“What, Frannie, what is it?”
“I can’t remember things anymore. Big things or small things—it’s all the same. All of my head is empty. I think I might have Alzheimer’s disease. I’m scared shitless.”
“So?” Her voice was calm; her face said so what?
“So? Is that all you can say? Memory is leaking out of me like air from a balloon and you say so?”
“We’ll go to a drugstore and get you some Tapsodil. What is the problem?”
“What’s Tapsodil?”
“It’s medicine for Alzheimer’s disease. You take it for three days and you’re cured.”
“Shit.” I made a sour face.
“What?”
“They can cure Alzheimer’s now?”
“Of course. I had it two years ago. It’s not a big deal, Frannie. You don’t even need a doctor’s prescription.”
“But...”
“But what? Is that all you’re worried about?”
I couldn’t think of another thing to say. My brilliant plan to trick all the info I needed out of Susan had come and gone like a breeze. Stumped, I watched another person go by with a full-head helmet on, only this one was yellow. “What the fuck is this, the Pod People? Look Susan, until I get some of this espadrille—”
“Tapsodil.”
“Tapsodil. Yeah, whatever, you have to help me. I don’t like walking around in my own life bumping into walls, not able to remember the layout. So just for now answer a few questions. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Who’s Floon? What is that feather logo he uses?”
“He owns the largest pharmaceutical company in the world. They make Tapsodil, among hundreds of other drugs. The feather is the company trademark. You really don’t remember this?”
“No. But why that feather?”
“You gave it to him. You and George.”
“George Dalemwood?”
“Yes.”
“Where is he?”
“My God, Frannie, you don’t remember that either?”
“Nothing. Where is George?”
She looked at her hands in her lap. “He disappeared thirty years ago.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just that. He disappeared from Crane’s View and no one knows what happened to him. You tried to find him for years but never had any luck.”
“Disappeared? George?”
“Yes.”
I had given Floon the Old Vertue feather? And George – dependable, sedentary George Dalemwood disappeared never to be heard from again? This was my future? While trying mentally to swallow those two lumps, I heard someone singing Aretha Franklin’s “Respect.” Two voices sang, one of them sounding distinctly weird. That was because the voice came from a dog.
A man in faded jeans and a green T-shirt that said DROPKICK MURPHYS walked next to a Rottweiler. The man moved quickly while the dog trotted next to him looking up at his master occasionally as if waiting for a cookie. But the two were singing “Respect” and they weren’t half bad. The dog’s voice was gravelly and rough, sort of deep and sort of not. I don’t know what I’m saying—how the hell do you describe a dog’s singing voice?
I whipped around to Susan and saw she was looking the other way. I elbowed her hard and she cried out. “Susan! Susan!”
“What? Why did you do that? It hurt!”
“Look! Look!”
“So what? Why did you hit me?”
The singers passed us singing R-E-S-P-E-C-T...
“That dog is singing!”
“Yes, and?”
“When did they teach dogs to sing?”
She rubbed her arm. “Years ago. I don’t know when. Ask Floon. They invented the stuff.”
“What stuff? To make dogs talk?”
She must have remembered I had Alzheimer’s because she stopped looking angry. “No. But you can give them stuff that makes them learn things. Like how to sing or say certain phrases.”
“Jesus! Why would you do that?”
“For fun. I don’t know. I hate dogs.”
As a kid I used to eat as fast as I could. My parents would say slow down, slow down or you’re going to throw up. But there was always someplace important to go or someone to see and food was only fuel to get me there. As a result I often ate so fast I’d get a stomachache that lasted hours. Sitting with Susan on that bench in Vienna, in a world where Rottweilers sang Aretha Franklin and people passed with bowling balls on their heads I had the same feeling; only this time the ache was in my head and not my guts.
“I wanna go home.”
Susan nodded and sighed. Little did she know to what home I was referring.
“When did you and I get married?”
Wrong question to ask. She didn’t answer and only when I turned did I see she was crying.
When she finally spoke, her voice was bitter. “I thought everything would now finally work out. Stupid me, eh? Stupid me! Do you realize I have loved you my whole life? My whole damned life you’ve been stuck in me like a piece of meat between my teeth I can’t get out. But finally finally I thought we were home free. I waited my whole life for you. I fought and I was patient and I never gave up hope because I just knew one day I’d prevail. I honestly believe life makes sense if you’re patient. And I was, Frannie! All those years I waited for you like the girl in a corner waiting to be asked to dance. When you asked me to marry you—”
“I did?”
“Yes you did, damn it! Please don’t tell me you forgot that too. I think I’ve been humiliated enough for one morning. When you asked, I thought: fifty years too late but why the hell not? I’ve loved the idiot all this time so why not finish the party with him? One great last hurrah before...
“I’m going back to the hotel and lie down. Go to a pharmacy or whatever they call them here and ask for Tapsodil. I’m sure they’ll have it.” She stood up and rubbed her arm some more.
“Don’t go, Susan. Let’s have this day together and be happy. Everything’s my fault and I apologize. We’ll do the town.” I moved to stand up but my lower body promptly reminded me I was an old geezer. My legs were uncooperative. Cursing quietly, I rocked back and forth twice to gain momentum and only then was able to rise. “I’m not good at being old.”
“You still look pretty cute to me, husband. And I want to tell you a secret. Do you know what made me love you most of all? I always had a thing for you, sure, but the thing that really hooked me?”
“Tell.”
“How wonderfully you cared for Magda when she was dying. I’d never seen that side of you, Frannie. I never thought you had it in you.”
Hearing those terrible words, hearing that my Magda died was as bad as if it had just happened. What immediately came to mind was the conversation I’d had with George when I told him I had never loved anyone enough to fear losing them. But now, in this strange no-man’s-land time, I realized I had never been more wrong about anything in my whole life. Knowing Magda would die before me was unbearable.
“When, Susan? When did she die?”
She made a worried face and moved to go. “We have to get you those pills.”
I stepped in front of her. “When?”
“On my forty-eighth birthday. I’ll never forget it.”
Magda would be dead in less than two years.
What happened next almost saved me and the rest of my life a lot of trouble. Almost. We found an apotheke and Susan bought some of the Alzheimer’s medicine for me. I didn’t watch the transaction because I was too busy looking around the place, trying to familiarize myself with a world thirty years my senior. This drugstore looked pretty typical except for some futuristic gadgets on display that did God only knows what to repair and improve human life. If they’d spoken English there I’d have asked, but my German vocabulary consisted solely of ja and nein. Walking out of there, we almost bumped into another Pod Person– this time wearing white.
“All right, what the hell is he learning with that thing on his head?”