On the other side of the lounge, a woman in a shark cage looked up from her textbook. “Your friend over there’s kind of cute.”
“A freakin’ lunatic is what he is.” Story turned a page in her own book. “Wearing out my last nerve.”
“Then why do you still hang with him?”
“He’s damaged. Guess it brings out the maternal instinct. Plus I need transpo.”
“Admit it. You think he’s cute.”
“I will say this: Incredibly annoying as he is, there are at least three or four times a day I have to strain with all my might not to burst out laughing.”
“Don’t give me that old garbage: ‘He makes me laugh.’”
“He does.”
“You think he’s cute.”
“Trust me. They don’t make a strong enough dose of cute to compensate for the crap I have to put up with.”
“What kind of crap.”
“Wait long enough and you get a chance to see-“
The woman in the cage pointed. “Holy mother!”
Story jumped up. “Serge! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m dancing.”
“Get the fuck off the aquarium!”
“But I always wanted to-“
“Get off!”
“Alllllll right.”
Story plopped back down on her stool. “See what I’m talking about?”
“I have to go to the bathroom.”
“I’ll go with you.”
A door of metal bars creaked open. “I’ll bet I could change him.”
AFTER MIDNIGHT
Mahoney was going with his instincts, playing a hunch, had a gut feeling. He squeezed his way through the crowd in a dark room. Dance beat throbbed. He arrived at a woman gyrating inside a shark cage.
“I’m playing a hunch.” The agent held a photo to the bars. “Seen this mug?”
“You some kind of cop?”
“Yes.”
She appraised the rumpled wardrobe. His necktie had a pattern of Route 66 signs. “You don’t look like a cop.”
“Seen him or not?”
She continued dancing to .38 Special. “Prove you’re a cop.”
“Doesn’t it usually work the other way in strip clubs?” He reached inside his coat pocket.
“… Wild-eyed southern boys! Wild-eyed boys!…”
A badge went through the bars.
She studied it, then resumed dancing, eyes turned defiantly in another direction that sent an economic telegram.
Mahoney passed an Andrew Jackson through the bars.
She stuck it in her garter. “Yeah, I saw him. Just this afternoon. No way you could miss that guy.”
“How so?”
“He took like a million photos. And we had to chase him off the aquarium.”
“Fink to his skip?”
“What?”
“Did he give any indication where he might be going?”
She grabbed the bars on the opposite side of the cage, bent over and wiggled her ass. Mahoney stuck another twenty in the crack. She turned back around. “Just that they were heading down the coast doing research.”
“They?”
“Traveling with a dancer friend of mine and some drunken idiot. That’s all I know.”
Mahoney began walking away. “Thanks Blondie.”
“I’m a brunette.”
Coleman had a laptop on his knees. Serge read a newspaper. They were driving.
“This is a pretty cool travel site you made.”
“Nothing but the best.” The Javelin blew south on U.S. 1. Serge checked his watch. Four a.m. “I love driving in the middle of the night! No traffic, the rhythm of the dotted fluorescent centerline, occasional diner with a guy alone in a corner booth, all the traffic lights set to flashing yellow, my heart charged with spiritual ecstasy from the approaching dawn! But the best part is the silence, especially with Story asleep in the backseat-a rare chance to take a break from the hectic modern world and relax alone with your thoughts … hmmm, hmm-hmm, hmmm … now my thoughts are too fucking loud. We need some noise in this car.” He reached for the radio.
“… Still time to save fifty! Sixty! Seventy percent at Mattress Warehouse!… Save a horse, ride a cowboy!… All weekend long at the monster truck rally!…”
Serge turned a page in the metro section.
“How can you read a newspaper in the dark?”
“Just a sentence at a time as each streetlight passes. But that only makes it better: Gives every story cliff-hangers, like this one …” He folded the paper over. A streetlight approached. “… About an eccentric dude who liked to drive around with pet snakes hanging over his shoulders …”
The light faded.
“What happened?”
“I can hardly wait to find out!”
Another streetlight.
“Ooooo, six-car pileup in Naples.”
Coleman returned to the laptop. “So we’re just going to keep driving around working on your travel stuff?”
“I’m also implementing a secret plan.”
“What plan?”
“It’s a secret.”
“Can’t you tell me?”
“No. You drink too much and blab in bars.” “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’ve worked that into the plan.”
“So I can keep doing it?”
“Absolutely.”
“Had me worried for a second.”
Serge reached in his pocket and pulled out a clear plastic tube that coin collectors use to store dimes.
“Isn’t that one of the things you filled with dirt at famous places?”
“Correct.”
Coleman looked closer. “Doesn’t look like dirt.”
“My toenail clippings.”
“What are you collecting those for?”
“Number twenty-three on my to-do list. I’ve been getting strange sensations from the universe, like, who knows how much longer I’ve got on this rock?”
“You’re not that old.”
“Pushing the edge of caveman life expectancy. Of course they didn’t have health insurance, but they also didn’t have my lifestyle, except the one at Kubrick’s monolith who figured out the club. Here …” Serge passed the tube to Coleman. “I want you to have this.”
“What for?”
“To bury at my funeral. I’m hedging bets with that tube in case the end leaves no recognizable remains. I want people to have a place to visit and picnic.”
“Serge, please stop talking like this.”
“I have no regrets. Life’s been good.” He slapped Coleman on the knee and gestured at the surrounding landscape in general. “Someday all this will be yours.”
“Cool.” Coleman hit the return key on the laptop. “Hey, Serge, your mailbox is completely full.”
“It’s all Mahoney.”
“Aren’t you at least going to read what he has to say?”
Serge shook his head. “My life is now completely dedicated to positive thoughts. Rainbows, unicorns, singing flowers, cheerful elves who grant wishes frowned on elsewhere. If I open even one of Mahoney’s e-mails, it could drop a turd on an elf.”
“… This is NPR. The life of a chimney sweep in nineteenth-century Liverpool might have seemed unglamorous … Rocky Mountain Way, couldn’t get much higher!… Tom Bodette here …”
“Serge, you accidentally set the radio on scan again.”
“That’s deliberate. I have to stay abreast of culture, and a few seconds on each station is all I need. It’s also all I can stand before I lose interest. Plus, scan mode gives you the added bonus of picking up pirate radio stations, like Da Streetz, whose signal was so strong it interfered with air traffic at Miami International. And if you’re really lucky, you might even pick up a numbers station.”
“Never heard of that.”
“Most people haven’t, but they’re all over the place in Florida, jumping around the dial, popping up at random times, only broadcasting a few minutes a day from a safe house with an illegally powerful shortwave.”
“What do they broadcast?”