“It’s barely 6 a.m.,” Pop said.
“Wait,” Saul said, but Mom was already opening the door.
Mom put her hands on her hips. Just folks. “Callie!”
“Mrs. Cohn.” Frannie saw Callie step forward, so petite and yet aggressive, energetic. Callie’s eyes swept the group and she lingered for a second on Saul and Frannie. She returned her gaze to Mom. “I hope you don’t think me intrusive.”
Mom shrugged. “It’s a little early, but we were just—” she waved her hands at the stacked baggage.
“Oh,” Callie said, tilting her head as she looked at the bags. “You are going away.” She seemed to process this some more, so absently that Frannie had a notion that Callie was a little drunk. She wondered how many times Callie did this, embarrassing herself around town, with all parties probably choosing not to remember. “Well, I have something to discuss with you.”
“Of course,” Mom said. “But—”
“About your daughter.” A glance her way. No, not drunk. Studied and careful which made her slow to speak, but not drunk.
“What?” Frannie demanded.
“Of course it’s understandable,” Callie said. “Young people want freedom and opportunity. But I felt it was my duty to inform you that this young lady has been associating with a… a dishonorable element. Yes.” She swallowed, nodding. “A very dishonorable element.”
Frannie wasted a good few seconds trying to work out which dishonorable element Callie might be referring to before Saul said, “You mean me, right? The café?”
“You know very well that the Town Council has grave misgivings about the goings-on in that establishment. Obscene sculpture. Sacrilege of every kind.”
“Come on, Callie,” Saul said. “We just saw you.”
“Evil books,” she chirped. “And I know that we—you know that we need to confiscate them.”
Saul looked at Frannie’s Pop and mom and said, “This is crazy.”
Pop waved his pipe. “I agree; this is insane. Are you hearing yourself, Mrs…”
“Stevens,” Callie said.
Pop continued, “Are you aware of how crazy this sounds? Disturbing a family at this hour?”
Saul smoothly took Frannie’s backpack and held it casually in under his arm and a little in front of him as he spoke. “Look, I don’t know what you think you’re talking about, but we don’t owe you anything.”
Callie wobbled violently and her nostrils flared as the backpack drew near her. “It’s not a matter of owing,” she said, looking intently at the pack and then back at Saul. “It’s for the community’s own good. They’re illegal. Obscene.”
Pop’s soft laugh filled the foyer. “Well, that sounds like something you can discuss at Saul’s place of work. If you don’t mind my asking, how did you even know that Saul would be here?”
Callie started, annoyed by the question. Saul peered past her and said, “Is your friend with you?” He threw Frannie a look and Frannie made out the truck parked in the street—that Morris Miner she’d seen the Book Man drive off in. So he was around here somewhere. She couldn’t see anyone in the driver’s seat.
“A friend?” Pop said. “You mean she has someone hiding out there?”
“We’re leaving, Mrs. Stevens,” Mom said. “I’m sorry, but we don’t have time to listen or try to understand, and I hope you understand—we were having a nice goodbye and we have to catch a flight. So really, we must do this another time.”
Frannie heard a jingle and saw that Saul’s number-cross medallion had dropped to the back of his hand as he held the backpack. “Let’s go,” Saul said as they started to move through the door.
Frannie shrank back from him as he glared at Callie and pushed by. Callie stammered and stepped away as Mom and Pop hustled the baggage out of the door.
Saul moved past her and Frannie noticed that he was pushing the backpack in a way, making sure she saw him clutching it. “Come see me at the Café. Okay? Come see me and we’ll talk business. But lady, coming here like this was crazy.”
Callie stood on the front porch as they got in the car and left her behind. Frannie mouthed the only words she could think of through the window. “You’re crazy.”
But she knew better. As they rolled down the street Frannie watched Callie take a few steps toward them and then turn back towards the truck. Then they turned out of the neighborhood and left Callie behind.
“That was meshuge.” Frannie looked forward, setting into the back seat of Pop’s car.
“There’s something wrong with that woman,” Pop said.
“Saul.” Mom turned to look back from her place in the front. “Is there anything to this town council stuff she was saying?”
“Who knows?” Saul responded next to Frannie. “The Ladies’ Decency something or other doesn’t like the art. I don’t know. There might be a hearing.”
“We’ll be there,” Pop says.
“You’ll be in Hawaii, if it happens in the next couple of weeks,” Saul reminded them.
“Okay,” Pop agreed, both hands on the wheel. He caught Frannie’s eyes in the rear-view mirror. “You should be there, though, Frances. People need to know this community leader is not so good, that she’s the one who’s crazy and harassing people.”
In Saul’s arm, the backpack he still held rustled and Frannie watched him unzip the opening. Emmett the golem popped his head up out of the opening as Saul pushed the pack down into the floorboards. The golem’s eyes blazed with rage as he looked from Saul to Frannie, his mouth still taped to prevent the constant expulsion of smoke.
“I agree, it was strange,” Saul said as he took a notepad from his shirt pocket and wrote in pencil:
NOT CALLIE.
AFRAID OF GOLEM IN PACK.
IT WAS HIM.
Frannie looked back. They were being followed at a distance by a gray Morris Minor.
The truck followed them all the way out to the highway, in fact all the way to the Orange County Airport. With every mile they chattered about her parents’ trip, about how Frannie was going to have to maintain the house if she went back there, about how mom expected her to serve her uncle well. This struck Frannie as a hilarious phrasing, like something from an old story where the hero is being sent to serve a warrior relative. And in a sense that was the case. And all along the way, the Morris Minor followed at a distance, and only Frannie and Saul noticed it. The Book Man was clever—at times Frannie felt certain he had disappeared, and then the truck would reappear miles later.
Forty-five minutes later, Frannie was hugging her father at the gate. He held his duffel bag in his arms and awkwardly hugged her with his free arm, patting her on the back. Frannie tried not to search the terminal with her eyes but did and saw nothing, sensed nothing. Even the Morris Minor had been gone by the time they had parked.
“I won't ask you again to come with us.”
Frannie leaned her head against her pop's chest. “Good.”
“Your uncle is a good man,” Pop said. “Different from us, he left so early to come here, so long before us. I think you were meant to help them, and you should. But it doesn't mean I have to always feel good about it.”