The Wooden Sea (16 page)

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 die 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, die 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
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grander in every way. I walked around looking for any sign of life--a book by die side of the bed, an open suitcase, a wallet or passport on die dresser. But tiiere was nodiing--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 streaming 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
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had so much to do and no idea of how to do it. Or even where to begin. And I was ravenously hungry. Atomi-cally, tidalwavedly hijngry. 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?

I walked toward the kitchen wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts, assuming my stepdaughter wouldn't be up for hours, as was her habit. I was thinking scrambled eggs and many pieces of bacon, cold tart orange juice that stung the tongue and enough hot coffee to float my eyeballs. I was thinking hot cinnamon buns--when the doorbell rang.

I looked at my watch but saw I wasn't wearing it. They had thought of everything, whoever they were. I always took off the watch before going to sleep. I was certain if I returned to the bedroom now and looked at my night table it would be there. The watch Astopel had taken from me. The watch that meant absolutely nothing anymore because time was no longer a highway going from A to B, but rather an amusement park with too many nauseating rides.

The doorbell rang again. I guessed it was about six A.M. Even in normal times I would have beheaded anyone who rang my bell at that hour. Without thinking about the effect of appearing at the door in my underwear, I appeared at the door in my underwear and opened it. And groaned.

"No, not you again! Please, enough for one lifetime!" "Step aside!" he said in a perfect imitation of Moe Howard from _The Three Stooges _Frannie Junior elbowed me out of the way and once again in his orange cowboy boots entered into my house uninvited. He stood in the hallway looking everywhere but at me.

It seemed like he was searching for something or memorizing the surroundings.

"What do you want? Go away and leave me in peace."

"You'll be in pieces, all right. Anyway, everything looks okay here.

And let me tell ya, bub, that's a fuckin' relief!"

"Look, before we go even deeper down the rabbit's hole with this, can I get some breakfast? I haven't eaten since I was seventy years old."

"Breakfast sounds good. I'm hungry too." He grinned like an evil wolf in a cartoon, all long teeth and menace. I didn't have the energy to spell out I

hadn't invited him to join me.

"Why don't you make some scrambled eggs with Worcestershire sauce and curry powder?" His request startled me because that was exactly what I had planned to cook.

"Why don't _you _sit down and put a cork in it? You'll eat what I make."

"Bite me."

I was opening cupboards. "I'd get food poisoning. Sit down and be quiet."

He sat down but wasn't about to be quiet. "Where've you been?"

"Guess." I took down my favorite frying pan.

"Up in the future?"

I nodded while taking things out of the fridge I needed to make our breakfast.

"So you don't know yet?"

I began cracking eggs into a bowl. "Know what?"

"I think we should eat first and then you can shit your pants."

"More surprises?"

"The word surprise is not part of this vocabulary, man; it's all just one long nightmare. Wait'11

you go outside and see what's happening today. Hey, by the way, who's Mary J. Blige? I was watching this MTV before and _that _is a ring-a-ding-ding woman!"

I was about to comment on his obsolete compliment when I remembered where he came from--the years when Frank Si-natra and his Rat Pack were the coolest guys around, cigarettes and roast beef were okay to ingest, and James Bond was still Scan Connery. In those days a

"ring-a-ding-ding woman" was one hell of an endorsement.

"Don't put too much curry powder on it. You always put too--"

"Be quiet."

"Howsabout some coffee while we're waiting?"

"Howsabout my hands are full and maybe it'd be nice if you got off your ass and made it."

"Fair enough. Where's your pot?"

"We don't use a coffeepot. The machine's over there."

"What machine?"

"That silver one on the counter. The espresso machine--the one on the counter with the long handle. It says `Gaggia' on the front?"

Sliding his hands into his jeans pockets he _tsk'd _his tongue in utter teenage know-it-all disgust.

"Espresso? I'm not drinking Italian faggot coffee. That stuff tastes like burnt tires. Where's your coffeepot and the

Maxwell House? That's good enough for me."

"There is no pot. That's what I've got--faggot coffee or nothing.

Drink water if you don't like it."

Crossing his arms, he didn't say another word until I put a full plate down in front of him. I couldn't resist a final verbal pinch. "I put a little foontageegee on yours."

His shoulders stiffened. "Foonta--what?"

"Foontageegee. A spice from Morocco. It's very...

hmmm..."I swishily put a hand on my hip, two fingers to my mouth and said, _"Robust." _I stretched out the _s _as far as it would go and finished on a very hard _t._

He shoved the plate away and actually wiped his hands on his pants.

"That's it! I ain't eating. Foontageegee. Holy shit."

"Eat the goddamned food, willya! It's a joke. I was kidding. It's bacon and eggs the way I always cook it."

Not believing me, he took the fork and poked everything on the plate slowly and suspiciously as if testing for landmines. Only after he'd bent down and sniffed things did he give in. Eating in silence, the boy didn't let the foontageegee get in the way of a crocodile's appetite. He kept his head low over the plate so he could shove more in faster. I was going to say something about it until I remembered he was me and that was how I had eaten when I was his age, God forbid.