On a Saturday afternoon the discount outlet mall in Kenosha, Wisconsin, is a modern souk, a throbbing marketplace teeming with uneasy juxtapositions. There are signs waiting to be read, a wealth of snap judgments that can be passed off as insights. The range of ethnic faces, the numerous languages being spoken, give the illusion of a futurist’s Community of Tomorrow. Unencumbered young power-walking power shoppers. Grandmothers with arms full of branded totes. Even a family of Gypsies in flowing garb. I expected to round some corner and find myself in the Casbah itself. It didn’t seem like Kenosha or Chicago or Milwaukee, but a community that doesn’t exist anywhere except at the moment when you, other shoppers, and your money pass in the mall.
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Rental strollers are all lined up; on Saturday they were stuffed with kids leaning forward like explorers in the prow of a ship, hands braced on the rail. Today it’s like a 24-hour grocery at three in the morning.
At the mall’s bookstore the clerk is of course reading. A pair of older women wearing aprons with the names of the shops where they work browse through Historical Fiction. “Yeah, we sell books during the week,” the clerk tells me. “I sold some books today, and it was mostly people I know.”
