“Telemann! Hah!” His back to me, he held up a CD jewel case and shook it as if it were a crucial piece of evidence he had discovered. Caz dropped it and kept reaching around on the floor and under the car seats.
“Floon!”
“Wait!”
Because I was such a nice fellow I’d give him a few more seconds to find whatever he was looking for. Besides it was interesting seeing him melt down into a molten nutcase.
In English he said, “Hah, there it is! I was right.”
“What’s he doing?” Junior came over and went up on his toes for a better view.
Deepening my voice, I tried to sound like Orson Welles, “I’m afraid the man’s coming unhinged.”
“Huh? Waddya mean?”
“Just hold on. We’re waiting to see what he’ll do next.” I put my hand on the boy’s shoulder. He quickly shook it off and stepped away from me.
“Frannie? Is that you?”
Looking up, I saw George standing on his porch next to a stranger. At first I didn’t know the other guy. A young man, he looked vaguely familiar. Then recognition came like a cannon going off in front of me. And I knew who he was—big-time. I almost laughed out loud. “Oh boy! Uh, Caz?”
He kept rummaging and mumbling but would not turn around.
“Floon!”
That got his attention. He glared at me over his shoulder. There was something in his hand but his body blocked my view of it. Anyway I was in a hurry to tell him and watch his reaction.
“What do you want, McCabe?” The words came out too loudly; his voice was full of hatred and hurry.
Pointing a finger at him like a gun, I spat back just as meanly, “Don’t talk to me like that, you piece of shit. Look at the porch. Just look over there.” I threw my arm wildly in that direction. Anything to get his goddamned eyes to look that way.
“What did you say?”
“Look on the porch, Floon!”
“I cannot. I have to—”
“Okay, that’s it. Get out of that car. Come here—” I reached for him but he was faster. The next thing I knew, Caz de Floon had a new pistol in his hand and was pointing it at me. Where did he get that? It almost didn’t matter because what he was about to see was a lot more powerful than a gun.
“Get away from me, McCabe.”
I stepped back, hands up. “Please look at the porch?”
Twisting back and forth, he awkwardly worked himself out of the car. The gun remained pointed at my heart the whole time. Only when he was standing again did he look where I’d said. The stranger next to George watched all of this with a kind of vaguely curious passivity. What was happening was sort of interesting but not enough to make him excited.
These two men looked at each other. Watching I got a chill up my back because to my great surprise, the expressions on their faces didn’t change a bit. The younger man seemed engaged but aloof. The old man was just plain pissed off.
“Don’t you know who that is? For Christ’s sake even I know who it is! How can you not recognize him, Floon? It’s you! It’s you when you were young!”
“I know. I knew he was here as soon as I saw the dent in the car. That’s why I was looking around inside it. I knew this was my car. I always kept this gun under the passenger’s seat. I taped it there the day I brought it home from the dealer.”
I remembered Floon in Vienna telling me George and I had given him the feather when he was young and that it had changed everything. I remembered George saying old Floon knew him from when he was young.
George followed by the thirtysomething Caz de Floon clumped down the porch steps and toward us. Neither Floon seemed particularly interested in the presence of the other. Their coolness at this meeting astonished me. Then I realized it was one-sided because Floon Junior could not possibly know who this white-haired man with a gun was. Because if you look in a mirror and try to imagine what you’ll look like in thirty years, I don’t think your guesstimate will be right. Mine certainly wasn’t when I saw myself in a mirror in Vienna for the first time.
But there was a piece to the Floon puzzle I didn’t know about that was going to reveal itself and change everything.
The younger man had the same big head of hair (only his was chestnut-brown), army officer posture, and thick stubby hands. But what fixed the resemblance between the two was the tone of voice when he spoke—it was identical. “Father? Why are you here?”
Floon said to Floon. Young to old. The floor was all theirs now—the rest of us were just house lights dimming for the beginning of their show.
Old Floon said nothing but watched his younger self intently, as if trying to figure out what the other was getting at. He kept the gun tight against his side, still pointed at me. I saw it was a Walther PPK. Nasty gun. Nasty man.
“I’m not your father.”
Ignoring what the other had just said, Young Floon stepped forward and spat out, “You promised to leave me alone for two years. Two years later, Father. That was our deal and you agreed to it. But it’s not even been six months. Why have you come here?” His voice was blistering now. If he’d thrown it on someone it would have burned their skin off. It was in complete contrast to the look on his face which was empty, indifferent and said nothing.
“I am not your father! How can you not see the difference?”
“I see an agreement we made which you are now breaking, in typical fashion. You are a contemptible man. Do you know that, Father? Both you and Mother are contemptible people. Please get away from my car.” He looked the old man up and down like a guy does to a girl he’s sizing up. His eyes stopped when he saw the pistol. “Where did you get that gun?”
Old Floon looked first at his hand and then back at the other man. “Where did I get it? Under the car seat. You know that.”
“I thought so. You went into my car and took it without asking. My car, my gun—it’s so typical of you. That’s what I’m talking about. Because it’s not your gun to take, Father. I bought it. I bought it with my money, not yours. Nothing I own anymore came from you, nothing on this earth. Nothing ever will again.”
“I know that! I remember doing it. One of the great days of my life!” Old Floon said.
Then it became so quiet you could have heard a body drop, which I more than expected to happen at any moment although I didn’t know whose body it would be. The whole situation had turned so fucking weird that it chewed up logic and fact like they were Juicy Fruit gum. Anything could have happened at that moment. I wouldn’t have been surprised if anything had. Floon shoots me. Floon shoots Floon. Floon surrenders to Floon. Floon... You get the point.
“Look at my hands, for God’s sake! Look how fat they are.
Don’t you remember his hands?” Pistol dangling from an index finger, Old Floon put up both hands like he was surrendering to us. “Those long fingers? The ones he used to stab into my ear whenever I did something wrong. You don’t remember?”
The younger man appeared unimpressed. Arms crossed over his chest and eyes closed, he shook his head. “You have the same hands I do, Father. Why are you lying about it? What is your problem?”
Old Floon exploded. “My problem? My problem is I am not your father! He had thin hands! And when I did anything wrong he used them on me! Oh yes, oh yes. Stabbing those terrible fingers of his into my ear. Saying ‘My son will not do things like this. Not-my-son.’ ‘We are living in Amer-i-ca now! So you will talk like an Amer-i-can.’ Once a week, more, sometimes five times a week he would find a new reason for torturing me with those goddamned hands, those fingers like pencils.” Voice crazed, Old Floon’s eyes stayed in his head but at the same time they were somewhere else very far away. “Look at my hands, you fool. They are like catcher’s mitts. Do these really look like his?” When there was still no response, the old man got even angrier. Grabbing little Frannie by the arm he jerked him over. The kid grunted and tried to twist away but it was impossible. Old Floon stuffed the pistol halfway down the front of his pants to free up his other hand.