Mind Prey

dead?”
    Wolfe’s mouth tightened in a line that might have indicated disgust. “Get away from me,” she said. She brushed at him with one hand and started down the hall toward Manette’s office. “Just get away.”
    But as he was going out the door, she shouted down the hall, “Who told you that? George? Did George tell you that?”
     
    L UCAS HIT A game store in Dinkytown, near the campus of the University of Minnesota, another on Snelling Avenue in St. Paul, then dropped down to South Minneapolis.
    Erewhon was run by Marcus Paloma, a refugee from the days of LSD and peyote tea. The shop was just off Chicago, a few blocks below Lake, surrounded by small stucco houses painted in postwar pastels, all crumbling into their crabgrass lawns.
    Lucas parked and ambled toward the shop. The cool, rain-washed air felt alive around him, the streets clear of their usual dust, the leaves of the trees burning like neon.
    The shop was exactly the opposite: dim, musty, a little dusty. Bins of comics in plastic sleeves pressed against boxes of used role-playing and war games. Lucite racks of metallic miniatures—trolls, wizards, thieves, fighters, clerics, and goblins—guarded the cash register counter.
    Marcus Paloma was gaunt, with a goatee and heavy glasses. His thinning gray hair was worn bouffant; he was dressed in a gray sweatsuit with Nike cross-training shoes. He’d once finished eighth in the St. Paul Marathon. “I got a concept,” he shouted down the store, past the bins of comics, when he saw Lucas. “I’m gonna make a million bucks.”
    John Mail was sitting in a folding chair, looking through a cardboard box of used D&D modules. He glanced down the store at Lucas, and then looked back into the box. Two other gamers, one of each sex, looked up when Paloma shouted at Lucas.
    “A feminist role-playing game, modelled on Dungeons and Dragons,” Paloma said, gradually moderating his voice as he walked toward Lucas. “Set in prehistoric times, but dealing with problems like heterosexual mating and childbirth in an essentially lesbian-oriented setting. I’m calling it The Nest.”
    Lucas laughed. “Marcus, everything you know about feminism, you could write on the back of a fuckin’ postage stamp with a laundry pen,” he said.
    The female gamer said, “Profanity is a sign of ignorance,” and faced him, waiting to be challenged.
    Marcus, coming up the store, said, “That was an obscenity, sweetheart, not a profanity. Get your shit straight. That’s a vulgarity, by the way—shit is.” To Lucas, he said, “How you been? Shoot anybody lately?”
    “Not for several days,” Lucas said. They shook, and Lucas added, “You’re looking good.”
    “Thanks.” Marcus’s face was its usual dusty gray. “I’m watching my diet. I’ve eliminated all fats except a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil, on salad, at noon.”
    “Yeah?”
    “Yeah. Could you sign some stock since you’re here?”
    “Sure.”
    “Hey, are you Davenport?” the female gamer asked. She was a dark-haired high school senior, quivering with caffeine.
    “Yes.”
    “I’ve got Blades at home, I’d love you to sign it.”
    “You still got the book on that?” Marcus asked the girl.
    “Sure,” the girl said.
    “I’ll get him to sign a book on a used one, and you bring yours in, and we’ll trade,” Marcus said.
    “Dude,” said the girl.
    “Marcus, we gotta go in the back,” Lucas said. “I need to talk for a minute.”
    “All right, let me get those games.” He stepped over to the cash register stand, took a half-dozen boxes off a rack, walked to the used bin and picked up two more, and led Lucas down the length of the store into the back. Just before ducking through a gray curtain into his office, he called back to the girl, “Keep an eye on the desk, will you, Carol?”
    The office was filled with cardboard shipping boxes. A rolltop desk was shoved into a corner, buried under ten pounds of unopened junk mail. There were three chairs, one overstuffed and comfortable, two folding, covered with green vinyl. The room smelled of old newsprint and slightly stale cat food. A fat red tabby was lying on the back ledge of the rolltop. The cat looked at Lucas, and Lucas’s gray silk suit, and seemed to think about it.
    “Sit down,” Paloma said, waving one hand expansively. “Damn cat is sitting on my orders. Get off of there, Bennie.”
    They talked the games business for a minute or two—who was winning, who was losing,