Torpedo Juice

by Tim Dorsey

  “Buy a fuckin’ antecedent!…”

  The cyclist’s voice trailed off as he sailed through the intersection; the gunman never had a shot and went back to discussing the Monroe Doctrine. The cyclist sat up in his seat as he cruised down the center line with no hands. He looked at his left arm and the checklist taped around his wrist like a quarterback’s game plan. Jupiter Inlet Light, Blue Heron Bridge, Royal Poinciana Playhouse, Flagler Park, Hypoluxo house where they shot Body Heat…All crossed off. He activated the backlight of his watch, then looked up at a red and blue sign three blocks ahead. Right on schedule.

  The cyclist parked in front of the bus station. He leaned the bike against the wall and went inside, and someone jumped on the bike and rode away. Half the people in the waiting room were fighting to stay awake, the rest trying to fall asleep. The man walked briskly for the lockers. He opened one of the largest and removed a beaten-up knapsack and a guitar case, then ran out the back exit to the loading platform. The door closed on an idling Greyhound.

  “Hold on!”—waving a ticket—“You got one more.”

  The door opened. Serge A. Storms bounded aboard.

  The bus was mostly empty as Serge walked down the aisle, thinking: Where do I want to sit? Whom do I want to talk to? That’s absolutely critical. For long rides, I require a stimulating conversation partner with deep reservoirs of cultural references upon which my metaphors can find purchase….

  Serge spoke his thoughts out loud, quite loudly in fact, as he moved through the bus, studying fellow riders who either gathered their belongings tightly or spread them out on the next seat so there was no room.

  Serge placed a hand on the back of each person’s seat as he passed by.

  “…No, not this woman, a disaster-in-waiting. Clothes and makeup that are only in fashion in penitentiary visiting rooms…. Not this guy, the bad-breath merchant keeping alive his record-breaking streak of wrong life decisions…Not this woman, who looks like she’s running from a failed two-week marriage consisting of late-night shrieking, credit card debt and venereal disease…”

  Serge was running out of people. He glanced toward the back of the bus and brightened. “Ahhh, that looks like a hospitable chap.”

  He trotted all the way to the last row and took a seat across the aisle from a late-stage alcoholic from Lower Matecumbe Key on the verge of kidney failure. The bum was sleeping across two seats with his neck bent against the side of the bus in a way that would remind him later.

  Serge stowed his knapsack, then opened the guitar case and began strumming. He rattled around in his seat. He cleared his throat. He paused and looked over at the bum. No movement.

  Serge reached across the aisle and shook the man hard—“Hey you!”—then quickly sat back in his seat and strummed. The bum raised his head and looked around in a fog.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” said Serge. “Did I wake you?”

  The bum began reclining again.

  “Well, since you’re already up—” Serge hopped across the aisle and made the bum scoot over. “Traveling is all about talking to new people. That’s the ball game. That’s the whole point, travel to an exotic place, meet the people, immerse in their culture, and find out why they’re so fucked up. If you’re not going to spill your guts to complete strangers, why take the trip? You might as well just stay home abusing sex toys until that mishap that brings paramedics and you become the talk of the neighborhood. But communication is easy for me because I’m a listener. I love to hear people gab about themselves. Every single person is special. Everyone has great stories. Like you. I’ll bet you have a million. How old are you? Sixty?”

  “Forty-three.”

  “I’m all about listening. That’s why the world is in shambles. Nobody listens anymore!”

  “I, uh…”

  “Shhhhhh! Listen,” said Serge. “I have big news. I’m getting married! I don’t know who yet. I’m still conducting the statewide search, in case you have any undamaged relatives…”

  The bum began slouching and closing his eyes.

  Serge jerked him upright. “I’m taking it to the next level. Marriage will force personal growth. In the meantime, I’m trying other methods. Like this one.”

  Serge turned forward and stared with intense concentration. Small folds twitched under his eyes until…

  “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

  The bum jumped. The bus driver looked up in his rearview.

  “Sorry,” said Serge. “I’m training my brain to look directly into the naked essence of life. Do you realize the person who lies to us most is ourself? Several times a day I stop and take a prolonged, unblinking look at the truth….”

  The bum started getting up. “I’d like to go to another seat.”

  Serge yanked him back down. “…It usually goes one of two ways. Horror or ecstasy. That time I flashed on the Black Death sweeping Europe in 1348. Let me try again….”

  Serge stared ahead and squinted.

  “Yeeeeeeeeeeeee-hawwwwwwwwwwwwwww!”

  Serge turned to the bum. “Now that was a good one! I just realized how lucky I am. I could have been born a cystoblast! It’s not important what that is. All you need to know is it’s one of the many, many things you definitely don’t want to be. It’s not even an organism, just a bunch of cells, which means they don’t have eyes and can’t appreciate the radiant colors of God’s creation. From nature: sky blue, forest green, the creamy pink of the spring blossom, the honey in the clouds at sunset. From food: eggshell, guacamole, tangerine, cranberry. From science: carbon, chrome, cobalt, copper. From women’s magazines: mauve, ecru, fuchsia, taupe. Colors I dig just because I like saying the word: gamboge, gamboge, gamboge. Other words that should be colors but aren’t, like Cameroon and DiMaggio. You’re a cystoblast, you can forget about all that….”

  Serge hadn’t noticed that the bus was pulled over. The driver stood over him. “If you keep yelling, I’ll have to ask you to get off.”

  “Sorry,” said Serge. “Can I play my guitar?”

  “Do you yell when you play?”

  “Not usually.”

  The driver was already walking back up front. “No more yelling!”

  Serge cradled his acoustic and began strumming. “…Mama don’t take my Kodachrome awaaaaaaayyyy-eeeee-yay….”

  A GIANT EYEBALL rotated in the peephole of room 133 of the Royal Glades Motel. Coleman took a hit from the corner of his mouth. Still dark out there. Nothing but the sandwich shop across the street, where local teens had come along in the night and rearranged letters on the roadside marquee: 99¢ HAND JOBS.

  Inside room 133, two days of Lifestyle Coleman. Fast-food sacks, roaches, matches, spilled trash cans, wet socks on lampshades, smashed potato chips in the carpet, fried chicken bones between the sheets, slice of pepperoni stuck to the mirror, bloody footprint on the dresser, pocket change in the bottom of the toilet, sink clogged with vomit, cartoons on TV.

  Coleman’s eye stayed pressed to the door. Paranoid. Every time he thought he’d watched long enough for a clean escape…second thoughts. What if someone comes out of the office in the next minute? Then he’d watch another minute, and so forth. Coleman wanted to make sure his getaway was absolutely perfect; nothing as much as a hair out of place. The eyeball scanned the street again. Drugs finally made the decision. The roach had burned out; no reason to stay any longer. Coleman stepped back from the peephole and grabbed the strap of a duffel bag at his feet. He took a deep breath.

  Now!

  Coleman threw open the door and it banged against the wall. He took off running. Into a metal garbage can. They both went over with a crash. The can tumbled loudly across the parking lot. Coleman pulled himself up by a car door handle, activating the auto-burglar alarm. Whoop-whoop-whoop. “Shit!” Lights started coming on all over the motel. Bleary people walked onto balconies without shoes. The manager emerged from the office. Coleman dove in the Buick. He dropped the keys. He hit the horn. The car finally started. Tires squealed. Colem
an patched out, running over the garbage can, which wedged under the bumper and sprayed sparks. The people on the balconies winced when the Buick’s undercarriage bottomed out at the base of the driveway, and they cringed again when Coleman made a hard left turn, sending the garbage can flying free and shattering the lighted roadside marquee in front of the sandwich shop.

  Then he was gone. Quiet resumed. Motel guests trudged back to rooms. Some decided sleep was futile. Might as well get a leg up on driving. They began loading luggage. Two blue American Touristers went into the trunk of a brown Plymouth Duster with Ohio plates.

  3

  APB #2: the metallic green Trans Am

  D ARK AND DESERTED on the Florida Turnpike, the part of day you can’t quite put your finger on. No longer the night before, not quite the next morning. Even more off-balance if you’ve been driving some hours.

  A metallic green Trans Am skirted the backside of Miami International, down through Sweetwater. The blackness alternated with pockets of light at the interchanges. The lights were the harsh orange shade found at businesses with barbed wire and surveillance cameras. They said: Don’t exit here.

  Almost five A.M., but the driver didn’t know where her watch was. The strap had broken. She kept looking in the rearview. The Trans Am had a smoked T-top. Her legs had bruises.

  The woman was petite, practically swallowed by the Pontiac. Twenty-eight years old, but her new skin, dimples and tiny features always got her carded.

  The Trans Am passed a tollbooth sign that said to get seventy-five cents ready. A shaking hand rubbed makeup onto the bruised thighs. Her window went down. Change flew into a toll basket, and the Trans Am accelerated. The makeup compact flew into an oversized purse on the passenger seat, then she jerked the whole thing into her lap and rummaged. The handbag’s organizational system was shot, the entire contents dumped out and thrown back in twice already tonight. She found a cigarette, lit it with the car lighter and coughed. She had just un-quit smoking with the pack bought back in Delray. The nicotine slowed her rampaging imagination, but it couldn’t block the involuntary images: what she’d seen when she opened the bathroom door. And again at the second place. That’s what really shook her, besides all the blood. How on earth did they know about the second place? It meant she wasn’t safe anywhere. She looked in the rearview. No sign of the white Mercedes with tinted windows.

  The Trans Am passed the Kendall exit and a blue info sign. She waited for a tanker to go by and slid over a lane.

  The Snapper Creek Service Plaza was at Mile Nineteen. Nineteen miles till the end of the turnpike, then just two isolated lanes through mangroves as the mainland seeps into the part of the map with those spongy symbols before reaching the drawbridge to Key Largo.

  Only a few vehicles at the plaza. An unattended Nissan with no tag. A security car with a sleeping guard in the driver’s seat and an emblem on the door of an irritable eagle and lightning bolts. A Peterbilt tractor-trailer, dark in the cab but the engine still on, along with hundreds of amber running lights that traced the entire outline of the truck in a manner that said someone was getting rich on amber running lights.

  The Trans Am pulled into the space closest the building. The woman forced her legs out of the car. She walked stiffly to the pay phones, pushed coins in a slot and dialed an exchange in the lower Keys. “Come on!” Three no-answers at the last three service plazas. Now ten rings and counting. The exposure time out of the Trans Am seemed eternal. A car door opened. Her eyes shot toward the sound. The night guard smiled like a sex offender.

  Thirteen rings, about to call it quits. A sleepy voice answered. The woman jumped. “Don’t hang up! It’s me!”

  BELOW MIAMI, YOU’RE on your own. Dixie Highway slants across a hot, dusty wasteland of Mad Max predators, where the famous roadside “Coral Castle” is now ringed with razor wire, and copulating dogs tumble past the doors of Cash Advance Nation. Above all this, another world away, are the elevated lanes of the Florida Turnpike. A metallic green Trans Am raced south just before dawn until the lanes ended and twisted their way down to merge with U.S. 1. Welcome to Florida City, a franchised boomtown decided by automatic traffic counters and satellite imagery. Mobil, Exxon, Wendy’s, Denny’s, Baskin-Robbins and a continuous row of chain motel signs indicating that the cornerstones of the white race are free breakfast and AARP rates.

  A maid pushed her cleaning cart and sang a merry Spanish song. Room doors opened; Middle America herded kids into cars. Lobbies filled with people grabbing Pop-Tarts and sticking paper cups under spigots. “The orange juice is out.” The sky grew lighter. The maid knocked. “Housekeeping!” The gas lanes at the food marts filled. “Pump five is already on (you idiot)!” College students with beer suitcases piled back into their Jeep Grand Cherokee and raced to the edge of the parking lot.

  Two sedans went by, then a metallic green Trans Am. The coast was clear. The Jeep took off with a wallet on the roof and shaving cream on the back window: “Key West or Bust!”

  COLEMAN CHECKED HIS rearview. No witnesses from the Great Escape. He continued through some modest new construction in the wake of Hurricane Andrew until the city of Homestead eventually dwindled out in a quilt of vacant lots.

  The Buick rolled to a stop at the intersection with U.S. 1. Coleman’s windows were down, letting in morning sounds that emphasized how quiet it was. A bird chirping, a far-off diesel getting a punch of fuel. Coleman opened a bag of peanuts and waited for some last cars to pass. A metallic green Trans Am and college students in a Jeep Grand Cherokee. He turned right.

  Nothing oncoming for the first three miles. The sky went from dark to light blue, the world waking up. Coleman smelled salt. The sun finally broke, orange blotches of light flickering through breaks in the mangroves. Coleman popped nuts in his mouth. Formations of wading birds flew over the causeway. Then more birds on foot, vultures standing around overnight roadkill with the posture of guys loitering outside an adult video store. Every other mile: dead raccoon, dead snake, dead opossum, dead armadillo. Traffic began filling Coleman’s rearview, and he was soon being passed nonstop by convertibles and SUVs and rental cars. Coleman was always being passed because the Buick couldn’t go faster than fifty without vibrating like a paint shaker. Some of the other drivers leaned on their horns. Coleman didn’t pay no mind. He was one of the most carefree creatures you’d ever meet, which meant he was an enemy of the state. He finished his peanuts and tossed the empty bag on the dashboard, which had become one of those trash gardens you frequently see on the highway: crumpled burrito wrappers, smashed soda cups, napkins, matchbooks, lottery tickets, coffee stirrers, dead AA batteries, Gulf Oil road map of Arkansas, intact vending-machine Condom of Ultimate Optimism, still-folded litter bag. As new layers of garbage were added, the older ones compacted into the seam between the front of the dash and the tapering windshield, where you could trace Coleman’s downfall like a museum cross-section of an Indian shell mound. On the floor of the passenger side was a chewed pencil, an umbrella handle and a broken answering machine he’d found in a field. The AC didn’t work.

  Mile Marker 108 went by. The Buick slowed as it struggled up the incline toward the bridge over Jewfish Creek, the official border between mainland Florida and the Keys. Coleman was passed in the left lane by a Greyhound bus with some kind of commotion in the backseat.

  “Wake up! Wake up!” yelled Serge, shaking the bum. “You don’t want to miss this!”

  The bum was having one of those fantastic drunk dreams, like if Georgia O’Keeffe did claymation of organic decomposition. “Wha—? What is it?”

  Serge pulled him upright and pointed out the window. “There’s the bridge! We’re about to enter the Keys! It’s one of those relaxing little life pleasures you should get into. So get the fuck into it!”

  The bus rattled across the metal grating of the drawbridge. Serge threw his arms in the air like he was on a roller coaster but remembered not to yell.

  Then it was over. He smiled at the bum. “Like no
other place on earth. Raw natural beauty, relentless freedom, unorthodox natives. A friend told me something else about the Keys I never forgot: Down here, nobody is who they seem to be. When people in other parts of the country want to reinvent themselves, they come to Florida. But when people in Florida want to reinvent themselves, they come to the Keys. That’s what I’m doing….”

  They passed Overseas Insurance, Paradise Tattoo and a house trailer with a hand-painted sign on the side of the road. WANTED: GRAND PIANO OR LEGAL ADVICE.

  Serge began strumming his guitar again. He stopped and silenced the strings with his hand. “Got a ground-floor opportunity for you.” He looked around to make sure nobody else was listening, then leaned closer. “I’m going to be the next Jimmy Buffett.” He winked. “Only better…” He resumed playing. “…Oh, I’m an irresponsible pirate mixin’ drinks and bein’ lazy…” He stopped playing. “That’s an original. It’s unfinished. The working title is ‘Make Me Rich.’ I really don’t know how to play yet, or write songs, but that doesn’t matter. It’s about marketing. Jimmy’s cousin is Warren Buffett…”—Serge reached in his back pocket for a computer printout and unfolded it across the guitar—“…It’s all in the numbers. I have an MBA.” The printout was blank. Serge put it away. “I don’t really have an MBA. I can admit that because you look like someone who doesn’t care. I mean that in a good way. And we’ll have to be straight with each other if we’re going to be partners….”

  The bus pulled over at a roadside shelter. The bum started getting up. “This is my stop.”

  Serge pulled him back down. “You need to stop and think about my offer. The world is becoming too stressful. Both parents working, losing shirts in mutual funds, running to after-school functions, filling weekends with unfinishable home improvements that looked so easy on the Renovation Channel. They never expected adulthood would be like this. ‘Holy shit! It’s just more and more responsibility! Maybe if I work a little harder it’ll start to get easier…. Nope, it’s even worse now and…oh my God! I’m having a heart attack!’” Serge grabbed his chest and fell into the aisle. He lay motionless. The bum bent over. “You okay?”