“I’m tired.”
“Who is Pigeon?” I ask. I recall that on several occasions she mentioned that name, or nickname. I can’t remember where, or in what context.
“Nat, she looks tired. Maybe give her a break?” Sam asks.
“This transcript is beyond strange.”
“There’s more,” Bullseye says. “I’ve only printed out a third of the transcript. The rest I e-mailed you and copied to another disc, for backup.”
“Is it all weird like this?”
“How do you mean?”
It seems so self-evident.
“The bizarre back-and-forth between human and computer, the computer’s high level of artificial intelligence, the butterflies — whatever those are. And then there’s Grandma’s story. I can’t tell if it’s real or imagined. It’s certainly provocative. I’ve never heard anything like that from her.”
Bullseye doesn’t respond. He’s focused on the road, or the inside of his head.
“Bullseye?”
“The artificial intelligence doesn’t seem that advanced, actually. The program is basically looking for keywords in your grandmother’s comments and prompting further discussion by emphasizing the keywords. As to your grandmother… well…”
“What?”
“She’s losing her memory, and trying to recall some childhood memory, and this… machine is recording it.”
“It’s much more than that, Bullseye.” I’m exasperated. “I wish you would have printed it all out.”
“Can you solve that later?” Sam interjects. “I think Lane needs her own bed.”
I look outside, and I realize where we are — parked on the street outside the Magnolia Manor nursing home.
“Jesus,” I say.
“You want me to take her?” Sam asks.
“Absolutely not. No way. Drive, Bullseye.”
“Nathaniel, please,” Sam says. “She’s got to be in the right hands.”
“Drive. Please. She can’t be here. They’ll…” I don’t say what I’m thinking: they’ll kill her. For reasons I can’t yet figure out. Instead I say: “I have a plan.”
Sam sighs.
“What?” I ask. Beyond impatient.
“Respectfully,” she says. “You seem out of balance. Let me take your beautiful grandmother inside.”
I don’t respond.
Samantha looks at Bullseye. “I’ll be back in five minutes,” then back at Lane. “Ready to go home, dear?”
“No fucking way,” I blurt.
“Nathaniel…”
“You need to trust me.”
“And you need to trust the people around you — the people who love you, and know you. We’re on your side.”
“Bullseye, why didn’t you bring the rest of the transcript?”
“It was long and he didn’t have enough paper and he’s not your secretary,” Sam says firmly. She’s looking me in the eye. I’ve never in my life heard her talk this way. It’s the first time I’ve ever had a confrontation with my best friends, my biggest supporters.
I don’t know what I’m thinking, or even why I said something vaguely accusatory to Bullseye. I
Sam says, “You can do all the goose-chasing you want. But don’t take your grandmother with you. Please.”
She looks at me, and I at Bullseye.
“Drive,” I say, quietly.
He hesitates.
“If you care about me, about us — about Grandma — then you’ll help me do what I need to do.”
I tell them what that is.
Chapter 35
Like Warren Buffet in a sari, the Witch sold her AOL stock shares just before the Internet collapse. She claimed to have so aptly guessed the bottom was near by listening to then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan on CNN with her eyes closed and picking up disingenuous tones in his voice. With her stock-market profits, the couple bought a swanky Victorian in the Haight-Ashbury and painted it purple.
On the porch of the Victorian, with the couple’s two English bulldogs watching on, Bullseye silently hands me the mysterious memory stick and the Cadillac keys. I can’t really tell if he’s upset with me or just being characteristically fatalistic. He looks from me to the bashed front of his Cadillac.
“I’ll get it fixed,” I say. After a pause, I add: “You saved our lives.”
“You want my opinion?”
“Not if you’re going to tell me to grow up, stop poking around, and take Grandma to the morgue where she can die in peace.”
His lips curl imperceptibly into a tight, bemused smile.
“Find the guy who did this to my Cadillac, and run him over.”
I slide Grandma into the Caddy. As I get settled, she fiddles with the knob of the glove compartment until it opens. She finds an eight-track cassette of
I buckle up and explain to her, knowing she won’t totally follow but hoping she gets the gravity of my tone, that I’ve got to do some serious work and that it’s important to me that we stick together.
“If you have to pee, don’t wander into a field. Stick with me,” I say, then immediately regret it because it sounds like scolding.
My first stop is the crowded parking lot of a grocery store in the outer Mission neighborhood. Into my laptop I insert the thumb drive from Adrianna. The file that opens contains dozens of pages of transcripts of the Human Memory Crusade and Grandma. I start to read, discovering a tale about Lane’s past that darts about in fits and starts, interruptions, and backtracks. There are mentions of butterflies, a pigeon, elaborate schemes to hide a note in a library book, and all of it communicated in increasingly disconnected dialogue. As the story goes on, the computer seems to get more intelligent and Grandma less so. After a few minutes — before I can get particularly invested — I look at the clock and realize that both my time and concentration are too limited to give my full attention to understanding what I’m reading.
Survival requires more immediate action.
“Grandma Lane, I’ll be right back. I’m just going to be a few feet away,” I say. “Don’t wander off.”
“I heard you.”
In the pickup parked next to us, a nun sits in the passenger seat, waiting for someone I assume, fiddling with her bracelet. She smiles at me. Safe enough environs.
I get out and stand by our car and pull out the cell phone I got from G.I. Chuck and dial his number.
“Woodward,” he says by way of a greeting.
“You’re tracking me.”
“What?”
“This cell phone you gave me has a tracking device on it. Right?”
