“The tall one’s jumping up and down.” Sasha cupped a hand to her ear. “What’s he saying?”
“I can’t quite make it out,” said Johnny. “But he sure is drinking a lot of coffee—” He cut himself off and strained for a closer look. “It couldn’t possibly be them . . . Oh, no, this isn’t happening.”
“What isn’t happening?” asked Sasha. Then she turned toward the opposite bank. “Dear Jesus, the fat one’s peeing in the water. J.R.’s water!” This time she cupped her hands around her mouth. “You son of a bitch! . . .”
On the other side of the bay: “Serge, I think that woman is yelling at us.”
“Probably one of your fans.”
“Now she’s throwing rocks,” said Coleman. “I think they’re meant for us, but her arm’s way too weak.”
“Do you know her?” Serge reached down and grabbed a handful of wildflowers.
“I don’t think so,” said Coleman. “But the guy looks familiar . . . What are you doing?”
“A historic place requires proper respect.” Serge cast the flowers upon the water. “For Johnny. Let’s bow our heads . . . That’s enough.” He sprinted up the bank to the car.
Back across the water, Sasha threw a final rock, then collapsed onto the grass in a sitting position, covered her eyes and began crying.
Johnny collapsed next to her and began crying, too.
His unlucky streak was intact.
Johnny was still covering his face when he felt something. A hand caressing his cheek.
“You’re crying,” said Sasha, snuggling into his shoulder. “That’s so sensitive.”
They sat still together. Eventually she raised her head. “I’m okay now.”
She stuck the J.R. handkerchief back in her purse. Sasha never knew Roselli, or any of the others. Way before her time. But she had this quirk. Sexual. One of those rare, unhealthy paraphilias where she needed to be in danger from the man she was with. At the top of her fantasy list was mobsters. She watched the movies and read the books and visited the sites. Just standing on the edge of Dumbfounding Bay set off a joy buzzer between her legs. In another era, she’d have been a gun mol, but she was born too late. Instead she was forced to run with today’s crop of low-level punks and wannabe gangsters. She was unsatisfied.
Sasha stood up and smiled.
Vegas followed suit and held out his hand. “My name’s Johnny, too.”
“Wow, this must be fate. Pleasure to meet you, Johnny.” She shook his hand. “My name’s Ssssssssaaa-shhhhhh . . . ahhhh.”
Sasha had been able to throw a bit of ventriloquism into the delivery, and Johnny glanced behind him like her name was being announced in Dolby Surround Sound.
“Johnny,” she said, putting his arm in hers. “Are you doing anything tonight?”
Inside his head: You have no idea how much I hope so. “Uh, let me check my planner.”
“Because if you’re free, I know the hottest new place on the beach . . .”
And that’s how Johnny Vegas came to find himself at three A.M. on the dance floor of the club called Liquid Plasma in the middle of a breast buffet.
Soon, a ripple through the crowd as it parted for Sasha. She presented herself in front of Johnny and launched into one of the sultriest grinds anyone had ever seen outside a gentlemen’s club. The performance climaxed with hands sliding down in her signature move that was almost illegal. No, it was illegal. Others took photos and videos with cell phones.
Sasha finished her routine and threw her arms around Johnny’s neck. And her tongue inside his shirt. The crowd congealed back around them and resumed hopping again as a single organism. It went on like this for hours, Johnny and Sasha tripping the light fantastic with the aid of the new ultra-strength energy drink, Tripping the Light Fantastic. They waved glow sticks and did cocaine bullet-snorts offered by fellow dancers, and Sasha sucked a glow-in-the-dark, amphetamine-laced baby pacifier.
Pouty lips went to Johnny’s ear. “It’s getting late,” she said just before noon. “Let’s go back to your place.”
Johnny practically knocked people over dragging her by the hand for the nearest emergency exit.
After running six red lights, Johnny parked his gull-wing Porsche GT1 behind a beach house. The couple stumbled and giggled together as they struggled up the front porch steps facing the dunes and bright sun over the Atlantic. Liquor, anticipation. She embraced him hard, and they crashed against the gingerbread trim next to the front door. Her mouth went to his ear again. “I’ve never told anyone this before, but my secret fantasy is to . . .”
The rest was inaudible except to Johnny’s eardrum. Bubbles hit his brain. Johnny fell one way, and Sasha the other, both landing on their asses. They stared at each other a second, then giggled even louder. Johnny dug in a pocket for house keys with renewed urgency. Yes! The streak is over!
Sasha got up and looked around. “Where’s my shoe? I lost a shoe . . .”
Johnny’s trembling hands fumbled with the keys, dropped them, and fumbled again. Sasha wandered in unsteady circles on the porch. “Where are you, shoe? . . . Come here, shoe . . .”
Keys hit the ground again. Anxious fingers snagged them but had trouble aligning the end of the key with the lock. “Let’s goooooo, focus!”
“Here shoey-shoey . . . Where are you, shoey? . . .” Sasha staggered around the corner of the house. “Motherfuckin’ shoe, where are you!”
The lock finally popped. Hooray. The door creaked ajar, but Johnny wasn’t looking inside. He stared off the side of the porch. “Sasha, the house is open . . . Sasha? . . .”
Then he finally looked though the front door.
“What on God’s earth? . . .”
In the background, squealing tires.
The cops arrived fifteen minutes later.
Johnny sat on the top porch step, face in his hands again. Shoulders shaking with sobs.
A detective approached the officer in charge of the crime scene. “Magruder, what have we got here?”
“Seems pretty open-and-shut.” The sergeant closed his notebook. “Our pal Mr. Vegas here spent all night in one of the local clubs with some young thing he had a chance meeting with yesterday afternoon, and he came home this morning to find his place stripped to the walls.”
“Another dating bandit?”
“Except a new wrinkle.”
“How’s that?”
“This one was female.”
They became distracted by a louder bout of weeping from the porch steps. The detective jerked a thumb sideways. “What’s his problem?”
The sergeant shrugged. “He’s been crying off and on ever since we got here.”
“Doesn’t he know insurance covers this?”
The sergeant raised his voice in Johnny’s direction. “Mr. Vegas, just call your insurance company . . . The important thing is you’re safe. She didn’t even touch you.”
The crying became deafening wails.
“Wow.” The detective turned toward the sergeant. “He must have really loved that furniture.”
FORT LAUDERDALE
Fingers impatiently tapped a counter in a strip mall. Hanging from a pegboard: chew toys, catnip, fish pellets, and electronic dog collars that create an invisible fence around your yard.
An employee rushed back to the register through a vortex of animal-waste aromas that combined to smell exactly like all pet stores everywhere.
“Sorry for the delay.” He wiped something green on his shirt. “How may I help you?”
“This is a rescue intervention,” said Serge. “You’ve seen those news stories about heroin-addict mothers forgetting baby strollers on escalators while they shoplift?”
The employee scratched his head. “I’m not following.”
“I need you to take in a hamster.”
“We don’t buy hamsters,” said the clerk. “They’re multiplying fast enough as it is back there. Unless you bought it here and it’s sick or something, then I’ll need a receipt.”