Serge banged on the door with a brass knocker. Coleman cracked a can of Colt 45.
Shuffling inside. A redheaded young man in a bathrobe answered the door eating a bowl of Froot Loops. “What do you want?”
Serge briefly flashed an official-looking document. “Is this the residence of Maybelline Coot?”
“She’s not feeling well. Get out of here.” The door began closing.
A foot stopped it.
“We’re not here to see Aunt May,” said Serge. “We’ve come to have a word with Preston Jacobs, which would be you.”
Preston squeezed the door on the foot. “I’m busy.”
Serge just grinned. “Right now is a very convenient time for you. Otherwise, your schedule will become amazingly busy. Actually it already has.”
A delicate voice from the back of the cottage. “Is someone here?”
“Just a salesman,” yelled Preston. “He’s leaving. Watch your TV show.”
“What’s he want?”
“Nothing . . .” A sneer through the crack in the door. “Move your foot or I’ll break it!”
Serge didn’t move it.
Preston put his weight into the door, which left him leaning the wrong way. He was stunned at the speed and force that Serge generated. The young man tumbled backward, and then all three of them were inside.
Coleman giggled. “He looks funny with Froot Loops in his hair.”
“It’s about to become a laugh riot.”
Preston leaped up and wiped milk off his face. “You’re both dead if you don’t get out of here right now!”
“Is he selling anything I might want? . . .”
“Yes!” Serge yelled toward the back bedroom.
“That’s it!” said Preston. “I gave you fair warning!” He cocked his fist back . . .
Three minutes later.
“Aunt May?”
“Do I know you?”
Serge grabbed a quilted chair from the vanity and pulled it to the side of the bed. “My name is Serge, and I’m a friend of Lou Ellen’s. Also Willard and Jasper.”
“You know my family?”
Serge held two fingers tightly together. “We’re like this.”
“I miss them.” She made a melancholy face. “Why haven’t they come to see me? Preston said he’s been calling and calling them.”
Serge gently placed his right hand on bony fingers. “All that’s changed now. Something happened and there was, uh, a disruption in phone service.”
“Is everyone okay?”
“Healthy as could be.” Serge patted the hand again and stood up. “And they’ll be here before you know it.”
“That’s nice.” She strained to look out her bedroom door. “Did you see the salesman? What was he here for?”
Serge exposed gleaming teeth. “Insurance! Preston just decided he needs a lot of it.”
“Preston?” said the old woman. “Where is he?”
“They called him back to the main office.”
“You mean in Panama City?”
“No,” said Serge. “This is the big main office. The one I oversee.”
“But then who’s going to take care of me?”
“Aunt May,” said Serge. “I’d like you to meet your new assisted-living specialist, Coleman.”
Coleman sipped from a large aluminum can and stared at a hand-sewn curtain featuring songbirds. His brain heard voices through the beer fog. His big round head slowly swiveled toward them. “What?”
“It’s only temporary,” Serge told the woman. “Until your relatives arrive. But he’s one of the best in the business . . . Coleman, do me a favor and grab another pillow for her head.”
“But she didn’t do anything to us.”
“No, you idiot! Under her head.”
“Oh, that’s a relief. I didn’t want to do the other.” Burp. Coleman noticed another curtain with canaries, and he started thinking about buffalo wings.
“Coleman! The pillow!”
“Right! I’m on it . . . Here you go, Aunt June.”
“I’m May.”
“What?”
“Who are you?”
“Coleman.” Burp. “What’s your name? April?”
Serge stood in the doorway rolling his eyes. “I’ll let you two work it out.” Then he was gone.
Coleman pulled up the quilted chair and looked at the TV. “What are you watching?”
“Wheel of Fortune,” said Aunt May. “It’s boring.”
“I see the remote.” Coleman grabbed it off the dresser and began clicking. “Did you know you have pay-per-view?”
“What’s that?”
“It’s where you pay for each show—”
“No, what’s that in your hand?”
“The remote.”
“Your other hand.”
“You mean my beer? . . .”
. . . Meanwhile, a vintage silver Corvette raced back toward the Apalachicola National Forest. Preston was in the passenger seat. He needed propping up with a rigid piece of wood inside the back of his shirt. The paralytic agent that Serge had injected into his neck vein prevented speech or movement, but the rest of his senses remained keen.
Serge punched him playfully in the shoulder. “Glad to have you with me! It’s a long drive, and good company makes it go so much faster. Coleman’s fine, but he tends to zone out, and usually just when I’m zoning in. That’s such a buzzkill!” He raised a travel coffee mug and chugged until it was dry, then punched Preston again. “And, man, am I zoning in right now! I know you can’t talk, but I’m totally ready to, so we have a symbiotic chemistry. You’re a good listener, you know that?” He accelerated to ninety and played bongos on the steering wheel. “Can you dig it? We’re on a Route 66 bender! I know what you’re wondering: What’s Route 66 got to do with Florida? And that’s what everyone thinks! People just assume that all the shows were filmed along the iconic ‘Mother Road’ highway from Chicago to Los Angeles. But the title had broader implications of unstructured life on the road during the post-Kerouac zeitgeist. I hate people who use the word ‘zeitgeist’ and yet I just did. That makes me a complicated, non-one-issue voter. So the Route 66 producers roamed all over the country and—hold on to your hat—near the end they filmed a dozen shows in Florida, including the double-episode series finale in Tampa! I guess they knew the show was winding down in the winter and figured, ‘Do we want to shoot in Detroit or Daytona?’ Tough choice, right? And they really did go to Daytona. On February seventh, 1964, the whole country watched a Stingray just like this one drive right out onto the sand, next to pounding surf, as amazed visitors do every year along the landmark stretch of beach—and then suddenly, for no reason, they’re at the City Island Library—which is a real place where they actually filmed the scene. But there’s more! If your mind isn’t already freaking blown, they pan to a big Airstream-like trailer sitting at the curb, attached to an ancient pickup cab. And this is what finally convinced me that Linc was the smarter of the two, because Tod looks toward the street and asks what the heck that is. Linc responds it’s the newest thing: a mobile library that brings books to you. And Tod’s brain is all overheating as he stares cross-eyed at a sign painted on the side of the trailer: ‘Volusia County Bookmobile.’ Well, I can tell you I almost hit the darn floor! How many people know that a Florida episode of Route 66 introduced the nation to the concept of the bookmobile? I could go on for hours. Actually, I will. In the next episode they drive to St. Augustine across the Bridge of Lions . . .”