We hugged. We hugged and I felt tears on my face and the heat of her thin body in my arms. “Don’t be normal, Pauline. Don’t ever try to be normal because it’s the first symptom of a terminal disease. As soon as you feel the need to be normal coming on, get the antidote.”

“And what is the antidote?”

I wanted so badly to come up with a brilliant ripping riposte that she would remember the rest of her life. All I could think of was, “Just make sure that you’re living your life, Pauline; don’t let normal pretend to be you.”

Isabelle Zakrides came over with papers to sign and asked if she could speak with one of us about Magda’s condition. With a glance I asked Isabelle if anything was new. Her eyes back said no, this was just a formality. I told her to talk to Pauline and the girl’s face showed happy gratitude.

“Will you tell me what’s going on with my mom?”

“Sure, Pauline. Let’s sit over there and I’ll give you the whole scoop.”

Standing outside the hospital, I told George what had happened to Johnny Petangles and that I was sure Floon shot him. I also described what had gone on between Barry and me. When I was finished, the blown-fuse look on George’s face said it all. “Digesting all this is like eating a whole turkey in a couple of bites, Frannie. It’s staggering. What are you going to do now?”

“I was going to look for Barry and ask some questions but he’s disappeared. I have a feeling he’ll be back when it’s necessary. In the meantime I don’t want that cocksucker Floon roaming around with a gun. He’s already shot two people and a dog and it’s not even noon.”

“But if you find him what are you going to do then? You only have a few days, Frannie.”

“First let me find Floon. The guy’s dangerous. Then I’ll look for this fourth thing they’re so hot to have, whatever the hell it is. What else can I do, George? I don’t exactly have a lot of options open to me.”

A look of deep sadness swept onto his normally impassive face and stayed. He was frightened for me and to my surprise a lot of love was in his look as well. Very quietly he asked, “How can I help?”

“Go back inside and keep an eye on Pauline for me. I can’t be worrying about her now. Carry your cell phone so I can reach you when I need to. And answer it for Christ’s sake, George. Don’t just let it ring till the battery runs out.”

“All right. Where are you goinp now?”

“Home to get a gun and get changed. Then out to find Floon the Flying Dutchman.”

We stared at each other and more than a lot passed between us in those silent seconds.

Finally a small guilty grin flickered at the corners of his mouth. He couldn’t resist asking, “Frannie, you really saw the Beatles? What was it like?”

“They were all shorter than I imagined. Even Lennon. I always thought of him as ten feet tall.”

The phone was ringing when I got to my house. In the rush to leave for the hospital, we’d forgotten to lock the front door. I walked in and caught the phone on its last ring. But by the time I said hello whoever was gone. Had Floon done something else in the meantime? God forbid. I thought about that familiar phrase as I walked into our bedroom and started getting dressed How could “God forbid” if He’d been asleep all this time? Or “God damn” or “God save us”? And was He actually unconscious the way we are when we sleep, or did Barry mean it as some kind of cosmic metaphor?

With a pair of trousers in my hands and one leg up ready to insert, I realized I was staring at our bed. Did God sleep on a mattress? Or use a pillow? How big was His bed? Why was I suddenly smiling? I was going to be dead soon because my poor brain was going to explode. In the meantime I had to catch mad Caz de Floon before he shot someone else, then find the fourth whatever so as to save the universe. Why was I smiling?

After slipping on the pants, I straightened up and struck a pure Bruce Lee pose—arms up in inverted “L’s” ready to deliver lethal blows. I swatted one out while growling, “Heeee-ya!” in my best Hong Kong karate movie voice. McCabe, dying Master of the Universe. Because George was right—it was too much to even imagine, much less absorb. It just seemed logical to do whatever I could and then leave the rest to Barry, his gang and whoever else was out there in the stars.

I didn’t have a solution but I had to admire the enormity of the problem.

Where to find Floon? In his situation where would I go? Hmmm? Where could I go with no money or identification? I was assuming he arrived here with only the clothes on his back. Plus he had no clue of the specifics of what was going on today. If I were suddenly shot back thirty years with no preparation and no resources to work from, I don’t know what I’d do. He’d said he wanted to “change some things” which I took to mean take greedy advantage of what he knew about the future to affect his fortunes then, i.e., buy a zillion shares of Microsoft stock the first day it goes public. But how could he do that? Rob a bank to get some startup capital? He had his gun and certainly the balls to do something like that.

Standing in front of the dresser slipping things into my pockets, I looked at myself in the dresser mirror trying to figure this out—where would Floon go? What’s the first thing he would be likely to do?

Magda is an orderly woman. Everything in its place, our house is always spick-and-span, her desk is empty of any extraneous papers, and monthly bills are paid punctually. It’s one of her qualities I deeply appreciate because I am not usually tidy in either mind or checkbook. Every morning when the mail arrived she put whatever letters were for me in a neat pile on top of my dresser. When I came home from work and changed clothes, I’d fan through them and read any that looked inviting. The others I left on the dresser for when I could summon the small interest to open them. Magda and Pauline kidded me about how many contests I’d lost or orphans I let starve because I didn’t open most of those letters for days.

Today on top of that pile was a quarterly report from my stockbroker. When my pockets were filled with what I thought I would need—money, notebook, pistol… I mentally ran through the list to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything. While doing this, my eyes remained on the broker’s letter, specifically the company’s mailing and email addresses. Something dawned on me.

“Elementary, my dear Watson!” And then I was galloping out of the house like a horse on fire.

Our town library was the pet project of Lionel Tyndall, the only obscenely wealthy resident of Crane’s View. A lonely old eccentric who made a fortune in oil prospecting, Tyndall gave the library so much money before he died that the place is a joy to visit. Not only do they have a wide array of constantly changing books, but their equipment is always the most tiptop, cutting-edge, and up to date. The head librarian, Maeve Powell, patiently taught me how to use a computer and, when I had it down, how to surf and make the most of the Internet.

That morning when I entered, Maeve was sitting behind the front desk looking at a large coffee table book on wristwatches.

The library’s computer room is behind that desk and off to the right. There was no way I could see into it from where I was standing. It made me nervous knowing Floon might be a few feet away but I had no way of knowing it.

Librarian Powell is as serious as a postage stamp, so when she smiles you should consider it a special gift. She looked up from her book and smiled. “Good morning, Francis.”

“Hi. Have you been here since the library opened today?”

“Yes. I was just reading about the Breguet Tourbillon—”

“That’s nice. But did a guy come in here in an ugly-colored jogging suit, around sixty years old and with a lot of white hair? He speaks with an accent.”

“Yes. He was quite nice. Asked for the CDs of the Encarta encyclopedia and dictionary we keep on reserve. Then he went into the computer room with them.”