The Impossible Fortress(33)
“You’re going home early?”
“I quit the whole game. I don’t want to do this anymore.”
“You can’t quit,” she said. “You have to win the PS/2 so I get your 64. That was the deal. We shook hands.”
“We won’t win,” I said. “We did everything the book told us. It’s not working. My eyes are blurry. My wrists hurt. My back hurts. We’ve been stuck in this store for A days, and I’m tired.”
Mary laughed like I made a joke.
“Go ahead and laugh,” I told her. “I quit.”
“You know what’s funny? You just said ‘A days’ instead of ‘ten days.’ You’re thinking hexadecimally, Will.”
I refused to believe her. “I said ten.”
“You said ‘A,’?” she insisted. “That’s real progress. We’re so close to beating this thing, I can feel it.”
And then the lights went out.
The computer died, Phil Collins stopped crying, and suddenly we were in total darkness. There were no windows in the back of the store. I couldn’t see my own hand in front of my face.
“Power failure,” Mary said with a sigh. “Happens every summer when the stores turn on their AC.”
No power meant no computer. No computer meant no progress. I stood up and smashed into a file cabinet.
“Stop,” she said. “Where are you going?”
“This is a sign. God just pulled the plug on our game.”
Mary reached through the darkness and found my arm, holding me back. Her fingers laced through mine and suddenly I was holding her hand. It was disorienting—like my entire center of gravity had shifted to my arm and the rest of me was adrift, weightless, like one of those giant balloons in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. I reached out to steady myself and found Mary’s shoulder.
“Sorry,” I said. “I can’t see.”
“Give it a few seconds. Your eyes will adjust.” Her hair tickled my cheek and she whispered into my ear: “You can’t quit now, Will. I won’t let you. We’re too close.”
I leaned forward, pressing against her. Mary’s hair was soft and smooth and cool to the touch, and I’d never felt anything quite like it. The store was completely silent; I could hear her breathing. I wrapped my arms around her waist, pulling her closer, reveling in her fresh clean scent.
Then a feeble beam of light cut across the showroom, and Mary sprang away from me. Zelinsky was patrolling the store with a handful of miniature flashlights, the kind that sold next to the cash register for a dollar and ran off a single AA battery. “You kids okay?”
“We’re fine,” Mary said.
“Uh-huh,” I mumbled.
He gave us flashlights and raised his voice, calling out to the rest of the store. “Any customers back here? Anybody need help?”
A frail voice cried out from the typewriter aisle—an elderly woman who’d crouched down at the time of the blackout, fearing she’d suffered a stroke. Zelinsky helped her stand up, and we all walked outside onto Market Street.
The customer scowled at Zelinsky. “You should pay your electric bill on time,” she said. “I could have been injured.”
“It’s not our fault,” Mary said, but Zelinsky talked over her. “I’m very sorry for the inconvenience, Mrs. Durham. I hope you’ll come back and see us tomorrow.”
“Don’t count on it,” she huffed.
The old lady hobbled down the sidewalk and Zelinsky turned to Mary. “The customer is always right,” he said.
“That old kook is never right,” Mary said. “She blamed the Challenger explosion on the Vietnamese. She calls parachute pants ‘the devil’s pajamas.’ It’s like her glaucoma has spread to her brain.”
Mary was grinning at me, waiting for me to laugh at her jokes, but my mind was still back in the showroom, I was still holding her hand and touching her hair. I felt like something extraordinary had just happened—like I’d just caught a glimpse of a different world—and the transition back to reality had left me with whiplash.
Up and down Market Street, merchants were flipping their door signs from OPEN to CLOSED—except for General Tso, who stood on the sidewalk handing out 15 percent–off coupons while his staff filled the dining room with hundreds of tiny votive candles.
“I think we’re done for tonight,” Zelinsky said, but I barely heard him. I’m pretty sure I stumbled down Market Street without even saying good-bye.
1700 REM *** HERO ATTACKS ***
1710 FOR I=0 TO 24
1720 POKE L1+I,0:NEXT I
1730 POKE L1+24,15:POKE L1+12,160
1740 POKE L1+13,252:POKE L1+8,80
1750 POKE L1+7,40:POKE L1+11,129
1760 FOR I=1 TO 100
1770 NEXT I
1780 POKE L1+11,128
1790 RETURN
ALF AND CLARK AND I lived at the bottom of a hill on a dead-end street called Baltic Avenue. Our classmates loved to remind us that Baltic Avenue was among the cheapest properties in Monopoly, that the rent was a laughable four dollars. On rainy days, the storm drains would overflow, flooding our cul-de-sac and the sidewalks. We’d have to take off our sneakers and cuff our jeans just to wade out the front door—unless we cut through the old cemetery that bordered our backyards. It was the largest Catholic cemetery in New Jersey, ten acres of tombstones, and growing up, we played beside every single one of them.