She snorted derisively. “Ripping out toilets, and nailing up sheet rock! Already, I’ve lost more money than you earn in a week.”
She stuck out her hand at the young man. “Give me your car keys.”
Dazed, the kid obeyed. Gretta climbed down, got in the Hyundai, and wheeled it around. “I’ll have somebody return this to the Institute later today.”
Then she was gone, off to find another route around the herd.
She should have waited, because a minute later the beasts decided to leave, and in no time at all were nowhere to be seen. They’d be easy enough to find, though. They pretty much trampled everything flat in their wake.
The kid shook himself, as if coming out of a trance. “Hey,” he said. “She took my car.”
“Climb into the cab,” I said. “There’s a bar a ways up the road. I think you need a drink.”
* * * *
He said his name was Everett McCoughlan, and he clutched his glass like he would fall off the face of the Earth if he were to let go. It took a couple of whiskeys to get the full story out of him. Then I sat silent for a long time. I don’t mind admitting that what he’d said made me feel a little funny. “How long?” I asked at last.
“Ten weeks, maybe three months, tops. No more.”
I took a long swig of my soda water. (I’ve never been much of a drinker. Also, it was pretty early in the morning.) Then I told Everett that I’d be right back.
I went out to the truck, and dug the cell phone out of the glove compartment.
First I called home. Delia had already left for the bridal shop, and they didn’t like her getting personal calls at work, so I left a message saying that I loved her. Then I called Green Mountain Books. It wasn’t open yet, but Randy likes to come in early and he picked up the phone when he heard my voice on the machine. I asked him if he had anything on Triceratops. He said to hold on a minute, and then said yes, he had one copy of The Horned Dinosaurs by Peter Dodson. I told him I’d pick it up next time I was in town.
Then I went back in the bar. Everett had just ordered a third whiskey, but I pried it out of his hand. “You’ve had enough of that,” I said. “Go home, take a nap. Maybe putter around in the garden.”
“I don’t have my car,” he pointed out.
“Where do you live? I’ll take you home.”
“Anyway, I’m supposed to be at work. I didn’t log out. And technically I’m still on probation.”
“What difference does that make,” I asked, “now?”
* * * *
Everett had an apartment in Winooski at the Woolen Mill, so I guess the Institute paid him good money. Either that or he wasn’t very smart how he spent it. After I dropped him off, I called a couple contractors I knew and arranged for them to take over what jobs I was already committed to. Then I called the Free Press to cancel my regular ad, and all my customers to explain I was having scheduling problems and had to subcontract their jobs. Only old Mrs. Bremmer gave me any trouble over that, and even she came around after I said that in any case I wouldn’t be able to get around to her Jacuzzi until sometime late July.
Finally, I went to the bank and arranged for a second mortgage on my house.
It took me a while to convince Art Letourneau I was serious. I’d been doing business with him for a long while, and he knew how I felt about debt. Also, I was pretty evasive about what I wanted the money for. He was half-suspicious I was having some kind of late onset mid-life crisis. But the deed was in my name and property values were booming locally, so in the end the deal went through.
On the way home, I stopped at a jewelry store and at the florist’s.
Delia’s eyes widened when she saw the flowers, and then narrowed at the size of the stone on the ring. She didn’t look at all the way I’d thought she would. “This better be good,” she said.
So I sat down at the kitchen table and told her the whole story. When I was done, Delia was silent for a long while, just as I’d been. Then she said, “How much time do we have?”
“Three months if we’re lucky. Ten weeks in any case, Everett said.”
“You believe him?”
“He seemed pretty sure of himself.”
If there’s one thing I am, it’s a good judge of character, and Delia knew it. When Gretta moved into the rehabbed barn next door, I’d said right from the start she was going to be a difficult neighbor. And that was before she’d smothered the grass on her property under three different colors of mulch, and then complained about me keeping my pickup parked in the driveway, out in plain sight.
Delia thought seriously for a few minutes, frowning in that way she has when she’s concentrating, and then she smiled. It was a wan little thing, but a smile nonetheless. “Well, I’ve always wished we could afford a real first-class vacation.”
I was glad to hear her say so, because that was exactly the direction my own thought had been trending in. And happier than that when she flung out her arms and whooped, “I’m going to Disneyworld!”
“Hell,” I said. “We’ve got enough money to go to Disneyworld, Disneyland, and Eurodisney, one after the other. I think there’s one in Japan too.”
We were both laughing at this point, and then she dragged me up out of the chair, and the two of us were dancing around and round the kitchen, still a little spooked under it all, but mostly being as giddy and happy as kids.
* * * *
We were going to sleep in the next morning, but old habits die hard and anyway, Delia felt she owed it to the bridal shop to give them a week’s notice. So, after she’d left, I went out to see if I could find where the Triceratops had gone.
Only to discover Everett standing by the side of the road with his thumb out.
I pulled over. “Couldn’t get somebody at the Institute to drive your car home?” I asked when we were underway again.
“It never got there,” he said gloomily. “That woman who was with you the other day drove it into a ditch. Stripped the clutch and bent the frame out of shape. She said she wouldn’t have had the accident if my dinosaurs hadn’t gotten her upset. Then she hung up on me. I just started at this job. I don’t have the savings to buy a new car.”
“Lease one instead,” I said. “Put it on your credit card and pay the minimum for the next two or three months.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
We drove on for a while and then I asked, “How’d she manage to get in touch with you?” She’d driven off before he mentioned his name.
“She called the Institute and asked for the guy with the bad hair. They gave her my home phone number.”
The parking lot for the Institute for Advanced Physics had a card system, so
