by Mike Befeler
A smile returned to her face. “Well, invite the detective in, and I’ll help clear up things.”
I opened the door to a scowling Detective Quintana, whose mustache twitched as I ushered him inside.
“I’d introduce you, but I don’t know who you are,” I said to the woman, noting she was an attractive old broad.
She reached out her hand. “Hello, Detective. I’m Marion Aumiller. Paul’s fiancée.”
“Fiancée?” I said with a gasp.
“That’s right, Paul. You and I have a marriage ceremony scheduled this afternoon.”
I plopped down on the couch. This was too much for my addled brain.
“Let me give both of you a brief summary,” Marion said. “First of all, Paul suffers from short-term memory loss. He recalls things perfectly during the day, but overnight he loses his short-term memory and can’t remember anything from the day before and recent past.”
“That would explain why I don’t recognize this place,” I said.
“Paul and I met in Hawaii last year and were engaged in Boulder, Colorado, a month ago. He flew out here last week and we’re getting married.” She held out her ring.
Detective Quintana wrinkled his nose like he had smelled a dead fish. “May I see some identification now, Mr. Jacobson?”
“Your wallet should be in the nightstand, Paul.”
I scurried into the bedroom to see what I could find. One bedside table only held a lamp and murder mystery, but the other had a note which read, “You’re going to become a married man again today, you old poop. Don’t do anything stupid when you wake up.”
It was my handwriting. Too bad I hadn’t seen it and followed directions. So here I was in Venice, California, waking up next to an attractive woman I didn’t remember who seemed willing to get hitched to an old coot like me. What a strange world.
I located my wallet and returned to the living room to show my ID card to Detective Quintana.
“This shows an address in Kaneohe, Hawaii,” he said.
“That’s the retirement home in Hawaii where Paul and I met. Since then he went to live with his son in Colorado.”
Quintana’s mustache twitched. “Please give me the phone number here.”
Marion wrote it down for him, and Quintana dropped a card on the end table. “If you think of anything else you should tell me, call this number.”
With that, he strode to the door and let himself out.
“Intense fellow,” I said.
“I guess you have to be that way in his line of work. Now what were you doing this morning, Paul?”
“I woke up not knowing what the hell was going on and decided to take a little stroll. Wasn’t planning on finding a dead body in a canal.”
“You seem to have a knack for this kind of thing. You’ve attracted the attention of the police before.”
“Don’t remember anything like that, but I would appreciate a little more background on my recent past and our marriage plans.”
Marion gave me a hug.
My heart raced. Something felt right about marrying her.
“Our ceremony takes place at two p.m. today at Saint Andrew’s Church here in Venice. We’ll have a reception in the courtyard after the service. It’s the church my daughter and her family attend.”
“And this family of yours. All I know is that the car in the garage is registered to a George Kanter.”
“That’s my son-in-law. He’s married to my daughter, Andrea. They have two children, Austin who is thirteen and Rachel who is eighteen and taking summer classes at UCLA.”
“I went to UCLA.”
“We’ll have to visit the campus together sometime.”
“It’s been a few years. Do we have any honeymoon plans?”
Her eyes lit up. “Yes. You arranged for an Alaskan cruise two weeks from tomorrow. Now, there’s something I want you to do to help with your memory problem.”
“Besides having a brain transplant?”
She swatted me on the arm. “You used to keep a journal. I think you should resume that practice. Every night before you go to bed, write down the day’s activities. You can leave a note to remind yourself to read your diary first thing in the morning. Then you’ll be armed with an account of your most recent adventures.”
“Sounds like something I should do, especially since I’ll be waking up next to an attractive woman each morning.”
She blushed and squeezed my hand. “Your journal will help, and I’ll have to keep reminding you as well.” She gave me a kiss.
Damn. That would be hard to forget.
“So with that in mind, I have a wedding present for you,” Marion said.
She retrieved a wrapped package and handed it to me.
“Shall I open it now?”
“Go right ahead.”
First inspecting the silver paper imprinted with bells, I then tore it open like a kid on Christmas morning. Inside was a leather-bound book.
“Open it,” Marion said.
I lifted the cover and found a picture of Marion and a handwritten note that read, “To my husband. Since you’ll wake up almost every morning not remembering who I am, this is a reminder for you. We now live in Venice, California, with my daughter Andrea and her family. You can keep a running diary in this book as a reminder of your current life. Love, Marion.”
“What’s this about almost every morning?” I asked.
Marion gave me a Cheshire-cat grin. “There is one circumstance when you remember things the next day.”
“And that is?”
“It’ll be a little surprise for you. I’ll make sure that you wake up tomorrow with a memory of today.”
She refused to elaborate further, so I decided I’d just wait and see what mysterious remedy for my faulty memory existed. This was all so confusing that one more unresolved question wouldn’t matter.
“Now,” Marion said, “there’s one thing we need to take care of. Your pills.”
“But I hate taking pills.”
She wagged her right index finger at me. “Paul, I have your pills all set up for you to take each day, once in the morning and once in the evening. They’re supposed to help your memory.”
“Doesn’t look like they’re doing any good. I remember diddly from yesterday.”
Marion smiled. “They keep you from having further problems. Now are you going to be brave and take them?” She pointed to three rocks disguised as pills, resting on the table.
I felt like a little kid. “Do I hafta?” I surreptitiously covered the pills with a napkin.
She wagged her finger at me again. “Yes. You are under doctor’s orders to take your medication twice a day. So quit trying to hide the pills.”
I removed the napkin. “Damn. I thought I had you fooled.”
She crossed her arms and stared at me.
“All right,” I said.
I couldn’t disappoint her, so somehow I managed to swallow the horse pills without choking to death.
She dusted her hands together. “With that taken care of we can begin our preparations for the ceremony. I need some time to myself, and your family is taking you out to breakfast.”
“My family is here?”
“Yes. Denny, Allison and Jennifer will be by shortly.”
She adjourned to the bedroom to do her wedding preparation thing, and I sat down in an easy chair to figure out my strange existence. I felt excited to be marrying this young chick, but uncertain about finding myself in a new place. And I looked forward to seeing my family. I needed to wrap my feeble brain around all these events. With a sigh, I decided to go with the flow. I’d follow what was set in motion and see where it led me.
True to Marion’s word that my family was in town, thirty minutes later someone knocked on the door, and upon my opening it, a young girl bounded in to give me a hug. “Grandpa, this is your big day.”
I stood back at arms’ length and stared at her. “You look like an older version of my granddaughter, Jennifer.”
&
nbsp; She stomped her foot. “Grandpa, I’m twelve now.”
“I last remember you being six.”
She tisked. “That’s why you need to start keeping a journal again. So you can remember what’s happened.”
“Marion gave me a book to write in.”
“Then leave yourself a note and put it by your bed at night. Every morning you can review your journal before you go anywhere.”
“You’re the second person to give me that advice today. It would have been helpful this morning. I didn’t know where I was and wandered around. I found a canal with a dead body in it.”
“What?” Jennifer’s eyes grew to the size of silver dollars. Then she put her hands on her hips. “You aren’t involved in a murder investigation again, are you?”
“I don’t know what happened. I just found a man floating in the canal. Met a Detective Quintana who questioned me.”
“Grandpa, this is so cool. Maybe you can assist this detective. You’ve helped track down murderers before.”
“Me? I’m just a retired auto-parts store owner. And besides, who’s to say that the body wasn’t an accidental death. And even if it was a murder, I don’t know how to investigate crimes.”
She scrunched up her eyebrows and stared at me. “You helped solve a zillion cases both in Hawaii and Colorado.”
I shrugged. “That all must have been lost somewhere in my mis-wired brain cells. I don’t remember anything like that.”
Now she smiled again. “And I can always help you like I did in Colorado. There, I charged you a stuffed animal for every crime I helped you solve. It will be my wedding present to you. I’ll assist you any way I can, and I won’t even charge you any stuffed animals for my services.”
“That’s mighty kind of you. But I don’t think I’ll need any help. I’m not involved other than finding a body.”
She gave me another hug. “I don’t know, Grandpa. You seem to find a way of being implicated in crimes.”
Chapter 3
“Now, Grandpa, I want a tour of your new house,” Jennifer said.
“I’ll show you around. We both can learn what it’s like since it’s all new to me as well.”
While Marion was in the bathroom, Jennifer and I entered the bedroom. Jennifer pointed to a bag on the floor. “There’s the carry-on that you packed in Boulder.”
A corner of a picture frame stuck out of the bag. “I guess I haven’t finished unpacking it yet.”
“You have some souvenirs, Grandpa. Let me show you.” She removed a framed butterfly collection and an autographed picture of a stark, institutional building.
I stared at the two items she held. “What the hell kind of mementos are these?”
“Oh, Grandpa. These are presents from the two detectives that you helped. The butterfly collection came from Hawaii, and the other is a picture of the jail where you almost got locked up.”
“I sure don’t remember any of that.”
“Here. Let me put these on your dresser.” She set them up and stepped back. “Now you’re officially moved in.”
Jennifer skipped back to the bag. “Let’s see what else you have in here.” She sorted through and removed several pictures. “Grandpa, here’s a picture of me and another of you.”
“I’ll keep the one of you, but you can have the one of me.”
“Cool. You’ll have to autograph it for me.”
I found a pen and was ready to sign it when I had an idea. “Jennifer, here’s a trick I taught myself when I was younger.” I transferred the pen to my left hand and scrawled my signature. “Although I’m right-handed, I learned how to write left-handed as well.”
“Cool. It looks different but it’s readable.”
“Yeah. I had my right hand in a cast in high school after I fell out of a tree. That’s when I taught myself to write left-handed. You should try it.”
She grabbed the pen and tried writing on a piece of paper, ending up with an undecipherable scrawl.
“It just takes some practice.” I wrote a sentence below what she had tried and signed it with a flourish.
* * * * *
On our way to breakfast Jennifer said, “I want to see the canals.”
Denny replied, “We can see the main canal right from Venice Boulevard.” He pulled to a stop on a bridge, and Jennifer looked out the window. “Do you know why they’re called canals, Jennifer?”
“No, why?”
“Because we can all see them,” Denny replied.
Jennifer groaned. “That was a really bad one, Dad.”
“He inherited that talent from me,” I said. “But, in addition, all dads have to go to bad-joke camp.”
Jennifer ignored my comment and looked out the window. “Is this where you found the body, Grandpa?”
“What body?” Denny and Allison asked in unison.
“Oh, just a floater I happened upon during a stroll this morning.”
“Dad, you’re not getting involved in a murder again, are you? Denny said.
“Why do people keep referring to ‘again’?”
“Because you have a history of getting in trouble with the police.”
“That couldn’t be me. I’m a law-abiding citizen.”
“But you have a way of finding dead bodies,” Jennifer said. “Now point out to me where you found this one.”
I leaned across to look out her window. “Over toward that white bridge.”
“Cool.”
* * * * *
After returning from gobbling an omelet, I read a number of short stories, resisted the urge to take a nap, and then traded in my Bermuda shorts for my dark-blue trousers, a white shirt and a throat-constricting tie. That’s probably what did in my brain cells. Too much oxygen cut off by wearing a tie in my store all those years.
I admired myself in the mirror. Not bad for an old gentleman. I still had all my own hair so I didn’t need to resort to a substitute contribution from some furry animal. In addition I retained my original teeth and stood firmly upright on my creaky but solid legs. I patted my stomach. No paunch. I couldn’t have weighed much more than when I was a mere pup in college.
Marion had already left for a hair appointment, and she would then go straight to the church to change into her wedding getup there. I had a little free time on my hands, and then my family was due to retrieve me for a quick snack before the big event. I guess they wanted to make sure I didn’t pass out at the altar from hunger. I could faint from fright instead.
My wife Rhonda and I had tied the knot in a small church in Long Beach many years ago. We had had a happy marriage with only a smattering of fights, usually due to my hair-trigger temper. But we always made up the same day. That was something I had learned. Don’t let an argument simmer overnight.
But her once vigorous body had been attacked by cancer. I remembered sitting by her hospital bed and holding her hand the day she died. She looked over toward me and in a raspy voice said, “Paul, you find someone else after I’m gone. You’re too good a man to be by yourself.” Tears had welled in my eyes, and I squeezed her hand. Then her eyelids closed, and she drifted off.
But after she was gone, the opportunity had never materialized up to the time my memory went on the fritz. After that, who knew? What if I had hooked up with some other old broad along the way? What if I were about to become a polygamist? Nah. I was sure that no one else besides Marion had agreed to put up with me.
I could imagine Rhonda looking down, chuckling and blowing a kiss to wish the best for Marion and me.
Still I found it amazing that Marion had signed on for a recycled putz like me. With my memory I wasn’t the easiest person to live with. It would be tough for her when I woke up every morning wondering who the hell she was. Still, there seemed to be some special connection between us. Before today, I couldn’t remember Marion from the dish drainer, yet I felt warmth in my chest when I thought about her now. I just hoped it wasn’t a pending heart attack. Hell, if my old ticker had lasted this long, it pr
obably would get me through the wedding. Wedding. I started to break out in a sweat. I was turning in my bachelorhood again.
Denny, Allison and Jennifer showed up in their rental car to whisk me off to a sushi bar for a prenuptial feeding frenzy. My son Denny maintained the family tradition by wolfing down a plate of raw denizens of the deep, while Allison had a small portion and Jennifer picked the raw fish pieces out to savor independent of the rice and seaweed. With my stomach in turmoil due to the upcoming event I limited my intake to some salmon, tuna, crab, eel, squid and octopus. All right, in my nervous state I guess I kept up with Denny by consuming my fair share of seafood.
Then we raced off to get me to the church on time. After we hopped out of the car, Allison straightened my tie. “You look very handsome, Paul.”
“What am I getting myself into?” I asked. “What am I doing to Marion? She’s being stuck with an old relic whose memory is as solid as liver pate.”
Allison patted my arm. “I think Marion is delighted that you asked her for her hand in marriage.”
“Sure. I get her hand, but she’s stuck with my memory.”
My family headed inside to take seats while I waited in the lobby. I paced the floor for a few minutes, stopped, took a deep breath and when I discovered I wasn’t going to pass out, I surveyed my surroundings. The white walls and Spanish-style windows were reminiscent of the mission buildings that lined California. Then the minister, a tall man in flowing white robes, directed me to the vestibule to wait for my command performance.
I opened the door and found a small room. As my eyes adjusted from the bright sunshine outside, I saw a table full of presents and a man nearly my age holding one of them.
“What the hell are you doing?” I asked in my most inquisitive tone.
“I . . . I . . . I,” he said as he stepped backward, tripping and falling. His flailing arms struck a table and two silver candleholders tottered. The man and one of the candleholders crashed to the floor.
I grabbed the other candleholder and steadied it.
The man lay quietly on the floor with a candleholder on his chest. I removed it and set it aside as I bent down to examine him. He didn’t seem to be breathing.
“Hey,” I shouted. “We need some help.”