Triggerfish Twist

by Tim Dorsey

  Gladys retrieved her hand and looked at the palm. “Sorry about the sweat. I’ll shower and come back.” She ran away.

  Martha closed the door and braced it with her back. “Jeee-zus!”

  “Harmless,” said Jim. “Probably won’t be back.”

  He was wrong. Gladys returned in an hour with a bottle of wine and an antique tin of homemade lemon cookies. Several excruciating hours later, the sun set over the tops of the palm trees at the end of the street. The movers in the driveway were down to just the big stuff stacked in the back of the truck, dressers, box springs. Gladys was still with them on the porch, a crowd of three on the cedar swing.

  “…So then my great-great-grandfather built the Tampa Bay Hotel for the rich Yankees coming down on his railroad…Churchill stayed there. And Stephen Crane. And Remington. He was a painter, you know…”

  Jim and Martha forced smiles and pinched themselves to stay awake.

  “But you don’t want to hear about that…” said Gladys.

  Thank God.

  “…You want to know about your neighbors.” Gladys pointed across the street, two houses up, 907 Triggerfish. She checked her watch. “Keep your eye on the front door. Any second now…”

  The door at 907 opened and an elegantly dressed couple emerged and got in a green LeSabre.

  “The Belmonts,” said Gladys. “Up close, they look like Angie Dickinson and Dean Martin, but with a lot more mileage. They like their gin. That’s where they’re going right now. They’ve got Tampa’s happy-hour scene down to a science. Know every special at every bar in town, even the VFW hall and the Moose Lodge. It’s actually quite remarkable.”

  The LeSabre drove by and Gladys waved, still talking. “See the place next door? Eight-ninety-seven?” They turned. A woman with cropped blond hair shepherded three small boys in designer tennis clothes into a sport-utility vehicle.

  “Barbara Colby, soccer mom from hell. If you ask me, she’s going to drive those kids up a tower with a rifle. She’s compensating for a father who went insane when she was a child and forced her to start memorizing the Bible. She was up to Deuteronomy before calmer heads prevailed.”

  Gladys saw the looks on the Davenports’ faces.

  “Oh, nothing’s a secret around here,” she said. “Every summer the Bradfords tape newspaper up in their windows for illegal renovations, every fall Mr. Donnolly blows all his leaves into the Peabodys’ yard, and every winter the Fergusons put up so many Christmas lights it smashes the power grid. Mr. Schmidt has a yard the size of a postage stamp, but he has to have the best riding mower, and he’s always drunk when he’s on it. The Hubbards argue way too loud, which is how we found out about their swinging love harness. The Rutherfords can’t park in their garage because it’s full of Jet Skis and mopeds and unicycles and all this stuff they buy and use just once. The Baxters claim they’re Xeriscaping, but everyone knows they just don’t give a damn. And we all wish the Coopers didn’t give a damn so they’d stop with the lawn jockeys and cement mermaids. Then there’s Mr. Oppenheimer. I’ve never even seen Mr. Oppenheimer. They say he lives in his garage, where he’s been building an experimental aircraft from a kit for twelve years…”

  Gladys pointed directly across the street at 887 Triggerfish and the man kneeling on the manicured lawn with scissors.

  “Jack Terrier. His middle name is actually Russell. Can you imagine parents doing that to a child? Takes all kinds. His thing is a lawn fetish.”

  They stopped and watched Jack hand-prune the St. Augustine.

  “He does have nice grass,” said Martha. She looked around at the other yards. “Everyone else’s looks so…brown.”

  Gladys waved at the sky. “We’re in the middle of a drought. The city’s under Code Red lawn-watering restrictions. Every night at four A.M., Jack comes out in a camou-flaged hunting outfit to water his yard. I kid you not.”

  They stopped to sip wine. Triggerfish Lane took on idyllic amber and rose hues as the sun went down. The foot traffic came out: wholesome couples jogging and riding bikes and power-walking with heart monitors.

  “It’s so safe,” Jim marveled.

  “Like the fifties,” said Martha.

  “Ozzie and Harriet,” said Gladys. “You’re now living in the best part of Tampa, S.O.K.”

  “S.O.K.?”

  “Local slang. South of Kennedy Boulevard. That’s like the demilitarized zone. The Thirty-eighth Parallel…”

  “So on the other side it’s like…?”

  “North Korea.”

  A dog began barking. They looked up. A fat pit bull ran out of Jack Terrier’s yard and chased a jogger three houses down the street. Then the dog stopped and lumbered back to Terrier’s front yard. The jogger turned and shook a fist at Jack, but he was busy with his scissors.

  “Is that his dog?” asked Martha.

  Gladys nodded. “His name’s Rasputin.”

  A Rollerblader came by, and the dog took off again. Then a couple with a twin baby stroller, who had to do a wheelie to get away.

  “Isn’t there a leash law?” asked Jim.

  “Of course,” said Gladys. “But enforcement is weak. We tried calling the police, but Jack always has the dog back in the house by the time they arrive. Cops say there’s nothing they can do until it actually bites someone.”

  Martha noticed Jack walking across the street. “Shhhh! He’s coming over here.”

  “Probably wants to welcome us,” said Jim.

  Jack stopped at the bottom of the porch steps. “Got a second?”

  “Me?” asked Jim.

  Terrier nodded.

  “I’ll be right back,” Jim told Martha and Gladys.

  He came down off the porch with his right hand extended. “Pleased to meet you. I’m Jim Davenport. That’s my wife, Martha.”

  Martha smiled and waved from the porch.

  “Right,” said Terrier. He pointed back at the street. “Listen, is that your vehicle?”

  Jim retracted his unshaken hand. “The Aerostar? Yeah, that’s ours.”

  “Can you park it in your driveway?”

  Jim looked at the driveway. The moving truck was still there.

  “The driveway’s full,” said Jim.

  “I know,” said Jack. He stared at Jim. Jim began to squirm; he looked up and down Triggerfish Lane. It was one of those old streets platted extra wide, and most of the neighbors had cars in the road.

  “You having a party or something?” Jim asked. “Need extra parking?”

  “No.”

  “Am I breaking a rule?”

  “No.”

  Jim paused. “Please don’t take this the wrong way. Mind if I ask why you want me to move it?”

  “I don’t like it there.”

  “Oh.” Jim looked across the street at Terrier’s Audi parked at the curb. “Your car’s in the street.”

  “I need it there.”

  “I see.”

  They stood for another awkward moment.

  “So you don’t want me to park in the street?” asked Jim.

  “Right.”

  “All the time?”

  “Right.”

  “Except when we have company. That would be okay, wouldn’t it?”

  “Not really.”

  “What about an emergency?”

  Jack patted Jim on the back. “Try to keep it in the driveway, sport.”

  “Okay,” said Jim.

  Jack began walking away. “It really bothers me.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Jim called out.

  “Right.” Jack looked both ways and crossed the street.

  Jim went back to the porch swing.

  “What did he want?” asked Martha.

  “He wants us to park in the driveway.”

  “When?”

  “All the time.”

  Yelling erupted across the street. Rasputin had finally gotten Jack Terrier’s attention.

  “Whoaaaa, doggie!” Jack held out both arms in a halt signal as Rasputin w
ent into the squatting position. The dog froze. Jack grabbed him by the collar and dragged him across the property line into his neighbor’s yard at 877.

  “What about the people who live there?” Martha asked Gladys. “Doesn’t Jack worry they’ll see him?”

  “That’s Old Man Ortega’s place,” said Gladys. “He’d never say anything even if it did bother him. Lives there alone. Comes out to get the paper and that’s about it. Pound for pound, the best neighbor on the block.”

  Jim and Martha nodded.

  “On the other hand…” said Gladys, pointing three houses away at 857 Triggerfish, where cars and Jeeps and pickups sat all over the dirt yard, and a plastic flamingo drank out of a toilet on the porch. Trash spilled over the curb.

  “That’s the Rental House,” said Gladys. “A bunch of college kids from the University of South Florida. They’re majoring in dragging down our property values.”

  “There’s a rental on the street?” Martha asked with concern.

  “That’s actually the Original Rental,” said Gladys. “We now have a total of six on Triggerfish.”

  “Six?” said Martha.

  “The same guy owns them all. It’s like he has a thing for this street. And he has a knack for picking the worst tenants.”

  “Which ones are rentals?” asked Martha.

  “That one over there, where they think chain-link fence is landscaping. And the one next to it is rented by a Latin family who built that religious Madonna grotto with rocks and bathroom caulk. And that one over there, where a couple from Knoxville liked the grotto idea so much they made their own for Tammy Wynette.”

  Jim stared at the students’ trash pile. “I’ve never seen so many pizza boxes.”

  “It’s like clockwork,” said Gladys. “Every night, right after Jack comes out to water the lawn in his Delta Force outfit, the students order pizza. My guess is marijuana. That’s how it works, you know. The pizza companies are in brutal competition. Backgammon Pizza guarantees delivery in thirty minutes, and Pizza Shack sends its drivers out to follow the Backgammon drivers and lure away their customers by giving out free pies, which they claim taste better. Needless to say, they tear around the neighborhood hell-bent for leather trying to make the thirty-minute deadline and catch each other.”

  Martha pointed at the house between the college students and Old Man Ortega. “Who lives there?”

  “Mr. Grønewaldenglitz. He’s an artist…and a renter. Half the times I’ve seen him, he’s been wearing a welding helmet. He converted his den into an acetylene shop, where he stockpiles scrap metal from the landfill and solders it together into those whimsical creations of modern art that you’re pointing at in his front yard.”

  “So that’s what those are,” said Martha.

  “What’s the big one supposed to be?” asked Jim.

  “The cow made of fenders and umbrella skeletons?”

  “No, the radar range, monkey wrenches and water faucets.”

  “Lady Bird Johnson.”

  “I think it’s ugly,” said Martha.

  “So does everyone else,” said Gladys. “We went to the zoning board, but they say it’s First Amendment.”

  A pickup truck full of real estate signs parked in front of 867 Triggerfish. A man in jeans got out and began pounding a FOR RENT sign into the front yard between Lady Bird and a chickenwire diorama of Gettysburg.

  “Wow, Mr. Grønewaldenglitz moved out,” said Gladys. “So that’s what he was doing in the middle of the night.”

  “What else should we know about this neighborhood?” asked Martha.

  “Well, do you have any pets?” asked Gladys.

  “No.”

  “You do now. A family of opossums lives under your house. They come out at night and make the rounds of the neighborhood’s pet-food bowls.”

  Something large and fast-moving caught the corner of Jim’s eye. He turned quickly, but it was gone.

  “Was that one of them?” he asked.

  “Where?” said Gladys.

  “Over there. I saw something big.”

  They looked and waited.

  “There!” Jim yelled. He pointed at what seemed to be a small armored personnel carrier. “There it is again! What the hell is it?”

  Gladys laughed. “That’s one of our roaches.”

  “That’s a roach?” said Jim.

  Gladys nodded. “If you belong to the chamber of commerce, you’re supposed to call ’em palmetto bugs.”

  “Kill it!” Martha told Jim.

  “Maybe we should observe it for a while,” he said. “Learn its defensive systems.”

  “What’s are you waiting for?” said Martha. “Kill it, already!”

  Jim grabbed a rake and walked across the porch.

  There was sudden movement and Jim swung the rake, taking down a hanging planter.

  “I forgot,” said Gladys. “And they can fly.”

  A commercial van drove up the street. It passed the Davenport home and stopped three doors down. The van had a large magnetic sign on the side: INSULT-TO-INJURY PROCESS SERVERS. A man in white makeup and a black-and-white-striped shirt got out.

  “What’s that about?” asked Jim.

  “A malignant version of the singing telegram,” said Gladys. “For wealthy grudge-bearers: subpoenas, summonses and suits delivered with attitude…We usually get them on this street about once a month.”

  “What do they do?” asked Martha.

  “Mrs. Van Fleet was served a defamation lawsuit by a barbershop quartet. Mr. Buckingham got a restraining order from a tap-dancing Shirley Temple look-alike. And Mr. Fishbine was subpoenaed by a clown who squirted him in the eye with a trick lapel flower.”

  The three turned to the left and watched. The mime stood at the front door, but nobody was answering because he mimed knocking on the door instead of actually knocking. Finally, someone inside noticed him through a window and opened up. The mime handed him legal papers, then did a pantomime of someone crying silently and holding on to the bars of a jail cell.

  The resident grabbed a bowling trophy and began chasing the mime around the front yard. The mime ran with silly, exaggerated strides and a goofy look of alarm on his face until he was knocked cold.

  3

  T WO A.M. The pedestrian traffic was down to a trickle at the south end of Tampa’s Howard Avenue, the part of town overrun by bistros, martini bars and California cuisine. It made the young professionals feel cosmo, and they called the strip “SoHo”—South Howard—but it only increased the reek of small pond.

  One of the last genuine places was a modest yellow building on a side street. Stark concrete and small windows with beer signs. The Tiny Tap tavern stood alone next to the railroad tracks and the vine-covered concrete supports of the Crosstown Expressway. There were two pool tables, some stock-car junk on the walls, lots of smoke and the loud, reassuring drone of malarkey. Tonight there was an added attraction. A leggy blonde poised with her back arched against the L-shaped bar and produced a cigarette with no intention of lighting it herself.

  A young man with two beepers on his belt materialized with a flicked butane. The juke played “Indian Reservation” by Paul Revere and the Raiders. The blonde turned to the flame and lightly brushed the man’s crotch with the back of her hand. His stomach fluttered. Did she do that on purpose?

  Ten minutes later he was getting a hummer in the front seat of his Hummer, parked under the expressway. She came up for air. “You like to screw on coke?”

  In an impressive display of prestidigitation, a wallet suddenly appeared in the man’s hand. He was fishing out a hundred when she grabbed the billfold and dumped the contents in her lap. “If we get an eight-ball, we can really have some fun.”

  “But—” the man said, reaching for his money. She began playing the silent flute again, and his objections evaporated. “Start the car and head south on Howard,” she said, then back to work. His gas-pedal leg trembled, and the Hummer lurched herky-jerky up the street. She peeked
over the dashboard. “Turn here!” He ran over the curb.

  “Pull into those apartments. Cut the lights but keep the engine running. I’ll be right back.” She jumped from the vehicle with three hundred dollars and ran for the breezeway.

  “An eight-ball is only two-fifty,” the man shouted after her. “Two-seventy-five tops.”

  “I’ll get change,” she yelled, and disappeared into the blackness of the apartment hallway.

  The man stuck his head out the driver’s window, trying to adjust his eyes. Where’d she go?

  She kept running down the breezeway, right out the back of the apartments and into the next street. She spun around in the middle of the road, frantic. Headlights swung around the corner at the end of the street, and a dented Impala convertible raced up to her.

  Sharon jumped in and punched Coleman in the shoulder. “You blockhead! You were supposed to be waiting!”

  “Ow,” said Coleman, rubbing his shoulder as he drove off. “How much we get?”

  “I shouldn’t give you any for being late! What if he followed me!” She bent down from the wind to light a cigarette, took a deep drag and violently exhaled out her nostrils. “I should fuckin’ kill you!”

  “Where’d you get that lighter?”

  Sharon looked at the lighter. “What do you mean?”

  “I think I recognize that lighter,” said Coleman. It was an old banged-up Zippo. The paint had started to chip on some words. Miami and Orange Bowl and 1969.

  “A lighter’s a lighter,” said Sharon, jamming it down the tight hip pocket of her jeans.

  “If that’s what I think it is, we’re in big trouble,” said Coleman. “That looks like Serge’s Super Bowl Three lighter. You haven’t been getting into his secret box, have you?”

  “Secret box? What are you guys, playing fuckin’ army in the woods? I was out of goddamn matches. He’s always got a ton of matches in there. This time I found the lighter.”

  “You’ve been taking his matches, too! Oh my God, we’re dead for sure!”