Even at that late stage of disfigurement, he liked her body and wanted to touch it. To wit, they had ducked behind some holiday props in the princess’ castle on the shopping center’s third floor. The mall administrator who had stumbled upon them had been so embarrassed that he had showered their naked forms with two fistfuls of the gift certificates he carried around to appease customers stuck on elevators or dirtied by floor cleaning machines.

The twosome giggled at that rain of pink and lavender confetti, gilded with important stores’ names. Later, they exchanged those coupons for lattes and sugar cookies and for a cashmere scarf, which they tied, simeltaneously, around both of their necks.

On a lower level, reached only by escalator, the pair partied in the employees’ lounge where teens still adorned in elf caps and housewives moonlighting in spangled leotards slurped up imitation hot chocolate. He raised an eyebrow at her when she reached for, and then sucked on, his candy cane. She was so radioactive from that combination of cadmium and of thallium, long ago secreted from innocent batteries, that he would have to toss his pink/white ribboned treat.

She shrugged, tugged at his collar, winked, and slipped into the warren of corridors earmarked for deliveries. He followed, not knowing how long her current half life would last.

photo by Pavel Ševela