“Did I bring back a bad memory?”
“No!” Coleman pointed. “I’m getting a second rush wave! Those gigantic alligator jaws coming toward us. Please tell me it’s a hallucination!”
“Sorry to disappoint you, but it’s definitely real, like ten or twelve feet high.” Serge pulled into the parking lot. “But luckily it’s historic Gatorland, with the huge landmark fake jaws at the entrance to lure tourists off Orange Blossom Trail and into the venerable 1949 roadside attraction. The fantastic part is they dropped anchor just south of Orlando long before Disney ever saw the possibilities. But Gatorland did!”
“The jaws are snapping,” said Coleman. “Concrete can snap, right?”
“No, that’s a hallucination.”
“Mescaline.”
“What?”
“I finally remembered what I took . . . Or was that another time, or another person?” Coleman leaned toward the windshield and the snapping jaws. “Whew! Definitely mescaline!”
“How can you tell?”
Coleman urgently opened the passenger door and doubled over on the ground. Serge heard the ever-familiar sound of his pal sending a high-pressure spray of stomach contents onto pavement. Coleman climbed back into the car. “Excellent stuff!”
Serge just stared.
“What?” Coleman wiped the back of his mouth with his hand. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Puking is excellent?” said Serge.
“I keep telling you it’s the best, man. Always look forward to it.” Coleman picked a couple things off his T-shirt that made Serge wince, then flicked them out the window. Except the window was closed, and they stuck to it.
“Got it under control,” said Coleman, wiping the window with his forearm but just making it smear.
Serge grabbed his own stomach and covered his eyes. “Please fucking stop it. I have to eat again this century.”
“I’m surprised,” said Coleman. “You usually want me to keep your vehicle clean.”
“Just tell me when you’re done so I can open my eyes.”
Coleman continued rubbing. “Don’t be a buzzkill. I told you I always look forward to throwing up. All the heads understand this.”
“You enjoy getting sick?”
“It’s like that Carly Simon ketchup song about anticipation. After taking a dose, the first half of the trip is a lot of work, getting yourself situated to the effects, and that can be some serious heavy lifting if you’re in unfamiliar surroundings: distinguishing what’s moving and what’s stationary, the difference between solids, liquids and gases. See, the whole key to a mellow and enlightening mescaline trip is not to ram your head through something solid like a TV set, just because you wanted to meet the people inside. That takes a lot of responsibility . . .”
Serge tentatively opened one eye at Coleman as he continued to work on the window.
“. . . But once you get sick, it’s clear sailing.” Coleman illustrated by moving a level palm through the air and whistling. “All the great organic psychedelics are like that. If it doesn’t involve a little tummy unrest, keep shopping.”
Serge opened the other eye. “Enough of this dumb show. I’m going in the park . . .”
“Wait for me!”
They arrived at the entrance and stared up at concrete teeth.
“Coleman, remember we’re in a family setting, so don’t attract any unnecessary attention.” Then Serge clenched the coffee tube in his teeth and sprinted into the jaws.
Chapter Eighteen
FORT LAUDERDALE
Earth-friendly canvas grocery bags sat on a kitchen counter. Out came split-pea soup, rigatoni and five plum tomatoes that had been scrutinized back at the produce section.
A female voice called into another room. “Dad, it looks like you have a message on the answering machine.”
“A what?”
“Answering machine!”
“Okay.”
Ronald Campanella had retired from the New York City Fire Department two years before with prestigious honors and lingering joint problems from falling through the floor of a burning housing project. That was back in the early nineties. Both knees had scars from multiple surgeries. He didn’t like to wear shorts.
The woman unloading canned vegetables and Benefiber was Brook Campanella. Brook, for Brooklyn. That kind of family. Four generations from the borough across the East River from the Manhattan skyline. Ebbets Field still choked him up. So the idea of Ronald spending his golden years in Florida held no allure, but he made the retirement move anyway, because he was supposed to.
Brook was the caboose. With three adult offspring already in college, Muriel Campanella had come home from a routine doctor’s visit with an unroutine announcement. Surprise! They did the math. Ronald and Muriel would be raising a teenager in their sixties.
The answering machine rested on a small antique end table in the living room. The eighth-floor condo had an open floor plan from kitchen to balcony. Next to the answering machine sat a yellowed firehouse group photo from 1987, a King James Bible with family records, and a young portrait of Muriel, who had recently passed from a family history of heart disease. That’s when Brook decided to follow her father south and help around the place. Florida needed paralegals as much as New York.
That hadn’t been her plan. The whole family always said a law degree was in the cards for their National Merit Scholar. They scrimped and saved for tuition. Brook flew through her first year with straight A’s. Then a conspiracy of interruptions. Always family. Crisis after crisis, and it usually involved money. She began a cycle of repeatedly dropping out and re-enrolling, until the financial woes forced her into night school. Then there wasn’t money for that. Then her mother’s health . . . and now her father. Family always came first.
“Oh, and the mail came,” Brook told her dad as she opened a large brown envelope containing the kind of application forms that never provide enough space for address and Social Security. The top of the documents had the name of a local college whose campus sat between a pain clinic and a liquor store in a nearby strip mall. The two businesses next to the college had an unusually high overlap in clientele. Oh, well, at least the move to Florida and her mom’s modest life insurance policy would allow her to resume classes. Brook was a ferocious student. Under the best of circumstances, there was at least a year left of credits toward a degree, which meant Brook would be taking her bar exam in six months.
She opened another envelope and called to her dad again. “Looks like you got your replacement credit card.”
Ronald walked into the kitchen and grabbed a banana. “You mean for the one someone used to buy ten plasma TVs in San Diego?”
“At least the card company’s fraud-alert system caught it. You’re not responsible for a penny.”
“But how is that even possible when the card was still in my wallet in Florida.”
“They steal the digital data and replicate the magnetic strips.”
“What?”
“It’s computers, Dad.”
He shrugged and headed into the other room to check the phone message.
A wrinkled, almost pink index finger pressed a button. The message began to play.
Brook was making neat rows of Jell-O boxes in the cupboard when her father returned. She looked over at him with a smile. “Hey, Dad—” Her smile vanished. “Dad, what’s the matter? You’re white as a ghost!”
A half-eaten banana hit the floor. Ronald’s legs began to betray him. He pulled out a chair and grabbed the edge of the kitchen table as he eased himself down.
Brook ran over and sat next to him. She leaned in with a hand on his shoulder. “Dad, what is it? What’s going on?”
Speechless. He just pointed into the other room.