Rehearsal Season

It is not the actual day. It is a practice. Everyone knows it is a practice. And still at eleven fifty-five the corridor fills with uncles in singlets, three generations of one family, and a man who has brought a chair, and everyone points at the same sky at the same moment.

Nobody in the basement food court between two and four is shopping. They are cooling. Students with laptops, retirees with newspapers, one man asleep upright with total commitment. The mall provides this service continuously, for free, and asks only that you occasionally buy a bubble tea.