Don't Ever Get Old (14 page)

Tequila looked wounded for a second. “That's observant of you,” he said. “Uncharacteristic, for you to be so on the point.”

And then his face went blank and he plugged his Internet telephone into the car radio. He blasted loud music for the rest of the trip. It was weird noise and hard to listen to. But it was a relief not to have to talk anymore.

 

21

I checked us into an Embassy Suites. I'd stayed in plenty of motels—low-slung, concrete buildings, off the side of the highway, with dingy bathrooms, threadbare sheets, and the smell of road tar filling my nostrils as I fell asleep to the rumbling of passing trucks. I didn't have a problem with squalor. I wallowed in it throughout my professional life. But I didn't go out hunting Nazis every day, so it seemed like an occasion to travel in style.

I thought the Embassy Suites was a swell establishment. Happy hour with snacks every evening at five. Full breakfast in the morning; they'd cook up some eggs the way I liked them, not too hard, not too runny. And the rooms were built around a lovely atrium, overlooking an indoor garden, little ponds with ducks in them and footbridges over them, all inside the hotel. They even had a palm tree.

We arrived around nine at night, too late to visit Meadowcrest Manor. The inmates would have already taken their tranquilizers. So we went to the hotel, dropped our bags in the room, and headed down to the restaurant off the lobby for a late supper.

The place was nearly empty; the only other diner was a dark-haired young woman with glossy pink lips and olive skin, who was listening to music through tiny white earphones and tapping at the keyboard of a portable computer. I noticed her with idle, fleeting interest. Tequila's gaze hung on her a little longer, but we followed the bored-looking waiter to our table and ordered a couple of sodas.

“God, this place is such a middlebrow cliché,” Tequila said. “Did you see that ridiculous fucking palm tree?”

I decided not to respond to that. “Your mother said you've been having some romantic troubles.”

His eyes shifted, for a moment, in the direction of the woman at the other table.

“She exaggerates,” he said. “I was dating a girl for a while, and now we're not dating anymore. These things happen.”

“She thinks these things happen to you a lot. And you're alone up there in New York. Your grandmother is concerned about you, too.”

He threw me an icy glare. “What do you think, Pop?”

I tugged at my shirt collar. “I don't care one way or the other.”

“Then quit giving me shit about it,” he said, rising to his feet and leaning toward me.

The pretty girl glanced up from her computer screen at us. Tequila saw her looking and turned very red. He slumped back into his chair.

I looked at the menu. “I think I am going to get me a well-done hamburger,” I said.

“Mmm-hmm,” he said.

“Look,” I said. “I'm sorry about what happened at the casino the other night.”

“It's fine,” he said.

“I'm glad you've been here,” I said. My mouth had that dry, cottony feeling again. “I wouldn't have found any kind of lead on this thing if you hadn't helped me.”

“I'm sick of all this bullshit. I ace college, I blow the LSATs out of the water, I get into a top law school, and it doesn't even matter. I got an internship, a job for the summer, with a big corporate firm. It pays three thousand a week. That's dollars, American. Did you ever make three grand a week?”

“I don't think I ever took home that much in a month.”

“Yeah, but I do all that, and what the hell is it worth?”

I set the menu on the table. “About three thousand dollars a week, I reckon. But I haven't had as much schooling as you, so my math could be a little off.”

“See, that's just it. Whatever I do, I'm a big damn disappointment.”

“Oh, come on. You know that isn't true.”

“What do you mean it isn't true?” he said, pounding his fist on the table. “You can't shut up about how much money I'm spending up in New York. I've been listening to your shit about it since I moved there.”

I leaned back a little in my seat. “I'm joking because you're so successful. We brag about you to everyone. You know your grandmother and I are always proud of you, no matter what you do. And your mother, too.”

“Dad never was.”

“You don't really believe that.”

“I don't know, Grandpa. I don't know. If you're so damn proud of me, why do you always treat me so coldly?”

I didn't say anything for a long moment while he stared at me, and then finally, quietly, I told him something true.

“You remind me of him.”

Tequila opened his mouth to speak and then changed his mind and closed it. I recognized the reaction; when it happened to me, I always blamed my meds, though. He wiped his eyes with his shirtsleeve, sniffed loudly, and then made a show of looking around the restaurant.

“Where is that shit-bird waiter with our sodas?” he growled. “How long does that take? He's got two goddamn tables.”

I lit a cigarette, and that brought the waiter scurrying from whatever hole he'd been hiding in.

“I'm glad you came back,” I told him. “Somebody forgot to leave an ashtray over here. Can you bring me one when you fetch our drinks?”

He gave me a thin-lipped frown. “We haven't got any ashtrays, sir, because people don't smoke in our restaurant.”

I took a long drag on my Lucky Strike, disproving his contention. “That's okay,” I said. “I'm easy to please. If you just bring a glass about half-full of water that I can ash in, I'm fine with that.”

“You must be having a little trouble following,” said the waiter. “This is a smoke-free establishment. You have to put that out.”

Tequila jumped to his feet so fast, the chair he'd been sitting in fell over backward. The dark-haired girl took out her white earphones and looked up from her computer screen.

He pointed at me. “Do you know who this man is?” he asked the waiter. His voice was low, from between clenched teeth; unmistakably a challenge.

“It doesn't matter,” said the waiter.

“Oh, I think it matters a hell of a lot,” Tequila told him. “This man fought in a world war. This man was wounded serving his country. And you're going to tell him he can't have a cigarette, while he waits for you to do whatever it is you were doing instead of getting our fucking sodas?”

“He can have a cigarette if he goes outside,” sniffed the waiter.

“I think maybe you and I had better go outside,” Tequila told him.

The waiter shrank back, away from Tequila. “Look, this policy is a courtesy to our other customers.”

“It doesn't bother me,” said the dark-haired girl, who had taken off her headphones. She had a foreign accent that was familiar, but I couldn't quite place it. “I wouldn't mind a cigarette myself.”

“Be my guest,” I said, holding out my pack of Luckys toward her.

“Neither of you can smoke,” the waiter said, mustering as much authority as he could manage with Tequila six inches from his face. “This is a nonsmoking restaurant. That's the rule. I didn't make it.”

Tequila and the dark-haired girl were looking at each other, and I knew my grandson was hankering for something other than a hamburger. I decided to remove myself from the situation.

“It doesn't matter,” I said. “I'm not that hungry, anyway. I'll head back to the room and forage in the minibar.”

“That's fine,” said Tequila as he righted the chair he'd knocked over.

The waiter took the opportunity to melt into the scenery. I suspected the sodas would not be forthcoming.

“You should go ahead and stay,” I said. “Get whatever you want, and bill it to the room.”

He hesitated a moment. “Okay, Grandpa. Thanks.”

I looked back once as I shuffled toward the glass elevator. Tequila had moved to the dark-haired girl's table. She was laughing at something he'd said.

 

22

When I got up to the room, I called Rose from my cell phone.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“Just calling to let you know we made it to St. Louis safely. How is my stumbling sweetheart?”

“I'm doing as well as can be expected, considering I am an injured old woman who has been disgracefully abandoned by her capricious husband. Did you take your pills?”

“Yeah,” I assured her.

“Did Billy count them out for you?”

“Yes. He followed your instructions to the letter.”

“He's a good boy.”

“He's okay. How are things in Memphis?”

“Fran has an age-defying skin cream. I tried it out. It is supposed to make my face ten years younger, so now I have the sumptuous perfumed flesh of a coquettish seventy-five-year-old.”

“Well, you know, you always look lovely, even if you are prone to pratfalls.”

“Thanks, Buck.”

We were quiet on the line for a few moments, and then I cleared my throat to break the silence.

“What are you really doing up there, Buck?” she asked.

“When I spoke to the doctor last night, he wanted us to move to a place where they will take care of us. I don't want to give up the house,” I told her.

“What does that have to do with chasing phantom Nazis in St. Louis?”

“He's not a phantom. I think he's here. Tequila does, too.”

“But even if he is, what does it matter? How does it change anything?”

I sighed. “I don't know.”

If there really was gold, we could maybe afford to hire a full-time nurse to move into the spare bedroom. That would at least let us stay where we were, instead of moving into some facility. But I knew there was no amount of money that could slow or stop the escalating health problems that threatened our independence in the first place.

“Buck, you can't fix everything by dashing off to do something heroic.”

“Maybe I can sometimes.”

“Maybe sometimes, sweetheart,” she conceded. “Oh, and Buck?”

“Yeah.”

“Happy birthday.”

I grunted. “I don't have birthdays anymore.”

I'd known too many guys who lived to make it to their birthday milestones. Seventy-five, eighty, whatever. They'd throw a big party to celebrate their longevity. The whole extended family would come into town. Everyone would toast and sing, and the guest of honor would bask in the attention. And of course, they'd always have an enormous cake with dozens of candles. And three weeks later, they'd all have to schlep back for the funeral. When somebody celebrates like that, he's just begging for the other shoe to drop. I can't tell you how many times Rose has dragged me to the home of some grieving family on a
shiva
call, and all the visitors were standing around eating the dead guy's leftover birthday cake.

“Whether you believe it or not, Buck, you're eighty-eight today. Find a candle and make a wish.”

“Nothing doing,” I told her.

“You're irascible,” she said.

“Yeah. I love you too.”

“Sweet dreams, birthday boy.”

“Watch your step, precious.”

I heard her laugh, and then the phone clicked.

The last birthday party I had was for my eightieth, seven, I guess, eight years ago. Brian and Fran flew in a few out-of-town relatives. Billy was there, of course. He was still in high school. Table for nine. Private room at the back of a restaurant. Cake and ice cream and the birthday song. I didn't know about it in advance, or it wouldn't have happened. I'd like five minutes alone with whoever invented the surprise birthday party.

That night, I got my gun out of its box on the high shelf, loaded it, and put it on the nightstand before I went to bed.

“What are you doing with that, Buck?” Rose had asked me.

“It's for just in case,” I told her.

She stared at me over her reading glasses. “What, exactly, do you think is coming for you?”

“I don't know,” I told her. “But I'm going to sleep with one eye open, and when I see the bastard, I'm going to blast him full of holes.”

“Great,” she said. “I've got that to worry about if I get up in the night to use the bathroom.”

“You know I'm always careful.”

“You have got to accept that there are some things a gun can't protect you from.”

And I knew she was right. But I felt more in control when the piece was nearby, so I kept it next to the bed for about six weeks before I removed the cartridges from the cylinder and put the weapon back up in the closet.

It was half-past twelve, and Tequila still hadn't come back to the room.

I pulled out my memory notebook so I could put that story in it, and I put my handgun on the night table, because I still didn't trust birthdays. I also lit a cigarette; one of those was worth at least eighty-eight candles. I took a long drag and made a wish for good health.

 

23

I was wondering whether to get worried about my grandson sometime after breakfast the next morning, when he came into the suite looking very content and somewhat pleased with himself. I was happy for him, and happy for me as well. I'd had about as much of his pouting and rage as I could handle. He'd needed something to cheer him up, and I was glad he'd found it.

“She's great, Grandpa. I think you'll like her.”

“Shut up,” I told him. As thrilled as I was by his happiness, this was the day we were slated to get face-to-face with Ziegler, and I was nervous.

I tossed him the keys. “Do you know where we are going?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I ran the directions off of MapQuest.”

I didn't know what that meant, but I decided to trust him. We got to Ziegler's retirement home at high noon, which seemed appropriate.

The parking lot at Meadowcrest Manor was about the right size to accommodate visitors and staff, but there was no parking for the residents. The part of their lives that involved going places was apparently over.