“I don’t—” Seth grabbed a VHS shell from the nearest rack. The cover art was blurry, and in black-and-white. “The Whore Next Door. Is this, like, homemade or something?”
“Yeah, he had all kinds of crazy stuff in here.”
“Had?”
“That’s why we’re here, dude. Store’s closed. He’s leaving everything here for the owners to clear out because he’s salty about having to leave. They haven’t even checked in, as far as I know. Until something happens, this is basically, like, my treehouse.”
“Whoa,” Seth said again. He began strolling around the store, scanning the walls and floors like a foreman sizing up a building site.
“Yeah. I’ve been using it as my, umm, my studio,” Derrick said, putting on an upper-crusty accent and pulling out his sketchbook. “If you can get over the, uh, décor, it’s nice.”
“Décor.” Seth laughed, taking down another tape. “Neighborhood Pussy.”
Seth was a quick study; although teachers and other interested adults worried a lot about whether he was learning the right skills to help him survive in the big world of adults and jobs and responsibilities, his wits were sharp. He reached into his backpack and retrieved a pen-style X-Acto knife, the kind the journalism class used in paste-up.
“If they ever search your backpack you’re gonna get expelled for that,” Derrick said.
Seth rolled his eyes. “Dude. Watch,” he said. He gripped the VHS case in his left hand about half a head below eye level; working quickly with his right, he carved out the eyes of the model on the front cover. Then he sliced a couple of snake-like s’s into her forearms, and a perfect equilateral triangle into the center of her midriff. It took him only a minute, maybe two; his casual speed with the blade was like a magician’s sleight of hand.
He flipped it around so Derrick could see. Just three modifications to the naked woman with the girl-next-door face made her look like a demon priestess. Lowering his voice to a demonic gurgle and making a face, Seth growled: “Neighborhood Satan!”
“Dude, stop,” said Derrick, but he couldn’t keep a straight face; Seth had known how to get a laugh out of Derrick since playground days.
He put the case back on the rack. Face-out, the changes on the model’s body registered just enough to cause a double-take. Seth was happy with his work; he scanned the other titles on the same rack, wondering if a second one would spoil the effect of a single defaced picture. And then he turned to Derrick and said: “We can seriously have all this, though?”
His normal voice was so earnest, so young, Derrick had to laugh again. There wasn’t anybody really like Seth in this world; it’d be a nicer world if everybody could have a friend like Seth.
“All this can be yours,” Derrick said in his rich-butler voice again.
KNIGHTS ENTRY
They spent an hour or so together in the store. It felt strange to both of them, two young men in a place usually visited by older men who almost always arrived unaccompanied. But Seth saw all the possibilities; they were visible on his face, and palpable in his energy. He cased the place like an artist pricing out supplies. When, after a while, he joined Derrick behind the counter, he found a roll of Scotch tape on a shelf underneath the cash register and began assembling a collage on notebook paper. From the Neighborhood Pussy housing, he taped the eyes and stray s’s to the page; they looked lonely there, so he headed out into the racks to grab more materials. “You’re sure this is OK?” he said.
“Everything’s gotta go,” Derrick said. “I can’t stay long, though. Now that it’s early-acceptance season Mom wants to talk every day.” Seth didn’t respond; Derrick knew he’d collected several failing grades over the years—in PE, in civics, in history. Things Seth didn’t care about. When he didn’t care, he couldn’t focus.
The silence gathered for a moment, and, in it, Derrick had the kind of melancholy realization that lands on people repeatedly during their senior year in high school. Whatever happens next, this won’t be part of it. He tried to think of things he’d miss about Milpitas—bike rides on known streets, people he’d known half his life, the many perks of familiarity that only feel like burdens if you fear never being relieved of them.
“You could stay here and draw if you make sure and lock up,” he said.
“Yeah?” Seth said.
“Yeah,” Derrick said. “But you gotta punch in the code. You have to promise. The cops will come otherwise.”
“Is it—”
Derrick picked up a pen and wrote it at the top of the page where Seth was presently sketching a tall tower with half a dozen small, dark cave entrances ominously dotting its height.
“Five-seven-five-seven-one-star,” he said as he wrote. “OK? Five-seven-five-seven-one-star. The star is the lower right. Come have a look.” Together they went to the back, and Derrick armed and disarmed the alarm several times.
“That number seems pretty easy to guess,” Seth said.
“That’s because you’re ignorant,” Derrick said, ducking Seth’s punch in response. “That’s because you’re ignorant” was a phrase left over from a brief phase Derrick had gone through in grade school when he and all his friends had been trying out meaner aspects than the ones most would eventually settle into. It was a shared memory of long ago; calling back to that time made their connection vivid, immediate.
“Now you,” Derrick said. Seth passed the test on the first try.
“There’s a hundred thousand ways to make a five-number combo,” Derrick said, standing in the doorway to the outside now, the setting sun behind him. “Nobody’s ever going to guess it. I’ll see you tomorrow. Remember to lock.”
“Got it,” said Seth.
“No, man, seriously, though,” Derrick said. “Seriously. I don’t mean to be all like this, but if you don’t lock up, trouble for everybody. Lock up like I showed you or all this will be gone.”
“All this will be gone,” Seth said, lowering his voice and gesturing dramatically behind him with one hand, toward the clamshell cases and the racks and the as-yet-unexplored alcoves of the arcade.
THE ANCIENT ART OF ASTROLOGY
[Interior: a small office in the 1980s; MARC BUCKLER, a young man in smart business wear—grey blazer, crisp pink shirt—at his desk, atop which sit period-appropriate cosmopolitan desktop accessories: sleek black-and-silver multi-line phone, miniature “magic window” sand toy on a clear plexiglass stand, etc.]
[CHYRON lower screen center throughout scene. Text, yellow or red, all-caps: DRAMATIC RE-CREATION]
BUCKLER [mid-conversation]:… perfect. Perfect. And it’s how many square feet? [pauses] How many subdividable? [pauses, listens] Great. And, making sure I’m correct here, zoned commercial? [pauses, laughs] Well, OK, I hear you, but I have to be honest, “zoned commercial” makes us nervous down here. Not really our area. At all. They will ding you down here if you screw up on zoning. Just ding you. Just six blocks from where I’m sitting, one violation can tie your business up for— [pauses, listens] Sure, no, you’re right, you’re right, but I’ve seen it, people get cold feet. I’m just telling you. I have a colleague from up closer to you who says there’s some towns where nobody really cares, but I— [pauses, listens] Sure. Anyhow, no real reason to get ahead of ourselves. I can’t make any promises until I see the property. But I feel good about this! We had some good experiences last year expanding into, you know, Arizona. When’s good? I’m not in a hurry, but at the same time I could be there whenever.
[As he hangs up, PAN around office. Aside from the desk, décor is sparse. A corkboard on one wall with motivational phrases in Sharpie on lined paper, stuck to the board with colorful pins: BELIEVE IN THE RESULTS. REPRESENT WHAT YOU PRESENT. STAY OUT OF YOUR OWN WAY.]