were renting was considered cheap in the market; second, the agent said all the money they made was used to pay the landlord's mortgage.
She saw his slightly furrowed brow in the mirror and saw that the string at the end of his hat had fallen inside the collar of his T-shirt, which was slightly frayed at the edges. She squinted for a moment and suddenly realized that the closer she looked, the stranger it seemed. The hair sprayed with hairspray could not hide the receding hairline, the nose with pores like a hornet's nest, the mole the size of a grain of rice on the left side of the neck, the eyes that drifted between the ground, her and the wall - each element was his, but together they seemed too specific, like words that were too long in recognition to be recognized.
When he paced two steps over, she asked him, as if waking up from a dream, whose phone it was.
My mother's. He said.
Oh.
She did not ask again.
Let's go. He said.
She took two steps, her right ankle still hurting a little, she thought, maybe it would stop after a while. As she got on the elevator, the pain felt like vines slowly wrapping around her, and by the time she reached the next floor, it was like a swarm of termites had started eating her bones, and they were multiplying and growing.
By the time she reached the checkout lane, she was limping. He had to hold her up and scold her for being so careless.
There was a long line in front of the checkout lane. They didn't have anything in hand and could have gone straight through the fast lane without checking out, even though that lane was a little further away. He kept encouraging her to hold on a little longer, and if she really couldn't walk later, he could carry her to the subway station.
But she stopped. On the display not far from the cashier's exit, she saw the mint green enamel pot again.
I want to buy that pot. She said.
