‘You asking me or telling me?’
Towler ignored the sarcasm. ‘What kind?’
Poe told him.
Towler nodded approvingly. ‘That’s where you’ll catch him then,’ he said. He drained his tea, took a slice of mango and popped it in his mouth. ‘I need to be away. Try to stay out of trouble, kids.’ He took in theDungeons & Dragonsstage queue. He shook his head again. ‘Do you know something? If they were playing that film on the inside of my eyelids, I’d tape my fucking eyes open.’
Chapter 36
Poe and Bradshaw spent the rest of the afternoon checking they hadn’t missed any new role-playing game stalls. Poe said he’d rather they did it together. That he didn’t have the right language to engage with the stall owners. She’d just said, ‘Thank you.’
When they were halfway round, Poe said, ‘So, are you going to tell me what Matt Towler was doing before he worked for Archie Arreghini, Tilly?’
Bradshaw considered his question carefully. ‘I don’t know, Poe.’
‘Youdoknow, Tilly. You said he’d done something odd before he began working for Archie Arreghini. Then you stopped talking and tried to make me eat fruit. That was weird, even for you. So, tell me what he did.’
‘I have no idea what he did before working for Mr Arreghini, Poe.’
‘Are you lying, Tilly?’
‘I don’t lie to you, Poe. I never have and I never will.’
It was true. To the best of his knowledge, Bradshaw had never lied to him. Not once. He sometimes wished she would. Her painful honesty and natural inquisitiveness could at times be . . . painful. It wasn’t that long ago that they’d been in a meeting together, and the label on his new boxer shorts must have been digging into the small of his back or something. In front of everyone, she’d asked him if he was squirming in his seat because he had an itchy sphincter. They’d had . . . words afterwards. It hadn’t made any difference. She still told the truth, and she still asked the questions. But, shehaddeveloped workarounds for when she knew something she didn’t want totell him. She’d choose her language carefully. Make sure she could answer truthfully while at the same time telling him nothing. Poe suspected now was one of those times. And there was no point forcing the issue. She was the very definition of an immovable object when it came to certain things. Or, as Doyle put it, she could be even more stubborn than him.
‘Suit yourself,’ Poe said. ‘Why don’t you tell me about the Norse Parmesan instead?’
‘Pantheon, Poe. Parmesan is an Italian hard cheese. A pantheon is a group of respected or important people.’
‘Yes, Tilly. I was being deliberately silly. But regardless, you seemed to know who they were. Tell me about them.’
‘Why, Poe?’
‘Because you’ve been trying to get me to come to one of these things for years,’ he said. ‘But instead of bursting at the seams with excitement you’ve been subdued. And now I know why. You were expecting them, weren’t you?’
‘I knew of them. I had never met them before today.’
‘OK, if not them exactly, someonelikethem.’
Bradshaw took her time answering. Eventually she said, ‘All aspects of the gaming and comic book community have problems with misogyny. And although itisimproving, there are still men who think women don’t belong. They say war is the domain of men and unless we’re camp followers, all we do is get in the way.’
‘Yeah, I heard Horace spout that nonsense,’ Poe said. ‘Even ignoring the fact that women now serve inallbranches of the military, that they’re no longer restricted to rear-echelon roles, role-playing games are not war. They’re just games. Same asSnakes and LaddersorMonopoly.’
‘One famous designer went as far as to say that games were primarily designed for men as a woman’s brain functions differently. That they couldn’t play to a man’s standard. Somewent even further and said that gamer females fake their interest to attract gamer men.’
‘There’s nothing as sad, nothing as vindictive, as scared white men, Tilly. We both know this. We’veseenthis. It seems they had something and they don’t like that others now have it too. They’ll defend what they see as their turf with sexist tripe like that.’
Bradshaw nodded her agreement. ‘And as most of the older games weredesignedby these scared white men,forthese scared white men, there were problematic representations of the female character. Her value and power lay only in her appearance. Her fighting prowess was limited so male characters had a built-in advantage.Warlocks & Witches, the RPG I play, still assigns a beauty score to female characters. AndWarlocks & Witchesis considered one of the safer spaces for women. So even though I’m a level-twenty-four Avariel, my abilities still include things like “charm men” and “seduce men”. It’s kinda gross.’
‘So why . . . ?’
‘So why do I play it? Because I enjoy it, Poe. Because I’m good at it. And why should a bunch of nasty pasties spoil it for me?’
‘They shouldn’t, Tilly,’ Poe said softly. A dreadful realisation crept over him. He felt his face burn, his breath sped up. Classic signs of shame. ‘When you kept asking me to attend these things with you, you weren’t trying to get me into this stuff, were you? It was because you didn’t want to go on your own.’
She lowered her eyes and nodded. ‘There have even been incidents of drink spiking and sexual assaults.’
Poe stopped walking. ‘What did I say the last time you asked me to come to one?’
