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he wished he did. "Makes pretty good sense."
"Never underestimate the power of human stupidity." That sounded like a joke,
but Eduardo didn't seem to be kidding.
He stopped short to keep an Opel from running him down. "Like that moron, for
instance."
"He's got a car. We don't. He thinks that makes him the boss," Gianfranco
said.
"Well, if he hits us, he's right," Eduardo said. "Oh, they'd throw him in
jail, but how much good does that do me if I'm in the hospital?"
"Not enough," Gianfranco said.
"Looks the same way to me."
They made it to the far side of the square without getting maimed. Gianfranco
sighed with relief. The streets on the far side were crowded, but at least he
and Eduardo had a sidewalk to use again. Cars hardly ever came up onto it with
more than two wheels, which gave the two of them a fighting chance to dodge.
"Here's the Avenue of the Glorious Workers' Revolution," Gianfranco said.
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"Sure looks glorious, doesn't it?" Eduardo could pack more bite into a handful
of words than anyone else Gianfranco knew except maybe Annarita's father.
The avenue looked anything but. Most of the buildings along it were a couple
of hundred years old, dating from the late-nineteenth or early-twentieth
century. Some of them might not have been painted in all that time. The
sidewalk had cracks. The street had potholes. Big lumps of asphalt repaired
some of them. Those stuck up like cobblestones, and were almost as hard on
cars as the more numerous holes nobody'd bothered to fix.
"You said it was number 27?" Gianfranco asked.
"That's right." Eduardo nodded. "Now I have to hope everybody in the place
isn't on holiday, even if it is legit. It's
August, after all."
"What do you do if everybody is?" That hadn't occurred to Gianfranco.
"What can I do? I pound my head against the door," Eduardo answered. "Then I
come back here when vacation time is over. But I hope I don't have to. Stuff
breaks down in August, too. They ought to keep somebody around ... I hope."
"Me, too," Gianfranco said. They went past 164, 161, 158, 153. . . . Most of
the businesses were dark. Eduardo muttered under his breath.
He started muttering again a little farther along. This time, Gianfranco could
make out the words: "Getting close." And so they were. They walked by 47, 39,
38, 36. . . .
"Look!" Gianfranco pointed at the grimy little sign ahead. BY THE ARCH
REPAIRS, it said, and then, in smaller letters, ELECTRICAL EQUIPMENT OUR
SPECIALTY.
"That's the place, all right." Eduardo walked faster. As Gianfranco had in San
Marino, he needed to hurry to keep up.
"Now we find out what's going on or we find out nothing's going on."
When Gianfranco saw the dirty window at the front of the shop, he thought
nothing was. Then, through the dirt, he saw a lightbulb shining. "Somebody's
in there," he said.
"Looks that way." Before going in, Eduardo looked behind him and to both
sides. If somebody from the Security
Police was watching, he wasn't obvious about it. Eduardo's right hand came
down on the latch. It clicked. The door swung open. Gianfranco thought the
hinges should have creaked, but they didn't.
Eduardo went in. Gianfranco followed. Eduardo didn't say anything, though he
hadn't wanted Gianfranco and Annarita along when he went into Three Sixes.
The guy behind the counter wasn't anyone Gianfranco had seen before. He looked
half asleep. A ceiling fan spun lazily, stirring the air without cooling it.
Gianfranco was surprised the calendar on the wall wasn't from 1996, or maybe
1896.
"Help you, Comrade?" the repairman asked when Eduardo showed no sign of
vanishing in a puff of smoke.
"Well, I don't know," Eduardo said, and that had to be true on levels
Gianfranco could barely imagine.
"You've got something that's busted. You want somebody to fix it. If it's a
buggy or a gas lamp, you're in the wrong place. If it's got an electric motor
in it, maybe we can do you some good." The repairman sounded so reasonable and
so sarcastic at the same time that Gianfranco wanted to punch him in the nose.
"Well, I don't know," Eduardo repeated. "This isn't something just anybody can
take care of." That was bound to be true. Maybe nobody in this whole world
could take care of it. Certainly nobody from this whole world could take care
of it.
"And so? Do I look like just anybody?" The fellow in the grimy coveralls drew
himself up with touchy pride. The answer there, as far as Gianfranco could
see, was yes. The repairman was around forty. He was chunky not fat, but
definitely chunky. He should have shaved this morning, but he hadn't. His face
wouldn't set the girls' hearts pounding, not with that honker in the middle of
it. "So what's your trouble? Home? Industrial? This is a good time to get
industrial work done. Not much happens in August most places."
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"Why are you open, then?" Gianfranco asked.
"Somebody's gotta be," the repairman said with a resigned shrug. "We take
turns with four or five other outfits. It's our year. What can I tell you?" He
spread his hands.
"How long have you been in business here?" Eduardo asked. For a moment,
Gianfranco didn't get it. Then he did. Tf this guy's great-grandfather had
started the shop, it had nothing to do with the home timeline. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]