Hitchers

corner of the bar.

Grandpa drained the glass in three gulps, pulled out my wallet and hooked a twenty. “Keep it.” The twenty fluttered to the bar.

“You’re a big tipper,” Grandpa chuckled as he pushed open the door.

“So,” he said as he walked, “dinner’s on you, is it? Because of all the money you’re making.” A young couple heading toward us paused. They looked alarmed, whispered to each other, then hurried across the street. The bartender may not have heard yet, but word was spreading about what shaking hands meant. “There’s only one problem, buddy-boy. It’s not your money. It’s mine.”

He turned into a clothing store called Enki Mikaye. A skinny guy with a square jaw met him right at the door and asked if he could be of service.

“Yes, I want a suit. A solid three-piece, double-breasted. Classic. None of this new styles crap.” Grandpa made it sound like changing fashion in men’s suits was entirely this salesman’s fault, but I didn’t think that was why the salesman took a step back. Besides the hands, Grandpa’s voice still held an unmistakable croak.

Appearing visibly nervous, the salesman helped him choose a suit, plus an ensemble to go with it. It was an outfit I would never be caught dead in, and it cost me $1800.

When he presented the salesman with my credit card, the guy slid it through, glanced at it, then at Grandpa.

“Finn Darby. Toy Shop.”

“Yes, that’s right.” Grandpa lifted his chin, as if daring the salesman to question it.

The salesman slid the card across the counter. “It’s a wonderful strip. Wolfie is a hoot.”

Grandpa was breathing out of his nose so heavily it was almost deafening. “Go fuck yourself.” He turned and headed for the door.

“You’re an ungrateful little mutt,” he said as he slammed the car door. “I took you in when your no good father walked out on you. I fed you, I tried to show you how to get along in this world, and what thanks did I get?” He threw the Avalon into gear. “I want your comic strip,” he said in a whiny baby tone. The tires squealed. “And when you get hold of it, what do you do? You use cheap tricks—bells and whistles—because you’re not clever enough to do it the right way. You’re not a man, Finnegan. You’re still a boy, hanging on to everyone’s shirt tails. Mine, your mother’s, your spic wife’s. You expect everything to be handed to you.”

Grandpa fell silent. He had quite a take on things. He took us in and fed us? He charged his own daughter rent. Mom had to buy all of our groceries separately; there was a separate part of the fridge for Grandma and Grandpa’s food, and we were not to touch it. Bells and whistles? The strip was a hundred times more popular than it had ever been under his hand, and that was right into the teeth of a huge decline in newspaper circulation.

And the truth of it was, I had to change the strip. I’d felt boxed in by a strip frozen in time, with only two major characters and a finite stable of timeless toys (jump ropes, bicycles, teddy bears) to work with. I’d dreaded each return to that musty little toy shop, to those two earnest little twits, to my dead grandfather’s tight, Victorian humor. I’d been falling farther and farther behind my deadlines when I finally decided to defy my agent and the syndicate and update the strip, creating new characters and having a big chain buy out the little toy shop.

I stewed, and waited for my body to return to me. How long had it been? An hour and a half, at least.

Grandpa pulled out my phone, punched 911. The 911 operator asked what his emergency was.

“My emergency? I don’t have a damned emergency. I’m calling information.”

The operator told him information was 411, not 911.

“Oh, that’s right.” He hung up without apologizing, dialed 411, and asked for the number for CNN.

As he dialed, repeating the number in a whisper as he did so, my mind raced. What would Grandpa want with CNN?

Grandpa said he wanted to talk to someone about Toy Shop, specifically how Finn Darby had stolen it from him without his permission. He was transferred, told the story again, then was transferred again. This final listener, a young woman with a Long Island accent, asked how he could be the creator of Toy Shop when the creator was dead.

“I know I’m dead. You don’t have to tell me I’m dead,” Grandpa said. “I’ve come back. Now, will you run the story or not?”

“How have you managed to come back?” she asked, sounding amused.

“A lot of us have come back. The dead are everywhere, missy, or haven’t you noticed?”

Sounding less amused, she said she’d have to look into it, and took his number. I could only hope they’d check with my agent, and he would deflect them.

Our next stop was a jewelry store, where Grandpa bought two Rolexes at full retail and a set of gold cufflinks before ducking into another bar. Then we were off again.

“It’s really something, to be young again,” he said as he drove. “I tell you it’s no good getting old. When you hit seventy, that’s it,” he made a chopping gesture, “blow your brains out and be done with it. Ah, here we are.” Grandpa pulled into Maserati of Atlanta.

“I’ve always wanted an expensive car,” he said as he swaggered toward the showroom, flipping my keys in his palm. “I might as well spend it, right? I’m the one who earned it.”

The son of a bitch. When he was alive he was so cheap he rinsed out and re-used plastic baggies. Now that he had my bank card he was going to live it up. Or maybe he was intentionally trying to bankrupt me, to get revenge for Toy Shop.

A miniature poodle met us at the door, yipping and spinning in circles. Otherwise, the dealership was deserted. Evidently not many people were buying Maseratis, at least in Atlanta.

“Can I get some help here?” Grandpa shouted.

A young woman in a grey suit appeared. “Sorry, I was in the rest room. Can I help you?”

“Yes. I’m Finn Darby, I have a lot of money, and I want to buy a Maserati.”

The woman frowned. She was staring at Grandpa’s hands. “I don’t think I can help you. Please come back some other time.” The croak in his voice and tremors in his hands were definitely less severe; in another week or two he might pass for one of the living. But not yet.

Grandpa froze. “What do you mean? I want to buy a car. You sell cars, don’t you? Isn’t that what you do here?”

She took a step back. “Please go.” She was clutching her phone. My guess is she was debating whether to dial 911.

Grandpa threw his hands in the air. “For God’s sake, I won’t bite. I just want to buy a car. Here—” He pulled my bank card from my wallet, held it out. “I can pay cash. Ten minutes and I’ll be out of your hair.”

“I’m sorry. Just, please leave me alone.” She looked terrified.

Grandpa lunged at her, clutched her jacket sleeve where it was hanging under the wrist. In a low voice he said, “I want a God damned Maserati. Now get your little ass in gear and sell me a car, and we’ll get along just fine.”

It took Grandpa five minutes to pick out a wheat-colored four-door Quattroporte from their inventory. He didn’t want to look at the interior, only under the hood. When the saleswoman popped the hood and quickly stepped back, Grandpa peered at it, scowling with concentration before nodding once and saying, “That’s a beaut.”

I groaned inwardly. My grandfather knew nothing about engines. He used to take a rag and a spray bottle of Formula 409 and clean the parts of his engine he could reach from his wheelchair, because he liked the idea of working under the hood of a car. Cleaning it was all he knew how to do.

After strong-arming the terrified saleswoman into forgoing all of the usual paperwork, he headed to Grandma’s house, the Maserati growling in a low, unfamiliar rumble.

Grandpa rapped on the locked front door, then peered in the window to be sure Grandma wasn’t hiding inside; he pushed behind the overgrown bushes in front of the house and retrieved a key hidden in one of those fake rocks.

He headed straight to his studio, where his drafting table still sat, empty of pens, ink, paper. Cursing, he went to the empty shelves lining the far wall, where there had been tens of thousands of original strips, stacked floor-to-ceiling.

“You sold them all, didn’t you?” He traced the grain of the wood with his fingers. “You rotten stinkers. All you care about is money. You’re a pair of God damned profiteers, I’m telling you.”

Yes, I had sold them. Except for the really important ones, and the ones I’d kept as models for drawing new