THE STRONGHOLD AT CORNWALL
Alone in the store, he found a copy of The Last Starfighter among several general-release movies in the supply closet near the counter. Seth had left the store’s usual fare playing in all the booths—the light was needed to showcase all they’d done to the walls, and the seats, and the screens, and the floors—and had hand-selected the most unpleasant fare he could locate. But Seth wasn’t here now, and he wanted to watch something fun. He’d seen The Last Starfighter on the big screen two years ago; it felt like an eternity now.
The comfort of a story line he knew and could follow without difficulty was profound; before long, he dozed off, awakening only during a loud battle sequence. When the tape ended, it automatically rewound; he watched it again, staying awake this time. Known quantities help situate us in contexts that anchor us to ourselves; he’d had very few chances to confirm this over the last several months, but the second run-through of The Last Starfighter made him feel alert, undistracted, palpably alive to the present moment. Even when he reflected, during a lull, that the present moment found him in a wrecked porn store with almost all his worldly belongings in a backpack—not much to brag about—the clarity of that moment’s particulars felt like a triumph. He’d read once, in one of those books you always find in the lone bookcase in a corner of the overnight shelter, that your mind could be your best friend or your worst enemy. It was true. By himself in the booth with a movie whose plot he already knew, he felt on good terms with his mind. It was a good and comforting feeling, one whose integrity went slack and then unraveled completely the moment he heard voices outside in the store again: speaking, this time, not in the voracious tones of buyer and seller but in registers of shock, and panic, and fear.
He readied himself to defend his home. He felt steady in his resolve; the moment held great clarity for him, as if all this time in the store by himself, drifting in and out of sleep until day and night became a smudged continuum, had been necessary for the gathering of strength, for the conservation of energy. The time of gathering was at its end, and the energy would now find its purpose.
A person has a right, perhaps a duty, to protect himself and his stronghold from invaders. There are laws on the books about this, very old laws. They’re there for a reason.
597
When the castle door came into view, as her car approached the curb, Lady Gates saw straightaway that aught was amiss, and said unto her companion, But steady, for these woods are not as they were; and sometime among them run bandits and drunkards. Then bethought she to say also, I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s going on: but called she then to mind an old counsel of her upbringing, to wit, that she never express regret before regrets are sought. Howsobeit with these old counsels and their sway, which ever arise before us like shadows at noon, their strength did wane as she assayed the walkway, and the excrement strewn down it, and the broken glass, and the ashes: I’m sorry, she thought again, and yet again did check her inclination, scrutinizing instead the countenance of her companion, whose face betrayed no special outrage. For if a man, at cards, cries out when dealt the queen, all will know his fortune and fold their hands; and while still green and young and indeed in the bloom of his youth, not for nothing had Marc Buckler at his studies been thought one who might succeed, were he to learn patience, and to favor the small gain over the grand sack, the lined pantry over the glitter of the counting house. Yet alack! for further ventures to the counting house, and for errands to the pantry, as the great door of the castle gives way to Lady Gates’s key, the better for her to behold the Great Angel of the Transformation before her, its limbs all atwitch, the iridescent colors of its skin revealed in the glint of the late sunlight. For this was the time of early evening, when shadows grow; then did Lady Gates, mindful of her client’s presence, and thinking on her feet as befitted her station, reach for the light switch while closing the door behind her in a single movement; and all was revealed.
Jolly in the face both of danger and an advantage to press, saith Marc Buckler, What the fuck; nor could his Lady protest, for, under her breath, a language better suited to the common knave did issue in whispers; for all was ruin; yet not the ruin of the vandal but the cunning of the imp; spells on countertops, racks rearranged into shapes better suited to the coven than to an empty property awaiting one young enough to pay the markup; wares all about repurposed as if to confound evil spirits; and behold, the dam breaks, I’m sorry, says poor Lady Gates, these neighborhood kids, I didn’t know.