“Okay, pop.”
Frannie watched the plane take off through the giant windows in the terminal. Then she and Saul let out a deep sigh.
Saul rocked on his heels as the plane pulled away. “Well that's something. Come on.”
“Where to?”
Saul was walking very fast. “I thought we'd go drag racing.” Frannie stared.
“That's where we'll catch him,” Saul continued. “I gotta make a phone call.” He dashed to find a phone booth near the exit.
Stewardesses who looked like Cinderella in blue streamed into the Orange County terminal. Frannie felt tiny and insignificant as they rushed around her, with their blonde hair and steel blue eyes sparkling colorfully as they streaked past, a stampede of graceful blue gazelles. By the time the rush of them had passed, Saul emerged and tapped her arm. Time to go.
In the parking lot of the airport the 8 AM sun was streaking across the tops of cars and blinding them. Pop’s car was parked a few rows from the exit out to the highway. As they found the car, Saul said, “Here’s the thing. There’s an unusual landing strip on this airport. It's called the Santa Ana. And everyone will be gathering there even now.”
In the car, Saul dropped the canvas backpack between them. Emmett popped out, raising his arms up, which Frannie understood instantly to be as close to untape my mouth as possible. She undid the tape. “I'm sorry we had to do that.”
“The indignity we suffer is a reminder of the best in consequence in which we—”
“Don't make me tape you up again.”
It was the beginning of the morning rush in earnest now as they weaved through the parking lot, dodging travelers in business suits and more flight crew. Frannie was scanning for the Morris Minor as they neared the exit to the highway. “Come on, you mother.”
And then it was there: they passed the gray Morris Minor where it was parked facing out. It came alive and immediately whipped around out of its spot and they pulled onto the highway together.
“Callie’s driving.” Meaning it-as-Callie. Frannie could see the woman's pillbox hat in silhouette.
They lurched left and turned down a feeder road and the Morris Minor lumbered after them. They passed a sign: Santa Ana Flats.
Frannie absently patted the golem on the head as she turned to look out the rearview mirror. The area they were pulling into was full of people and she took them in:
On either side of the airport runway, people were parking cars and setting up for races. She saw kids in blue jeans and T-shirts, a sea of baseball caps. Young and middle-aged people working under the hoods of cars. They passed a souped-up Lincoln. A kid in a chipped, mechanic-style fedora, the kind Jughead wore in the Archie comics, looked up at them. The Santa Ana runway stretched for two miles into the morning sun, and on this and every Sunday morning was nothing like a runway at all.
“What does he want?”
“I’m betting he wants this.” Saul reached into the backpack next to the golem and lifted out a single Blank.
“Are you kidding me; you brought a Blank?” “It's bait, baby girl. He knew the golem was there, but he still wants the Blank, because I’m sure he smelled that, too.” Now the truck rumbled onto the runway itself as Saul sped up. “I like this car. You know, I was with your pop when he bought it, it looks square, like the kids say, but it's got an eight-cylinder engine and come on you yemakh!” He turned to Frannie. “Put on your seatbelt.”
“What?” Frannie looked down at the straps lying limp next to her legs.
“Put it on.”
“But—”
“Oy, Frannie.”
“Okay, all right.” Frannie have never worn a seatbelt in her life. Why would she? It wasn't like she did any regular drag racing herself, and in fact most of the cars she was around didn't even have the things. She struggled with the weird clasp on the end of the canvas belt on either hip, and finally managed to click them together at her navel. “What for?”
Her words were cut short by a loud crunch and she gasped as seatbelt bit into her hips. Emmett the golem shouted something in German, and she saw him smack into the air conditioning console and fall down at her feet. She looked back to see Callie close behind and backing off. She had bashed them from behind and suddenly she was accelerating again with a roar from the truck.
“You want it?” Saul cried. “Come and get it.” He looked at Frannie. “Gimme the Blank and get the box.”
“You brought the Dybbuk box too?” Frannie opened the sack with one hand as she picked up Emmett and placed him in the seat next to her before hauling out the shoe-sized wooden box that Saul had used on the beach. She had a vision of the ghost that had hated Hooky so, and wondered if she was still in here somewhere.
The Morris Minor had pulled up alongside them as they raced now past the crowds. Frannie looked ahead—they had a curious audience among the people setting up. They were drag racing, a sedan and an old Morris Minor truck, alone on the runway as they approached the empty bleachers and press box halfway down.
Just about three feet from Frannie, Callie’s body drove the truck, staring back at them from beneath that absurd pillbox hat, white-gloved hands wrapped around the leather steering wheel. Saul motioned to Callie to roll down her (its?) window. When the demon in Callie’s body obliged and the glass in the car next to them lowered, Saul hollered over the roar of the engine.
“Hey, this what you want?” Saul waived the blank book. “It's from my own collection, but you probably sensed it back there at the house. I'll race you for it, how's that? Demons like games, right?”
Callie broke left and smashed into them as they tore down the runway.
Saul struggled to keep the car on the road. “Okay, then.” He accelerated and then whipped right, bashing back. The two vehicles crunched together as they hurtled forward. No there was a strange hissing sound over the engines and Callie opened her mouth in something like surprise.
“We are visited once more by Penamue,” the golem intoned. “VAAT AN HONNORRR.”
In the car next to them, what Frannie had taken for surprise in Callie’s open mouth had moved past surprise into something else. Her head split open at the cheeks and the top half folded back, and a cloud of origami birds burst forth. The birds closed the gap between the cars instantly. Frannie rolled up the window as one of them got in. It flitted at her hair and she smashed it against the dash with her foot, smearing it into one of the air conditioning grills. Paper birds clattered against the windows and windshield and Frannie heard them slicing over the roof.
Saul turned on the windshield wipers and little paper birds got rolled under the rubber blades. “He sure can hold a lot of them.”
“The transformation of matter is but a trivial thing,” the golem responded, though it sounded like Zeh trahnsformehshunn uff mahtter iss… “to the wielders of the powers of the Tetragrammaton.”
Frannie was able to tear her eyes away from the strange image of waves of paper birds crushed by the windshield wipers. “Tetragrammaton? The power of God? That thing isn’t God.”
“But he was of God, and was next to God, and so he still holds some of the power of God,” Emmett said. “As do we all. And as far as he might be from God, this is no farther than you are from God in any sense that matters, if one could but look at the distance from the vantagepoint of God.”