by Tim Dorsey
24
Behind Hammerhead Ranch, just beyond the line of stuffed sharks, was the bar. It predated the motel. Originally built as a small beach house during the Florida land boom of the mid-twenties, it was gutted and renovated as a tavern during the forties. The building was wooden and sturdy, and over the years many of the beams had petrified and nails couldn’t be driven into them anymore. The cracker architecture stayed intact-floor raised on stilts and a vaulted pyramid ceiling open to the joists for ventilation. It smelled salty and looked like a shipwreck. The floor was uneven with a thousand cigarette burns and stains upon splotches on top of splatters. Small blue neon letters went up in 1963 over the entrance facing the Gulf. “The Florida Room.”
It hadn’t resisted change as much as change had rejected it. No crab pot buoys made into lamps or thick rope glued around the edges of the tables. The Bahama shutters were double-thick and held up with chains. There was no AC. It stayed hot so that when there was a breeze, it reminded people that they liked it.
The Florida Room would begin filling up in the next hour. But for now, Lenny and Serge had it to themselves. Serge took wide-angle photos from each of the bar’s four corners. Two sets-one flash, one natural light. The bartender wiped glasses and kept an eye on them. Serge and Lenny went back to the bar. It was quiet except for the squeaking of the bartender’s wash rag and the tumbling daiquiri machine. Serge had an olive burlap shoulder bag in which he stowed camera gear, notebooks and any souvenirs that got caught in his dragnet: matchbooks, postcards, keychains, ticket stubs, brochures, swizzle sticks. He decided that now was a good time to spread the contents on the bar, reorganize and repack.
Lenny ordered a draft, Serge another mineral water.
“You ever been to the John Ringling Museum down in Sarasota?” Serge asked the bartender.
“Heard of it,” he said, and continued wiping glasses.
“It’s unbelievable,” said Serge, turning to Lenny. “There’s all the circus stuff you’d expect from his days with Barnum and Bailey. But there’s also this incredible artwork, like he was trying to overcompensate for the bearded ladies and the fat guy they had to bury in a piano.”
“I think you have the fat guy mixed up with the Guinness book,” said Lenny.
“You sure?” asked Serge, looking up at a ceiling fan to concentrate. “Maybe I’m thinking of the guy born with his face upside down.”
The bartender stopped wiping, eyed them a moment, then resumed. He was forty-eight and a Vitalis man. He had a toothpick in his mouth and all the answers.
“They also have the Clown College down there,” said Serge. “Heard of that?”
The bartender nodded, kept wiping.
“It’s a historic institution,” Serge told Lenny. “The circus needed a school to keep their talent pool stocked, and since the Ringling Brothers crew wintered there, it was the natural place. The college takes it very seriously, just like a regular campus. Dorms, library, cramming all night, finals. It’s still there, even though they almost closed it down after some trouble back in the sixties.”
“What happened?” asked Lenny.
“Antiwar demonstration. The National Guard came in with Plexiglas shields. Horrible scene. Clowns running everywhere through clouds of tear gas; cops beating them with batons, the clowns kicking back with big, floppy shoes. At the administration building the guardsmen set up a barricade, and thirty students rammed it in a tiny car… Got a lot of bad press. Few days later there was a news conference showing unity for the antiwar movement-a long conference table in front of the cameras: a couple of Black Panthers, some SDS, the Weathermen, Leonard Bernstein, three clowns…”
The bartender stopped wiping and studied Serge again.
City and Country finished a rejuvenating swim in the Gulf and bounced into the bar full of spunk. At high tide the waves rolled twenty yards from the back door, even closer after storm erosion. A heat wave still hadn’t broken, and the water was filled with swimmers in numbers unusual for December.
The two women bellied up to the bar exuding sexual energy. The bartender immediately attached to his glass wiping the importance of a decathlete rosining up his vaulting pole. The women pointed at the daiquiri mixer. “We want two of those,” City said in her British accent. The bartender poured strawberry slush with aplomb.
The pair took seats next to Lenny and smiled.
Lenny smiled back.
“What’s that about?” asked Serge.
“I’m in love.”
Serge asked the bartender to turn on the TV. Business began to pick up.
A Japanese man walked in with a surfboard. Serge raised his water in toast: “Tora! Tora! Tora!”
The man gave Serge a thumbs-up and smiled. “Yankee go home, shit-eater!” He took the stool next to Serge, and Serge patted him on the back and bought him a beer.
“I see you’ve been teaching him,” said Lenny.
“Someone has to build the bridge,” said Serge.
A Haitian man ran up to the bartender and talked fast in French, gesturing desperately. Captain Bradley Xeno came in seconds later. “There you are!” He threw the bartender a ten, grabbed the Haitian by the collar and dragged him off.
At a nearby table, a short, squat man was trying to sell letters of transit to a vacationing couple. “Signed by de Gaulle. Cannot be rescinded.”
Serge wiped perspiration and gazed out the window and saw an armored van backed up to room five. Two men in dark suits and dark sunglasses jumped out the front of the vehicle with riot guns. Two more jumped out the back. The door of room five flew open and four more armed men in suits rushed a Mafia underboss with a beach towel over his head into the back of the vehicle, and it sped off for the next stop in the witness protection program.
As the van pulled out, a white limo pulled in. On the door were the five multicolored interlocking rings of the modern Olympics. Tampa Bay had placed a bid for the 2012 Summer Olympic games, and, although the Olympic Committee had no intention of awarding the games to Tampa Bay, they had an obligation out of fairness to show up and examine for themselves the level of local graft. Seven men of assorted ancestry got out of the limo and walked toward The Florida Room, followed by Sherpas carrying steamer trunks plastered with travel stickers. “I love Euro-Disney,” “I climbed the Matterhorn,” “ Hiroshima is for Lovers!”
The International Olympic Committee wandered around the bar with confident smiles and expectant eyes, looking everyone in the face, wondering which stranger was the preordained one who would whisk them off to unimaginable wealth and human titillations.
“Hey, pencil-dicks! Down in front!”
The Olympic Committee noticed they were blocking the wide-screen TV, which was on Florida Cable News. Mug shots of City and Country were on the screen, but by the time the Olympic Committee got out of the way, FCN was into the Celebrity Rehab Spotlight portion of the broadcast.
W hen Jethro Maddox and Art Tweed first arrived in Tampa Bay, they got gas and Sweet Tarts at a Rapid Response convenience store. Art went inside to ask around the Proposition 213 rally. The clerk gestured to the end of the counter-a stack of bumper stickers and pamphlets with Boris’s smiling face and an old car horn. On the back of the pamphlet was a map with directions to Beverly Shores. Art folded one and stuck it in his back pocket.
“You have been a noble and proud travel companion,” Jethro said back at the gas pumps, “but we shall sadly depart, for I must once again rejoin my own kind.”
“What?”
“I need to drop you ’cause I gotta meet the Look-Alikes for our gig… Anyplace you want me to take you?”
Art looked up and saw a billboard and pointed. “Take me there.”
Three miles down the road, they shook hands again and Jethro dropped Art at Crazy Charlie’s Gun Store. (“Our assault rifle prices are so low because we’re absolutely insane!”) Art went inside and quickly picked out a Colt Python.357, nickel, six-inch barrel.
“That’s a beaut!” said t
he clerk, running Art’s credit card. “You can pick it up Thursday.”
Art looked bewildered.
“It’s the law. Three-day cooling-off period.”
Art leaned forward. “No, no, no! I don’t want to cool off! Cooling off is bad! It’ll ruin everything!”
“You’re preachin’ to the choir,” said the clerk. “Tell it to our commie government.”
“Isn’t there anything you can do?”
“Well, if I was a private collector selling one of my own guns-instead of a licensed dealer-there’d be no waiting period.”
The clerk then looked around the store suspiciously. He took off his baseball cap embroidered with “Crazy Charlie’s” and replaced it with one embroidered “Private Collector.” He picked up the gun Art had selected and stuck it inside his jacket. He looked around again and then cocked his head toward the back door. “Let’s take a walk.”
They ended up behind the clerk’s car parked in the alley. He handed Art the gun, and Art felt the weight, liked the balance. But he shook his head and handed it back. “I only have credit cards.”
The clerk opened his trunk and took out a magnetic credit-card swiper and plugged it into a cell phone.
“That’ll be six hundred.”
“But it was only five hundred in the store!”
“I’m a private collector! I can’t compete with those prices!”
Art sighed and he forked over his Visa. Then he caught a cab for Beverly Shores. They were just about done building the stage. Art cased the place. He asked someone what time Boris the Hateful Piece of Shit was supposed to arrive. The nearest accommodation was the Hammerhead Ranch Motel next door. Not exactly the luxury digs he had intended, but this was business.
He checked in with a Diners Club, tuned a radio to Boris the Hateful Piece of Shit and began cleaning the Colt.
25
The next morning Serge cut across the grass to the sidewalk in front of room one and turned the knob. Before he had the door open, he smelled strawberry incense; Buffalo Springfield was on the radio. Inside, the beds were pushed against the walls to create a large expanse of carpet. Everyone was sitting cross-legged on the floor. City held her breath and passed the alligator bong to Lenny, who did a double-clutch toke and passed it to Country, who then passed it around a circle of eight guys that Serge didn’t recognize. They represented all races and creeds. There were coats on the beds: kabuki robe, Nehru jacket, dashiki. On top was a turban.
“What the hell’s this?” said Serge. “Get High for UNICEF?”
“It’s the International Olympic Committee,” said Lenny. “They’re here scouting for 2012. I wanted to do my part to bring the games here.”
The men looked up and smiled at Serge and ate potato chips and salted almonds and passed the Lucite alligator.
Serge shook off the scene, then held up a videocassette with satisfaction. “I found The Cocoanuts, the first Marx Brothers movie. It’s about the Florida land boom back in the twenties. Groucho plays a Miami innkeeper who tries to rip everyone off.” He nodded toward the delegates. “We-Are-the-World can stay, but only if they obey the theater rules.”
By now Serge and Lenny had the routine down, and they began moving like a precision drill team. Serge sealed the windows with tape, and Lenny zipped around the room moving chairs and rationing out snacks. The circle of guests fanned into two rows, for optimum viewing. Serge hit the cooler, grabbing a grapefruit and mineral water. Lenny was by the TV, and Serge turned to throw him the videocassette.
“Lenny! Catch!”
“What?”
Lenny turned with the bong as the cassette zinged past his ear.
There was a scream. The videotape hit the Burkina Faso delegate in the left eye, and he grabbed his face and jackknifed in pain, right into a globe lamp. Now there was broken glass, blood and panic. A stoned Lenny picked up the videotape, stuck it in the VCR and started watching the Marx Brothers. People ran around the room in an international commotion. Groucho flicked his cigar: “Why, when I came to Florida three years ago, I didn’t have a nickel in my pocket. Now, I have a nickel in my pocket…”
Serge’s jaw fell. Then came anger. “Everyone out! Now! Come on, let’s get!”
Serge held the door open as they filed by, smiling, bowing and thanking Serge.
Serge looked over at City and Country, who were back into the pot.
“’Ere,” City said without exhaling, handing the smoking bong to Country. “This is some nuclear weed!”
“You, too!” Serge yelled. “Be gone, young dope fiends!”
Country didn’t leave. Instead she sidled up to Serge with a whimsical, sexy swagger.
“How ’bout it, big boy?” She was feeling mischievous and wanted to toy with Serge-see him go slack-kneed. But she saw something entirely different in his eyes. Serge took a step forward, and it was Country who went invertebrate. Serge whisked her up in his arms like he was carrying a bride across a threshold. She put her arms around his neck to hold on, scared but feeling his energy.
Serge marched quickly to the bed and threw her on her back, and she bounced a foot and a half. He turned to Lenny and City. “Would you excuse us?”
It was not tender lovemaking. It was the kind of vigorous workout described in brochures for expensive isokinetic machines. Country was noisy in bed. She moaned and yelled and screamed. Lots of “Yes! Yes! Yes!” Soon they were drenched in perspiration, bodies sliding all over. They were going so hard that Serge was constantly in danger of sailing off the bed like a luge taking a turn too fast. Country writhed with her eyes closed and whipped her head side to side, her golden hair a damp mop, and it matted on her cheeks and fell in her mouth.
Suddenly she reached up and grabbed Serge by the back of the head. Breathing hard, she rocked her hips into him, parted her wet lips and gave Serge a predatory, squinting look that would send most men’s prostates flying like a tee shot.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked, hyperventilating.
“Pioneer landmarks, historic graveyards, Andrew Jackson…” he said, keeping pneumatic rhythm. “… East Martello Tower, Pigeon Key, Stiltsville, the Don Shula Expressway, Larry Csonka…”
“Csonka? You gay?”
“I’m not picturing him naked. I’m imagining him splitting the linebackers in the Orange Bowl.”
“Oh, I’ve heard of guys thinking stuff like that to prolong sex.”
“I’m not,” said Serge. “I’m trying to accelerate it.”
Country started to give him a weird look, but Serge thrust again and hit pay dirt, and Country’s eyes rolled back in her head. Then her eyelashes began to flutter. They reached simultaneous peaks, and Country surprised herself by making a squeaking sound like someone repeatedly stepping on a cat toy.
Serge arched up. “Remember the Maine!”
And they collapsed together in an exhausted, panting tangle.
S erge became something of a guru to City and Country. They were mesmerized by his patter on All Things Florida, especially when they were high. They started following him everywhere like ducklings, and Serge accommodated with a running commentary as a kind of Florida docent-at-large.
The next day, about noon, he led them into The Florida Room, and they walked around the inside of the place at museum pace, taking inventory of the stuff on the walls. Dominant were the trophy fish. None of the taxidermy work looked newer than fifty years-chipped, faded scales and yellowed eyes. Serge identified the largest over the bar-blue marlin, swordfish, sea bass and mako shark-and the midsized stuff on the north and south walls: sailfish, tarpon, white marlin, wahoo. Then, above the western windows facing the water, the “small” fish: bull dolphin, king mackerel, barracuda, permit.
“Check out these great photos!” he said. They were in old wood frames mounted on the wall running down to the restrooms. The earliest were ware era, group shots of people at tables in sailor and soldier uniforms. There was a close-up of a whiskered chief petty officer next to a teenage
recruit, both smoking cigars. Most of the women in the photos looked like the Andrews sisters. There was raucous swing dancing and an old Bally jukebox that was later mothballed for twenty years in a warehouse in Dalton, Georgia, and now sat restored under a tenth-floor apartment window overlooking Central Park. The photographs were arranged chronologically. Lots of fishing snapshots and local parades; Hank Aaron and Stan Musial during spring training; and a party photo with a banner, “Happy New Year 1959.”
Next was the memorial photo corner dedicated to some local photojournalist named “Studs” Allen, 1921-1971. Serge didn’t need to read the captions.
“This is a young Cuban baseball pitcher sitting at a lunch counter on Tampa ’s Kennedy Boulevard, before the president’s assassination, when it was still called Lafayette Boulevard. He was in town raising money to oppose Fulgencio Batista. His name was Fidel Castro.”
Serge moved a step sideways and the girls followed. “This is an angry shot of beat author Jack Kerouac at the Wild Boar lounge on Nebraska Avenue in Tampa… Here he is again, a little happier this time, standing outside his home on Tenth Avenue North in St. Pete, where he lived from 1964 to 1966… And this is a photo of a St. Petersburg Junior College student named Jim Morrison performing at the Beaux Arts Coffee House in Pinellas Park.”
Country whispered something in City’s ear, and City came up with some kind of excuse to leave.
Country turned back to Serge. “Did I hear you have some kind of moon rock back in your room? I’d love to see it.”
Three minutes later they were back in the room: Country kneeling on the foot of the bed, eyeing Serge-Serge completely missing the point, sitting in the middle of the bed, wrapped up in his storytelling. Country’s gaze intensified, and she began to feel wet. Serge waved the rock around in the air, making rocket sounds.
“Did I ever tell you that Dade Country was supposed to be named Pinkney County?”