“What’s the matter?”
“I told you about that language, Fran. I’m not a man who likes hearing profanity from no one. We’ve talked about this before—”
I stepped in close and grabbed his throat with an aching right hand. “Don’t give me any shit, Droopy. Who are you, where are we, and please answer whatever questions I have right now. Or I’ll knock your teeth so far down your throat you’ll have to stick a toothbrush up your ass to brush “em!”
Droopy grabbed my hand and gave it some kind of karate twist. Suddenly my arm was up behind my back in a hammerlock and he was breathing old-man breath over my shoulder. “Don’t be a dumbbell, Fran.” He gave rny arm a sharp push up my back and even more pain flooded me. I thought I’d pass out.
“Please let him go, mister! He gets senile sometimes and doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
I recognized the voice but couldn’t move to see if it really was whom I thought it was.
Behind me, Droopy said “You know him, young fella?”
“Yes, sir, he’s my grandfather. Grandpa McCabe.”
My arm was released but stayed where it was. For a moment it felt’like I’d never be able to unbend the damned thing again. It just sort of stayed up behind my back like a bent chicken wing.
“You better tell your granddad to behave himself or he’s gonna get into big trouble with that kinda talk.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll keep an eye on him. Thank you, sir!” Frannie Junior’s voice came out sounding like the worst kind of suck-up, sycophantic, brown-nosing ass-kisser. He came from behind and took me gently by the other arm.
I snatched it away. “What the hell are you doing here?”
He looked at Droopy and rolled his eyes in exasperation. “Don’t you remember, Cramps? I came this morning to surprise you.”
“Yeah? Some surprise.” I tried to march away but my legs felt like hot rubber bands. “I’m old! What the hell am I doing old?”
“You should be happy! Now you know you’re going to live a long time. That’s what you get for punching Astopel.”
“The guy stole my watch!”
“Yeah but you weren’t exactly diplomatic taking it back.”
I shook my head. “You would’ve done the same thing! What about the guy you hit at the Schiavo house?”
“That was different.” He crossed his arms to indicate that discussion was finished.
“My grandson! If I had a grandson like you I’d move to Sumatra.”
“If you were my grandfather I’d buy you the ticket.”
“So are you fellas catching up on family business?” Droopy came up and was all smiles again.
“What’s your name?” I had to start somewhere and knowing who he was might lead to something.
“August Gould, Gus to my friends; pleased to make your acquaintance. Again. You want to shake hands now and make it official?”
“Gus Gould.”
“That’s right, sir.” He was smiling like a carved Halloween pumpkin.
“Gus, my memory is a sieve today. Tell me exactly where we are and what we’re doing here.”
“We’re in Vienna, Austria, Fran. This is a two-week tour of Europe and we got one more week to PO. After here we go to Venice, Florence, Rome, Athens, and then home.”
“Where’s home?” I almost didn’t want to ask for fear he’d say some place like Yanbu, Saudi Arabia.
“Yours is New York. Mine is St. Louis.”
“Crane’s View, New York?”
“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 Ginnety? The kid was so overwhelmed by the news that he jumped away from me, grabbed his head, and did an agony dance right there 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.