As I clocked in, I was confronted by Sarge. That was the nickname the daytime guards and I had given our boss due to his constant yelling. Sarge demanded that I do something about the graffiti if I wanted to keep my job. I got a bucket of white paint from the storeroom. Before I covered the smiley face, I dipped a finger into the paint and crossed out its eyes. As I moved the roller across its grin, I said, “Not so funny, is it?” With the wet paint still on my finger, I drew a smiley face on my palm. Then I ran my palm across my arm until a white streak was all that was left.

The next day, Sarge was waiting for me in the parking lot when I pulled in. He swarmed me like a gnat, screaming about how the smiley face was still there. Underneath it now was, “Oh, it’s funny,” and I wondered if one of the daytime guards was pranking me.

I went to paint over the graffiti again, but the roller was missing. I ended up using a rag instead, soaking it in the paint and scrubbing the wall. When I finished, I wrung out the rag over the sink in the storeroom. I watched the paint swirl down the drain and imagined a massive paint whirlpool. I got trapped in its current, and soon I was inhaling gallons of paint as thick as a milkshake. It sucked me in and spat me out. On the other side, brush bristles grew from my fingertips, and I fingerpainted the world like an unsupervised kindergartener. I fingerpainted a universe-sized I-was-here smiley face across reality.

During my drive home the next morning, I got stuck in traffic on the bridge crossing the river. I inched forward and spotted “Hello!” spray-painted on a support column in big, colorful bubble letters. How the hell did they get down there? I thought. Then I imagined the graffitist’s rope snapping as they finished dotting the exclamation point, imagined them falling onto the rocks below and cracking their head open, paint seeping from the fractures in their skull. What would I risk my life to say? The traffic thinned before I got the answer.

I arrived at work the next day, and the smiley face had tripled. Sarge shouted, got so close that I could smell the Reuben he’d had for lunch. This was my last chance to catch the graffitist. After the mall closed, I patrolled the polished hallway between Hot Topic and JCPenney, listening to a podcast about graffiti and how it dates back to prehistoric times with handprints in caves. I placed my hand on the wall next to the shuttered GAP and felt cold concrete. When I pulled it away, no mark remained.

I went and checked the parking lot cameras. In the staticky, black-and-white surveillance image, I thought I saw the shadow of a man standing next to the mall. I rushed outside. I wanted to ask him, “Why smiley faces?” But the shadow was gone, replaced by a dozen smiling handprints. Smiling, I rubbed my thumb across my fingers and felt dried paint flake off my skin.