The contract said she’d be bound to the store for the rest of her life and into eternity. Should she default on her commitments, her firstborn child would have to finish out her term.
“Ha, ha,” she said dryly. “Now where’s the tax stuff and that document I have to sign guaranteeing that I’m not an illegal immigrant.”
Spider frowned at her. He took the calligraphed parchment back and slipped it in a book.
“I told Dave a girl wouldn’t be any fun,” Spider said as he pulled out the other forms.
“Dave?” she said. “Is that the man who hired me?”
Spider’s eyes widened. “You don’t know?”
She repressed the urge to sigh. She had a feeling she’d be doing that a lot during her first day at work.
“I’m new to town,” she said.
“I thought your mom was a Bunny,” he said.
She did remember mentioning that the night before. “I’m new,” she said. “My family’s been here off and on since the 1920s.”
He nodded. “People can’t stay away. Home is home, particularly when it’s weird, like this place.”
“Lake Geneva is weird?” she asked.
He did that eye-widening thing again. “You don’t know?”
She shrugged.
“It’d be weird without the gamers. I mean, first you have the rich Chicagoans, like Wrigley and those guys, all coming here for second homes. Then the gangsters showed up. This place was the hottest town on the planet during Prohibition.”
He slid that book under the counter. Jen filled in the forms while she listened.
“Then,” he said, “you have Yerkes Observatory, so scientists made pilgrimages here—even Einstein. There’s a picture of him over there with some of the locals.”
Spider waved his hand at the wall.
“Then, of course, Hefner—who was a rich Chicago guy—gets the bright idea to open the Playboy Club here. Every celebrity on the planet shows up, plus all the feminazis—pardon my French—who want to protest the mistreatment of women. Which, as you know, being a hereditary Bunny—”
At which point he looked pointedly at her chest.
“—wasn’t mistreatment at all.”
Jen felt her cheeks color.
“We had Bunnies,” Spider was saying, “and gangsters and then we got dragons.”
“Dragons,” Jen said, wishing she’d never started him on this conversation.
“You know. This is the birthplace of D&D. E. Gary Gygax—he just died—started the whole role-playing thing here in his basement. And even though he lost the company in the mid-eighties to some corporation, everyone still associates it with us. We used to have the biggest gaming convention in the world right here. Of course, it got too big for us and we had to move it to Milwaukee, but still.”
Spider was grinning at her.
“A lot of the artists still live here, and some of the writers, and a bunch of the gamers. We have a big fantasy community.”
“Sounds like it,” Jen said. Sounded like the whole place existed on fantasy. Gangsters, big-breasted women, and dragons.
Her head was beginning to hurt.
“The guys who hired you last night, some people say they’ve been around since Gygax’s basement.” Spider put his elbows on the counter. “Some say they existed before the basement, and Gygax used them for inspiration. You think that’s true?”
“I have no idea,” she said, sounding as confused as she felt.
Spider sighed. “Oh, that’s right. Dave says you don’t play. We probably should roll you up a character and get you going.”
“I’d . . . um . . . rather see the whole store,” she said. “Learn my duties. Figure out what I’m supposed to be doing.”
“Playing is part of your duties,” Spider said. “Eventually, you’ll run your own game. It’ll be up to you whether you do it online or on paper. Some of the older guys, they prefer dice and graph paper. Me, I use a combination of both.”
She nodded, not understanding again. He was going to fast for her.
“As for the whole store,” he said, “you’ll never see all of it. Although you’ve already seen more of it than I have.”
“I have?” she asked.
“You just walked in, right?” Spider asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “Is that a problem?”
“After six, right?”
She nodded.
“Man,” he said. “Then you saw the back room.”
“No,” she said. “I didn’t see the room. I just saw the door.”
She gestured toward it, then started.
There was no door. Just a wall with little metal figurines in plastic packaging hanging from wire racks.
“Do you replace those wire racks in the morning?” she asked.
He looked at the packages. “There’s nothing behind that,” he said. “Believe me, I’ve looked.”
“Okay,” she said, beginning to feel annoyed. If hiding information from her made him feel superior, then so be it. She wasn’t going to argue.
But she did hope that after she had learned the job, she wouldn’t have to work anywhere near the day manager.
“Look,” he said. “Let’s start over. Give me the paperwork, and then we’ll have lunch, okay?”
“Okay.” When it came time to order lunch, she’d just get a Coke or something.
He took the completed sheets from her. “Before I file these, you should know that if you make extra money in a game, then you’ll have to declare it.”
“Money in a game?” she asked. “Like poker?”
“Didn’t Dave mention treasure?” Spider asked.
“Yes, but . . .” she let her voice trail off. She’d thought he was kidding.
“If you don’t fill this stuff out, if you let them pay you under the table, then you don’t give the government thirty-one percent.”
“I’ve never given them thirty-one percent,” Jen said. “Only rich people do that.”
He looked at her sideways. “Well, duh,” he said. And then he laughed.
The first two hours of her employment were dedicated to the art and science of multi-sided dice. She learned what they were, how to identify them, and how to tell the collectible die from the average die.
Then Spider surprised her. He said, “Are you hungry?” and before she could answer, he clapped his hands together.
Bread, cheese, ham, and a pitcher of the sweetest smelling water she’d ever encountered appeared on one of the tables, along with enough plates for everyone in the shop, and enough glasses as well.
She looked at Spider open-mouthed. “How did you do that?”
He shrugged. “It rubs off. I don’t know how.”
“What rubs off?” she asked.
“The magic,” he said. “I’ve been playing a wizard forever.”
“You’re a wizard?”
“Not in real life,” he said. “In the game.”
She couldn’t tell if he actually believed that or if he was just messing with her mind. She kept her voice dry as she said, “So you acquired the ability to make lunch simply appear.”
He grinned. “Small magic, but effective. Are you impressed?”
In spite of herself, she was. She became even more impressed when she tasted the bread which had more flavor than fresh-baked. The ham had a richness she hadn’t expected, and the cheese had so much bite that she almost grimaced. But the water cut the sharpness.
It was the best meal she’d had in years.
“What do I owe you for the food?” she asked when she finished, dreading the answer.
“Nothing,” he said. “Nobody ever gets charged for the food.”
He waved his hand toward the other patrons. They were all eating as well.
“Is it part of the job?” she asked.
“When I’m here,” he said. “You can make it a perk too, if you want. Depends on what your character does.”
“My character?” she asked.
“We hav
e to roll you a character, remember?”
She did now. But she hoped she could avoid that. She didn’t want to play anything.
Maybe she could put it off. She’d put off unpleasant tasks in jobs before.
“This is great food,” she said.
Spider grinned at her, clearly pleased, and for the rest of the day said nothing else about playing games.
The rest of the week went the same way—learning some esoteric part of this esoteric business, eating an excellent lunch followed by an even better dinner, then heading back to her van for sleep. She hadn’t gotten her first paycheck yet, and even when she did, she wouldn’t have enough ready cash to rent an apartment.
Part of her hoped she wouldn’t have to. If her great-grandfather’s house was in halfway decent condition, she’d move in. She might even be able to get the utilities up and running without having someone contact her parents.
But she had to see the place first.
Lake Geneva, like most bigger towns, now required first and last and a deposit before she could even move in. With that large a sum of money, she could probably buy a house.
The house was located near a part of the lake called the Narrows, and took her nearly a week to find. None of the locals would tell her where the house was located, even though they seemed to know.
When she mentioned to Spider that no one would tell her where her family’s old house was, he shrugged.
“Too many rich folks up here,” he said. “The librarian might think you’re paparazzi or something.”
She laughed, but he didn’t. Instead, he told her to look in Newport of the West.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“A series of books the historical society put out in the 1970s on the historic homes. If your house is famous enough to be secret, it might be in there.”
She found the books with little effort. It took only a half an hour to find the listing for her great-grandfather’s house.
Initially, it had been called Kingston. But when he’d purchased it in 1925, he changed the name to Rosehay, a slight pun on the name Roshaye.
She had seen a listing for Rosehay in all kinds of publications. It was a well-known landmark, easily visible from the center of the lake.
On her first day off, she got into her grimiest clothes, and drove the van along the rabbit paths that wound through the historic houses along the lake until she found one marked “Rosehay.”
The lane was so badly overgrown that she couldn’t drive up it. She slathered on the mosquito repellant even though it was spring, took an ax that she kept in the back of her van, hooked her knife to her belt, and headed into the wilderness.
She hacked her way along, sweating despite the spring chill. She wasn’t able to get to the house, but after a few hours, she could finally see it, a four-story tower rising above the greenery like Rapunzel’s prison.
She climbed on a rock and peered over the bushes and shrubs and landscaping gone awry, and felt her breath catch.
Rosehay itself was a single building, bigger than any private home she had ever seen outside of photographs. The building itself partially obscured the tower, but she had a sense of its size and its former elegance.
Even from this distance, she could see that windows were missing and shingles had blown off the roof. After years in the harsh Wisconsin weather, she wondered what the interior would look like—if it had even survived.
But Rosehay wasn’t the only building on the property. She counted at least ten others, including an oval shaped something or other that looked like a racetrack for horses.
Her heart pounded as she contemplated it. A racetrack and stables? Could that even be possible? She wasn’t certain. The history of the house in the book was purposefully vague, saying that the current owner (her great-grandfather) wouldn’t let anyone inspect the grounds.
The book did have pictures of the original building with its tower, but made no mention of the other buildings. And it also noted that the building had been added onto in the intervening years, but did not say how.
She would guess, from the view she was staring at, the building had at least doubled in size.
There had to be another way to get to the property. She looked over that landscaping, but wasn’t able to see a path.
And then she realized that the other way glistening the distance.
Rosehay had to be accessible by the lake.
She would hire a boat.
Hiring a boat was easier said than done. The season hadn’t officially started, so the boat rental places wouldn’t open for several more weeks. Spider knew someone with a boat, but he disapproved her going near Rosehay.
“Your skill set isn’t up for it yet,” he said when she asked.
She had gotten used to his quaint way of speaking. That meant, in Spider terms, that he wasn’t going to help her.
Most of her conversations at the store were about the game. The game, she learned, was Dungeons and Dragons—the original version, not World of Warcraft on the computer or the new D&D multiplayer module.
Every regular played some version of the old game. Some of the games, Spider informed her, had been going on for decades with no new blood at all. If a new employee wanted to play—and they all did, Spider said (ignoring the fact that she didn’t)—then they had to start their own game.
He wanted her to start one, but she didn’t know how. So finally, on the fifth full day of her employment, he brought out some charts, colored pens, and multisided dice.
“It’s time you rolled up a character,” he said.
She stared at him. “What if I don’t want to?”
“You’re already playing,” he said. “Wouldn’t you rather know what skills you had instead of going blindly into the dark?”
“I haven’t played anything,” she said.
For the first time since she arrived, he couldn’t be deterred.
“We’ll take it slowly,” he said. “But you are going to roll.”
He gave her a sheet of paper that had been photocopied so many times the words were faint. There was a place for a character name, a personal description, and then characteristics.
Beneath characteristics were these words: Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Constitution, Dexterity, and Charisma. Beside the words were symbols she was just beginning to understand: D6, D12, D24—all referring to a type of die, from a six-sided die (or, as she thought of it, normal dice), a twelve sided die, and so on.
She picked up the appropriate dice and rolled when Spider told her to.
After a few minutes, she had numbers beside each characteristic.
Spider pulled the paper toward himself and studied it for a moment. Then he frowned at her.
“I gotta talk to Dave,” he said, and took the paper with him.
She didn’t see Spider for the rest of the day.
But she did have a great memory for numbers, so about closing time, she pulled a few of the older customers to the counter.
She had written down her scores along with the words that they went with. She showed the scrap to the customers and said, “What does this mean?”
“Old game version. Nice,” said one of the regulars. “Great character.”
“Wow,” said another. “I’d love this character.”
“You obviously understand it,” she said. “I don’t. What is this?”
“A thief,” said another man. “A mighty thief, the kind you’d want in any party. Can open any door, can steal anything. Dexterity off the charts and that charisma! Unusual for a thief.”
A younger man peered over his shoulder. “That charisma would get you noticed. You don’t want that in a thief.”
“But useful if you’re going for a big haul,” said the guy who mentioned thieving.
“Intelligence isn’t bad either. Seems rather high for a thief,” said the young guy. “Means there might be some magic in this character as well.”
“But very little wisdom,” said an older woman. “Isn’
t that just like a thief?”
They all laughed and went about their business. Jen stared at the numbers she’d scrawled and wondered what it was about them that had so upset Spider.
It would be another day before she found out.
She spent the morning of that day studying satellite images of her great-grandfather’s property. They revealed one small path that still looked viable. It came from a neighboring property. From appearances—and really, who could judge from the air?—it seemed like the neighbors preferred Rosehay’s tiny beach to their own.
She figured she could get onto the neighbor’s property. She spent fifty precious cents printing out a color photocopy of the satellite image, and then she went to work.
For the first time since she took the job, Dave sat behind the counter. There were no customers. Spider hovered near the door, as if he had been waiting for her to come in.
Jen’s heart beat faster. This was the point where they told her she had done something wrong. Maybe they would tell her that she was all wrong for the store. Her lack of interest in the games combined with her lack of knowledge probably wasn’t going over well with the customers.
She swallowed hard. She clasped her hands in front of her, so that they wouldn’t shake from nerves.
She hated it when she cared about a job. Caring had caused her more problems in her life than almost anything.
Anything except her family, of course.
Dave smiled at her. He seemed younger. Or maybe it was just the way the thin daylight from the small windows fell across his face. He held an envelope with her name on it.
“Your pay for the week,” Dave said, “plus a bonus.”
A good-bye bonus. Thanks, but no thanks. She nodded and tried not to look disappointed.
“You’ve done better than we thought,” he said. “So we gave you a performance bonus even though you’re not completely enrolled in the game.”
Jen looked down at the envelope he offered her. A bonus? For doing well? She’d never gotten bonus at any job.
“You’ve been storing up questions, I know,” Dave said to her. “Now is the time to ask them.”
Spider wouldn’t met her gaze. It made her uncomfortable. For a week, he’d been the only friend she had in this town, and her source for all information on the game itself.
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