Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town

by Cory Doctorow

seemed to know all this stuff. I thought that once I knewenough secrets, I'd be like them.

  "I don't want to learn secrets anymore, Andrew." She shrugged off hisarm and took a faltering step down the slope, back toward the road.

  "I'll wait in the car, okay?"

  "Mimi," he said. He felt angry at her. How could she be so selfish as tohave a crisis *now*, *here*, at this place that meant so much to him?

  "Mimi," he said, and swallowed his anger.

  #

  His three brothers stayed on his sofa for a week, though they only leftone wet towel on the floor, only left one sticky plate in the sink, onefingerprint-smudged glass on the counter.

  He'd just opened his first business, the junk shop -- not yet upscaleenough to be called an antiques shop -- and he was pulling the kinds oflong hours known only to ER interns and entrepreneurs, showing up at 7to do the books, opening at 10, working until three, then turning thingsover to a minimum-wage kid for two hours while he drove to the city'sthrift shops and picked for inventory, then working until eight to catchthe evening trade, then answering creditors and fighting with thelandlord until ten, staggering into bed at eleven to sleep a few hoursbefore doing it all over again.

  So he gave them a set of keys and bought them a MetroPass and stuffed anold wallet with $200 in twenties and wrote his phone number on the brim

  of a little pork pie hat that looked good on their head and turned themloose on the city.

  The shop had all the difficulties of any shop -- snarky customers,shoplifting teenagers, breakage, idiots with jumpy dogs, never enoughmoney and never enough time. He loved it. Every stinking minute ofit. He'd never gone to bed happier and never woken up more full ofenergy in his life. He was in the world, finally, at last.

  Until his brothers arrived.

  He took them to the store the first morning, showed them what he'dwrought with his own two hands. Thought that he'd inspire them to seewhat they could do when they entered the world as well, after they'dgone home and grown up a little. Which they would have to do very soon,as he reminded them at every chance, unmoved by George's hangdogexpression at the thought.

  They'd walked around the shop slowly, picking things up, turning themover, having hilarious, embarrassing conversations about the likelypurpose of an old Soloflex machine, a grubby pink Epilady leg razor, aBakelite coffee carafe.

  The arguments went like this:

  George: Look, it's a milk container!

  Ed: I don't think that that's for milk.

  Fred: You should put it down before you drop it, it looks valuable.

  George: Why don't you think it's for milk? Look at the silver inside,that's to reflect off the white milk and make it look, you know, coldand fresh.

  Fred: Put it down, you're going to break it.

  George: Fine, I'll put it down, but tell me, why don't you think it'sfor milk?

  Ed: Because it's a thermos container, and that's to keep hot stuff hot,and it's got a screwtop and whatever it's made of looks like it'd take ahard knock without breaking.

  And so on, nattering at each other like cave men puzzling over awalkman, until Alan was called upon to settle the matter with theauthoritative answer.

  It got so that he set his alarm for four a.m. so that he could sneakpast their snoring form on the sofa and so avoid the awkward, desperatepleas to let them come with him into the shop and cadge a free breakfastof poutine and eggs from the Harvey's next door while they were atit. George had taken up coffee on his second day in the city, buggingthe other two until they got him a cup, six or seven cups a day, so thatthey flitted from place to place like a hummingbird, thrashed in theirsleep, babbled when they spoke.

  It came to a head on the third night, when they dropped by the shopwhile he was on the phone and ducked into the back room in order toseparate into threes again, with George wearing the pork pie hat eventhough it was a size too big for his head and hung down around his ears.

  Adam was talking to a woman who'd come into the shop that afternoon andgreatly admired an institutional sofa from the mid-seventies whose linesbetrayed a pathetic slavish devotion to Danish Moderne aesthetics. Thewoman had sat on the sofa, admired the sofa, walked around the sofa,hand trailing on its back, had been fascinated to see the provenancehe'd turned up, an inventory sticker from the University of Torontomaintenance department indicating that this sofa had originally beeninstalled at the Robarts Library, itself of great and glorious aestheticobsolescence.

  Here was Adam on the phone with this woman, closing a deal to turn a$3,000 profit on an item he'd acquired at the Goodwill As-Is Center for

  five bucks, and here were his brothers, in the store, angry aboutsomething, shouting at each other about something. They ran around likethree fat lunatics, reeking of the BO that they exuded like the ass endof a cow: Loud, boorish, and indescribably weird. Weird beyond thequaint weirdness of his little curiosity show. Weird beyond theinteresting weirdness of the punks and the goths and the mods who werewearing their subcultures like political affiliations as they strolledby the shops. Those were redeemable weirds, weirds within the bounds ofnormal human endeavor. His brothers, on the other hand, were utterly,utterly irredeemable.

  He sank down behind the counter as George said something to Fred intheir own little shorthand language, a combination of grunts andnonsense syllables that the three had spoken together for so long thathe'd not even noticed it until they were taken out of their context andput in his. He put his back against the wall and brought his chest tohis knees and tried to sound like he had a belly button as he said tothe woman, "Yes, absolutely, I can have this delivered tomorrow if you'dlike to courier over a check."

  This check, it was enough money to keep his business afloat for another30 days, to pay his rent and pay the minimum-wage kid and buy hisgroceries. And there were his brothers, and now Ed was barking like adog -- a rare moment of mirth from him, who had been the sober outerbark since he was a child and rarely acted like the 17-year-old he wasbehaving like today.

  "Is everything all right?" she said down the phone, this woman who'dbeen smartly turned out in a cashmere sweater and a checked scarf and apair of boot-cut jeans that looked new and good over her designer shoeswith little heels. They'd flirted a little, even though she was at leastten years older than him, because flirting was a new thing for Alan, andhe'd discovered that he wasn't bad at it.

  "Everything is fine," he said. "Just some goofballs out in the streetout front. How about if I drop off the sofa for six o'clock?"

  "KILLED HER, CUT HER UP, SLICED HER OPEN," George screeched suddenly,skidding around the counter, rolling past him, yanking the phone out ofthe wall.

  And in that moment, he realized what the sounds they had been making intheir private speech had been: They had been a reenactment, a grunting,squeaking playback of the day, the fateful day, the day he'd taken hisknife and done his mischief with it.

  He reached for the phone cable and plugged it back into the wall, but itwas as though his hand were moving of its own accord, because hisattention was focused elsewhere, on the three of them arrayed in atriangle, as they had been on the hillside, as they had been when theyhad chanted at him when the knife grip was sure in the palm of hishands.

  The ritual -- that's what it was, it was a *ritual* -- the ritual hadthe feel of something worn smooth with countless repetitions. He foundhimself rigid with shock, offended to his bones. This was what they didnow, in the cave, with Davey sitting atop their mother, black andshriveled, this was how they behaved, running through this reenactmentof his great shame, of the day Danny died?

  No wonder Darrel had terrorized them out of their home. They were beyondodd and eccentric, they were -- unfit. Unfit for polite company. Forhuman society.

  The phone in his hand rang. It was the woman.

  "You know, I'm thinking that maybe I should come back in with a tapemeasure and measure up the sofa before I commit to it. It's a lot ofmoney, and to be honest, I just don't know if I have room --"

  "What i
f I measure it for you? I could measure it for you and call youback with the numbers." The three brothers stared at him with identicalglassy, alien stares.

  "That's okay. I can come in," and he knew that she meant, *I won't evercome in again.*

  "What if I bring it by anyway? I could bring it by tomorrow night andyou could see it and make up your mind. No obligation."

  "That's very kind of you, but I'm afraid that I'll be out tomorrowevening --"

  "Friday? I could come by Friday --" He was trying to remember how toflirt now, but he couldn't. "I could come by and we could have a glassof wine or something," and he knew he'd said the exact wrong thing.

  "It's all right," she said coldly. "I'll come by later in the week tohave another