Information Point

A flustered shopper tells the woman staffing a shopping-centre information point that she has lost her mother, and is immediately offered condolences, as though the old lady had died. Once that is cleared up, every reasonable request runs into the same wall: asked about a public-address system, the attendant muses on whether the centre would ever pay for one just for a missing mother; asked about a meeting point for lost people, she describes where teenagers hang out by the bus stops. The daughter's worry about her mother's age only prompts tips on birthday parties and idle chat about muffin shops. Then the centre's public-address system pages the daughter by name and sends her to the café, where her mother is waiting for her, and the attendant is left musing that someone out there must be lost.