by Tim Dorsey
Serge popped back up. “And then you’re fuckin’ dead! What kind of life is that?” Serge faced forward and nodded. “This is where I come in. I’ll give people the momentary illusion of escaping adulthood, for a fee. The market’s ripe: Everyone’s become obsessed with maturity….”
A gold ’71 Buick Riviera drove past the parked Greyhound, Coleman hitting the nub of a joint and humming in falsetto: “Hmm, hmm-hmm, hmm-hmm, fruit juicy. How’d you like a nice Hawaiian punch?…”
Coleman reached under his seat, locating a loose beer and an empty convenience-store collector’s cup promoting the Harry Potter industrial complex. He poured the beer in the cup so he could sip while driving, nobody the wiser, instead of having to hunch over and sneak with a can, because that would be dangerous.
The Buick passed a row of fiery poincianas down the median on Key Largo, then countless red and white dive flags, coral-reef murals, concrete angelfish, big plaster shark jaws for tourists to pose inside, a fish-basket restaurant with stone patio tables out front from a pool store, the famous Caribbean Club, the famous African Queen movie boat, a dozen famous tiki huts, a seashell gift outlet mall, Tradewinds Liquors, Paradise Insurance, Kokomo Dental, and the parking lot of a boarded-up shopping center where a third-rate carnival was working its way down the Keys. Rusty Ferris wheel, Ping-Pong ball goldfish games, mechanical crane rigged so you couldn’t grab the mini-spy camera or switchblade comb. Disinterested clowns shuffled floppy shoes through the grimy midway. The clowns had gotten into substance abuse, flunked out of the prestigious Ringling Brothers Clown College in Sarasota and were now relegated to the hard-luck circuit of broken clown dreams. An audience of three preschoolers sat cross-legged on a mat. Mr. Blinky juggled a pair of balls. The children got up and left. Mr. Blinky put the balls in his pocket. Another clown walked up. They watched forlornly as the children entered the computer arcade tent.
“Let’s go get high,” said Mr. Blinky.
“Fuckin’ A,” said Uncle Inappropriate.
The clowns went behind some propane tanks as a Greyhound bus drove by in the background, the last window open, a man strumming his guitar.
SERGE STOPPED PLAYING his guitar and faced the bum. “It first hit me when I was eating dinner in Margaritaville. I had ordered the Cheeseburger in Paradise. Figured it had to be the best cheeseburger in the world if Buffett was involved. You know what? The fucking thing was inedible, a gray Keds sole. And as far as accuracy, get this: no pickle. There’s a pickle in every refrain in that song. I’ve heard it a thousand times. But was there one with my cheeseburger? They’re betting on us not noticing. Well, they bet wrong!…”
The bum began standing. “I’d like to get off—”
Serge pushed down on his shoulder. “…The waitress comes by, and I’m looking under my plate. She asks if everything is okay. I say, ‘There’s no pickle.’ I turn the burger vertical, going through it like a wallet, and the waitress says it doesn’t come with a pickle. I stop and look up. ‘Yes, it does.’ She says there’s no mention in the menu. I say I know what the menu says; lyrics overrule. Then we started yelling. Actually it was just me. Suddenly, there goes the table. Guess who they blame? So now these four beefy guys in festive shirts are dragging me toward the front door, and I’m screaming at the other customers: ‘Call Jimmy! Somebody call Jimmy!’ I land on my back on the sidewalk, and the cheeseburger patty hits me in the chest and they throw the buns and everything at me, just an ugly scene…. I have to tell you, somewhere along the line, something has gone horribly wrong in Margaritaville….”
Vehicles flew by Serge’s window. Jeep Grand Cherokee, metallic green Trans Am, brown Plymouth Duster, over the Marvin D. Adams cut, Tavernier Creek, Snake Creek, the Whale Harbor bridge, into Islamorada, the scuba industry giving way to rows of offshore charter boats at marinas with stuffed marlin and sea bass and hammerheads hanging from trophy hooks facing the road. A ’71 Buick Riviera chugged past Paradise Pawn and a motel with a faux lighthouse, then another bus shelter and the pulled-over Greyhound that Coleman had been leapfrogging the last thirty miles. The views from the bridges began opening up, and Coleman grooved on the scenery. The Long Key Viaduct was particularly inspiring, especially on the Gulf Stream side, so Coleman hit his blinker and cut into the left lane for a closer look over the top of the parallel bridge span heading the other way. Yes, sir, this is living. He smiled and hit his joint.
Coleman began noticing a lot of pelicans on the other bridge span. Then a camping tent. And another. Several fishermen. More and more tents. More fishermen. Hold the phone, thought Coleman. That’s not a parallel bridge going the other way; it’s a span that’s been converted into a fishing pier. Hmm, interesting. So I guess that means I’m on a two-way bridge. Coleman looked forward and saw the oncoming Camaro stopped cold, fifty yards up.
The Greyhound driver slammed the brakes, pitching Serge and the bum into the seats in front of them with the sound of scraping guitar strings. “Hey!” yelled Serge. “What the hell’s going on up there?”
The driver threw the transmission back into low gear. “Some fool almost had a head-on.”
The bus entered Marathon, smack in the middle of the Keys. The airport went by on the right. Small terminal, big fuel tank, Piper Cubs, biplanes for novelty rides, rows of corporate aircraft, white limo waiting at the edge of the runway.
Key West didn’t allow jets for noise reasons. So if a big executive wanted to take the Lear, he landed in Marathon and rode a limo the last fifty miles, drinking the whole way. Like the man right now climbing down the stairs and crossing the tarmac in a tropical shirt and flip-flops. Gaskin Fussels from Muncie. The chauffeur ran around the car. “Mr. Fussels, let me get those bags….”
Fussels was short, chubby and bald. He also reeked of money, which meant he was sexy.
The limo left the airport and headed west on U.S. 1. It was stopped within a mile. Fussels ran inside Overseas Liquors and was back in a flash with his usual fifth of their most expensive rum. The driver wondered whether he might get a better tip if he stopped in advance and had the bottle waiting. He’d done that once for another client, but the tip was the same and he’d gotten stiffed on the booze. The rich never ceased to amaze the driver. He’d seen everything. Take Fussels, for instance. Big attorney from Indiana with a second home in the Keys. Four-day work week, then every Friday morning a private charter into Marathon for another lost weekend as Calypso Johnny. Every single week. How could he afford it? Is there that much money floating around? The driver decided there was a secret world he wasn’t being told about.
“No other way to live,” Fussels explained as he always did, tidying the wet bar. “It’s just service economy down here, so I couldn’t make near the money. But I couldn’t live anywhere else. Yes, sir, these flights are worth every penny. My competition shivers all weekend up north, then I come back to the courthouse Monday morning, tanned, recharged, the weight of the world off my shoulders, and I bash their brains out!”
The limo started across the Seven-Mile Bridge. What a day, not a cloud, the Gulf Stream chocked with color. Fussels settled into the middle of the backseat with his drink and stretched his legs. “Got a joke for ya….”
The driver looked up in the mirror. “What is it?”
“How does a blind person know when he’s finished wiping?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Fussels. How?”
“No, you see, that’s the joke.”
“Oh…ha, ha, ha, ha…” The driver would never understand the rich.
Fussels grabbed his bottle. “Moron.”
They didn’t talk for a while after that. Fussels diligently got plowed. They reached Ramrod Key.
“Pull over. I need to take a leak.”
The chauffeur looked up the road. “There’s a Chevron next block.”
“Fuck it. I wanna go here.”
The rich again. The limo eased onto the shoulder. Fussels got out, walked down a mild embankment and stumbled to his knees. “Whoa, good ru
m.” He stood and undid his zipper, not remotely concealed, children pointing from station wagons as they drove by. Mr. Fussels started feeling splashes on his bare ankles. “What the hell?” He angled his head to look around the stream. “Am I hitting something?”
There was movement in the brush. A nocturnal armadillo raised its head. What woke me up? And what’s this stuff hitting my shell? The animal desired to be somewhere else and began marching toward the road.
Fussels returned to the limo. The chauffeur looked back up U.S. 1, waiting for traffic to clear. Just a couple more vehicles. A Greyhound bus and a metallic green Trans Am. The driver of the Trans Am had her radio on low, Shania Twain. A single tear trickled out from beneath dark sunglasses concealing two black eyes. She put on a blinker and swung around the Greyhound bus, which was slowing to an unscheduled stop behind a limousine.
The bus’s door opened and Serge came flying out with his knapsack. He picked himself up from the dirt and turned around, spreading his arms in a gesture of innocence. “What?”
A guitar hit him in the chest. The bus drove off.
Serge noticed the limo and began running for it. “Hey! Do you think you could give me a—”
The limo sped off. Serge hoisted the knapsack over his shoulder and stuck out his thumb. “Here comes somebody. Looks promising. The car’s pretty beat up, so they have a history of poor judgment like picking up hitchhikers….”
The driver of the brown Plymouth Duster with Ohio plates was distracted by Serge, leaning way too far into traffic with exaggerated hitchhiking gestures. Never saw the armadillo.
Bang.
The Duster’s driver looked in the rearview and watched the unfortunate animal tumble down the highway, coming to rest on the centerline with four legs in the air.
4
T HE INSIDE OF the ’71 Buick Riviera smelled like grease-smoke. Coleman had stopped at an independent convenience store with Citgo gas pumps out front and a glass case inside heated with red light bulbs. A Styrofoam box of yesterday’s food now sat in Coleman’s lap: chicken wings, chicken gizzards, potato logs, egg rolls, mozzarella sticks, crab cakes. He sipped a plastic soda cup of beer.
“Look, a drawbridge! I love drawbridges. And there’s a waterspout! I love waterspouts.”
Coleman was watching the waterspout and didn’t see the lowering arm of the drawbridge that the Buick had just sailed under. The bridge tender quickly hit a button raising the second arm on the other side.
The gas gauge was on E when Coleman hit the Torch Keys. The needle had been pushing hard against the right post ever since the Seven-Mile Bridge, where an approach sign told motorists to check their fuel. Coleman checked it. Yep, on E.
He barely made it to the top of the Ramrod Key bridge before the engine cut out. Coleman had been here before. He threw the car in neutral and switched over to gravity power, coasting down the back side and saving money.
He saw a gas station sign in the palms a couple blocks up. Thirty miles an hour. Twenty-five. Twenty. Cars honking again, whipping around, giving him the finger. Coleman smiled and waved. Fifteen miles an hour, ten. Traffic stacking up. The gas sign getting bigger. He rocked forward in his seat, giving her body English. Allllllllmost there…
Coleman noticed a discarded couch on the side of the road next to the gas station, then something in the middle of the street, a dead armadillo. He hit his blinker and made an ultraslow-motion left turn around the carcass. The Buick reached the edge of the parking lot and Coleman jumped out with the car still rolling, grabbing the door and lip of the roof, jogging alongside the Buick the rest of the way to the pumps.
He started gassing. When the pump reached five dollars, Coleman’s eyes darted back and forth. He clicked the pump handle, resetting the price back to zero, and resumed pumping again until the tank was full.
Coleman went inside and began loading up. Red-hot pork rinds, red-hot pub fries, red-hot beef sticks, sixer of Natural Lite Ice. He spilled it all on the counter. The clerk stared at him.
“What?” said Coleman.
“I saw you. You reset the gas pump.”
“I did?”
“Coleman!”
“Must have hit it by accident.”
“You do it every time, and I just add it to your bill.”
Coleman got out a credit card.
“I can’t take your credit card anymore.”
“Just try it.”
The clerk swiped it through the machine. “Says to confiscate card.”
Coleman snatched it back. “I’ll pay cash.” He opened an empty wallet. “Where’d my money go?”
“Coleman!”
“You know I’m good for it. I live just around the corner. I’m always in here.”
The clerk glared.
“Thanks.” Coleman grabbed a souvenir coolie with the gas station’s name and threw it on the pile. “Can I get a bag?”
Coleman tossed his nonpurchases in the Buick. There were a number of beer empties on the floorboard. He wouldn’t have minded except he remembered the time one got stuck under the brake pedal. He gathered the cans and headed for the trash. He happened to look up at U.S. 1. He got an idea. He had seen it in a poster.
Coleman walked to the edge of the highway. Traffic zipped by at a steady clip. He waited for a break, then wobbled into the street and went to work.
He giggled his way back to the Buick and climbed in behind the wheel. The car pulled away from the pumps with a loud ker-chunk. Coleman drove down a side street and turned up the dirt driveway of his single-wide rental. The trailer was dark orange. Had been white, before the rust. He could afford it because the landlord didn’t want to lift a finger, and Coleman was one of the few people unbothered by rain buckets in the living room and kitchen.
It was a dump. But in the Keys, even dumps are magnificent. Coleman’s crib was tucked in a thick grove of coconut palms, sea grapes, jacaranda and a tree with brilliant yellow blooms. Vines crawled up the sides of the mobile home, and wildflowers sprouted along the front, blocking more empties in the crawl space.
Coleman got out of the Buick. He saw a gas pump handle and a short length of torn rubber hose sticking out the side of the car.
“How’d that get there?”
Coleman threw it in the trash and went inside.
TRAFFIC BEGAN SLOWING on U.S. 1. Soon it was backed up to Little Torch, Big Pine and all the way to Bahia Honda. Rubberneckers inched past the Chevron station on Ramrod Key. Others pulled off the road altogether and got out with cameras, snapping pictures of the armadillo on its back, holding a can of Budweiser to its mouth with rigid front claws.
The gas station clerk was too busy to notice. He’d hit the big red emergency shutoff button and placed fluorescent cones around the fuel slick, according to corporate training. He ran back inside and looked up the phone number for environmental recovery.
More vehicles pulled over. Business at the gas station picked up despite the closed pumps. College students jumped out of a Jeep Grand Cherokee and headed for the beverage cooler. A woman in a Hog’s Breath T-shirt stuck her head through the door. “Disposable cameras?”
The clerk was on the phone. He pointed at a Fuji display.
The students set cases of beer on the counter. “Bags of ice?”
The clerk pointed at the freezer next to them.
Then, the first of the wrecks, a nasty rear-ender next to a SLOW DOWN—ENDANGERED KEY DEER sign. Traffic was at a standstill by the time the students came out the door. So they walked the edge of the highway, took off their shirts and plopped down on the discarded sofa. The volume went up on a boom box. Van Halen’s “Beautiful Girls.” Sunscreen squirted onto chests.
COLEMAN WAS FAT and happy, sunk deep into his living room couch with bad springs that he had considered swapping for the one on the side of the road. He ate and drank and worked the remote control. Outside: sirens and helicopters. Coleman surfed past something on TV. He backed up a channel. Local newscast. Live feed from one of the overhead
choppers.
“Hey, that’s my gas station.”
The airborne camera swept to the horizon, showing U.S. 1 at a standstill over endless islands and bridges. The picture panned back down to the filling station, where tiny college students drank and smoked on a little sofa. One of the youths tossed a cigarette over his shoulder.
Coleman’s head jerked back as a fireball exploded on TV, engulfing the Chevron pumps.
“Cool!”
THE GANG FROM the No Name Pub was down at the Bogie Channel bridge when the fireball cleared the trees in the distance.
“Wonder what that was,” said Sop Choppy, hair blowing as another helicopter took off from the bridge.
“Let’s get a drink,” said Bob.
They started walking back to the pub. A pink taxi came up the road from the opposite direction. The gang reached the bar as the cab pulled into the gravel parking lot. Serge got out of the backseat with his guitar case. He pulled cash from a pocket and leaned through the open passenger window. “Sure you won’t reconsider my offer? Ground-floor opportunity. I’m going to be the next Buffett.”
“Hey buddy, I got another fare….”
“Last chance,” said Serge, handing over money. “You wanna be a fuckin’ cabbie your whole life?…”
Serge and his guitar spun to the ground as the taxi took off.
COLEMAN SPENT THE rest of the morning taking on the shape of his couch. He had never watched one channel so long. People running all over the place at the gas station. A lone fire truck had somehow gotten through and foamed down the pumps. Coleman raised a can to his lips. Empty. He went to the fridge. Out. He pulled cushions off the sofa and collected coins.