The Wooden Sea (11 page)

"No, the city. Manhattan."

The kid looked at me. "That's cool. I wouldn't mind living in the city. But what happened to Crane's View?"

I shrugged and turned back to Gus. "And you say my wife's name is Susan? Not Magda?"

"Come on, Fran, now you are pulling my leg! You can't not know who your wife is, for crying out loud. If your memory was _that _bad she'd have to lead you around on a leash." He sighed like my little game with him had gone on too long. "Susan Ginnety. That's her name as far as I know. Although I don't think

I'd be so happy having a wife that didn't want my last name when we got married."

Both the kid and I yelped in disbelief the instant we heard her full name spoken. Susan Ginnety? I had married Susan Gin-nety? The kid was so overwhelmed by the news that he jumped away from me, grabbed his head, and did an agony dance right diere on the spot.

"Susan Ginnety?! Eeyow! You married that spaz? First Magda Ostrova out of tenth grade and then Susan Ginnety? What happened to your brain?

No, what happened to _my _brain? You killed it!"

"Cut it out! I know as much about this as you do. Susan's already married!

She's--Uh-oh." I suddenly remembered right before all this happened she and her husband had separated. "We gotta find her. We gotta talk to her. Gus, where is she? Do you know where Susan is now?"

He glanced at his watch. It was a strange-looking thing. Appeared to be more a black rubber bracelet than a watch. And from what I could see, the numbers on it made no sense, watch-wise.

He brought it close to his mouth and said, "Call Susan Ginnety."

The kid let fly a low whistle. "That's a _phone?'_

Gus raised his eyebrows but said nothing, obviously waiting for some kind of response from his phone. Suddenly he began talking. "Susan?

Hi, it's Gus Gould. Yeah, I'm keepin' an eye on him and that grandson of yours. What? Yeah, your grandson. No wait, wait. I got Frannie right here.

Says he wants to talk to you about something." He smiled at me. I frowned.

"Well, Fran, go ahead, talk to her."

"What do you mean?"

He pointed to my wrist and for the first time I saw/realized I was wearing one of those bracelets; the kid too. Hesitantly I brought it up toward my face but didn't know how far away I was supposed to keep it when I spoke. From afar it must have looked like I was afraid the bracelet was going to bite me.

"Susan?"

"Hi, Frannie. What's up?"

Her voice was crystal-clear, but how the hell was I hearing it? I felt around and inside both ears but nothing was in either. "How am I hearing this? How does this work?"

Gus announced authoritatively, "Linear matrix tubing."

"Say what?"

"Linear matrix tubing. There's a deliberated fiber-optic conduit bleached through an open-end ekistics feed--"

"Forget it! Susan, where are you? We gotta talk right now."

"At the cafe, Frannie. Don't you remember? You and Gus said you wanted to go--"

"Yeah yeah, forget it. You and I gotta talk _immediately."_

She was silent too long and then sighed like a martyr giving up the ghost. "I hope you're not going to complain about this trip again. I really don't want to hear another rant--"

"I ain't going to rant, Susan, and what I've got to say is not about the trip. I just gotta ask some things." I could hear my voice going weird and desperate. If it went any higher, pretty soon I would sound like a teakettle whistling.

"We're at the cafe. But you know that."

"No, Suze, I don't know that. I didn't even know where I was until about five minutes ago, but I won't dwell on that one.

What cafe?"

"The Sperl."

"The Squirrel? You're at a cafe called the Squirrel?"

_"Sperl, _Frannie, Sperl. Turn your hearing aid up, dear."

"All right, I'll find it. What do you look like now?"

She chuckled in her trademark way. I'd heard it often enough at our weekly meetings when we discussed the goings-on in Crane's View.

"What do I look like now? Well, like I did this morning, in case you forget.

Byyyye!"

Gus Gould thought that was _the _funniest thing and again his annoying heehaw laugh broke out of the corral. I'd forgotten he could hear both sides of our conversation. "I'll point her out to you, Fran."

"Yeah, great, thanks. Where is this Cafe Sperl, Squirrel, whatever?"

"Right near our hotel." Gus gestured for us to follow him and strode away.

I looked at the kid. "Our hotel? What hotel? I have no idea what the hell is going on here. What's wrong with this picture?" I started walking.

"It didn't have to be like this. It's your fault! If you hadn't been so stupid and hit Astopel--"

"Change the channel willya, sonny? You already said that nineteen times. If you're expecting an apology you're not getting it. Anyway, you still haven't said what _you're _doing here."

"I don't know. One moment I'm living my own life, minding my own fucking business, then _whoomp, _I'm in yours, and now I'm here."

"I don't believe this. Plus if we're so far in the future, how come things don't look different?"

Which was true. If I was now somewhere between seventy and eighty years old, at least three decades had passed. But from what little I'd seen of the surroundings, the world hadn't changed much. Stores were stores and cars rolled by on streets, not in the air a la _Back to the Future.

_Most of them looked sleeker and more aerodynamic, but they were still cars.

Junior interrupted my thoughts. "It was the same for me. When 1 got to your time I thought what's so different? Same kind of clothes, a TV's still a TV--"

"Who sent you up to my time?"

He shot me a quick, sneaky glance and looked away real fast. Then he started walking away at a frightfully _brisk _pace. The little fucker was trying to make a fast getaway. Hobbling after him, I managed to catch up and touched his shoulder. He shook me off.

"Astopel! It was Astopel, wasn't it?" I must have said the magic word because he moved away so fast that if he had been a car his tires would have laid down a patch of rubber thirty feet long.

Watching him and Gus Gould go, the truth suddenly dawned on me. "Because you hit him too!

You hit Astopel too, _didn't you?"_

The boy didn't answer, but I knew I'd hit the bull's-eye. _That's _why the boy had been so worried about how I'd react to the black guy when I first met him. And that's why he'd started hollering when I knocked Astopel down.

Because he knew what was going to happen! Because he'd done _exactly the same thing _and ended up being shot into his future, just like me.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

He kept moving.

"Hey, asshole, why didn't you tell me what would happen if I hit him?"

People standing nearby stopped to stare at the old crazy fart in red, shouting down the street at a kid who was obviously trying to ignore him.

"I'm talking to you!"

Gus was watching now, as were half the people on the sidewalk, but not Junior. If I'd had any legs under me I would have sprinted over and--Stopping, he put his hands on his hips and turned slowly. His face showed only disgust.

"Don't you get it yet? I can't do anything for you! You think I wouldn't have said something if I could? You think I want to be here? Are you really that stupid?"

"Then why _didn't _you tell me?"

"Be-cause-I-can't!"

We shouted at each other across that wide space. Sooner or later a cop was bound to appear and it was sooner. Police in Vienna wear green uniforms and white caps that make them look more like crossing guards than police. This dude was husky, wore a matching husky moustache and an attitude you could

smell in five different languages. He chose to interrogate me. The prick-- he had to pick on an old weak man. In red.

"Na, was ist?"

"What's the problem, officer?" Probably because I answered in English and didn't hesitate looking him in the eye, his expression downshifted to sullen and confused--a bad combination if you're on the receiving end with a cop.

He responded in limping, phrase-book English. "Why do you screaming?

It is not allowed to scream so in Wee-ena."

"I'm not. I'm calling my grandson." I pointed at Junior. I hoped the cop would see the family resemblance. The kid shrugged. The cop pursed his lips and moustache hairs went up into his nose. Out of the corner of my eye Gus

Gould came hotfooting over toward us. He must have thought I was completely bonkers.

The cop's nametag said Lumplecker. I paused a moment to digest that and stop myself from laughing out loud. "Officer Lumplecker?"

"Ja?"

"What year is it?"

"Bitte?"

"The year. This year, now. What's today's date?"

Eumplecker shot me a lumpy look, like I was trying to pull a fast one on him.

"I do not understand you. My English is poor. Here is your friend. You may ask him your questions."

"Come on, Frannie, we gotta get to the cafe." Gus nudged me with his hip while smiling a lot of
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old yellow teeth at patrolman Lumpy. Some bystander in leather shorts and green knee socks nearby said, _"Was ist mil ihm?" _The cop turned his annoyed attention at this unsuspecting Fritz and started shouting at him in machine-gun German.

Gus and I drifted off without saying so much as an _auf wiedersehn._

"What's the matter with you this morning, Frannie? Are you on drugs?

Did you take something?"

My father used to ask me that question when I was young and permanently in trouble. "Are you _on _something?" was his way of putting it. He hoped I was so there would be a valid excuse for my detestable behavior. And if he could somehow get me "off," I'd return to normal again. Fat chance. At the time the only drug I was on was me.

"Wait a minute! How come you can see him?" I pointed at Junior ten feet away.

Gus unwrapped a piece of gum and put it in his mouth. "How can I _see _him?

Why wouldn't I?"

I walked to the boy. "Why can he see you now? Back in Crane's View you said no one could see you but me and the cat."

"Because we're both in the wrong time slot now. Neither of us belongs here."

It was spring. Girls passed in sherbet-colored summer dresses, their perfumes wiggling come-hither fingers at your sense of smell. I might have been old as hell but my nose still worked. Couples strolled slowly from here to nowhere enjoying the warm weather. Street musicians played everything from classical guitars to musical saws.

Vienna. Austria. Mozart. Freud. Wienerwald. Sacher Torte. I'd not gone there even when I had the travel bug because I'd never had the slightest curiosity about the city. London, I'd spent some time in.

Paris. Madrid. Other exotic places too, but Vienna meant opera, which I hated, those Lippizaner horses that hopped on their back legs depressed me, and the town was where Hitler got started being Hitler.

Who needed it? Plus George Dalem-wood had visited and returned to say that generally speaking, the Viennese were the most unfriendly, unpleasant people he'd ever met. What the hell was I doing here in my dotage? Married to Susan

Ginnety, no less.

"There's the opera house. I thought it would be bigger. It sure looked bigger in the pictures."

As we approached I saw the celebrated building but felt nothing. Of course a heart is supposed to surge forward on seeing certain famous sites--the Grand Canyon, Big Ben, the Viennese opera house. But my heart usually went into reverse at those moments just because it doesn't like being told what to do.

"Don't forget, Frannie, we're supposed to take a tour of the place this afternoon."

"Uh-huh. How far is this cafe?"

"About another ten minutes."

"Jesus, that far?" My body felt like lead, like paste, stone, wood, double gravity, it felt like shit.

So _this _was what it was like to be old? Forget it! I wanted to trade me in on a new model.

Immediately. How did old people put up with it? How did they lift their unbendable, hundred-pound legs and put one in front of the other day after day? My hands were lava-hot with arthritis; legs cold with I had no idea what.

It seemed like every person whizzed past us as if they were all on rollerskates; but they were only legs connected to younger, healthy bodies they took for granted. I wanted to move faster, to stop, and to weep in frustration all at the same time.

"Guys, wait a minute. Hold it--I gotta rest."

Gus and the kid exchanged looks but stopped. I wanted to kill them both. How could they keep going while I felt like a boulder was sitting on my head?

"Are you okay, Frannie?"

"No I'm not okay! Just wait a minute, willya?"

"No problem, partner."

"Is that a hot dog stand? What's a wurstel?" The kid pointed to a small kiosk nearby that had different pictures of hot dogs taped to its windows. "I'm hungry. I'm getting one."

Between gasps, I asked if he had any money.

"Nope. You got any?"

Without a sliver of surprise, my hand slid over a bunch of cards in my pocket. I took them out to see what they were.

Gus said, "Use your Visa card."

"They take credit cards at a hot dog stand?"

He made a face that said I couldn't be _that _dense. "Are you going to pay with a five-dollar bill? When was the last time you saw paper money?"

"I got a card too. I got one of those. I had it all along." Junior waved a shiny pink card and moved toward the stand.

I could not catch my breath. My entire body felt outraged at having had to walk so far so fast.

Yet I knew we hadn't come far at all.

Besides all the other shocks whirling around like multiple cyclones, I couldn't believe this was me inside me--an aching, whining, grumpy, exhausted, old... shithead.

"So tell me about your grandson, Frannie. He's a good-looking boy."

We watched good-looking boy buy his hot dog, with much pointing and nodding until the seller
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