HANG TIGHT AND HANG TEN STOP WE ARE COMING STOP PS DON’T LISTEN TO THE BIRDS STOP THEY WILL EAT YOU STOP
Marc looked up to thank the porter, but the you man was already briskly walking towards the dome. The droning whispers grew more incessant. “Do you feel it?” she said.
“I do.” And they turned away their heads and walked for the lobby. All the way, the incessant compulsion of the whispering swarm of birds dragged at his body, seemed to want to turn his knees and feet back. “We have to find a room where we can’t hear it.”
Marc opened the lobby door and Desi Arnaz nearly ran over him, sprinting in the thrall of the birds, on the way to hear more of the whisper of the future.
At the moment that Marc and Sally Cohn were watching Desi run like a madman towards what had to be his certain doom, Frannie, Newp, Saul and Truly were lifting off the runway at Orange County bound for Honolulu.
Newp wore a tie, because Frannie told him it was required for flying and anyway a man should travel with dignity.
As they took off, Frannie opened the backpack that held Emmett and saw the little clay man look angrily at her, because his mouth was taped to prevent the constant stream of smoke. It was an indignity he would no doubt complain about at length and with great eloquence later.
The benefit of living in a bookstore was that they had no shortage of books to read on the flight. But Frannie was going to tell them which ones.
A stewardess came by dressed in berry blue. Saul made a show of saying they were his church youth group and not to serve these kids any alcohol, and the stewardess winked dramatically and brought them all cherry cokes with lime. This done, Frannie turned to everyone. “What do you know about Hawaii?”
Saul leaned back with his ball-capped head. “Pearl Harbor; I know that. It’s a protectorate. Basically I know what I read in the papers.”
“I have never seen you touch a paper,” said Truly, who leaned over to ask Frannie. “Does your uncle even get a newspaper?”
Newp took one of the Hawaii books that Frannie was passing out. “I saw Kurt tear up a paper for a papier-mâché Dracula crucifix. But I think he bought that in town.”
Saul smirked. “Everyone’s a wisenheimer.”
“Yeah, show some respect for your elders or tape your mouth and stick you in a backpack,” Frannie said.
“What are you handing out?” Saul took out a pair of glasses and looked at the book he had received.
“Books; I suggest we divide this up. First just some basics on the islands.”
“It’s more than one?” Newp said.
“Yeah, it’s an archipelago,” Frannie answered.
“A what?”
“A series of islands, we call that an archipelago.”
Newp nodded. “So what you’re saying is that before you started hanging out with all us beach bums, you were a major egghead.”
“I’m a student. And weren’t you going to college in the Fall?”
“Six weeks,” Truly said. “He leaves in six weeks.”
“Six weeks til you go to college?” Saul winced. “Jeez. I gotta find a manager. Truly, you want to manage a café?”
“I gotta go to school too, old man. And by the way, I know what an archipelago is, so it’s eggheads versus the male element.”
Frannie cleared her throat, addressing each of them in the row. “Okay. Everybody. Like I was saying. First, Hawaiian subjects. Then we review what we know about Penamue, or Book Man, and what tools we can use to stop him. Then we formulate a plan.”
“Hey, Commander,” Saul said. “How much time do we devote to this?”
Frannie sipped her coke. “We got 13 hours on this plane. So I figure one or two hours for each subject.”
“Ugh,” Newp said. “You want us to study?”
“I want you to learn.”
Truly and Newp visibly shrank. Saul waved his hand. “You can cut your plan down by half. You’ve forgotten a couple of things.”
“What’s that?”
“First, you’ll need sleep. When you get there, it’ll be six in the morning in Honolulu. And we’re gonna be busy. So I don’t recommend an all-night cram session.”
Frannie looked at the others and drummed her fingers, already devoting a portion of her mind to reciting Hebrew curses. “What was the other thing?”
“These broads,” Saul said, as a line of female hula dancers in grass skirts congregated in the front of the plane, chatting with one another. “I talked to one of them. Halfway through the flight, not long before lights-out, they get up and do a show, a whole Hawaiian thing. I mean, we don’t want to miss that, and even if we did, I don’t think you can read through it.”
“It’s research,” Newp said, eying the hula girls.
Truly rolled her eyes. “Yeah, Frannie, Newp wants to research the dancing girls.”
Frannie allowed herself to laugh. “Okay. So we work our butts off ‘til the floor show. Then it’s lights out. Okay?”
“Aye aye.” Saul saluted.
They got busy. A couple of hours in, they were interrupted by coke refills, bathroom breaks, and Frannie traded seats with Newp. She sat next to her uncle and the sound of whispered incantations filled the aisle.
Seven hours in came the hula show and by then Frannie’s head was so full of anagrams and number spells and recitations that she saw Hebrew in the strings of the grass skirts flowing from the hips of the dancers.
After that, sleep and dreams of Hooky and Penamue, and all the potential in the world.
Chapter 47
The airport in Honolulu at six a.m. was a madhouse. Frannie got the sense as they stepped down the rolling staircase onto the tarmac that the ceremonial lei that the local women placed on her shoulders (“Aloha,” of course) was the last thing the lady wanted to be doing and the last predictable thing that would happen.
As they made it into the terminal, their party ran into throngs of travelers. Lines backed up at courtesy counters, the lines doubling back and devolving into a mess of shouting, agitated people, some in traveling clothes and some wearing whatever they had worn to the beach that day.
When the gang entered the smoking lounge—the only place they could hear one another talk—the TV bolted to the wall showed them why.
“Look at that,” Saul whispered.
On the screen, apparently filmed by helicopter, a bizarre drama was playing out at the Hawaiian Village Hotel and Resort, according to the subtitle on the screen. “That’s Mom and Pop’s hotel,” Frannie said.
She moved closer to the TV set and gasped as a section of the great white roof of the dome fluttered and swirled and settled back, the first time she’d realized that was not the roof at all, but a covering unnatural. “It’s him. Those are origami birds, thousands of them.”
“Hundreds of thousands,” Truly corrected. “That dome is fifty feet high and a hundred feet wide. I read that just last night.”
Crowds of people appeared on the TV screen, wandering around the grounds of the hotel and the dome.
“These crowds you can see,” said the news reporter, “seem to be—well, they seem to be waiting. But we have not been able to get a visible interview with any of them.”