by Dorsey, Tim
The man killed a whiskey on the rocks and smiled. “Yes, I am.”
“Can I get your autograph?”
“Sure thing.” He took the napkin from Lenny and wrote his name.
“Thank you.” Lenny stuck the napkin in his pocket. “Mind if I sit here?”
“Go ahead.”
“Man, I can’t believe I’m meeting you! I loved you guys! Whatever happened to the band?”
“We’re still together.”
“Maybe it’s because you don’t have any new albums.”
“We’ve released one every year.”
“I don’t really go in record stores a lot. You guys should start touring again.”
“We tour all the time.”
“…Gee, sorry…. Well, anyway, I love you guys!”
“Thank you.”
“Can I buy you a drink?”
“Sure.”
Lenny waved over at Serge. “Buy this guy a drink. And can I get one, too?”
Serge got out his wallet.
Three drinks later, they were all back at Serge’s table.
“Serge, do you know who this guy is?”
“You told me.”
“I did? Well, let’s buy him a drink!…I’ll take one, too.”
Two more. Lenny turned to the drummer. He put his thumb and index finger together and put them to his lips and sucked. Then he raised his eyebrows in a question.
The drummer nodded.
“You get high?”
“Yeah, you?”
“Yeah, wanna get high?”
“Yeah, let’s go.”
“Okay, let’s go.”
They got up from the table and headed for the men’s room.
“Uh-oh,” said Serge. “Here we go.”
Lenny checked the stalls. No one there. He met the drummer back at the sink and rubbed his palms together in anticipation.
“Okay, break it out,” said the drummer.
“What do you mean?”
“Break out your shit.”
“I don’t have any shit. I thought you had it.”
“You said, ‘You wanna get high?’”
“So?”
“So that’s the guy that’s supposed to have the shit.”
“No, no, no,” said Lenny. “You said, ‘Let’s go.’ That’s the guy with the shit.”
“Usually, but you said the other thing first, and that’s the thing that counts, first.”
“I’ve been doing this for a while, thank you.”
“So you don’t have any shit?”
“No!”
They sighed and left the men’s room.
“How’d it go?” Serge asked as they sat back down.
“Miscommunication…. Wait! I almost forgot! I have some emergency money in my sock. Let’s buy some dope!”
“Great!” The drummer got his own money out. “How much you got?”
Lenny pulled crumpled bills from his sock and piled them on top of the briefcase. “Looks like forty-three dollars. How much you got?”
“Sixty,” said the drummer. “That ought to cover us. A quarter’s still a hundred, right?”
“Last time I checked.”
“You’re not a cop, are you?”
“You kidding?”
“I’m a target, you know. They’re always looking for high-profile busts to get on the news.”
“Tell me about it.”
“So you’re not a cop?”
“Not remotely.”
“Okay, we’ll meet right here in, say, an hour?”
“Here in an hour?”
“Yep. You sure you’re not a cop?”
“Yep, you sure you’re the drummer for——?”
“Yep.”
“Then it’s all set.”
“Let’s do it!”
“We’re on!”
They sat there staring at each other.
“Well?” said the drummer.
“Well what?”
“Why are you just sitting there?”
“I thought you were going.”
“I thought you—”
“Shit.”
“But you were the one who said, ‘Let’s buy some—’”
“Stop,” said Lenny, shaking his head. “This is getting way, way too complicated. Let’s back up and start over.”
“Okay.”
They each grabbed handfuls of money off the briefcase and stuck it back in their pockets.
“How much you got?”
“Forty-three dollars. How much you got?…”
Serge smacked himself in the forehead. He slid the briefcase off the table and set it down on the floor between his leg and the wall. Except he unwittingly set the briefcase on the ledge of the wall. The bar was revolving. The ledge was not. The briefcase began rotating away.
“I know this pot dealer with a scar…” said Lenny.
“I know him, too!” said the drummer.
The briefcase kept moving, rotating past the legs of unsuspecting customers. Table after table, typical south Florida hotel bar culture, three airline pilots from Ithaca, pharmaceutical salesmen hooked on their own samples, a Dutch tour group, headhunters, plastic surgeons, food photographers, four motivational speakers in town for a seminar on how to make one hundred thousand dollars a year repairing cracks in windshields with a simple tube of adhesive. The briefcase kept going, past the legs of two men sipping goblets of vodka and grapefruit juice.
“You’ve gone into another printing!” Tanner Lebos told Ralph Krunkleton. “Have you seen the new cover?”
Tanner passed the glossy prototype across the table to Ralph, who noticed some additional words across the top: New York Times Bestseller!
“It made the bestseller list?” asked Ralph.
“Haven’t you heard?”
“I didn’t see anything in the papers.”
“That’s because they only print the top ten or fifteen titles.”
“What number am I?”
“One hundred ninety-four.”
“That’s on the list?”
“The list is actually thousands long. Theoretically, every book is on the list, but for the sake of integrity, we cut it off at five hundred….”
“We have honor.”
“You know, I just reread the book,” said Tanner. “I’d forgotten a lot of it. It’s even better than I remembered.”
“Thanks.”
“Like that character the urinal guy. How’d you think that up? What an imagination!”
“Imagination nothing. I did that. I was on a roadtrip in college. This was before credit cards. I ran out of money and couldn’t get back….”
The briefcase kept going, more legs. Conventioning oncologists, conventioning lapidaries, conventioning Mary Kay sales leaders with pink cars in the garage. Another quarter of the way around the bar, under another table, a heated discussion, Russian accents.
“Dammit!” said Ivan. “We were this close to that money! This close!…”
Still rotating, more legs. Diamond dealers on sabbatical, gigolos on the make, Panamanian strongmen, Brazilian bombshells, American tragedies. The briefcase went past the legs of five women with five glasses of Sex on the Beach.
“I can’t believe you haven’t finished The Stingray Shuffle,” said Rebecca.
“I’ve been busy,” said Sam.
“You won’t believe what happens to the five million dollars.”
“Don’t give it away!”
Teresa stood and took a snapshot out the window. “So this is Travis McGee’s old stomping ground.” Another snapshot. “Let’s read a Travis book next.”
“Let’s not and say we did,” said Sam.
“What are you talking about?” said Maria. “They’re great!”
“The women are always objects,” said Sam. “In fact, the more I read, I’m not even sure I like Travis.”
That rocked the whole table.
“What?” said Maria. “You mean, you wouldn’t have slept with Travis?�
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“Are you kidding?”
“I would have,” said Paige.
“I’d have slept with Meyer,” said Rebecca.
“Ewwwwww!” said the other four.
The briefcase kept going, more legs, litterbugs, bookworms, social butterflies, midlife counselors, postmodern sculptors, premature ejaculators.
Serge looked up. “Oh no.”
Two large-chested men in black suits, black shirts and pointy shoes. They walked quickly toward Serge’s table, coats over their arms concealing something.
Serge’s eyes locked on the men. His right hand slowly reached for the pistol in his waistband, his left felt blindly under the table and grabbed the handle of the briefcase as it came rotating by. “I knew this would happen,” he whispered to himself. “I knew they were bound to send someone sooner or later.”
The men were twenty feet away, then ten. Serge cocked the pistol under the table. The men turned and climbed onto the musicians’ bandstand. They pulled a flute and a mandolin from under their coats and began playing Kenny G.
Serge fell back in his chair with a breath of relief. He set the briefcase back down, not on the ledge this time.
“…We meet back here in an hour, okay?” asked Lenny.
“How will I know who you are?” asked the drummer.
“I’ll be wearing this shirt.”
Serge smacked his forehead again.
“What’s the matter with your friend?” asked the drummer.
“I need some air,” said Serge. He picked up the briefcase and headed around the curved side of the bar and pressed the elevator button. He overheard conversation fragments behind him. “…Nyet!” “Vladimir!”
Hmmm, Serge thought, Russian mob….
He walked back to his table and handed Lenny the briefcase. “I need you to hide in one of the stalls with this and wait for me.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Ivan.
“What is it?” asked Dmitri.
“I think it’s him. Dummy up!”
Serge approached the table. “Hi guys. You the Russian mob?”
The Russians reached under the table for ankle holsters. Ivan discreetly waved them off. He turned to Serge. “No, we’re with Amway.”
“Right,” said Serge, winking. He pointed. “What happened to your feet?”
“Amway accident.”
“Mind if I join you?” Serge pulled up a chair before they could object. “I have a proposition for Amway.”
A half hour later, everyone was laughing, shaking hands and slapping backs. Serge stood. “Then it’s all set?”
“All set.”
“Sunday at midnight,” said Serge. “You remember the place?”
“We remember.”
26
Serge sat with Lenny at the bar in the B&H Deli near Cape Canaveral. Lenny dialed a number on his cell phone. No answer. He hung up and dialed again. It began ringing again. He turned to Serge.
“I still don’t understand why we had to pay for a taxi from Pier 66 when we had the van.”
“I told you already. Because they were going to ambush us in the parking lot. That’s standard. Didn’t you see the two guys waiting for us?”
“But I thought you made a deal with them.”
“I did. We’re still on.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You’d never make it in the business world.”
Lenny hung up and dialed his cell phone again. He put the phone to his ear.
“Will you stop that?” said Serge. “You’ve been doing it all night. It’s getting on my nerves.”
“I have to reach the drummer for——. He’s supposed to get me some weed.”
“I hate to tell you this, but it’s not going to happen.”
“But he’s got my forty-three dollars.”
“Write it off as the stupidity tax.”
“No way,” said Lenny. “The drummer for——would never rip me off.”
“Lenny, he’s not trying to screw you by not coming through. It’s because he’s hapless, just like you.”
“He’s not coming back?”
Serge put his arm around Lenny’s shoulder. “It’s a cruel world.”
“I don’t believe you.” Lenny hit a series of numbers again on his cell phone. No answer.
Serge swung around to face the barstool on his other side and began hitting on an off-duty stripper…. Well, not really hitting on.
“Did you know that after every successful liftoff, the launch team eats the exact same thing—biscuits and beans?”
“Don’t talk to me,” said the dancer, lighting a Camel.
“It’s tradition!” said Serge. “You look like a bright girl. Ever think of going out for the space program?”
“You’re drunk.”
“Drunk with enthusiasm for life!” said Serge, hoisting a briefcase onto the bar.
Lenny punched numbers on his phone. “Why doesn’t he answer?” He dialed again. “Hold on! Someone’s picking up!”
A woman’s sleepy voice answered. “Mmmm, uh, hullo…?”
“May I speak to the drummer for——?”
Serge and the stripper heard the yelling from Lenny’s phone. “What are you, a fucking comedian?…(Click.)”
Lenny closed the phone with a stunned look. “The drummer for——gave me the wrong number.”
“Lenny, this is how bad you’ve gotten. Almost everyone else goes out partying and they wake up the next morning and look in their wallet and say: ‘Where the hell did all my money go?’ But you’re such a mess you invert the paradigm. People get wrecked and run into you and the next morning they go, ‘Where’d all this money come from?’ Do you understand what I’m getting at here?”
Lenny nodded.
“Good.”
“So how do I get my forty-three dollars back?”
Serge turned to the stripper and slapped the top of his briefcase. “Guess what’s in here.”
“I don’t give a shit.”
“Five million dollars! You know what I’m going to use the money for? Want me to tell you?”
“No.” She blew out a big stream of smoke.
“It’s been my lifelong dream. I’m going into space!”
“Goodie for you.”
“Haven’t you read the Dennis Tito articles? Everything’s for sale now in the former republic. Tanks, bombs, Fabergé eggs. I met some mobsters in Lauderdale. Turns out they also do some work for the Russian space agency. The deal’s all set up. We make the swap at the rendezvous tonight. I give them the money and they give me my space suit, to show good faith. Then I fly out to the Baikonur Kosmodrome, go through six months of intense training, blast off on a Soyuz, and next thing you know I’m in the International Space Station helping mice copulate in zero gravity.”
She stubbed out her cigarette. “Buy me a drink.”
“Don’t have any money.”
“Thought you said you had five million.”
“They might count it.”
“Your whole story’s horseshit,” she said. “I’ve fucked people in the space program, and they won’t even give me a damn launch viewing pass. There’s no chance you could bribe your way onto the Space Station.”
“Not through NASA, but it’s a totally different culture over in Russia,” said Serge. “They’re Communists, which means it’s all about money.”
Serge stood with Lenny in the dark at the rendezvous point, checking his illuminated wristwatch: 12:01 A.M. “Where can they be?”
“How can I get my forty-three dollars back?”
“Sometimes you just have to let go.”
A slight breeze came off the ocean. A twig snapped.
“Ivan?” Serge whispered. “Is that you?”
Out of the distant shadows came a silhouette, then a second, a third, a fourth, and finally five dark forms stood abreast thirty yards away.
“You got the money?”
“Right here,” said Serge, tapping the briefcase.
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br /> “Put it on the ground.”
“Where’s my space suit?”
“It’s in the car.”
“Forget it,” said Serge. “First I get my space suit, with my name over the pocket. Spelled right. That was the arrangement.”
“You really are crazy.”
“No space suit, no deal.”
The five pulled automatic weapons. “The deal’s changed,” said Ivan. “Put the money on the ground and step away.”
Serge pointed at them. “Hey! You’re not really with the Russian space program!”
Bullets began flying.
“I’m hit!” Lenny yelled, going down and gripping his leg. Serge grabbed him by the armpits and pulled him to cover. Bullets pinged off the missile they were slouched behind in the Rocket Garden at Kennedy Space Center.
“Stop it! Stop shooting!” yelled Serge. He ran out from behind the rocket and threw himself across the front of the Titan, spreading his arms wide, a human shield. “I’m begging you! This is our history!”
Ivan grinned. He turned and fired at a Juno II.
“No!” screamed Serge.
Then an Atlas-Agena got it right between the tail fins.
“Please!” yelled Serge. “Anything!”
Ivan walked over to the next rocket and pressed the muzzle of his gun against the first stage.
“Hand over the briefcase or the Mercury-Redstone gets it!”
Serge felt down in the zippered leg compartment of his royal blue jumpsuit. He wrapped his fingers around the antique grenade, his ace in the hole. He looked up at the rockets. They were bound to take shrapnel. Too risky. He removed his hand from the pocket.
“Okay! Okay!” said Serge. “Just don’t shoot!”
He took the briefcase by the handle and twirled himself in a circle three times like a discus thrower and let the briefcase sail. The moonlight caught the metal finish as it tumbled through the air. It landed a few feet in front of the Russians. Vladimir ran up, flipped the latches and raised the lid. He looked over his shoulder at Ivan. “It’s all here.”
“Good,” said Ivan, looking up at Serge and breaking into a smile. “Now you die!”
The foot pursuit was slower than a three-legged race, Serge helping Lenny limp along, the Russians hobbling after them on bandaged feet. Serge and Lenny took off across the visitor concourse. The Russians fanned out to form a net and flush them into the courtyard. They encircled the pavilion and cased the IMAX theaters, Gift Gantry and Nebula Café. But they were no match for Serge, who knew the grounds of the space center like a womb. Soon it was quiet again; the Russians stood bunched together on the lawn, in front of a giant viewing window at the welcome center, scratching their heads with their guns.