I pulled onto the few acres of smoking asphalt in front of Wal-Mart as a dozen other drivers also angled for spots closer to the entrance. The Florida sun, like the lid of a big tanning bed in the sky, was closing down on us, turning all to a slow, red broil. A couple of young oaks, looking like anorexic scarecrows, did what they could to shade the scene.

Several other discount places loomed nearby, a family reunion off the highway for a clan of ugly one-story buildings. These enterprises often face each other down, like gunslingers in a mock showdown.

Whole families shuffled in and out of the row of eight doors in front of Wal-Mart. Those exiting the store were distinguished only by the stuff they toted or pushed in carts, but looking no more satisfied than those on the way in. They were partaking in a ritual, nibbling on the communion wafer of globalization, biting off a discounted piece of the manufacturing sector and keeping their plastic warm. They planned on brightening their homes and their children's long summer days with new stuff. They had all experienced the power of the smorgasbord of goods so efficiently displayed, a kind of a lunch buffet where you tend to overeat since it seems like a bargain.

I was hunting an international calling card. Foolishly, I hadn't checked the multitude of really cheap cards available on the Internet. But a friend had told me she got one at Wal-Mart for her son in Iraq.

When I stumbled in the door, a blast of cold artificial air hit me like the welcome chill from the ice cream freezer at the corner candy store when I was a kid. The feeling I got searching for a Creamsicle. Perhaps some pleasure did await me.

Making a guess, I headed off to the cell phone area. A young Indian woman with two bindis, one on her forehead and one on her hairline, approached me. When I told her what I was after, she shook her head warmly and said "Oh, not here." Then she called to a coworker, summoning a smiling woman with the swagger of someone carrying a couple of buckets of paint. They both sidled up to me, determined to ensure that I could communicate with those I love when I left the country.

They escorted me back to a rack near the cash registers, where all sorts of store-brand plastic cards were on display, though as we read the fine print none of us could figure out if they worked outside the country.

I took a chance on the $35 option and got in the checkout line. Sometimes I just give up amid the multitude of unsatisfactory options and simply do what's expected of me to keep the crazy enterprise moving along.

When it was my turn to pay, the young Latino cashier said, "Would you mind waiting one minute? The lady is here selling ices and the mango ones are great."

I was surprised, since these places usually extract your money with assembly-line efficiency. But the cashier, other workers and customers were suddenly buying their ices from the woman wielding a Wal-Mart cart armed with a giant Styrofoam cooler. She wore a large, flowered muumuu and was conducting a brisk, on-the-sly business in mango, lemon and watermelon ices — $2 each. Even an assistant manager came by and sanctioned the operation with her silence.

Our cashier returned quickly. "The mango is the best. She's here at 2:30 every day. I'll be on break in five minutes," he said as he stashed his treasure behind the register.

I took out my $2 and got one of the few remaining mango ices. Soon I sat in the hot parking lot, my hands cooling on the plastic cup. I opened the windows and recalled other times something cooled me off, like the root beer floats I made as a kid and sipped on the front stoop of our old Staten Island house, the Yankee games my grandfather listened to booming through the window screens. Then I thought of the other shoppers and employees slurping in the vicinity, joined in a counter-corporate communion. The mango was thick with pureed pulp, sweet like some ripe and forbidden fruit.

This article appears in Jul 16-22, 2008.