Terry Brooks - Magic Kingdom For Sale Sold

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Terry Brooks - Magic Kingdom For Sale Sold
Magic Kingdom for Sale - Sold! - Terry Brooks
The catalogue was from Rosen's, Ltd. It was the department store's annual
Christmas Wishbook.
It was addressed to Annie.
Ben Holiday stood frozen before the open cubicle of his mailbox, eyes slipping
across the gaily decorated cover of the catalogue to the white address label and
the name of his dead wife. The lobby of the Chicago high rise seemed oddly still
in the graying dusk of the late afternoon rush hour, empty of everyone but the
security guard and himself. Outside, past the line of floor-to-ceiling windows
that fronted the building entry, the autumn wind blew in chill gusts down the
canyon of Michigan Avenue and whispered of winter's coming.
He ran his thumb over the smooth surface of the Wishbook. Annie had loved to
shop, even when the shopping had only been through the mail-order catalogues.
Rosen's had been one of her favorite stores.
Sudden tears filled his eyes. He hadn't gotten over losing her, even after two
years. Sometimes it seemed to him that losing her was nothing more than a trick
of his imagination- that when he came home she would still be there waiting for
him.
He took a deep breath, fighting back against the emotions that were aroused in
him simply by seeing her name on that catalogue cover. It was silly to feel like
this. Nothing could bring her back to him. Nothing could change what had
happened.
His eyes lifted to stare into the dark square of the now empty mailbox. He
remembered what it has been like when he had first learned that she had been
killed. He had just returned from court, a pre-trial on the Microlab case with
old Wilson Frink and his sons. Ben was in his office, thinking of ways to
persuade his opposition, a lawyer named Bates, that his latest offer of
settlement would serve everyone's best interests, when the call had come in.
Annie had been in an accident on the Kennedy. She was at St. Jude's in critical
condition. Could he come right over . . . ?
He shook his head. He could still hear the voice of the doctor telling him what
had happened. The voice had sounded so calm and rational. He had known at once
that Annie was dying. He had known instantly. By the time he had gotten to the
hospital, she was dead. The baby was dead, too. Annie had been only three months
pregnant.
"Mr. Holiday?"
He looked about sharply, startled by the voice. George, the security guard, was
looking over at him from behind the lobby desk.
"Everything all right, sir?"
He nodded and forced a quick smile. "Yes-just thinking about something."
He closed the mailbox door, shoved everything he had taken from it save the
catalogue into one coat pocket and, still gripping the Wishbook in both hands,
moved to the ground-floor elevators. He didn't care for being caught off balance
like that. Maybe it was the lawyer in him.
"Cold day out there," George offered, glancing out into the gray. "Going to be a
tough winter. Lot of snow, they say. Like it was a couple of years ago."
"Looks that way." Ben barely heard him as he glanced down again at the
catalogue. Annie always enjoyed the Christmas Wishbook. She used to read him
promos from some of its more bizarre items. She used to make up stories about
the kind of people who might purchase such things.
Side 1
Terry Brooks - Magic Kingdom For Sale Sold
He pushed the elevator call button and the doors opened immediately.
"Have a nice evening, sir," George called after him.
He rode the elevator to his penthouse suite, shucked off his topcoat, and walked
into the front room, still clutching the catalogue. Shadows draped the
furnishings and dappled the carpeting and walls, but he left the lights off and
stood motionless before the bank of windows that looked out over the sunroof and
the buildings of the city beyond. Lights glimmered through the evening gray,
distant and solitary, each a source of life separate and apart from the
thousands of others.
We are so much of the time alone, he thought. Wasn't it strange?
He looked down again at the catalogue. Why do you suppose they had sent it to
Annie? Why were companies always sending mailers and flyers and free samples and
God-knewwhat-all to people long after they were dead and buried? It was an
intrusion on their privacy. It was an affront. Didn't these companies update
their mailing lists? Or was it simply that they refused ever to give up on a
customer?
He checked his anger and, instead, smiled, bitter, ironic. Maybe he should phone
it all in to Andy Rooney. Let him write about it.
He turned on the lights then and walked over to the wall bar to make himself a
scotch, Glenlivet on the rocks with a splash of water; he measured it out and
sipped at it experimentally. There was a bar meeting in a little less than two
hours, and he had promised Miles that he would make this one. Miles Bennett was
not only his partner, but he was probably his only real friend since Annie's
death. All of the others had drifted away somehow, lost in the shufflings and
rearrangings of life's social order. Couples and singles made a poor mix, and
most of their friends had been couples. He hadn't done much to foster continuing
friendships in any case, spending most of his time involved with his work and
with his private, inviolate grief. He was not such good company anymore, and
only Miles had had the patience and the perseverance to stay with him.
He drank some more of the scotch and wandered back again to the open windows.
The lights of the city winked back at him. Being alone wasn't so bad, he
reasoned. That was just the way of things. He frowned. Well, that was his way,
in any case. It was his choice to be, alone. He could have found companionship
again from any one of a number of sources; he could have reintegrated himself
into almost any of the city's myriad social circles. He had the necessary
attributes. He was young still and successful; he was even wealthy, if money
counted for anything-and in this world it almost always did. No, he didn't have
to be alone.
And yet he did, because the problem was that he really didn't belong anyway.
He thought about that for a moment-forced himself to think about it. It wasn't
simply his choosing to be alone that kept him that way; it was almost a
condition of his existence. The feeling that he was an outsider had always been
there. Becoming a lawyer had helped him deal with that feeling, giving him a
place in life, giving him a ground upon which he might firmly stand. But the
sense of not belonging had persisted, however diminished its intensity-a nagging
certainty. Losing Annie had simply given it new life, emphasizing the transiency
of any ties that bound him to whom and what he had let himself become. He often
wondered if others felt as he did. He supposed they must; he supposed that to
some extent everyone felt something of the same displacement. But not as
strongly as he, he suspected. Never that strongly.
He knew Miles understood something of it-or at least something of Ben's sense of
it. Miles didn't feel about it as Ben did, of course. Miles was the
quintessential people person, always at home with others, always comfortable
with his surroundings. He wanted Ben to be that way; he wanted to bring him out
of that self-imposed shell and back into the mainstream of life. He viewed his
friend as some sort of challenge in that regard. That was why Miles was so
persistent about these damn bar meetings. That was why he kept after Ben to
forget about Annie and get on with his life.
Side 2
Terry Brooks - Magic Kingdom For Sale Sold
He finished the scotch and made himself another. He was drinking a lot lately,
he knew-maybe more than was good for him. He glanced down at his watch.
Forty-five minutes had gone by. Another forty-five and Miles would be there, his
chaperone for the evening. He shook his head distastefully. Miles didn't
understand nearly as much as he thought he did about some things.
Carrying his drink, he walked back across the room to the windows, stared out a
moment, and turned away, closing the drapes against the night. He moved back to
the couch, debating on whether to check the answer-phone, and saw the catalogue
again. He must have put it down without realizing it. It was lying with the
other mail on the coffee table in front of the sectional sofa, its glossy cover
reflecting sharply in the lamplight.
Rosen's, Ltd.-Christmas Wishbook.
He sat down slowly in front of it and picked it up. A Christmas catalogue of
wishes and dreams-he had seen the kind before. An annual release from a
department store that ostensibly offered something for everyone, this particular
catalogue was for the select few only-the wealthy few.
Annie had always liked it, though.
Slowly, he began to page through it. The offerings jumped out at him, a
collection of gifts for the hard-to-please, an assortment of oddities that were
essentially one-of-a-kind and could be found nowhere but in the Wishbook. Dinner
for two in the private California home of a famous movie star, transportation
included. A ten-day cruise for sixty on a yacht, fully crewed and catered to
order. A week on a privately owned Caribbean island, including the use of wine
cellar and fully stocked larder. A bottle of one-hundred-and fifty-year-old
wine. Hand-blown glass and diamond creations, designed per request. A gold
toothpick. Sable coats for little girls' dolls. A collector's chess set of
science fiction film characters carved from ebony. A hand-woven tapestry of the
signing of the Declaration of Independence.
The list of offerings went on, item after item, each more exotic and strange
than the one before. Ben took a strong pull on his scotch, almost repulsed by
the extravagance of it all, but fascinated nevertheless. Then he thumbed ahead
into the center of the catalogue. There was a transparent bathtub with live
goldfish encased in the framework. There was a silver shaving kit with your
initials inlaid in gold. Why in God's name would anyone . . . ?
He caught himself midway through the thought, his eyes drawn instantly to an
artist's rendering of the item being offered on the pages that lay open before
him.
The promo of the item read as follows:
MAGIC KINGDOM FOR SALE
Landover-island of enchantment and adventure rescued from the mists of time,
home of knights and knaves, of dragons and damsels, of wizards and warlocks.
Magic mixes with iron, and chivalry is the code of life for the true hero. All
of your fantasies become real in this kingdom from another world. Only one
thread to this whole cloth is lacking-you, to rule over all as King and High
Lord. Escape into your dreams, and be born again.
Price: $1,000,000.
Personal interview and financial disclosure.
Inquire of Meeks, home office.
That was all it read. The artist's colorful rendering depicted a knight on
horseback engaged in battle with a firebreathing dragon, a beautiful and rather
thinly clad damsel shrinking from the conflict before a tower wall, and a
darkrobed wizard lifting his hands as if to cast an awesome and life-stealing
spell. Some creatures that might have been Elves or Gnomes or some such
Side 3
Terry Brooks - Magic Kingdom For Sale Sold
scampered about in the background, and the towers and parapets of great castles
loomed against a gathering of hills and mists.
It had the look of something out of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round
Table.
"This is nuts!" he muttered almost without thinking.
He stared at the item in disbelief, certain that he must be mistaken. Then he
read it again. He read it a third time. It read the same. He finished his scotch
in a single gulp and chewed on the ice, irritated with the nonsensicality of the
offering. A million dollars for a fairy-tale kingdom? It was ridiculous. It had
to be some kind of joke.
He threw down the catalogue, jumped to his feet, and crossed to the bar to mix
himself a fresh drink. He stared momentarily at his reflection in the mirrored
cabinet-a man of medium height, lean, trim, and athletic-looking, his face
rather drawn, with high cheekbones and forehead, slightly receding hairline,
hawk nose and piercing blue eyes. He was a man of thirty-nine going on fifty, a
man on the verge of passing into middle age too young.
Escape into your dreams . . .
He crossed back to the couch, placed the drink on the coffee table and picked up
the Wishbook once more. Again he read the item on Landover. He shook his head.
No such place could possibly exist. The promo was a tease, a hype- what the car
business called puffing. The truth was masked in the rhetoric. He chewed
gingerly at the inside of his lip. Still, there wasn't all that much rhetoric
being used to promote the item. And Rosen's was a highly respected department
store; they were not likely to offer anything that they could not deliver,
should a buyer appear.
He grinned. What was he thinking? What buyer? Who in his right mind would even
consider . . . ? But of course he was questioning himself now. He was the one
considering. He had been standing there, drinking his drink and thinking about
how he didn't belong; and when he had picked up the Wishbook, the item on
Landover had caught his attention right away. He was the one who felt himself
the outsider in his own world, who had always felt himself the outsider, who was
seeking always a way to escape what he was. And now here was his chance.
His grin broadened. This was crazy! He was actually contemplating doing
something that no sane man would even think twice about!
The scotch was working its way to his head now, and he got up again to walk it
off. He looked at his watch, thinking of Miles, and suddenly he didn't want to
go to that bar meeting. He didn't want to go anywhere.
He walked to the phone and dialed his friend.
"Bennett," the familiar voice answered.
"Miles, I've decided not to go tonight. Hope you don't mind."
There was a pause. "Doc, is that you?"
"Yeah, it's me." Miles loved to call him Doc, ever since the early days when
they went up against Wells-Fargo on that corporate buy-out. Doc Holiday,
courtroom gunfighter. It drove Ben nuts. "Look, you go on without me."
"You're going." Miles was unflappable. "You said you were going and you're
going. You promised."
"So I take it back. Lawyers do it all the time-you read the papers."
"Ben, you need to get out. You need to see something of the world besides your
office and your apartment-however lavish the two may be. You need to let your
colleagues in the profession know that you're still alive!"
Side 4
Terry Brooks - Magic Kingdom For Sale Sold
"You tell them I'm alive. Tell them I'll make the next meeting for sure. Tell
them anything. But forget about me for tonight."
There was another pause, this one longer. "Are you all right?"
"Fine. But I'm in the midst of something. I want to stay with it."
"You work too hard, Ben."
"Don't we all? See you tomorrow."
He placed the receiver back on the cradle before Miles could say anything
further. He stood staring down at the phone. At least he hadn't lied. He was in
the midst of something, and he did want to stay with it-however crazy it might
be. He took a drink of the scotch. If Annie were there, she would understand.
She had always understood his fascination with puzzles and with challenges that
others might simply step around. She had shared so much of that with him.
He shook his head. Of course, if Annie were there, none of this would be
happening. He wouldn't be thinking about escaping into a dream that couldn't
possibly be.
He paused, struck by the implications of that thought. Then holding his drink in
his hand, he crossed back to the sofa, picked up the catalogue, and began
reading once more.
Ben was late getting to the offices of Holiday and Bennett, Ltd. the next
morning, and by the time he arrived his disposition was less than agreeable. He
had scheduled an early appearance on a merger contest and gone straight to the
Courts Building from home, only to discover that somehow his setting had been
removed from the docket. The clerks had no idea how this had happened, opposing
counsel was nowhere to be found, and the judge presiding simply advised him that
a resetting would be the best solution to the dilemma. Since time was of the
essence in the case in question, he requested an early setting-only to be told
that the earliest setting possible was in thirty days. Things were always
busiest with the approach of the holiday season, the motions clerk announced
unsympathetically. Unimpressed with an explanation that he had heard at least
twenty times already that November, he requested a setting for a preliminary
injunction-only to be told that the judge hearing stays and pleas for temporary
relief was vacationing for the next thirty days at some ski resort in Colorado,
and it hadn't been decided yet who would bear his docket load while he was gone.
A decision on that would probably be made by the end of the week and he should
check back then.
The looks directed at him by clerks and judge alike suggested that this was the
way of things in the practice of law and that he, of all people, ought to
realize it by now. He ought, in fact, simply to accept it.
He did not choose to accept it however, did not care in the least to accept it,
and was, by God, sick and tired of the whole business. On the other hand, there
was not very much he could do about it. So, frustrated and angered, he went on
to work, greeted the girls in the reception area with a mumbled good morning,
picked up his phone messages, and retired to the confines of his office to fume.
He had enjoyed less than five minutes of that when Miles appeared through the
doorway.
"Well, well, just a little ray of sunshine this morning, aren't we?" his friend
needled cheerfully.
"Yeah, that's me," he agreed rocking back in his desk chair. "Joy to the world."
"Hearing didn't go so well, I gather?"
"Hearing didn't go at all. Some incompetent took it off the call. Now I'm told
it can't be put back on until hell freezes over and cows fly." He shook his
head. "What a life."
"Hey, it's a living. Besides, that's the way it all works- hurry up and wait,
Side 5
摘要：

Terry Brooks - Magic Kingdom For Sale SoldMagic Kingdom for Sale - Sold! - Terry BrooksThe catalogue was from Rosen's, Ltd. It was the department store's annual Christmas Wishbook.It was addressed to Annie.Ben Holiday stood frozen before the open cubicle of his mailbox, eyes slipping across the gail...

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