I sighed/said, “Go home, Fran. Go home to your family.”

Smith sat like a statue on the top step of the porch to our house, looking as if he had been waiting for me to return. I was so tired I’didn’t even say hello. Reaching down, I just stroked his head a few times and then opened the front door.

Home sweet smell. The Dutch have a line that goes something like the sound of a clock ticking is always nicest at home. Even better are the smells of home. One whiff and the soul knows where you are before the mind does. I stood in the front hall and, closing my eyes, simply breathed home for a little while. After what I had been through, it was God’s perfume. My life was on that air. The people I lived with, the objects we owned, the cat, popcorn someone had made earlier, Pauline’s CK One cologne; even the dust smelled familiar.

Upstairs the two women would be asleep—Magda in sweatpants and one of my Macalester College T-shirts, her body sprawled across as much of the bed as possible. Pauline in a nightgown huddled on an edge of her bed as if she were afraid of taking up too much space. Unlike her mother, she slept lightly, she had bad dreams; her closed eyelids always fluttered.

I was exhausted and empty as a dead man’s mailbox. The thought of slipping into the warm bed beside my wife was almost as gratifying as the act itself. But as soon as the word “wife” trotted across my mind, the next thing that followed was a picture of Susan Ginnety who, x years in the future, would be Mrs. F. McCabe. Thinking about that deranged union snapped my eyes open.

The cat purred at my feet. Without warning, he raced across the room, leapt in the air, and threw himself full force against a window. There was a squeaky squawk and a bird sprang off the outside windowsill and fluttered away. Two large white feathers drifted lazily down and out of sight. I watched and thought– feathers. So now that feathers were on my mind, up came a picture of the one tattooed on Pauline’s spine and then the one I’d found and buried with Old Vertue and... Like a bomb bursting in my brain, I remembered something from my future. It made me so excited that without thinking I said, “Holes in the rain!” Because I had to return to find another feather I’d seen up there that might be the answer to everything.

I was naked. I was naked and in bed. I was naked and in bed with a woman. Who was naked. And old. And not my wife Magda. And she had her hand on me, clearly trying to bring Old Horny to attention with her busy fingers.

I stood straight up on the bed and covered myself, but not before noticing she had been semisuccessful with her hand jive.

An old Susan Ginnety smiled up at me with a triumphant leer. “I told you I’d get you up, Frannie! Get back down here now. Stop being silly.”

Sixty years earlier, this woman and I had had sex in every position two eager teenage bodies could manage, not to mention using every one of our nooks and crannies to fullest effect. But now, towering above her on wobbly old man’s legs, I felt as modest as a nun in the boys’ locker room.

“Cut it out, Susan! Are you crazy?”

That got her up. She stood on the side of the bed with hands on her bony hips showing me a naked body I did not want to see. “I have been very patient until now, Frannie. But I am a woman. I have needsl”

If I played this wrong, I’d never get any answers out of her.

“Look at me, Susan. You want to make love to this body? I look like a Dead Sea Scroll!”

She was unmoved. “Why did you marry me if you knew this would happen?”

Before I could stop myself, I blurted out, “That’s a good question.”

She punched me in the knee. Thank God I stood on a bed because I collapsed sideways and my head bounced like a Ping-Pong ball on the mattress.

“Bastard! You proposed to me! Why did I ever say yes? Why did I ever think it would work?”

World War Knee had my full attention while she ranted. Even when the pain dropped back below the danger zone, I kept rolling around and groaning. As if I’d been kneecapped by the Mafia rather than punched there by an old woman.

Two sharp knocks on the door froze us. We stared at each other like we’d been caught doing something bad. A short pause followed by three more knocks. I pulled the blanket up to my chin. In no hurry, Susan wrapped herself in a green terry cloth robe that had been slung over a chair.

For the first time since I’d “awakened” here, I looked around. It was one of the most beautiful hotel rooms I’d ever seen. It should have been occupied by a head of state, or at least someone with their own Gulfstream jet fueled and waiting at the airport; definitely not a room for the Crane’s View chief of police. My first wife (First? Now I was apparently on my third!) loved the caviar life, so I had spent time in many plush hotel rooms. But those were railroad waiting rooms in Upper Volta compared to this palace. How the hell had I ended up here with a geriatric nymphomaniac? More importantly, who was paying for it?

“Hi, Gus,” she said glumly.

It wasn’t the Gus Gould I’d seen the day before. This gentleman looked like the head of state that belonged in this fancy room. He wore a dark suit so perfectly cut and understated that one glance told you it had to have come from a tailor who required four fittings before his work was done. Snow-white shirt, cuff links, and thin black tie with a narrow gleam off the silk. I raised up on an elbow to look at his shoes. They immediately spoiled the picture. Nice though they were, they were still black snakeskin cowboy boots.

“Why are you kids still lying around in bed? We got a whole day ahead of us and things to do!”

“My husband and I were having a chat.” Susan flicked me a look that would have fried the snakes on Medusa’s head.

“Well, better get up now. You know Floon doesn’t like it when you miss a meal.”

“Who’s Floon?”

“Don’t be stupid, Frannie.” Susan sashayed into the bathroom, closing the door behind her a lot too hard.

“She’s a fine-looking woman, Frannie. You’re a lucky man.”

“Uh-huh. I’ll trade her to you for a few answers.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing.”

Gus walked to one of the large closets and opened the door. He reached for something and pulled out a suit exactly like his– dark, rich, beautiful. A fortune in cloth. “Here, I’ll help you on with it. We gotta get moving. You got the shirt and boots somewhere?”

“We’re wearing the same thing?”

He looked at the suit, briskly brushed the front, and pointed to it. “Frannie, I never imagined a man’s suit could cost ten thousand dollars. That is, until this trip when he gave us this one.” He held up a foot. “And John Wayne wore Lucchese boots like these. If Floon wants me to wear these clothes today, I’ll do it. He paid for them but we get to keep them when the trip’s over.

I got out of bed naked. What else could I do, hold a pillow in front of my package? “Gus, my mind is a little unreliable today, so forgive me if I ask some dumb questions.”

“Will do. Here’s your undies.” He held out a brown box.

Opening it, I pulled beautiful lime-colored tissue paper aside, and stared. “I don’t wear boxer shorts.”

“Today you do, buddy. That’s how Floon works—everything down to the last detail. Those undershorts probably cost more than my first automobile.”

Unhappily, I slid them on. Next came the white shirt, black cashmere socks, and the suit. Luciano Barbera. I’d always wanted to own one of his suits. Yes, I was an old man but could still feel the quality of the material sliding across my skin. ‘This suit really cost ten thousand bucks?”

“Yeah, and Floon bought twelve of them for the men. I don’t want to even guess what he paid for the women’s clothes. Know what he told me? That he paid for them all in ngultrums.”

“What’s that?”