“Probably because you’re looking at him.”
“He looks familiar. Doesn’t he look familiar to you?”
“No.”
“Of course! I know who it is! That’s the drummer for — — .”
Serge studied the man some more. “You know, you might be right.”
Lenny waved for their waitress. “Who’s that guy at the bar?”
“The drummer for ——.”
“I knew it! I’m getting an autograph.” Lenny grabbed a napkin and went to the bar. “Aren’t you the drummer for — —?”
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?”
“Are you kidding?”