After Lisa I left Elite and moved in with some friends. I was twenty years old and all of my qualifications revolved around around spotting fights, breaking up fights, and arresting people who started fights.
Naturally, I got another security job. At a mall. It was September when I started.
Mall work was easy. Walk around, hit the little beeper unit to record I was, indeed, out walking around rather than letting my ass dent a cushion back at the office, and chat with the cellphone booth girls. Wasn't a bad way to make my pay, at first. Ate at the food court and took my cigarette breaks behind the coffee shop next to the office door. Sat and read trashy scifi novels at the bench there in the morning sun before my shift started. Made friends with my coworkers - the cast of the next year of my life.
TJ was east county born and bred. Dude had been prom king in high school and was taking his time decaying into beer-bellied malaise. Smoked Camel wides and spent most of his days on the roof, spying on mallrats smoking pot in the parking structure. Lieutenant. Theoretically, my boss.
Carnell had been a aviation firefighter in the marines. Pretty much the most hardcore job I'd ever heard of. Couldn't bring himself to take mall security too seriously. Spent most of his shifts scamming on high school girls and doing crosswords.
David was a bit younger than me and started a bit before me, but he already had the place around his finger by the time I showed up. Old fashioned with a big grin and a quiet but vicious sense of humor. Introduced me to the fine art of golf-cart surfing.
Earl was a real shitbox. First thing he told me when he shook my hand was that he was gay and that he loved fucking ass. He was flipping his oversized maglight back and forth in his free hand when he said that. In retrospect, I probably should have seen what happened to him coming.
21 was enormously fat, showed up with barbecue stains on his uniform, and had a habit of spending his shifts sprawled out in the golfcart smoking and drinking a liter of diet coke and sneaking into the electrical room to smoke a joint and jerk off to ancient, crunchy-paged porn mags.
Evan had been a security guard since he was in high school. He was around forty when I met him. He'd taken a header off a building around ten years ago and knocked part of his head in, and as a result Evan was a pretty dull knife among the bunch of butterknives that constituted the rest of the crew. Sweet man though. Only one in the office who could make coffee without burning it.
Jerry was pushing 70 and the morning shift lieutenant. He'd worked as a DJ in the 70's and 80's and his girlfriend still did. He smoked cigarillos and called shoplifters "turkey". Liked to spend his shifts in the office playing solitaire and browsing apartment listings and practicing with his collapsible baton.
Florida was the night shift lieutenant. Tiny and Fillipina and an angry whirlwind of destruction when her authority was questioned. Her english vocabulary was adequately summed up by the phrase "STOP MOTHERFUCKER" and "SHUT UP" which she used frequently and at high volume, usually while planting a knee in some poor meth-heads shoulderblades. Rumored to be former Phillipines army. I got on her good side early by being basically harmless and ineffectual, which apparently reminded her of her ex-husband.
Lupe. The only female guard besides Florida. Worked nights. Mysterious quantum pregnancies and a lack of english prevented any fraternization with coworkers.
Rick resembled the cop from Terminator 2 in both appearance and action. He never completed police academy, so he spent his time on shift being as much of a cop as he possibly could. Was remarkably calm in all situations - especially the ones in which he was being an utter shithead and turning an argument into a fistfight complete with mace and arrests.
Nuke was the utterly incongruous nickname for a tiny Jewish guy who hated my tall Norwegian ass from day one. Spent most of his shifts trying to do as little as possible, usually by hiding out by the dumpsters and talking on his cellphone to a girlfriend none of us were really sure existed.
Jake was the security manager. He'd been a cop before he came and worked for the company. Then some idiot had rear ended his cruiser and fucked up a few of Jake's vertebrae and rather than moving to a desk he moved to the glamorous private sector post of security management. Talked a good line but he'd spent twenty years in the police force in traffic division, managing meter maids.
Ineffectual, frequently stoned or bloodthirsty management. Setting loose a bunch of twenty-something year old males loose in a mall armed with mace and handcuffs and a sense of (utterly misplaced) duty. It's a wonder we didn't leave the place a smoldering pile of rubble. Sometimes I think we probably should have.
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