Beyond the beaded curtain was a room of bookshelves, rather messily arranged but with hand-lettered signs for different sections: TRAVEL and PHILOSOPHY and MYSTERIES. He even stocked best-sellers because travelers often picked up something to read on the beach. Saul swept a hand. “Here we are.”
“Hmm,” she said, stepping towards the nearest shelf, seeming to idly peruse the volumes. “Where is...”
Where are the banned books? He wanted to say for her, wanting perversely to help her destroy him because the girl inside wanted so much to do well. “What was it you were looking for?”
“I don’t know,” she said honestly, then caught herself. “Um. DH Lawrence?”
“We don’t have any Chatterley, I’m afraid,” he said. “I wish, actually, because it would sell.”
“Well,” she laughed. “It would be illegal, though, wouldn’t it?”
“You want something illegal?” Saul shrugged. “Sorry.”
He tried to picture what it was she was expecting. Maybe some sort of pornographic display, anything but the Agatha Christie novels and How to Win Friends and Influence People staring back at her. He turned around and went to the back corner.
“You know, Callie, I may have something for you anyway.” Saul looked up at the top shelf, which was lined with a series of unlabeled, brown-leather books. He took one from the end and turned around. As he glanced down at it, the pages were blank.
She took it without thinking, and as she peered at the cover he saw that it now had a gilded title on it. Quickly he read the words upside down: The Girl Who Spoke Too Late. Interesting.
Callie Stevens opened the book and looked at the title page. Then she scanned the first page, which Saul saw was printed in a nice and well-kerned font as though typesetter had toiled over the book for weeks.
The words written there were a mystery to Saul, and he did not try to see them or even listen to the persistent thoughts that washed at him off the pages. That was more than Catskills storytelling. But he merely watched as the woman ran her hand down the page. After a moment she seemed to sway.
Callie she shut the book, clapping it loudly down on a nearby shelf. “I don’t...”
“Is something the matter?” Saul asked.
She touched her head, caught in the half-moment as though awakening suddenly. “I’ll see you soon,” she said.
“Go safely,” Saul stepped out of the book section after she burst through the beaded curtain. She was at the front door before he the curtain had stopped swaying. The bell on the door rang as she tore it open and light streamed in. As Callie/Kali went out, a younger girl was coming in. The girl, another silhouette, stepped out of the way before Callie could run her over. It was his niece.
Chapter 8
Frannie nearly ran into the woman coming out of the restaurant. The lady, pretty and dressed like she could easily be a friend of Frannie’s mom, seemed all huffy and threw her a look to kill just because Frannie happened to be coming in the door as the lady was going out.
Frannie walked in and immediately saw a whole menagerie of oddness at once: for one thing, there was a crucified Frankenstein monster in mixed media stuck off to the left, and next to it she saw her Uncle Saul and a wiry guy who looked like the kind of artist Gene Kelly was pretending to be in that American in Paris movie. The cafe was dark and smoky, with shimmering reflections coming from the tables and booths, and the microphone stands at the humble proscenium far behind them.
Whether it had really whispered to her or not, she loved the Café instantly.
Uncle Saul and the artist were mainly watching the invisible wake left by the woman, and their look was not pleased or awestruck, which Frannie would have accepted because she’d seen that lady—but more like someone had told them they had six months to live.
Now they both seemed to regard Frannie as though they couldn’t believe their show was over and something else was on, like her mom got sometimes when Edge of Night went off and then all the sudden you’re listening to The Lone Ranger, and who in their right mind liked the William Tell Overture anyway?
“Hi, fellas!” Frannie swept her hand in a wide arc.
Her uncle looked into the dimness and recognized her as he snapped out of it. He smiled widely and walked fast, sweeping her into his arms. “Hey, little lady! Lemme look at you. Good to see you up and at ’em.”
She loved the way Saul talked. Unlike her father, who had grown up in Germany—just as she herself had been born there, though she had no memory of this—Uncle Saul had spent most of his life in the States— first Brooklyn, then the Catskill Mountains, the place where he was the emcee with the wavy hair, all of that gone now. Because she had stayed there as a baby, Frannie’s mom said Frannie was infected by the lingering chutzpah in the air, “like a fungus.” Vague memories. Nothing to hold onto.
Saul sized her up. “Last time I saw you, you were in bed. So what are you, anyway, Frannie, like five foot?”
“That’s what I tell people,” she said. In fact she was four-foot-ten-and-a-half, and likely to stay there. “Let’s just leave it at that.”
“Smart,” Saul said. “So look! This is the place. Not bad, huh? What can I get you?”
Frannie looked around and before she hit on the lunch counter, some of the paintings caught her eye. She hadn’t seen anything like this except in some survey books her pop kept around.
“Saul, this place is—hey, what do you have here?” She went past the skinny guy and crawled into a booth, checking out one painting. On it, a man in a red cape was falling off a skyscraper, and a long line of frames in the air followed him down, and through each frame, the background was different, sometimes detailed and sometimes just a swath of murky color.
“I’m supposed to get sandwiches,” she said, putting her hands on the back of the booth and kneeling in the slick seats. “You got a real German Expressionism thing going on here. You got egg salad?”
Saul said, “We don’t have egg salad between the rushes, it goes bad.”
“What do you mean, German Expressionism?” the artist said.
“Okay, what do you have? You got peanut butter and banana?”
“We can do PB&B.” Saul said, shrugging. “I think we got ham.”
“Nah. Actually—come to think of it, yeah, one ham, but not for me I swear.”
“Spare me the put-on frumkeit.”
“Yeah, okay. Anyway: one grilled cheese, one peanut butter and banana, one ham and swiss for the shiksa—who drives I might add, and boy is she a looker. I should bring her in; she’ll brighten up the place.” Frannie felt herself motoring on as she bounced out of the booth and checked out more of the art. This place was amazing. She nearly bumped into a table in the center and turned around to see an over-sized sculpture of a telephone, its mouthpiece off the hook and a large, bumpy tongue sticking out.
Forget her imagination and the crazy idea that she was drawn here. This place was the end. Why in heck hadn’t she thought to visit him before?
She spun around, internalizing that the artist had asked something. “German Expressionism—because of the color, and the odd angles, and then general feel of wholesale unhappiness. Like the unhappiness makes a texture on the painting of the world, like. And that’s a little too deep but that’s the way with the old GE,” Frannie said.