“I read them all.” Tim opened his blazer, displaying a graphic book cover T-shirt. “That’s why I’m here.”
“Your reading taste stopped in middle school, did it?” Sam asked.
Tim smiled, either unoffended or too well-mannered to let it show. Frustrating, that. “Gross-out humor and cheap thrills, that was me.”
“I never read them, either,” Dee confessed.
“His earlier stuff is better. I’ll loan you one,” Tim said.
Point to him, Sam thought. If anyone was keeping score.
They went inside and found four seats together. Sam sat on the aisle. Dee was next to him, Reeti on her other side. Not Tim, Sam noticed with satisfaction.
There were the usual droning introductions before Oscar Diggs bounded to the lectern, a gnomish little man with wispy hair and sharp eyes.
“Snakes. Spiders. Monsters. Death.” He twinkled around at the audience. “These are human fears. Universal fears. My Irish granny used to tell me bedtime stories about banshees and hobgoblins.” Diggs chuckled. “No wonder I had nightmares as a child.”
The audience laughed politely.
He was a bit of a humbug, Sam thought. Like every tourist who had a great-grandmother from the old country and thought that made them Irish. He saw them in the shop all the time.
“As adults, we know that what we really fear is extinction,” Diggs continued. “Not simply loss of life, but loss of self, loss of control, loss of connection, all the things that make life worth living. And this, my dear friends, is the stuff of fiction, from Shakespeare and Orwell to horror greats like Stephen King. Even littlestories such as mine can reveal not just the boogeyman hiding in the closet but our own monstrous insecurities.”
Sam slouched in his seat, watching Dee’s profile. Better that than listening to some stranger talk about primal fears and man’s evolutionary instincts.
Diggs knew how to play to his audience, though. He skipped nimbly from haunted houses toThe Walking Dead, from campfire tales about ghosts and serial killers to modern anxieties about climate change and system collapse.
“Fear is cathartic. To be scared from the safety of the couch or reading under the covers at night...” He waved his hands, winding up for the big finish. “What could be more fun? But the story is not the fear. The story is about surviving the danger. About facing your fears. About defeating your monsters!”
Lots of clapping for that.
The audience rose like a flock of pigeons, flapping, cooing, and puffing their chests. The tweens surged forward. Diggs perched on the edge of the stage, signing books and posing for selfies.
The four of them left the hall together. Somehow, without much discussion or decision, they found their way to a pub near campus, Sam swept up and pulled along like a leaf in the gutter.
He went out sometimes. He didn’t spend every night working, reading behind the register, or alone in his room. But this felt different from grabbing a drink with his mates or scouting for a spot of sex.
The pub was all right, eighteenth-century exposed beams and flat-screens over the bar. A few creatures of the night on the prowl, a girl group celebrating a birthday, posh lads with beards or beanies throwing darts. Tim bought a round of overpriced drinks. Sam nursed his Guinness, listening to the others talk.
They were all so bloody secure in their privilege, confident in their opinions and their right to be heard. Even Dee.
She sat with her drink—white wine, terrible choice—her face shining in the golden glow of the bar. “Wasn’t he paraphrasing Neil Gaiman at the end? That stuff about facing your fears?”
“FromCoraline,” Tim said. Trying to impress, the sod. “ ‘Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.’ ”
Sam absolutely did not need to show off. He had nothing to prove to anybody. “It was Chesterton,” he said. “Originally.”
“What?” Reeti asked.
“The quote. ‘The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.’ ” He took a sip of Guinness. “G. K. Chesterton.”
Dee grinned at him. She was a nice person. Too good for him. He pushed the thought away.
Tim inclined his head, acknowledging the point. “Another case of great artists steal, lesser artists copy.”
“Who said that?” Reeti demanded.
“Steve Jobs,” Tim said at the same time Sam replied, “Picasso.”
