Holy Thursday; Robin Winkler

At 47 years of age, living alone in a small house in a town where he knew few and did little Robin Winkler was numb rather than unhappy.

Grey at the temples and bald on top, there was a slight reminder at he back and sides of the mousey brown mop he had sported till it receded prematurely and rapidly soon after his 21^st birthday. Robin Winkler was average height and of average build. He wasn’t especially overweight, but he was out of shape. His sloped shoulders and the strange protrusion of his pot belly from his podgy frame suggested that he had never been in shape in the first place.

When the agency sent him on a motivational weekend training course he was asked to describe how he saw himself in one word. When he made an uncharacteristically open response and said “invisible”, the group reacted by talking about a Kevin Bacon movie from a few years back where he makes himself invisible and gets drunk on power. They talked about it for fifteen minutes. Robin Winkler hadn’t seen it.

The world was greying to black as Robin Winkler pulled his government Camry into the North Eastern Shopping Mall car park on the Thursday before Easter. He drove around the sprawling lot until he finally found a spot. He sat and watched the cars circling for spaces close to the doors that never became available. He wondered how long these people could keep going in the same direction. Would they get dizzy? Are they always the same people, a vision of purgatorial penance? Circling a shopping mall could be the fate that awaits the ordinary sinner. He let the engine run as he sat and listened to the weather warnings on the radio. He paused and contemplated the effects the weather could have on his weekend. Did it matter if the sun shone or rain fell, tornado, blizzard, or the horsemen of the apocalypse? Didn’t really matter did it? The radio died as he turned the key and stepped out into the blustery day. The North Eastern Mall was as good a place as any in Cedar Rapids to stop for lunch.

Robin Winkler was wearing a grey suit with black shoes, a white shirt and dark blue tie. The shirt was immaculately pressed but obviously not new, likewise his shoes were polished to an impressive shine but were old and cheap. Robin Winkler’s pride in his grooming and appearance came from something other than a desire to look good. He took his briefcase from the back seat and walked towards the mall entrance. Despite his hurry to get in out of the elements he was sure not to step on any of the cracks in the concrete or the white lines which marked the parking spaces. He avoided shoppers struggling to control their trolleys which refused to go in the directions they were pointed. In his top breast pocket his INS Identification badge folded out to show his photo. He had come from a home visit and had forgotten to replace it in his inside pocket. Agent Winkler had spent the morning at the home of a Polish School teacher who had an illegal Nigerian emigrant living with her. They were not related. The boy was seventeen and had made his way to Cedar Rapids three years previously. He had initially lived in a motel and worked as a cleaner while attending Abraham Lincoln High School. The Polish School Teacher had taken him in at the beginning of his Junior Year after she gave him detention for falling asleep in class and he had pleaded with her to excuse him because he had to work after school. The boy’s GPA was in the top ten per cent in his class and he was now two months away from graduation. The Polish teacher had told Agent Winkler that if the boy didn’t have to work after school he would probably make valedictorian. Robin Winkler had set his deportation proceedings in motion that morning.

As he approached the entrance of the mall, the true lunacy of the pre holiday madness became apparent. People were shopping as if it were the end of the world and not a blustery long weekend which they were facing. The minivans and SUV’s queued up to collect stressed mothers struggling to keep track of hyper active children and hold on to their huge quantities of shopping. The awning over the automatic doors flapped ferociously with every gust of wind that seemed to bring the storm closer and closer as if contractions indicating the imminent birth of something huge.

Robin Winkler’s demeanour gave little away as he ghosted past the throngs of people at the entrance and made his way towards the food court. Hungry now, he told himself that he wanted to go to Souper Salads but without much deliberation did enough to convince himself that the queues there would be prohibitive and so to save time he’d postpone the healthy option and go for KFC. As he rounded the corner into the food court he stopped dead and stared at the insanity that was every fast food outlet in the place. The counters were ten deep and any expectation of finding a seat was crushed by the Old Folk’s home outing, which was squatted on the ground picking at their happy meals, around the giant read plastic cubes that housed the strategically placed greenery. If Robin Winkler was disappointed, it didn’t show on his dead pan face but he veered sharply to the left and seeking a clear path he moved almost in slow motion around the circumference of the court to the far side and continued on into the guts of the mall, hoping to find an eatery that while not worthy of the food court could provide some sustenance. Robin Winkler stepped onto the escalator and stood close to the side to avoid the kamikaze skateboard kids hurtling up and down the steel stairs. He looked down to make sure that he was not so close as to scuff his polished black shoes on the brush like thing that stuck out just above the corrugated steel surface.

At the top of the escalator Robin Winkler lifted his foot very deliberately from the escalator stair and stepped off gingerly. He turned left; he always turned left when given the option. He walked up and down the tentacles of the mall occasionally passing restaurants that were closed during the day; Italian, Mexican, Indian, all closed and he didn’t understand why. Robin Winkler went up another level and on his third tentacle of the third floor he found a Chinese restaurant open.

The restaurant had big glass windows like all the units in the mall, but they had decorated them with Chinese designs; illustrations and lettering to above head height so that you could only see through the door. Robin Winkler wasn’t concerned with the outward appearance or the menu which was laminated and stuck to the front door, he needed to eat and soon. Stepping through the glass doors Robin Winkler stood on a false wooden floor which ran like a bowling lane up the middle of the floor space to the counter at the top. Its shinny, smooth surface did not have the strong workmanship of a bowling lane but the way it was raised an inch or so from the tiled floor on which the tables were laid out either side, compelled him to walk all the way to the top without stepping off to be gutter-balled to a table not of his choosing. As he reached the counter two members of staff stepped from the kitchen and greeted him. The Restaurant was empty except for the staff and he began to understand why the other restaurants were closed. It seems people are only willing to descend stairs in order to eat. One of the staff, a small Chinese man with deep set eyes and a very round head, crowned in a thin but even tuft of dead straight black hair, stepped to the counter smiling and nodding. The other came around the counter to show him to a seat. Robin Winkler chose a booth and shimmied in as he took the menu. His waiter was very tall for a Chinese man he thought and very thin, brittle thin, but he had a pleasant demeanour and took his drink order with a smile. Robin Winkler noticed the waiter’s smile waiver and the young man did a double take glance back at the table as he walked away. Robin Winkler scanned the menu quickly, more in pretence than anything else; he always had the special fried rice and lemon chicken when eating Chinese. He then opened his brief case and pulled out a copy of the “Daily Iowan”. The headline read “High Winds Threaten City”.

Robin Winkler sat reading, only raising his eyes from the paper when it came time to turn the page. After about ten minutes he began to get impatient and think it a bit ridiculous that the skinny waiter had not come back to take his food order. He hadn’t even got his Diet Coke and he was thirsty and hungry. Putting the paper down he leaned from his booth and looked for someone whose attention he could attract. There was no-one on the floor and now no-one behind the counter. After waiting a few minutes more Robin Winkler rose and walked to the counter. Peering into the kitchen he couldn’t see anyone. Calling out gained him no response, so after a second shout he walked behind the counter into the empty kitchen. Not a soul. The kitchen was very new and immaculately clean, the stainless steel surfaces did not show a blemish. The white tiled floor sparkled and he was impressed by the hanging contraption which held all sorts of pots and cooking utensils on an adjustable frame above the burners and work surfaces which formed an island in the middle of the large kitchen area. At the sides were more worktops, some fridges and storage cupboards. He wandered around the kitchen, finding an equally deserted office at the back. Agent Winkler was walking back towards the restaurant when he noticed a wok with rice, vegetables and chicken in it. The burner was off and the food cold. He first bent over to sniff the contents and then found a fork and tasted it. He made half a step to leave and then hesitated. He couldn’t face the trek back down to the mobbed food court with an empty stomach. He didn’t want to face an endless queue and a fight with the cast of “Cocoon” for a giant potted plant to lean against while he ate too fast in an effort to avoid conversation with people who would surly sit too close to him. Thinking he could light the burners and heat the food he placed his hand on the knob but again he hesitated. Robin Winkler shovelled a cold serving of rice, chicken and vegetables onto a plate and headed for his table. He found cups and a coke machine behind the counter and dispensed himself the Diet Coke he felt he had waited long enough for. Within two minutes he was munching on cold but tasty Chinese food. Robin Winkler ate slowly despite his hunger and continued to read his paper, it was at least fifteen minutes before he carried his empty plate and cup back to the counter, fed, satisfied and not bothered by a single Senior Citizen. There was a menu next to the till and Robin Winkler checked it and saw that the Chicken Fried Rice was $7.49, the coke a buck fifty. He left an even $10; he didn’t think 15% appropriate in the circumstances. As he walked towards the door Robin noticed his ID hanging over his pocket as his reflection approached him from the glass door, he took it, folded it over on itself. He put it in his inside breast pocket and left.