A Power Greater Than Themselves

We also see the Buchanan inventory at other Best Buys in the neighborhood pop up on the computer screen: goose eggs across the board, suggesting that the other outlets never got copies either.

"Do you know where Second Spin is?" the clerk asks us. "They might have it there. You might even be able to pick it up for four or five bucks."

We drive over to Second Spin, where we find nothing. A short hike away is a Tower, so we try again. Nothing in the bin—but, hey, we can pick up several copies of a month-old Time on the magazine rack or peruse copies of Shins and POD CDs, which bizarrely have been placed in an "Orange County Sounds" display case.

We need help finding Buchanan again, so we hit up a nice woman working the counter, who writes the band's name down on a slip of paper ("That's B-U-C-H-A-N-A-N, right?"), dashes off to the stockroom and pesters a colleague. "It just came out today, so it might not be on the floor yet," she tells us. It's 6:30 p.m. But a couple of minutes later, she flags us down and hands us one of five copies of All Understood—$12.99. "Life is all about timing," she says, stickering the rest of the Buchanan stock and slipping them in the B section.