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 had so much to do and no idea of how to do it. Or even where to begin. And I was ravenously hungry. Atomically, tidalwavedly hungry. 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’ll 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 Sean 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.
“Hi, Frannie. Who’s he?” Pauline stood in the kitchen doorway wearing a thin green nightshirt that didn’t cover much. She must have stepped outside to get the morning newspaper because she held it in her hand. She was staring at Junior with grave interest.