“Where are you coining from?”
“Mrs. Darnell made me French toast for breakfast. That was nice, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, it is. He’s a bad man, Johnny. His name is Floon. If you see him around town steer clear of the guy.”
“Shouldn’t you arrest him? He held you at gunpoint.” Johnny loved movie phrases like that—”held you at gunpoint.” Sometimes when he was watching a video he would hear one and laboriously write it down in block letters on a pad he kept near the television.
“Maybe later. Not right now.”
“Okay. But would you like me to follow him? I could give you a secret report on where he goes.”
My first instinct was to say forget it, but I stopped. What could it hurt? Even if Floon noticed him, he only had to speak with Johnny for two minutes to realize his mental Swiss Army knife didn’t have all its blades. Who would feel threatened by a fat retarded guy reciting Isuzu commercials? What Floon didn’t know was that once John got his mind set on something he was as tenacious as a mongoose battling a cobra. Why not let him follow Floon?
“You’d have to be very careful, Johnny. If he saw you he might make big trouble.”
Johnny never smiles but he did then. “I know how to hide. I used to hide from my mother and she could never find me anywhere. I’ll just hide from him too. You watch—I bet you ten thousand billion dollars that guy will never see me.”
“Then go ahead, John, but be careful. Don’t do anything stupid.”
“I am a little stupid, Frannie, but not about hiding.” He was still smiling when he left.
So much had already happened in the last few hours that it was a wonder I arrived at George’s house on two feet rather than crawling on all fours. My brain felt like it had been fucked by demons on acid and then tossed away. On reaching his street I began walking faster and faster without realizing it. I wanted to see my friend George Dalemwood, someone real and solid and an important part of the life only a few days before I had taken so blithely for granted.
I climbed the porch steps and pressed his doorbell. No one answered but that was no big deal. Even when he was home George frequently ignored a ringing telephone or doorbell. “They want me,” he was apt to say, “but I probably don’t want them, no matter who it is.” And he would go on doing what he was doing, oblivious to whatever bell scolded him in the background.
Before trying again, I walked back down a few steps and looked toward the roof. That’s where he’d been sitting the other day when my world was a simpler place, a world where “only” dead dogs reappeared and not versions of myself past present and future. Who then subsequently got shot by Dutch industrialists from the twenty-first century.
My friend wasn’t sitting on the roof today, but while looking up there I heard something that calmed my heart. George is an exceptionally good guitarist. He’s such an original that that shouldn’t be surprising but it is. And knowing his strange and conservative tastes, you’d expect him to play only classical music but not so. He ranges from Mozart to the Beatles to damned good imitations of Michael Hedges or Manilas de Plata. He spends at least two hours a day practicing on the most beautiful guitar I have ever seen. I would love that instrument just for its name alone—a very rare model called a “Church Door.” When I asked George how much it cost, he swallowed hard and got colloquial on me, saying only “five figures.” It’s worth it. He handles that wooden box like he’s making love to it and maybe he is.
While standing with one foot on a porch step, I heard him playing Scott Joplin’s darkly beautiful waltz “Bethena,” a great favorite of his. Relieved, I blew air out through my lips in a quiet raspberry. Hearing it told me he was all right. George played certain pieces depending on his moods. I knew “Bethena” was performed when he was stuck in his work and trying to figure his way out. Normally that tune meant stay away if you happened into his neighborhood; George was definitely not fun to be around when he was thinking something through. But today he would have to put that Church Door down and listen to me.
The music flowed out from behind the house. I made my way around to the back. George sat on the ground in the middle of his yard with the guitar propped between his knees. An unopened Mars chocolate bar lay on the ground nearby. Music filled the air. Chuck the dachshund sat nearby staring at his master like the dog staring at the old victrola on the RCA label.
“George?”
He looked at me and smiled. The dog ran over to say hello. I bent down and lifted him up. He attacked my face with hot fast licks. “Glad to see you back, Chucky.”
George heard that and his smile widened. “Did you see Caz de Floon? Did he find you?”
“Yes, Caz found me.” I walked over with the dog in my arms. He was a bundle of warm squirm and kisses all the way. George played two chords—a resolve—and stopped.
“When did Chuck reappear?”
“Caz brought him. He said he was a gift for me. So many things have happened, Frannie.”
“I know.”
It was a while before he spoke again. “And you talked to Floon?”
“Yes indeedy.”
“What did you think of him?” The question was unbelievable. George never, ever asked what you thought of people because he didn’t care. Neither about people nor what you thought of them. As a rule of thumb, George Dalemwood’s interest in humanity was akin to the average man’s interest in feldspar.
I sat down nearby and put Chuck on the ground. He walked over to George, curled confidently against his side, and closed his eyes. “What did I think of Floon? I already met him.”
George opened the candy bar. “Me too.”
That straightened me up fast. “You knew Floon before?”
“According to him I did.” He bit into the candy. A thin thread of tan caramel looped down and around his thumb. He licked it off. “He said we’d met back when he was in his thirties.”
“Why?”
“Supposedly he hired me to write the instructions for something he had invented.”
A warm gust of wind picked up the brown and red candy wrapper and flipped it into the air. I snatched it. “Do you remember him?”
“You have the fastest hands I’ve ever seen, Frannie. You really should play an instrument.”
“Is that true about his hiring you, George?”
“No, I never saw him before. And even though my memory is perfect, I checked my records to be sure. I never worked for anyone by the name of Floon.”
“So he’s lying?”
“He doesn’t think so. Plus he knew exactly who I was and specific aspects of my life. He cited both old and obscure examples of my work.”
“He could have found that out anywhere.”
“True, but the breadth of his knowledge was impressive. He must have done a lot of homework to find out what he knew. Would you like some of my Mars bar?”
“No. So Floon appears at your door with Chuck in tow as a little gift to gain your confidence. Tells you who he is and says you once worked for him. Did you know he was carrying a gun?”
“Everyone has guns today, Frannie. You said that yourself. That’s why you gave me one.” He offered a piece of chocolate to the dog, who sniffed it but turned away. George shrugged and popped the chunk into his own mouth.
“I’ve gotta tell you what’s been happening to me. It’ll make you see things differently.”
“Maybe, but Floon’s already told me a lot.”
That pissed me off and my voice reflected it. “Floon’s not me, George. He wasn’t where I was. What did he say?”
For the next half hour I told him my news and he told me his. To my great surprise and dismay, everything Floon told George was true, down to the last particulars. No exaggeration, no shading of the actual details of the story so that he would come out looking better. He answered all of George’s questions and then—get this—they tried to figure out what was happening to me and why.
“That’s rich! You two compared notes about me?”
“Yes.”
“George, Floon’s fucking Citizen Kane with a gun. He just shot Gee-Gee and before he shot the dog I think he did something bad to it so it became like a killer dog. You’re gonna take this man’s opinion as valid?”