Leslie at the perfume counter moves in a fog of exotic fragrance. There’s Estee Lauder, there’s Chanel. But now the air goes malodorous. At the Boscov’s at Owings Mills Mall, where she works, there’s the aroma of death.

On Monday, the department store chain filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and announced it would sell inventory and then close 10 stores, including its anchors at White Marsh Mall, Marley Station and Owings Mills.

The move is described as a blow to the malls. This is true. Goodbye stores, goodbye rents, goodbye profits. It is also a blow to those such as Leslie at the perfume counter, already wondering how to support herself when Boscov’s closes its doors.

She’s been here before, and might soon rejoin familiar ranks. The U.S. Department of Labor says the unemployment rate hit 5.7 in July. That’s 8.8 million people out of work, up from 7.2 million a year ago. Since December, says the government, payrolls are down by 463,000. Last month alone, 51,000 lost their jobs. That was before Boscov’s announcement.

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Leslie says she’s spent 30 years in the retail business, shifting around five department store chains from here to the famous Macy’s at New York’s Herald Square, where she started. She’s also worked for Wal-Mart. She spent an anxiety-riddled year between jobs before she finally landed at the Boscov’s perfume counter. That was a month ago. A month of work, a month of marginal security, and now she has to look once more.

On Wednesday, she turned 52. The retail stores are looking for those who will work cheap. Mostly, these are young people. Leslie can show everybody her 30 years of experience, her intelligence, her charm. But she wonders how much these qualities are valued when the stores are cutting corners everywhere.

Take a little walk around the Owings Mills Mall. When the big place opened its doors 22 years ago, everybody regarded it as one of the golden shopping oases of the metro area. Saks Fifth Avenue was here, and Lord & Taylor. Now it’s regarded as an afterthought, scarred by more than 35 empty storefronts. Some of the windows are darkened and others decorated to disguise the empty shells inside. 

Soon Boscov’s will join the ranks of the empty. Liquidation sales are planned and then, in the next few months, the stores will close. There are no immediate plans to fill them with other retail chains.

On Tuesday, as the noon hour approached, even the Owings Mill food court was quiet. Two women in sporty outfits, Brenda Williams and Lynn Morton, walked through the mall at a brisk pace. They use it for their daily exercise. They also count the empty stores as they move about.

“We’re here every day,” said Williams, “and it seems like there’s a different store closing every day. One day it’s the CVS drugstore, next it’s Sterling Optical.”

“We just watch ’em close up one by one,” Morton said. “It’s gonna be a ghost town.”

And, from every empty store, there emerge the depressing figures of the newly out of work.

“There’s a terrible feeling of insecurity,” Leslie said at the perfume counter. “It’s everywhere. Everybody who works here, we’re all wondering where we go from here. And the customers, too. Every other customer I talk to says they’re afraid to spend money. They don’t know if they’re gonna have a job tomorrow. They’ve got kids. They’ve got bills.”

Thus, the fear feeds on itself. If money’s going to be tight, we’d better not spend any. But if we don’t spend any, the stores will close and more people will lose their jobs and therefore have even less money to spend.

“Everybody in retail’s insecure,” said Leslie, standing at her perfume counter. There are no customers lurking about. “So you try to stay positive. You look on the Internet. But you know that companies can’t afford to hire.

“People I know, they’ve stopped taking vacations. I don’t even take the car out unless I’ve got something important I’ve got to do. Because of the gas. At $4 a gallon, I can’t tell my daughter, ‘Come on, let’s see what’s doing at the mall.’ You can’t afford the drive.”

So she stands at her counter for the moment. But the moment, and the job, will soon pass. She’ll be out of work, and so will scores more around the metro area who work at Boscov’s.

At Leslie’s counter, the air is fragrant with perfume. But the odor of death blankets everything.