Old Drew Id
First Post
Session 3 (5/21/2003) The Magic Shop
Session 3 (5/21/2003) The Magic Shop
Willie was definitely going to have to get his car soon. He normally didn’t mind bumming rides off of people, especially the preacher, but Willie was not liking riding three guys in the front seat of a pickup, and definitely not with this comic book boy up beside him. Willie somehow had agreed to ride in the middle, and now he had the preacher’s more-than-adequate size on his left driving, and Joe’s big ol’ butt taking up the entire right side of the car.
“Joe, will you move your big butt over? And what is that smell?”
“Oh, yeah, my stomach’s been a little upset since last night. Here, I’ll roll down a window.”
“You can’t,” the preacher admitted. “Window’s busted. I can’t roll it up or down except at home with a pair of---Wooo! Joseph! What did you eat?”
With his eyes watering, Willie saw the sign up ahead, in a little strip mall. “There’s the store. Get the truck pulled over. Get me out of this thing! That’s it, Joe, you’re riding in the back on the way home.”
“Alright, alright, I see how you’re gonna be. I’ll remember this,” Joe muttered as he plopped out of the truck into the parking lot.
Willie gratefully slid out of the truck and took a breath of fresh air. Now, he could get a good look at this magic shop. From the front, it didn’t look like much. There was no sign up yet, just a temporary plastic banner, and in the front window, he could see numerous cardboard boxes in various states of unpacking. After catching his breath, he noted, “Doesn’t look like much from the outside.”
Brother Cooper nodded in agreement. “What do you think, Joseph---”
Willie turned as he heard a little bell clink. The sound came from the front door of the shop, where Joe had already gone in.
“Well,” Brother Cooper continued. “I suppose Joseph has a good idea. Perhaps we should not all go in at once, so as to attract less attention.”
“Alright, well, I have no problem pretending like I don’t know him,” Willie grinned, and after a few more seconds, the two of them headed through the door.
Inside, the shop was full of trinkets. Candles, oils, and books made up the vast majority of the inventory, although there were plenty of other ways to waste money. One wall was covered in ornamental jewelry, knives, swords, and various metal goods. Another was covered in clothing, ranging from hemp woven shirts to velvet robes. The place smelled heavily of incense, and New Age music was playing over the sound system.
There were no other customers there except for Joe, and there was only one employee present. A teenage Native American girl, working behind the counter. She was looking across the room at Joe, who was standing in the middle of one of the aisles apparently reading a book. She turned to Willie as he came in, and he turned on the charm.
Fishing for information, when you weren’t really sure what you were looking for, was a tricky business. The right attitude with your subject was critical, and Willie was an expert with the ladies. He turned on Devilish Grin Just Between You and Me and gave the counter girl his full attention. “Hey, baby, how you doin’?”
Obviously, the wrong way to go. The girl turned cold on him, and asked point blank, “Can I help you find something, sir?”
“Oh, well, baby, you know, I’m just having a look around---”
“Let me know if you need anything, then.” She cut him off and moved over to where Brother Cooper was examining a collection of books. She began to talk to him, and apparently he was keeping her interest.
Willie pretended to examine a shelf full of crystals, and snuck a peek over at Joe. The fat guy looked like he was lost in a daze somewhere, staring ahead across the room and looking like a baby trying to mess its diaper. Willie wasn’t sure what to make of that, and maneuvered back closer to the preacher to check in with him.
Brother Cooper was questioning the girl. “So I see this Buddhist text here, and this necro-gnomish book here, but I don’t see any Christian books anywhere. Now, don’t you feel that you ought to be offering some alternatives to these belief systems here?”
Willie stealthily took a step backwards, deciding that was not a conversation he wanted to be involved in. He pretended to be engrossed in a fine selection of Tibetan wind-chimes when the salesgirl came back over to check on him. “Finding everything okay, sir?”
Willie gave her his best Friendly Confused Guy Needing Female Attention, “Thank you, baby, yeah, I’m looking for some of these for my mother, who is very into these, uh…wind chimes.”
The girl stopped and eyed him suspiciously, then he saw her bite. She shrugged one shoulder and started in, “Well, these are from Tibet and they are called---”
“I need a special delivery, please.” Joe interrupted and tapped the poor girl furiously on the shoulder.
The girl nodded knowingly and pointed to the back. “The door there in the back. You can go on in.”
Joe looked confused for a moment, then nodded, and headed towards the back door.
The girl returned to Willie’s assistance. “Sorry, as I was saying, these are not really wind chimes, they’re called---”
“Um, hey baby, I think I need a special delivery too.” Willie offered, trying to look convincing.
“---and the monks there use them…No, you don’t, sir...do you want to hear about the monks?”
“Well, no, I would like a special delivery. I would like to go see the inventory in the back room.”
“I’m sorry, sir. That’s no possible. If there is nothing else I can show you out here then?”
“Oh, I see. Is it because he’s white? Oh, I get it! The white guy can go in the back, but not the black guy! I see how it is!”
The girl folded her arms across her chest. Unfortunately, the only other person here was Brother Cooper, and this kind of thing didn’t work so well when there wasn’t a crowd there to see it.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave the store please, sir.”
“What?!”
. . .
Joe was hearing the Halloween theme playing in his head as he walked into the back room. He gripped the strap of his backpack a little more tightly as his eyes adjusted to the dim light. There were stacks of boxes and crates crowding the room, leaving a narrow path which lead further back into their depths. The room smelled heavily of dust and cardboard.
Joe wasn’t so much scared by the back room, though. He was more than a little scared by how he knew the password to get into the back room. He couldn’t really explain it, and he knew he should be able to if he was going to do it.
There was something, a certain state of mind, a kind of unnatural concentration, that he had felt several times, when he was putting together his book over the past couple of nights. ‘Thinking like they think’ kept coming to mind, but he didn’t know where the phrase had come from, or who ‘they’ were. It was a kind of concentration, and it was something that Joe knew he shouldn’t be able to do.
Some snippet came to mind, either of a song or a game or a movie or something Joe had once heard. It’s the cheat code to the universe. And maybe that’s what it was. Or maybe, he was just going crazy.
It made his head hurt a little, and it got worse the more he tried to push it.
But when he concentrated that way, he saw things. He saw, well, he guessed they were auras, or something like that. He saw them in the book that he had gotten from the library, and something in the magic shop made him want to see the auras there too.
And there were auras there. Oh, yeah, there were auras there. Everything in the shop pointed to a plain-looking rug which had been tacked up on the back wall. There was nothing special about the rug normally, but its aura actually spelled out a message: “special delivery.”
Joe cleared his throat in what he hoped was a manly-sounding way, and continued deeper into the back room. The light was low, like candlelight, and as he rounded another corner, he saw that he was not alone.
A man was sitting at a table with a clipboard and a pen. He was apparently examining the contents of a crate and noting the inventory onto his clipboard. The man appeared to be a Native American, and old too, probably seventy years old at least. Next to the crate was a small lantern, which provided the only light.
The man looked up and smiled a very wise, old smile, “Good afternoon.” He set the clipboard down on the table and devoted his full attention to Joe.
“Yeah, hey, how ya’ doing?” Joe felt somewhat relieved. He had figured he would get back here to find a half-snake woman behind a screen or bunch of guys in turbans chanting to three glowing stones. But an old guy with a clipboard? He could handle that.
“This is your first time here.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Um…yep.” Joe looked around the room, wondering if he was supposed to bow or something.
The old man seemed like he was trying to put Joe at ease. “This is your first time shopping like this?”
“No, I’ve been shopping lots of times. Um…what’s up with the special delivery thing you got going out front?”
The old man smiled again. “A…crude but effective method of finding our customers. Please have a seat. Allow me to explain.”
Joe eyed the chair suspiciously, and sat down on the corner of the seat. The old man cleared his throat and continued. “I am what is known as a Dealer. I buy and sell merchandise that is magical in nature.”
Joe realized he was holding his breath, and he forced himself to breath out.
“Since this is your first time working with a Dealer, I will explain a couple of things to you. First, Dealers never get involved in other people’s affairs. Dealers are always neutral. I want you to understand that. Any problems you have, are your problems, and they are not my concern.”
Joe could think of about twelve smart remarks to follow that line, but he just nodded and listened. The old man was soft-spoken, and seemed to honestly want to teach Joe something important.
“Second, Dealers don’t take sides. If you have an enemy, I will sell you items which might aid you against him. But, even five minutes later, I would sell your enemy items to aid him against you. To do business with a Dealer, you must accept that.”
Joe nodded. “Sure, nothing personal, just business.”
“Third, and this is something which should be unspoken, but in these times bears repeating: Dealers work together with other Dealers. A Dealer is never alone. Understand that, so that any notion of crossing a Dealer in any way in the future is banished from your mind. Such an action would be suicide.” The old man’s tone and smile never wavered.
“Okay, wasn’t planning on it.” Joe squirmed in his seat. He was being threatened by a magic man in the back of a magic room in a magic shop. Yep, just about where he expected to wind up when he got involved with this whole mess.
“And finally, back here, we don’t trade in dollars. For Dealers, blood is the most common currency.”
. . .
“So he sold you a magic hat? How much did you pay for it?” Willie was confused, and more than a little disappointed. He felt like Jack’s mom in Jack and the Beanstalk, when the stupid white kid came back from the store with a bunch of magic beans. He could see why they wouldn’t let a brother back there; there was no point. No black man would get talked into buying a magic hat, regardless of price.
“Um…it’s complicated.” Joe had refused to even talk about the hat on the ride back to the shop. It was only after Brother Cooper had dropped the two of them off back at the Griffon that he would tell Willie anything. And even then he made the poor white kid working there wait outside while the two discussed it.
“Uh-huh….okay, so what’s your magic hat supposed to do?”
“It’s Bigfoot’s Hat!” Joe seemed proud as a pimp as he pulled his new hat from his backpack. The hat looked something like a bowler but more like a beret, but was clearly pretty cheap and unexciting.
“Uh-huh…so you got Bigfoot’s hat. Yeah, Joe, that’s great. Well I got a date tonight---”
“Take my picture! You always carry one of those disposable cameras, right? Take my picture with the hat on!”
Willie smirked. Jeez, this guy was really gone. See, that’s what happens when a boy gets all caught up in these comic books and stuff and doesn’t get out on enough dates. “Sure, Joe, okay I’ll get your picture.” Willie pulled his camera from his jacket pocket. “Alright, smile for the camera---Whoa! Did that guy punch you in the mouth?”
Joe’s smile faded. “Huh?”
“You got blood on your teeth, Joe. Like your gums are bleeding.”
“Oh!” Joe licked his teeth and smiled again. “It’s okay, that won’t show up in the picture.”
"Whatever you say, Joe".
*Click*
Session 3 (5/21/2003) The Magic Shop
Willie was definitely going to have to get his car soon. He normally didn’t mind bumming rides off of people, especially the preacher, but Willie was not liking riding three guys in the front seat of a pickup, and definitely not with this comic book boy up beside him. Willie somehow had agreed to ride in the middle, and now he had the preacher’s more-than-adequate size on his left driving, and Joe’s big ol’ butt taking up the entire right side of the car.
“Joe, will you move your big butt over? And what is that smell?”
“Oh, yeah, my stomach’s been a little upset since last night. Here, I’ll roll down a window.”
“You can’t,” the preacher admitted. “Window’s busted. I can’t roll it up or down except at home with a pair of---Wooo! Joseph! What did you eat?”
With his eyes watering, Willie saw the sign up ahead, in a little strip mall. “There’s the store. Get the truck pulled over. Get me out of this thing! That’s it, Joe, you’re riding in the back on the way home.”
“Alright, alright, I see how you’re gonna be. I’ll remember this,” Joe muttered as he plopped out of the truck into the parking lot.
Willie gratefully slid out of the truck and took a breath of fresh air. Now, he could get a good look at this magic shop. From the front, it didn’t look like much. There was no sign up yet, just a temporary plastic banner, and in the front window, he could see numerous cardboard boxes in various states of unpacking. After catching his breath, he noted, “Doesn’t look like much from the outside.”
Brother Cooper nodded in agreement. “What do you think, Joseph---”
Willie turned as he heard a little bell clink. The sound came from the front door of the shop, where Joe had already gone in.
“Well,” Brother Cooper continued. “I suppose Joseph has a good idea. Perhaps we should not all go in at once, so as to attract less attention.”
“Alright, well, I have no problem pretending like I don’t know him,” Willie grinned, and after a few more seconds, the two of them headed through the door.
Inside, the shop was full of trinkets. Candles, oils, and books made up the vast majority of the inventory, although there were plenty of other ways to waste money. One wall was covered in ornamental jewelry, knives, swords, and various metal goods. Another was covered in clothing, ranging from hemp woven shirts to velvet robes. The place smelled heavily of incense, and New Age music was playing over the sound system.
There were no other customers there except for Joe, and there was only one employee present. A teenage Native American girl, working behind the counter. She was looking across the room at Joe, who was standing in the middle of one of the aisles apparently reading a book. She turned to Willie as he came in, and he turned on the charm.
Fishing for information, when you weren’t really sure what you were looking for, was a tricky business. The right attitude with your subject was critical, and Willie was an expert with the ladies. He turned on Devilish Grin Just Between You and Me and gave the counter girl his full attention. “Hey, baby, how you doin’?”
Obviously, the wrong way to go. The girl turned cold on him, and asked point blank, “Can I help you find something, sir?”
“Oh, well, baby, you know, I’m just having a look around---”
“Let me know if you need anything, then.” She cut him off and moved over to where Brother Cooper was examining a collection of books. She began to talk to him, and apparently he was keeping her interest.
Willie pretended to examine a shelf full of crystals, and snuck a peek over at Joe. The fat guy looked like he was lost in a daze somewhere, staring ahead across the room and looking like a baby trying to mess its diaper. Willie wasn’t sure what to make of that, and maneuvered back closer to the preacher to check in with him.
Brother Cooper was questioning the girl. “So I see this Buddhist text here, and this necro-gnomish book here, but I don’t see any Christian books anywhere. Now, don’t you feel that you ought to be offering some alternatives to these belief systems here?”
Willie stealthily took a step backwards, deciding that was not a conversation he wanted to be involved in. He pretended to be engrossed in a fine selection of Tibetan wind-chimes when the salesgirl came back over to check on him. “Finding everything okay, sir?”
Willie gave her his best Friendly Confused Guy Needing Female Attention, “Thank you, baby, yeah, I’m looking for some of these for my mother, who is very into these, uh…wind chimes.”
The girl stopped and eyed him suspiciously, then he saw her bite. She shrugged one shoulder and started in, “Well, these are from Tibet and they are called---”
“I need a special delivery, please.” Joe interrupted and tapped the poor girl furiously on the shoulder.
The girl nodded knowingly and pointed to the back. “The door there in the back. You can go on in.”
Joe looked confused for a moment, then nodded, and headed towards the back door.
The girl returned to Willie’s assistance. “Sorry, as I was saying, these are not really wind chimes, they’re called---”
“Um, hey baby, I think I need a special delivery too.” Willie offered, trying to look convincing.
“---and the monks there use them…No, you don’t, sir...do you want to hear about the monks?”
“Well, no, I would like a special delivery. I would like to go see the inventory in the back room.”
“I’m sorry, sir. That’s no possible. If there is nothing else I can show you out here then?”
“Oh, I see. Is it because he’s white? Oh, I get it! The white guy can go in the back, but not the black guy! I see how it is!”
The girl folded her arms across her chest. Unfortunately, the only other person here was Brother Cooper, and this kind of thing didn’t work so well when there wasn’t a crowd there to see it.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave the store please, sir.”
“What?!”
. . .
Joe was hearing the Halloween theme playing in his head as he walked into the back room. He gripped the strap of his backpack a little more tightly as his eyes adjusted to the dim light. There were stacks of boxes and crates crowding the room, leaving a narrow path which lead further back into their depths. The room smelled heavily of dust and cardboard.
Joe wasn’t so much scared by the back room, though. He was more than a little scared by how he knew the password to get into the back room. He couldn’t really explain it, and he knew he should be able to if he was going to do it.
There was something, a certain state of mind, a kind of unnatural concentration, that he had felt several times, when he was putting together his book over the past couple of nights. ‘Thinking like they think’ kept coming to mind, but he didn’t know where the phrase had come from, or who ‘they’ were. It was a kind of concentration, and it was something that Joe knew he shouldn’t be able to do.
Some snippet came to mind, either of a song or a game or a movie or something Joe had once heard. It’s the cheat code to the universe. And maybe that’s what it was. Or maybe, he was just going crazy.
It made his head hurt a little, and it got worse the more he tried to push it.
But when he concentrated that way, he saw things. He saw, well, he guessed they were auras, or something like that. He saw them in the book that he had gotten from the library, and something in the magic shop made him want to see the auras there too.
And there were auras there. Oh, yeah, there were auras there. Everything in the shop pointed to a plain-looking rug which had been tacked up on the back wall. There was nothing special about the rug normally, but its aura actually spelled out a message: “special delivery.”
Joe cleared his throat in what he hoped was a manly-sounding way, and continued deeper into the back room. The light was low, like candlelight, and as he rounded another corner, he saw that he was not alone.
A man was sitting at a table with a clipboard and a pen. He was apparently examining the contents of a crate and noting the inventory onto his clipboard. The man appeared to be a Native American, and old too, probably seventy years old at least. Next to the crate was a small lantern, which provided the only light.
The man looked up and smiled a very wise, old smile, “Good afternoon.” He set the clipboard down on the table and devoted his full attention to Joe.
“Yeah, hey, how ya’ doing?” Joe felt somewhat relieved. He had figured he would get back here to find a half-snake woman behind a screen or bunch of guys in turbans chanting to three glowing stones. But an old guy with a clipboard? He could handle that.
“This is your first time here.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Um…yep.” Joe looked around the room, wondering if he was supposed to bow or something.
The old man seemed like he was trying to put Joe at ease. “This is your first time shopping like this?”
“No, I’ve been shopping lots of times. Um…what’s up with the special delivery thing you got going out front?”
The old man smiled again. “A…crude but effective method of finding our customers. Please have a seat. Allow me to explain.”
Joe eyed the chair suspiciously, and sat down on the corner of the seat. The old man cleared his throat and continued. “I am what is known as a Dealer. I buy and sell merchandise that is magical in nature.”
Joe realized he was holding his breath, and he forced himself to breath out.
“Since this is your first time working with a Dealer, I will explain a couple of things to you. First, Dealers never get involved in other people’s affairs. Dealers are always neutral. I want you to understand that. Any problems you have, are your problems, and they are not my concern.”
Joe could think of about twelve smart remarks to follow that line, but he just nodded and listened. The old man was soft-spoken, and seemed to honestly want to teach Joe something important.
“Second, Dealers don’t take sides. If you have an enemy, I will sell you items which might aid you against him. But, even five minutes later, I would sell your enemy items to aid him against you. To do business with a Dealer, you must accept that.”
Joe nodded. “Sure, nothing personal, just business.”
“Third, and this is something which should be unspoken, but in these times bears repeating: Dealers work together with other Dealers. A Dealer is never alone. Understand that, so that any notion of crossing a Dealer in any way in the future is banished from your mind. Such an action would be suicide.” The old man’s tone and smile never wavered.
“Okay, wasn’t planning on it.” Joe squirmed in his seat. He was being threatened by a magic man in the back of a magic room in a magic shop. Yep, just about where he expected to wind up when he got involved with this whole mess.
“And finally, back here, we don’t trade in dollars. For Dealers, blood is the most common currency.”
. . .
“So he sold you a magic hat? How much did you pay for it?” Willie was confused, and more than a little disappointed. He felt like Jack’s mom in Jack and the Beanstalk, when the stupid white kid came back from the store with a bunch of magic beans. He could see why they wouldn’t let a brother back there; there was no point. No black man would get talked into buying a magic hat, regardless of price.
“Um…it’s complicated.” Joe had refused to even talk about the hat on the ride back to the shop. It was only after Brother Cooper had dropped the two of them off back at the Griffon that he would tell Willie anything. And even then he made the poor white kid working there wait outside while the two discussed it.
“Uh-huh….okay, so what’s your magic hat supposed to do?”
“It’s Bigfoot’s Hat!” Joe seemed proud as a pimp as he pulled his new hat from his backpack. The hat looked something like a bowler but more like a beret, but was clearly pretty cheap and unexciting.
“Uh-huh…so you got Bigfoot’s hat. Yeah, Joe, that’s great. Well I got a date tonight---”
“Take my picture! You always carry one of those disposable cameras, right? Take my picture with the hat on!”
Willie smirked. Jeez, this guy was really gone. See, that’s what happens when a boy gets all caught up in these comic books and stuff and doesn’t get out on enough dates. “Sure, Joe, okay I’ll get your picture.” Willie pulled his camera from his jacket pocket. “Alright, smile for the camera---Whoa! Did that guy punch you in the mouth?”
Joe’s smile faded. “Huh?”
“You got blood on your teeth, Joe. Like your gums are bleeding.”
“Oh!” Joe licked his teeth and smiled again. “It’s okay, that won’t show up in the picture.”
"Whatever you say, Joe".
*Click*
