John speared a piece of his Panda Express orange chicken and put it in his mouth. The food court at the mall was loud, and still I could hear his chewing. His suckling. Completely undid that piece of orange chicken before swallowing. We were not all afforded this luxury. John dribbled orange sauce on his tie that he’d forgotten to put over his shoulder. I pushed a napkin at him. The real and exhausting work of a relationship was stupid.

John’s co-worker (also named John because the name John crosses generational naming boundaries) passed us holding a tray with a hamburger and wiggled his shoulder.

“Check it out,” co-worker John said.  “He’s back.”

My John, who was facing in the direction John indicated, said, “Holy shit.”

I stretched to get a look. The man in question wore a three-piece suit and looked like a blurry photograph from the late 70s. Handlebar mustache, big Coke-bottle glasses. He was familiar, but I couldn’t place him. When I turned back, my John was eating the cookie that came with my sandwich. When we met for dinner back then, John always got Panda Express, and I’d get a turkey sandwich and a cookie from this place at the corner of the food court that feels like it was a Panera, but I don’t think Panera was ever in malls?

“I got you your own cookie,” I said.

“You never eat your own cookie,” he said. “You take one bite, then give it to me, so I saved us the trouble today. You don’t recognize that guy?”

The man moved the paper up like a cartoon spy in disguise. Co-worker John smiled at me, said, “By the way, huge congratulations! Welcome to the club!” then moved a table away where he sat across from a woman who I recognized as his wife. She wore a dress and had one hand on a baby stroller. And—I’m not trying to be shitty because I don’t like when people say this about me—she looked exhausted, just completely fucking wrecked. That baby was like eight months old, and John had told me she was pregnant again. Her hair was pulled back, and she stared off like she couldn’t figure where or who she was. They bowed their heads in prayer before eating their burgers.

“That’s Ron Goldman’s dad,” John blurted.

“Oh god,” I said, lowering my voice. “It is. Why is he in the mall?”

“He works at Nordstrom.”

“He does? Why does Ron Goldman’s dad work at Nordstrom?”

“He’s a regular person,” John said.

We both stared at him, Ron Goldman’s dad reading a newspaper.

“What’s in the paper today? Is there something about O.J.?”

John said, “No one reads the paper anymore.”

He put a napkin over his empty plate and brushed my cookie crumbs off his hands.

John’s break was almost over. He had to go back to the rich person’s store he worked in, Carter Bishop, a fancy place on the second floor where a polo shirt was $145. And this was 2005, so imagine how much it would cost now. The mall used to be the rich person’s mall but somewhere in the late 2010s, all the high-end stores moved north. To give you some perspective, back then, Barneys was the anchor store, and sometimes after meeting up with John, I’d walk through it, pretending like I’d come back someday with my grown-up money. Barneys was an ocean of beige, vast, unending, and full of perfect, clean lines. The store crafted and laid out this way on purpose, to mimic the soothing ease in which a person with money lives their life. I dare you to feel a sense of calm and possibility in a Wal-Mart aisle.

“Should we say something?” I asked.

“Say something? About what?”

“You know.”

“You think we should walk up to him on his break and tell him we know who he is, the father of a murdered person? He’s a guy in a mall. Leave him alone. We see him here a lot. Don’t make it a thing. You make everything a thing.” John said.

“What does that mean?” I asked. “I make everything a thing? I don’t make anything a thing. You do all the making of things.”

John stood and picked up his tray. I picked up my tray. We walked to the trash together.

“Hey. What was the last thing Nicole Brown Simpson said?” John asked. He pushed in the greasy trash lid and shook his plate and food inside then plopped it on top with the other trays. “She said, ‘I should have had V-8.’”

“That’s not funny.”

John laughed.

“O.J. killed two people.”

“I know. I was kidding. Also, technically, he was found not guilty.”

“Ron Goldman was kind of hot,” I said. “I even thought it back then. And he was nice. A gentleman. He brought back her sunglasses. That’s why he was at her house. He was returning her glasses.”

I pushed the flap back on the trash can and shook my own garbage in then tossed my tray on John’s tray because I like to be on top.

“Yeah?” John said. “And where did that get him?”

We walked together toward the escalators. John picked up my hand, held it up, looked at my engagement ring again, a half-carat princess cut. He designed it.

“You think Ron Goldman was hot?” he asked.

“I do.”

“Jesus.”

“You’re also hot, Homecoming King,” I said.

“You bring that up when you want to insult me, but it’s not an insult. It meant I was well-liked and, also, hot,” John said.

John and I were like that. Riffing on each other. It was fun, I think, or not. Maybe the truth is that we never respected each other. Once his mom—he had a whole thing with his mom, like, it was good then bad then ok then bad then moderately fine but indifferent—made this comment to us: Oh, I could listen to you guys all day.

Like we were an act, performers doing a show. We each had a role, and we played it.

John edged out of the food court. Me? I dropped his hand, edged toward Ron Goldman’s dad, but John took my arm. Steered me away.

“Oh my god, I said leave him alone.”

“I think O.J. did it,” I said.

“You and everyone else,” John said. We stepped up on the escalators.

John was getting his MBA, and he worked full-time retail nights and weekends because his depression was so intense if he didn’t stay busy 18 hours a day, he’d burrow so far into his own darkness I had to have an intervention for him. I’d have to call his friends, and they’d come over and knock on our bedroom door like hey buddy, let’s get you up ok?

I am also a depressive and anxious person, and my hot tip is that you can’t have two depressive and anxious people in a relationship because your depression and anxiety tries to out depress and anxious the other, so what happens is that one of you rawdogs your mental health by making offensive jokes and the other curls up around a matted childhood stuffy named Giraffe even though it’s a dog and drinks NyQuil because it’s not alcoholism if you pass out from cold medicine.

“What’s his name? I can’t remember his name,” I said as we rose, and Ron Goldman’s dad got smaller.

“Michael,” John said. “James? I don’t know.”

We stepped off the escalator in sync, right into Matteo’s arms.

Matteo was Italian. Literally, he was from Italy. He’d been at the store with John and the other John for six months and killed the sales board because Matteo had the accent. Rich people—maybe all people—liked to buy suits from men with an accent.

And, according to John, he was fucking every other person in the mall. Women. Probably men too. Matteo was into kink, John said at night while he was flossing his teeth. He was into BDSM. John’s dental floss always stuck to the side of the trash can he never emptied, so guess who emptied it? Guess who had to peel the dental floss off the side of the trash can?

Matteo had fucked all the women at Banana Republic. He’d fucked all the women at Burberry. I said no way. The mall would be in revolt. One guy can’t be fucking everyone and then everyone is out there taking their breaks in the food court together.

Matteo stood near the entrance of the store dapper as usual, hands behind his back like he gave no fucks but, see above, he was giving a lot of them.

“Leah,” he said to me in his accent. He put a heavier emphasis on the ah part. “Congratulations to both of you.”

John patted Matteo on the back hard. “Hey, I have to return my backpack but then I’m taking the front ok?”

They all jockeyed for the front of the store. If you were at the front of the store, you got people as they were coming in. Hook them early.

An older couple entered. The woman stopped near Matteo like she smelled something delicious and needed to find where it was coming from.

“I love Italy,” she said.

I drifted to some new sweaters that hadn’t been out last time I was in the store, pawed through them, checked the price tag, then retreated.

“That would look nice on you,” Matteo said from behind.

“Damn,” I said, hand over my heart. “You scared me.”

“You should try this on,” he said and selected one for me, slate gray, a color I would not have chosen for myself.

I reached for it. I have never touched anything so soft.

“I’m a medium,” I said.

“Try the small.”

“I’m not a small.”

“Your clothes, too loose,” he said. “Go. Try it.”

Matteo did have a little something clinging to him. Cookies, cake, his shampoo? I grabbed the medium anyway.

Matteo hung the small sweater on the tiny hook on the dressing room wall, brushed it off, stepped back, brushed it off a second time. He stepped out, barely, I had to kind of shimmy around him to get in. He was 6’4” at least. The top of my head reached his chest.

“You’ll like it,” he said, close, his breath minty.

The stall door was wooden with slats. I stepped inside, turned to latch and lock the door but hesitated.

“You are still writing your movie?” Matteo asked from outside the door.

I tucked my hair behind my ear. Examined my mascara, my eyeliner. “Always.”

“It’s about two people in love, yes?” he said.

“Uh—it’s about two people,” I said and stopped.

I pulled my shirt off and as my arms were up in the air. Matteo could see them over the dressing room door. I removed the medium sweater off the hanger, the price tag hanging limp. Christ this sweater was more expensive than everything I owned. “Have you seen Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind?”

“No?” he said.

At the time, when I’d stay up late—knowing I had to get up in a few hours to answer phones and take lunch orders and set up conference rooms—I’d write my little fucking lines of dialogue in my little fucking screenplays, like, yeah, I’m in my art, and I’m pushing boundaries with narrative, and I’m writing thought-provoking dialogue. I’m writing a scene about a pool game in a dive bar, but it’s a metaphor about how our hearts are broken and keep breaking and nothing, no person or thing or act, will ever make us whole.

Now I get it that I was attracted to deeply unwell people, and I myself was (am?) a deeply unwell person, but in 2005, I was shirtless in that dressing room, a future Oscar winner for best original screenplay.

The sweater was softer on my body than it was hanging on the rack. It was baggy but fine. I liked baggy. Baggy worked. You can do your whole life in baggy.

Matteo looked to the small still hanging on the hook.

“This is my size,” I said and held up a hand. “This is what I like.”

In the three-way mirror, it hung on me, but it was comfortable.

“This is what you like?” Matteo asked. “Turn around.”

I did as he asked.

“Turn around again,” he said.

I turned, once, twice.

“Stop.”

I stopped.

“Turn again and face me,” he said. He put his hand under his chin. “No. No. Go. Put on the small. This is not good for you.”

“It won’t fit,” I said.

“When you see clothing on that fits you well, you’ll never look at clothing the same.”

I stepped off the riser in front of the mirror and went back into the dressing room, again raised my arms, again stood in my bra with Matteo outside.

“Hey Matteo,” I said. “How long have you been in the U.S.?”

“A few years. Why?”

“Do you know O.J.?”

“The juice?”

“Yes. The Juice.”

“I don’t much like orange juice.”

I put the small on, and I turned around in the dressing room, looked at myself from behind. He was right. The sweater hugged my body, stopped at my waist, flattered my boobs, gave me cleavage I wasn’t used to having. “The killer. The football player.”

“Ah. Yes. I know who he is.”

“You know the other person he killed, Ron Goldman? He was Nicole’s friend. He was the server who brought her sunglasses back to her? You know his dad works in this mall? And his dad was like all over TV for a long time. Trying to find justice for his son. Do you remember his name?”

“I am not sure,” Matteo said as I opened the door.

He’d been leaning against the wall, then stood upright and nodded for me to go to the mirror.

I stepped on the riser. He stepped after me. Matteo brushed against the sweater—brushed against me. I felt woozy. We spoke to each other in the mirror.

“Sei cosi bella,” he said in Italian, low and under his breath.

“What?” I asked, mimicking his low tone.

“John should get this for you,” he said.

“Oh god. Where would I even wear this?”

“John will plan a nice meal for you,” he said.

“He already did last weekend,” I said. I knew John was going to propose, so I put on my best outfit, a Gap dress I got on the sale rack. We went to the Olive Garden, then took a walk in the park near our apartment.

Matteo moved my hair off my shoulder.

“See?” he said. “These lines. This is what you want in clothing. You can wear this sweater to your job.”

“They’d think I was embezzling. This is a $400 sweater.”

“Allora devo averti in questo maglione,” he said then smiled. “You must have this sweater.”

Matteo and I stood in the mirror together, breathing in sync, and before I could whisper back why are you speaking to me in Italian do not stop speaking to me in Italian, John popped his head into the dressing room.

“We’ve got a lot of people out on the floor,” he said slowly to Matteo.

Matteo took a step back. “Your wife wears this garment. This garment does not wear her.”

“I’m not his wife,” I said to Matteo in the mirror, then to John, “Yet. I mean.” I crossed my arms, stepped down.

“Wow,” John whispered to me. “That’s probably the most expensive women’s sweater in here.”

I put my old clothes back on. My Old Navy jeans, stretched out. My faded t-shirt that was piling under the arms that after having that sweater on, I can’t believe I wear in public. I walked the sweaters to Matteo. He held the small. “This is what you want?”

“Yes, I mean no,” I said. “I can’t afford it. Another day, maybe.”

Matteo lightly took my arm, guided me to the register. “You get this sweater. Seguimi,” he said. “Follow me.”

Matteo stepped behind the cash register. The drawer opened, then he closed it. Out of habit, I dug into my bag for my sunglasses then plopped them on my head. The sun went down an hour ago. Matteo wrapped the sweater in white tissue paper, folded it into the bag. He hit a button on the receipt machine and a slip of blank paper shot out, which Matteo wrote on, then tucked the note into the bag next to the sweater. He walked around the counter and handed my bag to me.

“Ciao, Leah,” he said.

John and a man in golf pants stood in front of the ties. John selected one for him and held it up like a butcher with a piece of meat. I waved. He waved back.  I crossed the threshold of the store certain an alarm would go off or a SWAT team might descend on me or a rich person might yell imposter, but none of these things happened. I walked quickly, glancing over my shoulder only once. I stopped near the Louis Vuitton store to compose myself. Inside, a tiny woman with long blonde hair stood alone.

Nordstrom loomed. I used to park my car in their garage. Less congested than the main entrance even though the main entrance was closer to the food court. I gathered myself and walked in, and I should have kept walking straight past the beauty counter to the outside garage but instead I browsed the men’s section, comparing. I looked at their ties (less colorful) and wandered into the shoe section where two men stood at the register. One had his arm on the counter. The other was Ron Goldman’s dad.

They sensed my wanting. A good salesperson always does. The man with his arm on the counter made like he was going to move in, but with authority, Ron Goldman’s dad got me first.

“Good evening,” he said. Up close, he was attractive, for an older man. “Can I help you find something?”

I checked for the nametag. Peter? Jack? Ronald Sr.?!

Ron Goldman’s dad seemed like a patient salesman.

“Did you need some help?” he asked again.

“Shoes,” I blurted then. “My, um, my guy. My fiancé. He wears shoes. And he needs shoes and I’m getting him shoes. He needs brown. Um. Brown shoes.”

“This is the place for shoes,” he said and did a quick once over on me, which is when I remembered I’d put my sunglasses on my head.

Frantically, I yanked them off and stuffed them in the bag, which Ron Goldman’s dad assessed, then seemed even more interested in me because he thought I had money.

“Brown dress shoes,” I said.

“Follow me,” he said.

He walked me to a display in the middle of the store. John had one pair of brown shoes and one black. He shined them himself every Sunday evening. John would never buy more dress shoes. He was a money hoarder. Not a bad thing. But he hated spending money. Hated the thought of it. Would rather sit in his underwear on his secondhand couch than buy new anything.

“He’s on his feet all day,” I said. “So he needs to be comfortable.”

“Is he a server?” Ron Goldman’s dad asked.

Christ almighty, what am I doing here? I can’t buy these shoes. I can’t afford these shoes.

“No, retail,” I said.

“I’ll show you the shoes I wear. Almost can’t live without them,” he said. “My back would have given out years ago.”

Ron Goldman’s dad showed me his shoes by picking up his pant legs, then he showed me the shoe from the display and talked about the insole, the stitching, the leather, and the durability, and I stopped him only once to blurt, “Sounds like you’re talking about a life partner, not a shoe, haha.”

He laughed but it was like he didn’t want to. He wanted the sale. I wanted to give him the sale. It was the least I could do. I wanted to leave this mall knowing I helped. Knowing this man in front of me, talking passionately about the heel of a brown shoe, got a little extra money, finally, made me kind of happy for the first time in a long time.

“What size?” Ron Goldman’s dad asked.

“What size shoe?” I repeated.

“Well, yes. What size is your husband?”

“Fiancé.” I flashed into our living room, watched John shine those goddamn shoes. “He’s a size 10?” I said and if Ron Goldman’s dad thought I sounded hesitant, he’d be right.

He disappeared into the back. I sat on a small bench next to a mirror where I could see my own shoes. Old, dull, used, half-dead.

Here’s a thing I didn’t get then, and I barely get now, but what I wanted was the big party and the pretty dress and for John’s and my friends to bring me glasses of champagne and tell me I was beautiful because a wedding day is the only day in a woman’s life where she gets to be the center of attention and not feel guilty or shamed by society about it.

I only came into Nordstrom to get to my car, not buy shoes for John he doesn’t want. Or that won’t fit. I was in men’s shoes. Waiting for Ron Goldman’s dad. Ron Goldman, who is gone. Ron Goldman, who moved to L.A. to become an actor, who took a pair of sunglasses—I am sure they were expensive!—back to his friend’s house because he was a nice and good person raised by a nice and good man. Ron Goldman was living his life, making his plans and then, boom—it was all over. I watched the O.J. bronco chase on TV. Was Ron Goldman’s dad at work when the call came? Did his entire life crash in on him while he was standing in the men’s shoe department at Nordstrom? How could I have even worn sunglasses in here? Don’t I think of anyone but myself? John would ask me this later from under the covers in his bed. It’s always you, oh you’re not happy, oh you don’t feel good, but you hurt people and you hurt me and your choices were wrong and selfish.

That’s really it, Leah. You are unfailingly selfish, and that you refuse to apologize or acknowledge what you did is proof.

I was going to tell him I was sorry. I was going to tell Ron Goldman’s dad I believed him. That’s a hard lesson. When people are sad or broken, you aren’t supposed to make them feel better. You’re supposed to be like, “Shit’s fucked, and I see you.” He came toward me with what I asked for. I started to speak, to prove I was valuable as an empathetic person, but the note from Matteo. I reached into the bag, grasped the thin piece of paper between my fingers.

Feeling hurt is the only real way to feel anything.

“Miss?” Ron Goldman’s dad asked as he held the shoes. I opened the note. “Are you ready?”