1330 POKE S+1,100:POKE S+5,219
1340 POKE S+15,28:POKE S+24,15
1350 POKE S+4,19
1360 FOR T=1 TO 1000:NEXT T
1370 POKE S+4,18
1380 POKE S+24,0
1390 RETURN
MARY AND I ONLY had one argument. It was our fourth afternoon of working on the game. Zelinsky was at the cash register, talking antique lighters with a pair of collectors from Philadelphia, and Mary was helping a customer with fountain pens, so I found myself alone in the showroom. Howard Jones was on the radio, and I was still working on the guard animation, fine-tuning the movements of their arms, when a girl walked up to my desk and said, “Excuse me.”
She was two or three years older than me—a junior or a senior, dressed like a punk mini-Madonna with army boots, ripped stockings, and a skirt made of vinyl. Her eyes were ringed with blue makeup. “Do you work here?”
“No,” I said.
She shrugged like it didn’t really matter. I was hunched over the keyboard, surrounded by notebooks, printouts, highlighters, and candy wrappers. If I wasn’t an employee, I was close enough.
“My dad sent me here to buy disks.” She reached into the folds of her skirt for a sheet of notepaper. “He needs ‘ten five-one-four-inch floppy disks.’?”
“Five and a quarter inch,” I corrected. “I can show you.”
We walked down the aisle to the computer supplies and I explained the options. “He’s got Fuji and Maxwell. They’re the same price, but Maxwells are black and Fuji comes in rainbow colors.”
“Cool,” she said, reaching for the Fujis. “Thanks.”
She carried the disks to the front of the store and Zelinsky rang up the purchase. I walked back to the showroom and Mary was waiting at her computer. She grinned at me. “She was awful flirty, huh?”
“What do you mean?”
Mary mimicked the girl in a squeaky singsong voice. “?‘I need five-one-four-inch floppy disks. Because I’m too cute to understand fractions!’?”
“She didn’t say that.”
“It’s the way she said it. Like she was some kind of helpless baby animal. That’s flirting, Will.”
I blushed. “Whatever.”
“Oh, God, please tell me she’s not your type. Don’t tell me you like these punk rock chicks with the raccoon eye shadow.”
“I don’t have a type.”
“Everyone has a type.”
“Not me. I’ve never even had a girlfriend.”
“But you have a type that you like,” she said. “Brunette, redhead, tall, short, goth, cheerleader—”
“I like all those types,” I said. “I don’t discriminate.”
“Everyone discriminates,” she said. “Everyone has personal biases and preferences. That’s basic human psychology.”
I felt like I was back in Hibble’s office—no answer was going to satisfy her.
“What about you?” I asked. “What’s your type?”
“I like confident people. I like guys who know what they want.”
“Like Tyler Bell?”
I don’t know why I said it. I didn’t believe any of the things Tyler had said about Mary: I had to beat her back with a stick, all right? She couldn’t keep her hands off me. I knew Mary would never really fall for a goon like Tyler—but suddenly she looked like I’d slapped her.
“You know Tyler Bell?”
“Everyone knows Tyler Bell.”
“How do you know Tyler Bell?”
“He goes to my school. He has a Harley.”
“What did he say to you?”
“Nothing. I mean, I barely know him. I just know he worked here.”
“Tyler Bell is an asshole,” she said. “The worst employee we ever had.”
“So not your type?”
“It isn’t funny, Will. Don’t even joke about him.”
“What’s wrong?”
And then Zelinsky was standing over us, his apron covered with wet black ink. At the time, I didn’t know how many of our conversations traveled to the front of the store. But looking back, I’m pretty sure he heard most of them.
“Is everything all right?”
He stated the question like a fact, strongly implying that no, everything was not all right.
“We’re fine,” Mary said.
“Maybe Will should go home now.”
“We’re fine,” Mary repeated. “I just want to get back to work.”
Zelinsky hesitated, then turned and walked back to the cash register. For the next hour, I didn’t dare say anything. We read from our respective books and typed on our respective computers. There were no further customers in the showroom and the only sounds came from All Your Favorite ’80s Love Songs—Joe Cocker and Willie Nelson and Phil Collins. From time to time I’d look at Mary, but she was typing furiously and avoiding eye contact.
Sometime around six o’clock I realized there were sirens blaring, and a police officer came into the store to tell Zelinsky that Crenshaw’s Pharmacy was on fire. We rose from our desks and went outside to take a look.
There were two fire trucks parked in the middle of Market Street and the volunteer firefighters were scrambling to unload their gear; Tackleberry and two other cops were routing traffic away from the train station. Mr. Crenshaw himself was pacing up and down the sidewalk, shaking his head. Gray smoke was venting from the second-story windows of his building; the fire appeared to be coming not from the pharmacy but the apartment above it. We craned our necks for a better view but we were standing at the wrong angle.
“Come on,” Mary told me. “I’ve got an idea.”
We went back inside and walked past the showroom to the cramped narrow staircase in the rear of the store. I followed Mary up to the second floor, and we entered a labyrinth of wire shelves and corrugated cardboard. All around us were boxes and shelves. The passage twisted and turned, and the lighting was dim, but Mary obviously knew every inch of the place. She stopped beneath a massive wooden hatch. “I just need to unlock it,” she explained.
I watched as she reached in her pocket for a key chain. Tyler Bell hadn’t exaggerated the sorry state of the woodwork; the door looked like something you’d see on a sunken pirate ship. A white wire stretched from the base of the hatch to a small crack in the ceiling, where it disappeared behind the wall.
I pointed to it. “Is that an alarm?”
“Yeah, my dad’s pretty paranoid. Like crooks are going to scale our walls and steal our envelopes, you know?”