but these mortice locks have been around for centuries. This one I’ve untombed might be 40 years or older, and sophisticated enough for me to flip the latch bolt and move it to another door. Energy stored and released for decades in a spring. I add my mark to the lever numbers and other trade codes. A process revealed, age pulls the curtain back on some things. In the last run of fiction I read I sensed what was at work, picked out a moment when I knew I was hooked and understood how the writer had done it. I’ve been at it so long I can see the levers. But those are the scam books, the entertainments and adventures, no disgrace there but no contest with lived experience. Some books offer more. Those you can’t open up like my lock, you go to turn the fastening screw and the whole device vanishes under your fingers. They’re not put together with springs and levers. And I’m no closer to unravelling their magic weft than I was when I first turned a page.
