“Last night’s episode of Glee warned about texting and driving,” said Coleman.
“Those Glee kids just keep on caring,” said Serge. “But the nation’s plight is now bigger than any teenage chorus line can handle. Technology has just passed our survival instinct, and the country is spinning on a stationary existential axis of make-believe importance: We text about a Tweet of a YouTube video posted on Facebook with a clip of Glee about not texting that we just texted about. Instead of actual life, we’re now living an air-guitar version of life.”
“Yow! Watch out!” Coleman lunged and grabbed Serge’s arms in an attempt to take over the steering wheel. The Firebird swerved across the lane. “Don’t you see it!”
“Coleman, get your fucking hands off me!” Serge swatted the arms away. “You almost made us crash. What’s gotten into you?”
He grabbed his chest. “You almost hit that weird beast in the road!”
“Coleman, it was a hooker.” Serge looked sideways with an odd expression. “And she’d already made it through the crosswalk.”
“You sure it was a hooker?”
“No question,” said Serge. “We’ve lived in Florida long enough that you should be able to identify them now without flash cards.”
“It must have been the snakes coming out of her head,” said Coleman. “That means it’s kicking in.”
“Why? What did you take?”
“I don’t remember,” said Coleman. “But it must have been good shit. That’s a sign of good shit: You don’t remember taking it and then see monsters and almost crash.”
Serge stared at him with scorn, then faced forward. “We need to buy insurance.”
“More head-snakes,” said Coleman, face pasted to his passenger window. “Where are we?”
The Trans Am raced due south on a major artery. They passed an open-air drug supermarket with handshake exchanges of bindles and cash, then pawn and beauty-product shops with door buzzers and baseball bats under the counters, a run-down motel full of police cars responding to aggravated domestic violence and an escaped monkey that had been in the news. More prostitutes, guys drinking from brown bags, shopping-cart pushers, slumped-over bus bench urchins, and run-on-sentence conspiracy preachers. The intersection people beckoned drivers at red lights to roll down windows for one-dollar flowers, bottled water and an underground newspaper written by hand. The area had become so notoriously sketchy that civic leaders snapped into action and fixed everything by installing new rows of expensive, decorative light posts.
“I absolutely love Orange Blossom Trail,” said Serge. “Also known as OBT and south Orlando’s red-light district, but that’s a bit judgmental.”
“Two dudes are having a sword fight with broken-off car antennas.”
“Ooo! Look, look!” yelled Serge. “They put up those supercool new light poles that tell people they’re in the wrong part of town.”
“The poles are bending toward the car and growling.” Coleman nodded. “Good shit.”
“I always seek out those poles,” said Serge. “They steer you to interesting new friends . . . Like this guy.”
A light turned red. The Firebird stopped. A bearded man on the curb made a rolling-down motion with his hand. Serge cranked the glass open. “What’s the good word, my fine fellow statesman?”
“Can I have a dollar?”
“Sure thing.” Serge uncrinkled a George Washington from his wallet and passed it out the window.
“Appreciate it.”
“Hey, wait,” said Serge. “Where’s my underground newspaper? I saw you give one to that other driver.”
“It was my last. Actually my only. Handwritten. That way no stray copies can fall into the wrong laps. That’s how they got Charlie.”
“Serge,” said Coleman. “The light turned green . . . I think.”
“Let ’em go around.” Serge hit his blinking hazards and turned back to the man. “Then what else do you have?”
“Let’s see.” The man reached in his back pocket with a quizzical expression. He removed a wad of paper. “Oh, yeah. I drew this last night.”
Serge took it through the window. Coleman looked at the page, then screamed and flattened himself against the passenger door. “Swarms of locusts with scorpion tails, people’s intestines sliced out, nuns with wooden rulers . . .” Quietly weeping in his hands now. “Serge, please make this stuff wear off.”
“It’s not the drug you took,” said Serge. “He really did draw this . . .” Then at the man: “And not too bad, if I do say so. What’s it represent? The Apocalypse from Revelation?”
“No, I was just doodling in the hardware store up the street.” The man wiped his brow. “They have air-conditioning. I get some of my best inspiration in there.”
“I know exactly what you mean.” Serge tucked the picture in his pocket and handed the man another dollar. “What’s the word on the street?”
“They just caught another monkey.”
“It’s getting embarrassing.”
“No kidding.” The man stuck the dollar in his pocket. “Busting up mailboxes and lawn statues all the way to Altamonte Springs. It just wasn’t right.”
“Like the famous Tampa Bay monkey,” said Serge. “He was becoming a regular D. B. Cooper.”
“I read about him,” said the bum. “Sightings all the way west to the St. Petersburg exercise trail, but police think that was just a copycat in a monkey costume, jumping out and dancing in front of Rollerbladers before darting back into the woods.”
Serge stared at the ceiling and scratched his chin.
“Serge.” Coleman peeked out one half-open eye. “Is that why you made me wear that outfit?”
“It was you guys?” said the bearded man.
“Why text when you have imagination?” said Serge. “What about Casey Anthony?”
“Just scraps of rumors and dubious innuendo. Harder to find than the monkey.” He pointed north. “She’s been reported everywhere from a Magic basketball game to a Ruby Tuesday’s . . .” His arm swung south. “And someone swears they spotted her at the Tupperware Museum.”
“Wait a sec,” said Coleman. “You’re pulling my leg. There’s no such thing as a Tupperware Museum.”
“Oh, but there most certainly is,” said Serge. “From the old days. Roadside-attraction gold.”
“You’re really serious?” said Coleman. “Tupperware?”
“Not only that, but the histories of Orlando and Tupperware are intertwined farther back than Disney.” Serge turned to the homeless man. “What was Casey supposedly doing there?”
“In the gift shop buying a gelatin mold.”
“Must be a false sighting,” said Serge. “From all reports, Tupperware isn’t how she likes to get her freak on.”
“My thinking, too,” said the man. “Unless she’s into something so twisted we have yet to fathom.”
Serge began rolling up the window. “Still, all leads must be followed.” The light turned green again. He switched off his emergency flashers and sped south.
Coleman sagged in his passenger seat with his head lying atop the window frame. “I don’t see hookers anymore.”
“Because we crossed the skank equator back into family land,” said Serge.
“The places with baby strollers where you don’t let me smoke dope?”
“Until I say otherwise.”
“This sucks.” Coleman idly flicked his lighter. “Let’s go somewhere else.”
“Can’t,” said Serge. “Mahoney’s idea. Wants us in position again. He’s trying to track another scammer with that Big Dipper company. Credit-card receipts, turnpike cameras, crime reports. Then they did a geographical probability cone like a hurricane chart pointed at Orlando. But like a hurricane, it’s a cone of uncertainty.”
“What are we supposed to do in the meantime?”
“Sit on standby and wait for his call like a nuclear submarine.”
Coleman flicked the lighter again and waved it in front of his eyes. “So what’s all that jazz about Florida and Tupperware?”