by Tim Dorsey
Rachael threw down a clump of hair. “The retards leading the retards.”
“You’re welcome to leave anytime you want,” said Serge. “But you’ll miss the tour.”
Rachael poked a finger in an empty cigarette pack and threw it aside. “Tour?”
“Tap into the spiritual undercurrent of genius. Total spectrum of disciplines, from science to politics to art, that have graced our fair state. Like the high school back there where Stephen Stills graduated…” He reached in his pocket and produced a clear plastic tube of dirt.
“What’s that?” asked Coleman.
“Soil sample from the high school. My legacy needs a dirt collection.” He held the tube to Coleman’s ear. “Listen.”
“I don’t hear anything.”
Serge placed the tube next to his own ear. “‘Suite: Judy Blue Eyes.’ Just imagine, Buffalo Springfield, CSN&Y, Woodstock…” He held the tube inches from his eyes. “…And it all started here….”
“You said we were going to make some money!” said Rachael. “And score!” Her left hand flashed out and smacked the plastic tube from Serge’s hand. It broke on the ground.
Serge gasped. “Stephen!” He fell to his knees. “Coleman, Stephen needs us!”
“What do I do?”
“Grab Rachael’s cigarette pack from the weeds.”
“Got it…. Here you are.”
Serge uncrumpled the empty pack and gently scooped dirt inside. He stood and wiped his forehead. “Crisis averted.”
“That’s it,” said Rachael. “I’m done with you boobs.” She ran across the street and accosted a random night wanderer. A negotiation. The man handed her something.
Coleman looked down at the cigarette pack in Serge’s hand. “That’s the collection you were talking about at the library?”
“Actually it wasn’t my first choice. I was originally going to start a sperm bank.”
“Sperm?”
“I figured if you’re going to collect, collect. You know how there are those institutes in Sweden with samples from internationally famous geniuses? But then I started running the logistics through my head: ordering watermarked stationery, composing the request letters, which have to be very delicately worded. And nobody would reply anyway. All those places in Sweden are well connected through Nobel Prize cocktail receptions. That’s the thing about starting a jiz farm: It’s all who you know. Plus the special freezers cost a fortune. Dirt’s less maintenance.”
“Where’d you get the idea?”
“Had it bouncing around my head several years ago. But I’d never heard of anyone else doing it, so I figured it must be stupid.”
“What changed your mind?”
“Saving Private Ryan. That scene after the D-day invasion where this sergeant collects a little tin of sand and adds it to a canvas bag full of tins marked with names of other battles. I said, ‘Hey, that’s my idea! He stole my fucking idea!’ Then they made me leave the theater—”
Rachael came screaming back across the street with something under her arm. “Get him the fuck away from me!”
The man in chase: “Give it!”
She hid behind Serge and peeked over his shoulder. “Protect me.”
The porky pursuer finished a rapid wobble across the road and reached the curb. “She ripped me off!”
Serge stared at the man’s T-shirt. VAGITARIAN.
“I didn’t rip you off!” yelled Rachael. “You gave it to me!”
“I want my television!”
GULF OF MEXICO
The G-Unit’s empty stomachs growled on the way out of the restaurant. They normally wouldn’t have conceded cafeteria arrangement to the cruise company, but they were on deadline. The real priority was ballroom dancing. They never missed it.
Like tonight. The quartet moved quickly up the Fantasy Deck. The carpet was movie-premiere red. Everything else shiny: faux-gold doorways and banisters reflecting harsh rows of cabaret lightbulbs.
“There’s the ballroom,” said Edna.
“Where’d all those people come from?” asked Eunice.
“Told you we should have gotten an earlier start,” said Edith. “It’s getting more popular.”
They stood in the back of a large, anxious mob. The doors opened. Everyone charged inside, a trail of bent canes and walkers lost in the stampede.
The sound system struck up Guy Lombardo. A disco ball spun. The G-Unit made its move. Flecks of light swirled over the hardwood floor. They zeroed in on a pair of men by the punch bowl who looked like David Niven and Don Ameche, but a rival gang from the Catskills had the angle and executed a flying wedge.
“Over there!” yelled Eunice.
James Mason and Cary Grant in later years. The women took off. More trouble, this time a rolling screen block from Boca Raton.
“Damn,” said Edna.
They made a sweep of the room. Everyone worth taking was taken.
“I guess it’s the Brimleys,” said Edith.
“Not the Brimleys.”
They looked across the ballroom at a gathering of stocky gentlemen leaning over the bar. Curiously, every last one of them bore a striking resemblance to each other, like they had all been contestants in a Wilford Brimley look-alike contest.
Unbeknownst to the women, the Brimleys’ similarity of appearance was no accident. The men had, in fact, been participants in a number of look-alike events, all veterans of the annual Hemingway contest in Key West. But as time and barroom falls took their toll, those Hemingways who could no longer make the grade were put out to stud on cruise ships. They could be counted on for two and only two things: always available, and always completely hammered.
“Okay,” Edith sighed. “I guess it’s the Brimleys.” Since there had never been any competition for these men, the G-Unit was in no hurry. Just then, a championship quilting team from Vermont blitzed their left flank and snagged the leftover dancers.
“What just happened?” said Eunice.
“I don’t get it,” said Edna. “They were always available before.”
“This is no accident,” said Edith.
“What do you mean?”
“The cruise line’s ratcheting back the gender ratio.”
One of the Brimleys took a nasty spill, pulling the lead quilter down with him.
“Let’s watch TV in the room.”
They arrived back in their cabin. Edith grabbed the remote control and swatted a towel-scorpion off the bed.
SOUTH TAMPA
Jim stood at his upstairs bedroom window. “I’m starting to appreciate you talking me into moving.”
“Why?” Martha looked up from her book. “What’s going on out there?”
Rachael clutched a small TV to her chest. “It’s mine!”
“No it’s not!” said VAGITARIAN. “I only let you have it because you promised to—”
Serge held up a hand for the man to stop. “I have a pretty good idea what she promised, and I don’t care. Caveat emptor.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Never trust a stripper.”
“I’m not leaving until I get my TV!”
Serge raised the front of his tropical shirt, revealing the butt of a chrome automatic pistol tucked in the waistband. “There’s nothing more to see here. Please disperse.”
The startled man stumbled backward into the street and was nearly clipped by a drunk driver in a Dodge Dart.
Serge turned around. “What the hell do you want with that stupid TV?”
“Hock it. Good for a dime bag.” She set it on the ground and began going through her pockets for cigarette money. “What’s this?” She retrieved a small, forgotten square of paper, unfolded it and snorted hard, then licked residue. The paper floated to the ground.
Serge bent down for the piece of trash. “Will you stop doing drugs and littering?”
“I’ll do any fucking thing I want!”
“And lower your voice! You’re disturbing the community.”
“I
talk as loud as I want! Ahhhhhh! Ahhhhhh!…”
Two people walked by on the sidewalk lugging a patio table—“Good evening”—then two more with the matching chairs.
“…Ahhhhhh! Ahhhhhh! Ahhhhhh!…”
“That’s it!” Serge twisted a hand up behind her back again and wrapped his right forearm across her neck, compressing the larynx. “Are you going to be quiet?”
She gasped for breath like a grouper on a boat deck.
Serge suddenly felt a sharp pain where she’d stomped on his instep. “Yowwwww!” He released his grip and hopped on one foot.
Rachael picked up a rock and hurled it with surprising accuracy. Serge ducked, and the stone skipped across the street, clanging off the hubcap on a passing Sunbird.
Brakes screeched. The driver jumped out with a baseball bat that is factory equipment on most cars in Tampa after midnight. “What the fuck?”
Serge whipped out his pistol. “Something I can help you with?”
The driver jumped back in. The Sunbird screeched away. A smaller rock hit Serge in the back of the head. “Ouch!”
Rachael reached to the ground for more ammo. She stopped halfway. Her left eye began twiching. Then her other eye. She scratched her arms and chest, then began ripping at her hair with both hands. “Ahhhhhh! Ahhhhhh—!…”
Serge cocked his pistol. “What did I tell you about that yelling?”
“…Ahhhhhh! Ahhhhhh! I’m not trying to yell this time….” Rachael ran in terrified figure eights, clawing the top of her head.
“Help! Help! For the love of God!…”
“What’s going on?” asked Serge.
“Too much crank,” said Coleman.
Rachael ran past them at full gallop. “Get rid of them!…”
“Get rid of what?”
“Snakes! My hair is full of snakes! Ahhhhhh!…” Rachael sprinted down the street. “Ahhhhhh!…”
Serge cupped his hands around his mouth. “Watch out for that oak—”
“…Ahhhhhh!” Smack.
“—tree.”
Rachael bounced off the trunk and grabbed the bloody wound on her forehead. “Ahhhhhh!…” She turned around and ran back the other way.
Serge and Coleman simultaneously sat on the ground. Their heads swiveled left to right as Rachael went screaming by. “…Snakes!…”
She crashed over a garbage can at the corner, got up and reversed direction again. “…Somebody! Help!…”
Coleman’s head rotated as she went by. “This is better than Bum Fight videos.”
A half block away, Martha Davenport looked up from her book. “What’s all that racket out there?”
“I don’t know.” Jim tried to get a better look out the window. “Sounds like some woman’s being attacked by snakes.”
“Snakes?”
“That’s what she says.” He watched as Rachael hit the ground, rolling furiously back and forth. Dirt covered her face, mixing with the blood pouring down from her forehead and getting in her nose and mouth. “Ahhhhhh! Ahhhhhh! There’s motherfuckin’ snakes in my motherfuckin’ hair!…”
“That’s odd,” said Coleman. “A little bit ago I thought she was the hottest chick I’d ever seen, but for some reason I’m not that turned on anymore.”
“It’s the same with all women,” said Serge. “Sexiness depends on what part of the day you catch them.”
Coleman grabbed the spherical TV from where Rachael had left it. “Wonder if this thing works.”
Up in the window, Jim had a nagging sensation that he recognized the wiry man down on the street. Must be mistaken.
Rachael finally stopped rolling around and walked back to Serge and Coleman.
“Hope you’re happy,” said Serge. “You disturbed a citizen.”
“Where?” asked Rachael.
Serge indicated by raising his chin toward a second-story silhouette backlit by his wife’s reading lamp. “That guy on the next block. Probably just trying to sleep in peace.”
Rachael shook a fist at the distant window. “What are you looking at, motherfucker?”
Jim then noticed the outline of Coleman’s nonwarrior constitution and it all snapped into place.
“Oh, no.”
SIXTEEN
THE NEXT DAY
Through the front window of a 1923 bungalow, two people sat facing each other in frosty silence.
“I don’t understand why you’re so upset,” said Serge.
“You don’t understand why I’m upset?”
“I went to the meeting just like you said.”
“I’ve been getting calls for three days. The moderator never wants to see you again.”
“I said I’d pay for the broken desks.”
“What a mistake!”
“Didn’t I warn you?”
“And yet you still claim you have no problems.”
“Right. They started it. Never seen so much hostility in one room.”
“So you just beat everyone up?”
“No, I didn’t just beat everyone up. At first I was consummately polite, but what do I get in return? You should have heard those potty mouths. Everything was ‘blow me,’ ‘bite me’…”
“Serge…”
“…Eat shit and die—”
“Serge!”
“What?”
“Now you’re just repeating yourself.”
“No, they each said something different. Suck my asshole. Lick my balls…”
“Serge!”
“What?”
“I’ve got the theme.”
“So you see I’m in the right?”
“Your anger’s far worse than I ever imagined.”
“My anger? I was the happiest person in the room. At least when I arrived.”
She got out a piece of notepaper and began writing. “I don’t know why I’m still bothering with you.”
Serge pumped his eyebrows. “We have that magic.”
“I’m going to try something. Very experimental. And risky. But you’re an extreme case. That’s why you have to make me a promise.”
“Name it.”
“No more fighting at meetings, especially this one.”
He didn’t answer.
“Well?”
“I didn’t realize it would be that promise.”
“Promise!”
“Okay, I promise. What kind of meeting?”
She handed him the slip of paper. He read it and looked up. “You’ve got to be joking.”
“I couldn’t be more serious. It seems counter-intuitive, but empathizing with these people might be a constructive experience. If you feel you’re about to lose control, just get up and leave.”
“Fair enough.”
TAMPA
The real estate agent was so cheerful you wanted to beat her to death.
“Jim! Martha! Wonderful to finally meet!”
“Me too,” said Jim. “Listen, I tried getting the price from you on the phone….”
The agent was also a hugger. Big squeezes for both Davenports. She had a ruby-red blazer with an azalea scarf. A gold metal name tag on the right breast pocket: STEPHANIE. Beneath: TEN-MILLION-DOLLAR ASSOCIATE.
Jim looked up the driveway. “How much?”
“Martha, I absolutely adore what you’re wearing!”
Martha glanced down at her warm-up suit from the gym.
Stephanie walked ambitiously toward the Spanish Mission house. “You’re going to just love living on Royal Palm Island.”
“I thought this was Davis Islands,” said Jim.
“Technicality,” said Steph. “We have a motion before the city council.”
“Why?”
“Money,” said the agent. “Like when they changed spider crab to Alaskan king crab. Plus the plural Davis Islands confuses everyone. Looks like a single key from the air, but a tiny, more exclusive islet was carved into the side when they dug the sailboat canal. That’s where we are now.”
“What about whoever this Davis guy was?”
“Dead. You need to get in before the name change,” said Steph. “Make a killing.”
“We just started looking,” said Jim. “We’re not even sure we can afford—”
“And the neighbors!” said Stephanie, arms springing out in both directions up the street. “You can’t put a price!”
“Speaking of price…” said Jim.
Stephanie solemnly raised a hand. “You can’t put one.” She turned toward the front door. “Shall we peek inside?”
Martha took a single step into the foyer and gasped. Sunlight streamed through two-story-high vertical glass windows. “Oh, Jim!…”
“It’s got to be too much.”
“But what if it isn’t?”
“How will we ever know?”
“Why are you whispering?”
“Because I don’t want her to hear me.”
“Maybe she should hear you.”
“I don’t want her getting upset with me.”
“Jim, this is what I keep talking about. You have to act more assertive.”
“But she’s working for us,” Jim whispered. “I shouldn’t be put through this kind of discomfort.”
“That’s why you need to say something.”
“Can we talk about this later?”
They resumed walking. Martha crossed the living room and lovingly ran her hand along the mantel. “This would be a great spot to display my antiquities.”
“You collect antiquities?” said Steph. “Me too!”
“They’re not much,” said Martha. “I just dabble.”
Steph pointed at the mantel. “That’s the perfect place.”
“Jim, it’s the perfect place…. Where’d Steph go?”
“Over here!” echoed the Realtor’s voice. “You’re going to be knocked out!”
Martha followed the agent across glazed terra-cotta tiles with cerulean-blue diamond accents. “Stephanie, what are they asking?”
“And the kitchen!…”
Martha turned the corner. Her hand went over her heart. “Jim! The kitchen!”
“Honey, the countertops are worth more than my car.”
Steph gestured at the glistening Corian surface. “Countertops are the second most important consideration in real estate, right after location.” She turned to Jim. “Whatever’s spent on them, you get back triple in resale value.”