In the parking lot are tiny islands of grass, as if the rising tide of asphalt had not yet quite drowned the dirt. Tiny trees are planted in them, their lateral limbs pruned within the limits of their concrete barriers, and the trunks are anchored by thick cables to posts in the ground: because otherwise, of course, the trees would simply pack up and leave, plunge into the asphalt sea and swim for some imagined shore, branches angling awkwardly through the oil slicks and yellow lines, roots flailing behind like vestigial fins until they washed up exhausted against the mall. Shoppers heading for home would find the doors blocked by beached trees gasping their last, pathetically coughing up sap and splinters of macadam.