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 I 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 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 Dalemwood 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.”