She rang the register. “Anything else?”
“New T-shirts, too!” He held one up to his chest. “And hand-painted postcards. Gimme ten of each.”
“Who do you send all your cards to?”
“Me.” Serge inspected a nearly empty pegboard of Instamatic film and individual packets of Bayer aspirin. The Coca-Cola snack-bar menu board indicated Fruitopia was now in stock and pinfish were going for a buck apiece. Julie punched buttons on an accounting calculator. Serge spun a rack of sunglasses. “They shot the movie Tollbooth here.”
“You told me.”
“When?”
“Last six times you stayed.”
Serge picked up a pot of complimentary coffee, smelled it and made a face. “It’s a B movie, but it beats trench mouth. They chopped up a guy and stuck him in your bait freezer over there.” Serge replaced the coffee beneath a mishmash of sun-faded photos covering the wall. People holding up bull dolphin and tarpon and snook. Bikinis, lobsters, smiles. Somebody’s dog was wearing a bandanna.
The back door opened. A man came in from the dock, sunglasses hanging from a lanyard around his neck. “Hi, Serge.”
“Hi, Mark.” Click.
“Anything going on?” asked Julie.
“One of the rental boats came back trashed again.”
“Which one?”
“Number seven, the businessmen.” He turned to Serge. “Guys from the Pacific rim, don’t know what nationality. Every morning this week they come in and buy twice as much bait as anyone needs and take a boat out all day.”
“Catching anything?”
“Apparently. Each time they come back, the deck is a bloody mess from bow to stern, but they never bring any fish to the dock. We just find all these skeletons in the bilge.”
“They’re eating raw fish out there?”
Mark nodded.
“What about the extra bait?”
“I think they’re eating that, too.” Mark snatched a compact yellow walkie-talkie off his belt. “Jim, hose out number seven…. That’s right, again.” He clipped the Motorola back on his shorts. “Staying in number five?”
“You know it.” Serge adjusted the band of his new cap and left through the rear door. He walked along the dock, where someone was flushing out a boat with a garden hose, pushing squid tentacles and loose suckers along the deck.
“Noble work.”
“What?”
Serge headed across the parking lot. He stopped and raised his camera. A row of tiny, white cottages from the forties. Picnic table in front of each.
The two proprietors were outside, trying to straighten a signpost someone had hit.
“Who’s he talking to?” asked Mark.
“Himself,” said Julie.
“…Ah, the Old Wooden Bridge Fishing Camp!” said Serge. “Last vestige of the early days, when rustic compounds defined the archipelago, vernacular gems with wraparound verandas and plantation fans, Zane Grey lounging in coconut shade, polishing dispatches on pompano for northern intelligentsia. Then the march of progress, coming ashore like Godzilla, smashing the historic fish camps like balsa-wood pagodas…”
“Why is he stomping around the parking lot like that?” asked Mark.
Julie shrugged.
“…Now they’re all memories. Even the old wooden bridge itself is gone, replaced by concrete. But at least the camp is still here….”
“What’s he doing now?” asked Mark.
“Kissing cottage number five.”
Serge stuck the key in the knob, went inside and double-bolted the door. Safe and snug. His own space capsule. Microwave, coffeemaker, fridge, stove, dark paneling and a dark-wood kitchen table bought at some place with a name like “The Wagon Wheel.” There was a single small painting on the wall of a lionfish made with the bold, instinctive brush strokes of a state prison art class. Then more impressionism, a clashing 1963 avocado sofa covered with sunflowers, marigolds and violets like Van Gogh’s bitter, less-talented half-brother worked in upholstery. Serge jammed the window AC unit up all the way, closed his eyes and stuck his face in the freezing vent. Good ol’ number five.
It was a busy hour. Serge scurried around the cabin, stowing all his paraphernalia in The Special Places. Finally, he was done, the cottage in perfect order. Serge unfolded a scrap of paper from his pocket and committed a task list to memory. He ran out the door, cutting between other units. There were no fences, just one big feral lawn with pockets of standing water that connected all the cottages and homes behind the camp like an abandoned par-three golf course. Serge ran past a car parked behind cottage number three, which he couldn’t tell was a metallic green Trans Am because it was hidden under a tarp.
The curtains parted a slit on a back window of number three. Eyes watched Serge jog across the grass and disappear up the road. The curtains closed. The petite woman went back to the couch and sat bolt upright at the very edge. Full ashtray, nearly empty bottle of vodka, baggy eyes. She stared at the cell phone on the coffee table and was frustrated she didn’t feel the least bit drunk. Adrenaline.
Her name was Anna Sebring. She’d been up most of the night, glands on battle stations, constantly peeking out the curtains for a white Mercedes with tinted windows. Then back to the windows again at every random sound. Toads, raccoons rattling garbage cans, dragonflies bumping into porch lights, the people four cottages up with their midnight fish fry and campfire songs. That was the problem hiding out at the Old Wooden Bridge. It was so quiet it was noisy.
A tap on the window.
Anna screamed and found herself standing on the couch.
Another tap. At least it wasn’t gunfire or someone kicking in the door. And what if it was him? But how did he find her? The car?
Tap.
Anna slowly lowered a leg off the sofa. She made it to the window and parted the curtains….
Her heart seized. Face to face. The beady eyes and narrow beak of the great white heron that the previous tenants had been feeding. Dinnertime. Tap.
In the background, fishermen returned to the dock, and two guys carried a green kayak over their heads.
Anna closed the curtains. “Get a grip!”
She returned to the couch and drank the end of the vodka. She stared again at the silent cell phone on the coffee table. A fast pulse throbbed in her forehead, which was running a horrible, round-the-clock slide show. Always blood.
Anna didn’t want to turn on the TV in case it blocked out a warning sound. But this was getting ridiculous. She needed distraction.
Anna picked up the remote control and pointed it at the TV. She paused a moment and studied her own reflection in the black picture tube. She clicked the power button and was then looking at a photo of herself on the local news. The remote crashed to the floor; batteries rolled under the couch.
The multiple killings were all over TV, and now her photo, asking the public’s help. The picture switched to a live shot, rows of evenly spaced volunteers combing a field for her body. Anna curled up on the couch and pulled her knees tight to her body.
The cell phone rang.
Her head snapped toward the sound, and she curled tighter. Three rings. Answer it! Her body wouldn’t respond. It was like she was floating somewhere near the ceiling. Five rings. Pick it up! Seven rings, eight… She saw one of her arms reach for the coffee table.
“Hello?…”
Sunset, cottage number five
SERGE OPENED A thick, leather-bound book in his lap, the journal he wrote in at the end of each day. He tapped his chin with a pen and stared out the window at the fading light over Bogie Channel. He hunched over and started writing:
Captain Florida’s log, star date 764.354
Another night of vivid dreams. Found myself in Key West a hundred years ago when the lawless streets were filled with bloodthirsty smugglers and wreck-salvagers. Except for some reason I had a plasma gun, which gave me the edge. Basis for hit TV series? Which started me thinking: How the early pioneers must have lived! By the late 1800s, Key West had run out of fuel sources. So people on the other islands built giant, ten-foot-tall earthen kilns to make charcoal that they shipped down on boats for barter. Which brings us to what I did today: The Great Serge Kiln Project! It was a daunting task, but the payoff would be immense in spiritual terms. Then I got to thinking: Hey, this could also make some real money. Remember natural sponges? Sell bags of the shit all over the place. “Historic Keys Charcoal.” Completely change the way people cook out, make a ransom by mass producing the un-mass-produced simpler life like Ben and Jerry. I have to admit, it was getting pretty exciting! I walked over to No Name Key and found a perfect clearing in the woods. There was much to do. Prepare the site, gather the right wood, assemble a domed superstructure, pack it with mud, then diligently tend the fire for at least a week, narrowing and expanding the chimney so the charcoaling process doesn’t overheat or extinguish. And I’m standing there, staring at the ground, and I think: That’s way too much fucking work. So I drive to the convenience store for some briquettes. And on the way in I pass the Dumpster, and there’s that smell again. You know, the