Insane City

by Dave Barry

  “This is really, really important to me, Seth. And my family.”

  “I know, baby. Me too.”

  “If you would just let my father . . .”

  “Baby, no. I made a promise.”

  “OK. But I’m serious: Don’t screw us up.”

  “I won’t. Laurette will find her sister, she’ll leave, we’ll get married. It’ll be great.”

  “You swear.”

  “I swear.”

  “OK. Now, get out, because I have to get my hair done for the rehearsal and the dinner. And you need to get cleaned up, OK? Because for a good-looking guy, you look like complete shit.”

  “Thanks.” Seth leaned over and kissed her, this time getting something in return. On his way out of the suite, he passed Meghan, who was sitting on a sofa, rolling a joint.

  “You lovebirds all patched up?” she said.

  “I think so.”

  “So Daddy won’t have to kill you?”

  “I’m hoping not.”

  “I’m kidding. He wouldn’t kill you. He’d have one of his thugs kill you. Still kidding. Sort of.” She held up the finished joint. “Care to join me?”

  “No thanks. I got into enough trouble doing that last night.”

  “I don’t know,” said Meghan, lighting the joint, inhaling. “Seems to me if you hadn’t done this last night, those people could have drowned.”

  “You were eavesdropping on me and Tina?”

  Meghan exhaled. “Of course. For the record, I think you’re right, and I admire the way you stood up to her. People usually don’t.”

  “Thanks.” Seth headed for the door. “See you at the rehearsal.”

  “Be careful,” said Meghan.

  Seth stopped halfway out. “Of what?”

  “There’s a reason people don’t stand up to her.”

  “I know, but in this case I think she really agrees with me.”

  Meghan took another hit. “Sure she does.”

  Seth hesitated a second, then closed the door.

  14

  Primate Encounter was the kind of tourist attraction that traditionalists loved because it was old but that tourists generally shunned because it was old.

  It was started in the twenties during one of Florida’s land booms, way out in the southwest Dade County Redlands near the Everglades. Its founder was a man named Dan Seckinger, who was drawn to South Florida primarily because of its distance from Duluth, Minnesota, where he was wanted for passing bad checks, bigamy and assault with a hockey stick. Seckinger, in the great Florida tradition, was looking for a way to get money from people without doing a great deal of work and hit on the idea of running a tourist attraction.

  His first enterprise was called Snake Village. It was a roadside hut with a dozen small cages inside; for ten cents, tourists could gawk at a variety of snakes, all of which, according to the signs Seckinger had made, were EXTREMELY DANGEROUS. This was highly inaccurate: All of the snakes were harmless. Several of them, in fact, were dead. Seckinger found them on the roads, squashed by cars; he cleaned them up and put them in the darker cages, posing them so that the tire marks didn’t show. When tourists asked why these snakes didn’t move, Seckinger explained that they were “night feeders.”

  Snake Village enjoyed modest success, prompting Seckinger to dream bigger. He changed its name to Reptile City and added lizards, turtles and alligators to the menagerie. All of the new additions were alive; the problem, from a showmanship perspective, is that most of the time they were no more animated than the roadkill snakes. The alligators were especially disappointing. Although Seckinger’s signs described them as FEROCIOUS MONSTER LIZARDS OF THE SWAMP, they spent days on end lying inertly in the muck like logs, but less animated.

  In an effort to liven things up, Seckinger brought in Chief Brave Savage, billed as “A Noble Seminole Indian Warrior, Raised in the Darkest Heart of the Vast Trackless Everglades Swamp.” In reality he was a Cuban immigrant named Carlos Penin, who took the job to earn tuition money so he could study civil engineering.

  As Chief Brave Savage, Carlos would wrestle an alligator four times a day on weekdays and six times on Saturdays and Sundays. This required him to wade into the pen and engage in what Seckinger billed as a “Death Struggle with an Alligator,” which required considerable acting on Carlos’s part because the alligators were not at all interested in wrestling. They were interested in the same activities they had been interested in for millions of years: eating and, very occasionally, mating. But since they were fed regularly, they had no desire to eat Carlos, and they definitely did not find him sexually alluring.

  Thus the wrestling show consisted of Carlos dragging an extremely reluctant alligator around in the muck, looking less like a man engaged in a Death Struggle than like a man moving a roll of waterlogged carpet. Meanwhile Seckinger, from the crowd, sought to add drama by shouting warnings such as, “Watch out, Chief! He almost got you there!”

  The Death Struggle, with a succession of non–Native Americans playing the role of Chief Brave Savage, carried Reptile City for several decades. But by the seventies, business had slacked off badly. Tourists wanted the spectacular flash and dazzle of Disney World, where they could see semi-lifelike animatronic alligators; they weren’t going to stop at some run-down roadside shack to look at real ones. In the eighties, Reptile City, now operated by Seckinger’s descendants, tried to revive itself by capitalizing on the popularity of Miami Vice by obtaining two chimpanzees, dubbed Crockett and Tubbs. Costumed in tiny pastel sport jackets, they starred in a show wherein they shot toy guns, and occasionally flung real feces, at actors portraying drug dealers, while the PA system blared Phil Collins wailing “In the Air Tonight.”

  The Miami Vice craze ended, but Crockett and Tubbs stayed on, and over time were joined by a variety of monkeys donated to Reptile City by naïve South Floridians who had thought they were bringing home a fun family pet, only to find themselves sharing their home with a hyperactive, poo-flinging banshee. By the nineties, Reptile City had again reinvented itself, this time as Monkey Adventure, which became, in the environmentally sensitive twenty-first century, Primate Encounter, its signage now rife with buzzwords such as HABITAT, RAIN FOREST, ECOSYSTEM and SUSTAINABILITY, although it was still basically a roadside shack exhibiting critters in crates.

  These critters still included snakes, one of which—an anaconda named Trixie—had this day swallowed a lady tourist’s backpack, which is how Duane, as Primate Encounter’s backup snake guy, got the emergency call. He’d driven out in his brother’s truck and, with effort, managed to get Trixie to swallow a doctored rat, which eventually caused her to regurgitate both the rat and the backpack. Neither came back out in great shape, but that was not Duane’s problem.

  Duane’s plan had been to retrieve the backpack, then drive over to the Ritz and give Seth his suitcase. But he’d received another emergency call, this one from Miccosukee Resort & Gaming out by the Everglades, where a seriously large python had somehow got onto the casino floor and wrapped itself around a Wheel of Fortune slot machine, where it apparently intended to stay. This had attracted a lot of attention, none of which was proving to be good for business; even the seriously dedicated slot players—people who had been known to continue feeding quarters into their machines while a neighboring player keeled over with a heart attack—were giving the python a wide berth. This meant many machines were going unused; hence the casino’s urgent summons to Duane, who had developed a reputation as one of Miami’s go-to python wranglers.

  And so it was that Duane elected to leave Seth’s suitcase at Primate Encounter. He entrusted it to a man named Gene Singletary, whose official title was Director of Operations, in which capacity he spent the bulk of his day picking up monkey shit. Duane had told Gene a guy named Seth would be coming by for the suitcase, but as the day wore on, no Seth appeared, and closing time was looming. Gene tried to call Duane but got voice mail. After giving the matter some thought, he called Duane again and left a me
ssage, saying that he’d leave the suitcase under a tarp behind the animal cages so his friend could pick it up after hours. He said it’d be safe enough because to get back there after hours you had to go through the security gate, which had a keypad lock. Gene included the code in the message to Duane.

  And so as dusk approached, Seth’s suitcase was sitting on the ground under a tarp next to a cage occupied by an orangutan named Trevor, who had a lot of time on his hands.

  15

  Seth woke up in a chair in the living room of his suite, looked at his watch and said, “Shit.” He’d meant to close his eyes for just a few minutes, then go get the suitcase. But instead, despite the noise in the suite—LaDawne and Cyndi mothering the Haitians, the baby fussing, Wesley watching SportsCenter—Seth had fallen sound asleep. Now it was too late to go for the suitcase. He’d have to get it after the rehearsal dinner.

  He rose and stretched, surveying the suite. Little had changed. The inert mass of Wesley was still on the sofa, surrounded by still more room service platters. Tina’s parents were paying for the suite; Seth hoped they wouldn’t look too closely at the bill. Wesley had been joined in front of the TV by Stephane, the two of them watching ESPN’s top ten plays. At the moment, LeBron James, in open defiance of the laws of physics, was leaping over another player’s head to snare a pass from Dwyane Wade, then slam the ball through the rim.

  “You see that?” said Wesley, nudging Stephane with a forefinger the size of a salami. “Lemme see Kobe do that.”

  Stephane, eyes wide, looked at Wesley, then back at the screen.

  Seth crossed the suite and poked his head into the estrogen festival that was the bedroom. The TV was tuned to Say Yes to the Dress. LaDawne and Cyndi were sitting on opposite sides of the bed, Cyndi holding the baby. Laurette was between them, propped up in the pillow forest. When she saw Seth, her face lit up with a radiant smile, brilliant white teeth against dark skin, eyes shining. She said something in Creole, holding both hands out toward Seth. He responded with an awkward wave.

  “She thinks you’re Superman,” said LaDawne.

  “I wish,” said Seth.

  “The Haitian guy called,” said LaDawne. “Carl. While you was asleep.”

  Seth brightened. “And?”

  “He said he’s still looking.”

  Seth’s shoulder’s sagged; he put his face in his hands. “Great.”

  “He said don’t give up,” said LaDawne. “He’s still looking. He’ll be here later.”

  “Duane called, too,” said Cyndi.

  Seth looked up. “Don’t tell me there’s a problem with the suitcase.”

  “No, it’s at Primate Encounter.” She relayed Duane’s message that the suitcase had been left under a tarp in back of the animal cages. Duane also told Cyndi the code to the security gate, which she’d written down.

  “I’ll have to get it after the rehearsal dinner,” said Seth. “Are you still up for showing me where that place is?”

  “Sure,” said Cyndi. “I can wait here until your dinner’s over and we’ll go.”

  “Thanks,” said Seth. He glanced at his watch again. “Jesus, the rehearsal’s in an hour.”

  “You gonna wear that?” said LaDawne, looking at Seth’s wrinkled, stained clothes, which he’d been wearing for more than a day.

  “All my other clothes are in my suitcase.”

  “The hotel store sells clothes,” said Cyndi.

  “Like, clothes that I could wear to the rehearsal dinner?” said Seth.

  “Anything is better than what you got on,” said LaDawne.

  It took Seth ten minutes to rouse the Groom Posse, who were sound asleep in a darkened suite reeking of BO and farts. Seth herded them down to the hotel store, Marty and Kevin wearing hotel bathrobes, as neither had pants. The store had a limited selection of men’s clothes, so they ended up buying overpriced golf outfits, which Seth, wincing, charged to his room. They went back to the Groom Posse suite to shower and change, after which Seth headed to his parents’ room to escort them to the rehearsal.

  He paused outside their door, put a smile on his face, knocked.

  Rose opened the door, wearing a Hawaiian Punch–red pantsuit and what looked like a pound of matching lipstick. Her hairstyle had been sprayed to the point where it could deflect rifle fire.

  “Hi, Mom!” said Seth.

  “This is what you’re wearing?” she said. “A bowling outfit?”

  “It’s really more golf, but—”

  “Who is that?” said Sid. Sid was wearing the brown suit he had worn to Seth’s bar mitzvah.

  “It’s Seth,” said Rose. “He’s wearing a bowling outfit.”

  It took several minutes, but Seth managed to get his parents moving toward the door. They’d almost made it when Sid declared that his gout was acting up and he needed his medicine.

  “You don’t need it now,” said Rose.

  “I’m telling you,” said Sid, “this gout is killing me.”

  “He just wants a brownie,” Rose informed Seth. Seth had forgotten about the brownies.

  “I do not just want a brownie,” Sid declared. “I have a medical condition.”

  “All right, already,” said Rose. “You’ll get your brownie, but not until after you eat your dinner. Seth, go get the brownies from your father’s suitcase.”

  “Mom, I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

  “So now you’re a doctor? In your bowling outfit?”

  Seth sighed and rummaged through Sid’s suitcase, where he found a shoe box–sized plastic box with a pharmaceutical label on it. He opened it and stared: There were several dozen individually wrapped brownies inside. He started to take one out.

  “Just give me the whole box,” said Rose.

  “What? There’s a lot of brownies in here, Mom.”

  “I don’t want to leave them in the room,” she said. “The people who work in these hotels, you never know. Plus I might need one later also, for my digestion.”

  Seth stared at her. “You eat these things, too?”

  Rose showed a trace of embarrassment but quickly recovered. “It’s medical. Now, give it to me.”

  Seth handed her the box. She put it into her enormous black purse, from which Seth had seen her pull a wide variety of objects over the years, including air fresheners, a spatula and, once, a fire extinguisher. Seth looked at his watch again: They were late for the rehearsal. He started down the hall. Halfway to the elevator, he looked back; Rose and Sid had managed to move about five feet. Seth sighed, turned and trudged toward them.

  “Are we going back already?” said Sid.

  16

  Trevor was a mature male orangutan. He weighed 250 pounds, and though he stood just a little over five feet tall, he had an arm span of nearly eight feet. He was, like all orangutans, very strong compared to humans—stronger than five large, fit men.

  Trevor had been imported illegally to South Florida from Malaysia as an infant. He spent his early years in the possession of a series of dimwits in the narcotics business who thought it would be cool to have an orangutan as a pet. All of them had quickly learned otherwise. Several had been hospitalized; one lost an ear. Trevor had suffered retaliations, having been stabbed twice and shot once in the leg. He recovered each time, but had developed a deep-seated distrust for men.

  Women were a different matter. There were no female orangutans in Trevor’s life and he had his needs. He was attracted to human females and found that they treated him much better than males, although, with the exception of one incident involving the very wasted girlfriend of an Oxycontin dealer, they had resisted his efforts to mate with them. But Trevor was an incurable romantic: He never stopped trying with the ladies.

  After five years of being passed from dimwit to dimwit, growing larger and stronger all the time, Trevor had been dumped late one night at Primate Encounter in a packing crate. He was received enthusiastically by management and soon became a star attraction, although he was a headache for the ani
mal handlers—hostile to the men, always hitting on the women.

  Trevor lived alone in a large cage with ropes, a tire swing and a log climbing structure for his amusement. By the standards of Primate Encounter, it was fairly lavish. But orangutans are not goldfish; they know when their recreational options are limited. There are only so many times an orangutan can swing on the same tire or climb up the same log before it thinks the orangutan equivalent of Fuck this. Trevor had reached that point. And he was only five years old. In captivity, he could live to be sixty. Basically, he was serving a fifty-five-year life sentence with no possibility of parole. He didn’t know this exactly; neither law nor math was his strong suit. But he did know he was bored shitless.

  And so when the male human who smelled like a snake went around behind his cage and left something there, Trevor perked up. This was new, and new was interesting. When the humans had left Primate Encounter, Trevor went to the back of his cage and peered through the bars. He saw the tarp several feet away in a clump of tall grass. He studied it for a few moments, then reached his right arm through the cage. With effort, he managed to get his hand on the edge of the tarp and pull on it. It came easily.

  Trevor pulled the tarp through the bars and into the cage. He held it up to his huge moony face and smelled it. It was not particularly interesting. He tossed it aside.

  Trevor went back and peered through the bars. He saw the suitcase. He reached his arm through the bars but could barely touch the suitcase with his fingertips. He shifted his position and reached his arm through again, straining. This time he was able to get enough purchase with his fingers to pull the suitcase an inch closer. He strained again and grabbed it this time, dragging it up to the bars.

  The suitcase was too big to pass through the bars. But it was made of fabric, so it could be squashed. And Trevor was strong. He got both hands on it and gave a hard yank. The suitcase came through the bars. Trevor studied it, sniffed it. He could tell there were things inside it. He didn’t know yet how to get to those things. But he had plenty of time.