There’s a lot we don’t know.
But I had a dream, anyway, about Marc Buckler’s first trip to Milpitas. We know he came here twice. The details of that first trip are recoverable—I know and have already mentioned some of them; his airline, his rental car, his drinks with Evelyn Gates. I have a few receipts. What I don’t have is the look on his face when he and Gates take the Milpitas exit, and he sees, over there on the other side of the windshield, a smaller town than he’s ever visited in his life. Did he get that half-frightened, half-condescending look cosmopolitans get when they pull over for gas at some last-chance stop? Did he begin spinning fictions about people who’d live in a town so small, imagining them as being like country folk in an episode of The Twilight Zone? I know that when I first got to town, I felt surprised by how modern it seemed, for lack of a better word: there are fewer old buildings here than there are in San Francisco; there’s less of the past angling for room in the frame. But Marc Buckler didn’t come from San Francisco; down where he lived, raze-and-renew had been the rule for as long as anybody could remember. Maybe he didn’t take any note of details like these, thinking instead in spreadsheets, in projections, in the possibility of the easy score.
In my dream, though, he notices something as they ease down the off-ramp. It’s the change in scale, the nearness of things. It’s the feeling that, not so long ago, there were hills and dirt roads here: in Southern California, you have to strain to imagine such days, but up north their aura has a half-life. It’s fading, and it’ll fade even further as the march of progress continues, but in the right light you feel like it’s only receding a little, gathering strength, waiting for its time to return.
It’s a feeling you get sometimes, pulling off the highway once you get away from the city. It seeps in through the windows, even when they’re rolled up and you’ve got the air-conditioning up high.
In my dream, Marc Buckler notices this feeling, and then swats it away like a June bug.
MISE EN ABYME
Now came to this abode while that the days of this compagnye were yet grene, this noble knight ALEX, known to both Sir Derrick and Sir Seth from schole; and the wise in whiche he arrivèd ther, a wonder was for to tell. For inside the howse, on that day, passing their noontide in gode earnest as had been their wyl lo these passing days, stood noone oother thanne Sir Derrick and Sir Seth, busy upon the errands that semed mete to them.
Now Sir Derrick had taken up unto himself in recent days, a quest, to wit, a cote of armes, the which might best bear forth, to the world at large, the good name of the castle in which both he and Sir Seth found themselves ful many an afternoon; and his grete scheme was, to emblazon above the castle door the legend DEVIL HOUSE, and upon the door, its shield, in colors most bold and with symbols to bear forth the soule and character of the compagnye. But, syne that as yet they numbered only two, his effort was somedel slight; and he did question himselfe, how best to assigyne the quadrants of the shield, or if agayn he might survey some noue style with which to say unto the passing throng: We, who do goe through your world somewhat unknown, are within; and behold, we too have a tale.
To this end he hadde placed, in the upper quadrant to one side, a figure in the likeness of a Spirit: so as to say, the ghost within is no dream upon the midnight, but a thing both of your world, and not. All in white, as a laundered cape, stood the figure of the ghost, its eyes pierced black and raggèd, its round mouth in mid-cry; and the field upon which it stood was sky-blue, to say in plain, these are the waking hours in which this vision does walk, and not the night to which he had been formerly consigned.
“Hark ye, Sir Seth,” callèd he from behind the counter where he sat with his boke, “see how liketh you our cote”; and Sir Seth, busy with scissors among the library halls again, arose and considered his goodman’s work.
“Behold, Caspar,” replied Sir Seth, in jape, but continued: “But fine, those thynges of our childhood have grown vast and fearsome while we slept; an fittynge, for will we not defend this castle if need be; and, should fortune find us in defeat, will we not pledge to haunt the dayes of those that laid us low; upon my troth I swear it, I favor no rest in the afterlife unless I am avenged upon those who would oppose this howse!”
Sir Derrick heard, in his companion’s voice, his troth; and thoughte unto himself, What we are, we are; a noble howse, but small. And behold, a silence came upon the compagnye, into which, all unexpected, intruded the sound of a hand knocking upon the door from the outside.
Both knights jumped as men awakened by thieves, so deep was their reverie; and then did both laugh as men helpless, until of a sudden they stopped again, and fell silent. For no visitor had been sought or called for, and none were expected; and who, then, of a day, should presume upon this fortress? For its ramparts in those days were as yet meager, and the walls without most modest, to speak truely.
Then heard they both, from without, a voice meek and familiar.
“It’s Alex,” came the voice. “I saw your bikes.”
DANISH INTERLUDE
Seth and Derrick exchanged a glance of unsoundable depths. It wasn’t that there was anything necessarily wrong with Alex; it was just that no one had seen or heard from him at all in several months. He’d gone missing from his foster family’s house in the middle of July. He didn’t leave a note or let anybody know he was leaving. People at school were starting to say he was probably dead. The few who’d known him well enough to care didn’t want to believe it, but it was hard to know what else to think.
An indispensable architectural feature of any adult bookstore is that nobody can see the inside of it from the street. By the mid-eighties, security cameras had become part of the standard package turnkey contractors offered bigger markets. But Monster Adult X never made it that far. There were safety mirrors in the two back corners of the store, and another above the front door, but there was no way of seeing outside the front entrance when the door was closed.
Seth had a hunch. “Weland?” he yelled, his hand cupped against the door. “Quit fucking around.”
“It’s Alex,” the voice said, no louder than the first time, with no real force or urgency.
“I told you quit fucking around,” Seth said. “Last time Alex was in town this place was still a comics store.”
“I don’t have any place to stay, man,” Alex said, and now both Seth and Derrick heard it clearly: the need, the resignation. Key suddenly in hand, Derrick rushed toward the door.
“Get in here, man,” he said, ushering Alex inside with one arm like an army nurse in wartime, trying to hurry the patient to safety before the enemy gets a chance to reload the cannons.
NEWS FROM AMIENS