My mind went hooray! I’d hit the mother lode, the bull’s-eye, and the way home with one question. I could barely keep the excitement out of my voice. “You put that thing on your head and you can remember your life? The whole thing? Everything that happened?”
“Yes. But I wouldn’t want to do it.”
“I would! Right now! Where can I get one?”
“Frannie, if you take these pills you’ll be fine in a few days. Your memory will return, I promise.”
“I don’t want an old man’s memory—I want my whole life! Where can I get one?” I couldn’t believe my good luck. All I had to do was strap that stupid-looking ball over my head and I’d have all the answers I needed. Then when I was sent back to my time I’d know exactly what was going on and what to do.
“They sell the white ones at Giorgio Armani stores.”
“Armani? The fashion designer?”
“Yes.”
“They sell a machine at a clothes store that brings back your memory? Why there?”
Susan thought, shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“This is a weird-ass time! Maybe memory’s considered a fashion accessory. Who cares—let’s go.”
With lots of questions, shrugs, and hand gestures, we eventually found someone who spoke English and knew the way. They directed us to a small side street off one of the main drags. There, behind a door guarded by two men in what appeared to be Kevlar vests, was the Armani store.
“Are those guys cops or private security? Why are they wearing protection?”
“There have been so many attacks and bombings, Frannie. I didn’t think it would be as bad here as in America. You take your life in your hands when you go shopping. Forget going to a mall anymore. Those are war zones. Remember what happened in Crane’s View?”
The guards came to attention as we approached. Susan lifted her arms from her sides like wings and gestured for me to do the same. One guy ran a wand around our bodies like security people do at an airport when your pocket change sets off the alarm. I couldn’t believe it. All this because we wanted to shop? When the electronic frisk was done, Susan took what looked like a credit card out of her pocket and handed it over. One guard inserted it in a small black box he wore at his waist. At once a small peep peeped. He moved out of the way, allowing us to enter.
Once inside I kept staring at them through the window. They were not your typical rent-a-cop chubsters. Both men looked fit enough to wrestle alligators and win.
I was about to bombard Susan with more questions but a saleswoman came up to us. She spoke perfect English and actually bowed slightly when asked if she had a “Bic white.”
I waited till she was gone before asking. “Bic white? That’s what they’re called?”
“Red, white—you ask for the color.”
“But it’s really Bic, the makers of the cheapo pen? The throw-away razor?”
“Yes, it’s the same company.”
“Is it disposable too?”
“No. They cost about a hundred dollars.” Susan wandered off to look at clothes. I watched the guards through the window. Brave New World. Brave cheap world. Here you could resurrect a whole life of memories for the same price as a good floor fan in my time. While I pondered away on that one, something bumped my foot. First I kicked it away, and then looked to see what it was. A small brown machine like a round hassock moved off without a sound. It took a while of staring to realize it was a robot vacuum cleaner. The damned thing was terrific. I wished there were some way I could bring one back to Magda, who absolutely hated cleaning the house. That thought brought back what was going to happen to her. I shuddered. Wasn’t there anything I could do to stop it? Take her to the hospital as soon as I returned and have them run every test...
But by using this mind machine, I was about to have all of my memories back. I could learn what actually happened to my wife. Maybe knowing the details would help me to figure out what to do.
I was thinking about this and watching the vacuum cleaner whiz around when the saleswoman said, “Have you ever used a Bic before, sir?”
“What? Oh, no, I haven’t.”
“It is not difficult, but you must try it on. This is a large. Perhaps it is best if you sit down?”
After I sat in a nearby chair she handed me the helmet. It was strangely light. “What do I do?”
“Put it over your head and say ‘face focus.’ The computer will create the adjustments if they are necessary.”
“It has a computer in it?”
“Yes, sir. Just put it—”
“I heard you, dear.” The moment of truth had arrived and, sure, my soul gave a small shiver. What would happen to me in the next minutes? Unlike the drowning man, the life I was going to lead was about to flash in front of my eyes. But I didn’t hesitate because too much was at stake.
Slipping the helmet over my head, I was pleased by what felt like the softest leather sliding across my cheeks. I could see nothing at all. Everything was pitch-black. It was like putting my head inside a leather glove. How could anyone see out of it? How could you walk down a street and not bump into everything? Maybe when the thing turned on—
“Now what?” I asked.
“You say ‘face focus’—” Her voice came through clear as a bell, which was reassuring.
“Oh yeah, right. Okay. Face focus!” I felt my hot breath spread back across my face when I spoke.
The helmet came on with a fast click-click. Next there was a whirring sound. It stopped. Then a pause. Then a big green flash and something inside the helmet exploded, knocking me out of the chair onto the floor. Onto the vacuum cleaner rather, which tried to drive away with me lying on top of it. But valiant little fellow that it was, I outweighed it by a hundred and fifty pounds so it could only jiggle beneath me making desperate noises. I flailed at my head trying to get the helmet off, petrified by a nasty smell of burning metal inside.
“Help!”
“Sir, sir, please wait, sir.” ‘
“Get it off me!”
Someone pushed me over, quickly undid the helmet and pulled it off with a pretty hard fucking jerk. The first thing I saw was the vacuum cleaner lying on its side nearby. One of the security guards held the helmet and looked at me with a big smile in his eyes but not on his mouth. The saleswoman stood next to him wringing her hands.
“This has never happened before! Never!”
“Lucky me. What the hell happened?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“You don’t know. You sell a product that microwaves my head, then tell me you don’t know why? Face focus, my ass!”
“Frannie, are you all right?”
Before I had a chance to answer, Susan’s wristwatch beeped. She bit her lip. “That’s the emergency. I should answer it– something must be wrong.”
“Yeah, my head!”
She raised her wrist to her mouth and mumbled something. While she spoke, the saleswoman meekly asked if I would like to try again with another Bic. I glared at her. Later I realized the whole catastrophe was my fault. The helmet blew up because my brain shorted out the computer’s circuits. How could the Bic restore memories of a life I hadn’t lived yet?
“Frannie, it’s Gus Gould. He says Floon is wild that we left. Apparently he had a big surprise he was going to give you at breakfast but then we disappeared.”
While she spoke I warily touched my eyebrows and discovered both were badly singed. “We disappeared because he’s an asshole. I don’t want any more surprises.”
“But it’s George. Caz found George Dalemwood and brought him here. He’s at the hotel waiting for you.”
I looked at my fingertips, which were sooty-black and covered with tiny bits of eyebrow. But hey, tomorrow a motorcycle was going to kill me. Who needed eyebrows?
“How old am I, Susan?”
“Seventy-four.” Her face showed only love and concern.
“How did Magda die?”
“A brain tumor.”
&nbs
p; “Jesus God!”
“Frannie, Floon specifically said to tell you he found Vertue. He has it with him, whatever that means.”
“I know what it means. Let’s go.”
I couldn’t wait to get back to the hotel, but there were no taxis around and my fossil legs could only go so fast. Thirty years after mysteriously disappearing, my best friend turns up in Vienna with a resurrected dog hundreds of years old? Damned right I couldn’t wait to get back. And the way he phrased it: “He had found Vertue” led me to believe there was more here to be reckoned with than just man with old dog.
On seeing the hotel I felt my spirits lift. This was it. I only had to somehow brush Floon off and get George alone in a corner. He would answer my questions. I might even tell him exactly what had happened to bring me here because George would understand. Where had he been for thirty years? What had he been doing? What had made him leave Crane’s View and disappear for eleven thousand days? And had he really found the dog?
These questions and so many others took off and landed in my head as if it were a busy airport. I didn’t know what to ask first. I wanted to know everything at once. There was the hotel.
Walk faster, old man. Somewhere inside was George Dalemwood and the answers. It wouldn’t be long now!
The street was jammed with people so it was not surprising that I did not see him as he approached. Susan had already asked me twice to slow down but I paid no attention. George might even have an idea of how I could save Magda—
“I’m sorry, Mr. McCabe, but you can’t go to the hotel.”
“Astopel! Why are you here?” I looked around to see if Frannie Junior had accompanied him. He was alone, and without any warning so was I with him. Without any warning we were suddenly the only animated objects in a world that had become a still photograph. Somehow Astopel had frozen the world around us, including Susan. She was looking worriedly at me and reaching out a hand.
“You cannot meet George.”
“Why not?”
“Because you must find out the answers for yourself. I told you that before. You can’t just ask another person questions. It must be your doing, Mr. McCabe.”
“You let me burn my brain in that goddamned helmet for no reason at all, but now I can’t ask my friend a few questions?”
“No, you can’t.”
“What if I go anyway?”
“You’ll find this.” He gestured at the frozen world around us.
“Astopel, if I lose my temper at you again, I won’t be able to find it! All I’ve discovered here are dead ends. You said go find the answers in the future. Now I think I have, but you stop me. What am I supposed to do? I’ve only got a week!”
“Five days.”
“Five days, all right. I have five days. Tell me what am I supposed to do?”
“Perhaps it would be better if you went back to your own time. Maybe you could find it there.”
“I want a favor. You have to give me this one favor. I don’t know what the hell else I can do.”
“What is it?”
“Let me see George now. See what he looks like physically. I know that’ll help. Can I? Will you let me?”
“Yes.”
Although surprised at how quickly he acceded to my request, I still made a fist and punched it triumphantly into the air. “Yes! Let’s go.” I started again toward the hotel.
“We don’t need to walk there, Mr. McCabe—unless you want to.”
“Are you kidding? The less I use these bum legs the better.”
“Good.” He looked at the sky. I looked too. Abruptly I was no longer looking at the blue Viennese sky but at a white sconce on a ceiling. My eyes rushed down to find George in this room, wherever that was. I was sure once I saw him—
On a large bed covered with a gold-and-white spread was Old Vertue, alive. No question about it. Like everything else, the dog was frozen—in a sitting position. But its eyes were open and looked alert. I couldn’t help smiling at the old son of a bitch. I had grown even fonder of it after what we’d been through together. Now here it was yet again, brought back this time by my friend. Where had it been all these years? Where had George found it? I felt a great urge to go over and pat its nondead head, but first things first—where was George?
The room was large and elegant, similar to the one Susan and I occupied, only this one was much grander in every way. I walked around looking for any sign of life—a book by the side of the bed, an open suitcase, a wallet or passport on the dresser. But there was nothing—no sign of anyone, much less George Dalemwood. Other than Old Vertue perched on the bed, this room gave the feeling it had been empty a long time. It held the smell of old suitcases and laundered sheets, room freshener was somewhere in there too.
I walked into the bathroom but it felt even emptier. No kit bag sat next to the tub. The water glasses were all unused and turned upside down on the shelf above the sink. No toothbrush / paste laid out, no shaving things all in a row. On a hunch I touched the towels. None was damp. Each was neatly folded and evenly spaced on the stainless steel drying bars.
I lowered the toilet seat lid and sat on it. I put my elbows on my knees and my chin in my palms. For some inexplicable reason my gums began to ache, and I was again reminded of how old and ornery my body was. Looking through the door at the dog on the bed, I tried to figure the whole thing out. On first realizing the room was empty, I thought George must be with Floon. Both were waiting somewhere for us to return. Why then would Astopel bring me here? What was the point if George wasn’t here? My view into the bedroom included Astopel’s foot sliding back and forth over the carpet near the door. He’d been silent since we materialized here but that hadn’t struck me till now. I started touching my singed eyebrows again.
His foot stopped. “Are you ready to go?”
My hand stopped. “What do you mean?”
“Is there anything else you’d like to do here?”
“Yes—see George.” My voice, whining, echoed off the walls.
The pause that followed was a long one. “Could you come in here a moment, Mr. McCabe?” Astopel’s voice was patient and earnest, as if he were a father having to slow down a lesson so that his young child could understand.
“Oh my God!” I said to myself, to the walls, the sink, and the silence of that empty room. The bathroom floor was made up of row after gleaming row of black and white ceramic tiles. They played tricks on your eyes when you stared at them too long. I closed mine and made tight fists in my lap.
What was going on had abruptly come clear to me and now I was stalling for time. I tightened my fists until both arms shook. When I returned to the other room I would confirm what I already knew. The moment that happened, my world would become an entirely different place. Magda’s mother used to say life is short but very wide. For me it had just grown about as wide as this human’s mind could stand. But stand I did and walk out of there because I had to see for myself.
His back to me, Astopel held a gold curtain aside and stared out the window. Over his shoulder, blinding sunlight reflected off the glass facade of a building across the street. The glare made me glance away. I looked at the dog. Mistrust took over and I thought Old Vertue was smiling. At what? Because he was glad to see me? Because of how things had turned out? At the fact I’d finally gotten the point?
“Did you do this?” I asked Astopel’s back. Silently I willed him to turn around and acknowledge me. He didn’t.
“No, Mr. McCabe. I’m only here to show you things, not interfere.”
“It’s George there, isn’t it? That dog is George.”
“That’s right.”
“Can you tell me why?”
“He and Mr. Floon recently collaborated on an experiment with a new drug they invented in one of Floon’s laboratories. You see the results.” He let the curtain drop but did not turn around. “Does that make things any clearer?”
The Wooden Sea
When I awoke I was in bed with Magda. The sun was stre
aming in the window, which meant it was early morning. Our bedroom faced east, and Magda, who was very much a morning person, liked to say sunlight was the alarm clock in this house. She lay with her head turned toward me on my outstretched arm. She was smiling. My wife often smiled in her sleep. She also gave me kisses in her sleep but when she woke up said she didn’t remember doing it. I was home. I was with my wife who was alive and smiling. Another day had passed. I had five left.
My last memory of the other place (as I came to think of it) was reaching out to touch Old Vertue/George Dalemwood on its frozen-in-place head. But at the last moment I hesitated because I was afraid. Yes I, Mr. Courageous, was afraid to pet a dog. I’d asked Astopel if it was all right to do it. Not even bothering to turn from the window, he said only “Why not?” His tone of voice sounded more like “Who cares?”
I reached out to pet the dog but stopped. Then I felt something heavy on my arm. Then I was back in bed with my wife and my life and all this confounding strife.
Normally I loved to lay in bed in the morning, barely awake, letting my still-sleepy brain simmer. Loved to lie next to Magda McCabe and watch her sleeping smile and smell her. She was the sweetest-smelling human being who ever lived. I could never get enough of her odor. Even when she was hot and sweaty after a ten-mile bicycle ride in the middle of August this woman smelled delicious. What is more gratifying than to lie next to your partner in your own bed mornings, thoughts just beginning to take shape, sharp-edged early light coming through the window and warming a patch of floor where your shoes are mixed with hers from the night before? What is more fulfilling than waking to your own satisfying life with someone treasured next to you? What more could we ask for and not be ashamed?
But that morning I shot up out of bed like I’d been launched by a catapult. I had so much to do and no idea of how to do it. Or even where to begin. And I was ravenously hungry. Atomically, tidalwavedly hungry. Never in my life had my stomach felt emptier. Was it because of what had been happening to me? Did time travel use up more calories than a day of normal clock time?
The Wooden Sea Page 12