ME: “Why? Because I told you about that money?”

DOLLAR BILL: “Yeah, he was screaming ‘why did Mike Barnes tell you about that, that was between us and he thinks it’s your fault I fired him. You probably should get your stuff out of there.”

ME: “Why would I not tell my best friend and business partner about $10k missing from our bank account?”

DOLLAR BILL: “Yeah, and I’m glad you did because now I really don’t trust him. Just be ready because he may come up there and start trouble or something, I don’t know.”

ME: “What are we going to do about AGF?”

DOLLAR BILL: “Let’s wait and see for now.”

So I waited to see. Waited to see if The Barrister was going to come to the store to start trouble with me. I was a nervous wreck that whole evening. I called all our employees into the store for an emergency meeting to let them know what was going on and we all sat on tenterhooks all night, just waiting. Other than the internal tension, it was business as usual. The regulars came in, played games, and everyone carried on like normal. But there was a palpable sense of fear- not necessarily because of what The Barrister may or may not do, but because the larger fate of the store seemed suddenly- and without warning- in jeopardy.

He never showed up that night. He wouldn’t be seen in the store again for nearly two months. The Dragon Con money was found and put into the bank account.

Throughout the fall, The Barrister was almost a complete non-entity and we kept right on doing what we did best in spite of his abandonment. Sales continued to grow, more and more customers were coming into the store, and the AGF culture continued to thrive. If anything, The Barrister’s elimination from all aspects of store management and operation helped tremendously and Dollar Bill and I pretty much resolved just to continue on without his direct involvement until we worked out an arrangement where we would most likely buy out his shares in the business and give him an easy way out of the partnership. He was almost like a ghost at AGF- rarely spoken of except in hushed whispers, but every Monday morning before I got there to open the store he would come by and pick up the deposit. That was literally the extent of my contact with him through all of September and October, a dialogue in money-stuffed white envelopes on which I would write the total amount contained in blue ink.

With school back in session, our regulars weren’t around as much so there were plenty of long fall days. I spent these rearranging the store, finishing up maintenance projects, and looking toward the Christmas season. It would be our second Christmas but the first was only two months after we had opened, so I really didn’t know what to expect- we could triple our business or it could be slow, it was hard to predict without a real precedent. Nonetheless, I started stockpiling games like SETTLERS OF CATAN and CARCASSONNE in anticipation of distributor shortages in November and December. I invested a lot of the Dragon Con profit back into the store and expanded almost every line. The Barrister always wanted to take money out of the store, but Dollar Bill and I believed that we needed to put more money into it and it paid off when our store became even more comprehensive and well-stocked than it ever had been.