The Riptide Ultra-Glide

by Tim Dorsey

  “Oh, I’m not losing patience,” said Serge. “It’s another way of contributing to the common good. This woman clearly needs help. But how many times have you seen someone in distress and everyone else just stands around doing nothing. It’s not neighborly.”

  Serge tapped the woman on the shoulder.

  She turned around. Into the phone: “Hold on a second, some jerk . . .” She looked up: “What?”

  “I couldn’t help but overhear,” he said. “Because I was placing my ear real close trying to overhear. My name is Serge Storms, and I wander from town to town helping people. I don’t do it for the thanks, just the satisfaction of seeing a person tearfully realize that someone else out there truly cares. But how do I help? you ask. By sharing invaluable pointers that will revolutionize your life! Could be as simple as which technical college fits your strengths, or a slight fashion correction that will land you the big promotion. Friends and relatives could easily do the same, but they’d be jealous of your success. In your case, I’ve already customized my program to pinpoint everything that’s holding you back from the cover of Fortune. Ready? You shouldn’t spend so much time on the phone if you’re shaped like a hippo.”

  Serge stepped back with a giant grin.

  An astonished gasp. “How dare you!”

  “Because I care,” said Serge. “And if that tube top ever gives way, you’re going to kill at least five people.”

  A shorter man next to her stepped forward. “Who the hell do you think you are, talking to my wife like that?”

  “An at-large life coach, just trying to help,” said Serge. “And while I’m at it, lose the diamond earring. You look like a prick and definitely don’t want to attract attention to your face.”

  The couple rushed away from the counter and toward the door.

  Coleman whistled. “Look how fast they’re moving.”

  “They’re chasing success,” said Serge.

  “We’re next up.”

  Serge stepped to the counter and dumped out his bag of CDs and DVDs. He smiled at the employee.

  She smiled back. “You want to return those?”

  “No,” said Serge. “I want you to open them.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Open these, please.” Serge picked up one of the movies and clawed at it like a squirrel. “These things are friggin’ impossible to open. And my futile attempts have now passed sleep as the largest time slice of existence.”

  “Sir, I just handle returns and exchanges—”

  Serge pointed up. “Does the sign say ‘Customer Service’?”

  “Yes?”

  “Please open these.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Neither can I,” said Serge. “Especially because I bite my nails. I bite other people’s, too, but they always had it coming. So I really need you to open these because I don’t have the time, but who does if you have a job? I don’t have a job, but I participate in current culture, which is like three jobs, not to mention constantly writing letters to the president to keep his spirits up. I recently sent him one saying Illegitimi non carborundum. That’s Latin for ‘Don’t let the bastards grind you down.’ Except my Latin was rusty and I think I wrote, ‘The organ grinders are bastards.’ Hoo-wee, they must think I’m crazy up there, so I wrote him a corrected letter.” Serge pulled an envelope from his back pocket and flapped it energetically in front of her face. “I’m going to stand in line at the post office next. Even if you’re into patience, that’s hard-core. Which is why you can surely understand that I need you to open these.”

  The woman maintained a professional gaze. “Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to step away from the counter.”

  Serge pointed at a male employee walking behind her. “What about you, sir? Can you open these?”

  “No, they’re too hard to open.” He kept walking.

  Serge turned to face the line behind him. “Can any of you open these fucking things?”

  They all shook their heads.

  “Sir!” the woman said sternly. “Your language! This is a family store.”

  “Oh, I get it,” said Serge. “You’re one of those customer-service people.” He slowly twirled a finger in the air. “You like to twist the meaning of words to your advantage. If anyone in this discussion has family values, it’s me. I just bought Beach Boys and Annette Funicello, but do you have any idea how many R-rated movies and CDs with explicit-lyric warnings are on the racks back there? You’re the ones peddling pussy, bitches, and ho’s.”

  She picked up the phone. “I’m calling security.”

  “Really? You think they can open these?” He turned around to the line again. “Am I right or am I right?”

  Three large guards arrived. “What seems to be the problem here?”

  Serge pointed behind the desk. “Her . . . I’m just trying to buy some wholesome family entertainment while this establishment is trafficking in cocksucker and cunt.” He began filming the guards with his camcorder. “And could you give me a little more anger for my reality show?”

  Seconds later, the front doors of the store burst open. Serge and Coleman came flying out and tumbled on the pavement.

  A deep voice. “If we ever see you around here again, we’re calling the police.”

  Then a shower of violently flung CDs and DVDs that smashed on the ground.

  Coleman crawled over with skinned palms and picked up the Good Vibrations disc. “Some of these broke open.”

  “I was right. I knew they could do it.” Serge pushed himself up. “It just took me to show them their potential.”

  WISCONSIN

  The winter was a long one. Patches of snow still covered the ground near the feet of the protesters, screaming and waving signs at the dome of the state capitol in Madison.

  It was a new era of hope.

  Across the nation, recent elections had swept fresh blood into office. They would reinstill fiscal responsibility. Among their first chores was to end wasteful collective-bargaining agreements for workers. Which made it a Right-to-Work State. Which cleared the way for layoffs. But the dismissals only trimmed the fat, you know, like police officers, teachers and firefighters.

  All the jobs were eliminated by politicians who said their biggest campaign donors deserved tax breaks, because they called themselves job creators.

  But you just can’t please some people. And hundreds of them now ringed the capitol grounds, hollering and otherwise dampening the party. They’d been coming for weeks, setting up before dawn and rubbing mittens together. TV cameras from local morning shows broadcast the images between traffic reports and college basketball scores.

  Twenty miles away, a cold gray light came through a kitchen window. The thermometer outside the window on the bird feeder said five. A red grain silo with a silver dome stood silently on a white hill.

  Barbara McDougall glanced at the small television mounted under her cabinets and continued spreading fat-free mayo on a baloney sandwich. The sandwich went in a stack with three others, awaiting Saran Wrap and brown paper bags. Bar, as her parents called her, learned from TV that a dozen protesters had been arrested, Interstate 94 was clear all the way to Oconomowoc and the Badgers won in double overtime.

  Bar heard footsteps from behind and smiled, but didn’t turn around. A peck on the cheek. “Good morning.” Her husband, Patrick. He started the coffee. The kitchen curtains were plaid, in a color scheme popular at bagpipe funerals.

  “They laid off another five hundred,” said Bar.

  Pat sat down at the table with the paper. “State Journal says six.”

  “Charlie called last night. He just got word.” Barbara set two paper sacks on the edge of the counter. “Jen’s gone, too.”

  “Everything will work out,” said Pat.

  “I know,” said Bar, pulling out her own chair at the table and pl
acing a hand on top of her husband’s. “It always does.”

  Their exchange wasn’t just platitudes or keeping a stiff lip. They were among the few people who genuinely counted their blessings. You had to hate them.

  They had gotten their own notices the previous week. Abrupt walking papers after seven years with the school district. And an awkward arrangement because it took effect at the end of the school year, which was three more months. Because the district needed the teachers.

  The vast majority of their colleagues quit immediately. An option with a severance package. Who could blame them? Bar and Pat never considered it.

  Theirs was an older wooden house, behind a dairy farm, with propane tanks on the side. The kind of extremely small place that Realtors call cozy. But it was ample room since there were only the two of them. Not their choice. The McDougalls desperately wanted children but couldn’t have any, even though they were practicing Catholics and rabid Packers fans.

  That’s why they would finish the school year. And volunteer after that. Their students were their children. Corny, yeah, the premise for a schmaltzy network series, except these were not made-for-TV kids. The McDougalls volunteered for special-needs duty.

  They were offered developmentally delayed. They turned it down, and said what they really wanted. The administrator stared at them in disbelief, then signed off immediately before they could change their minds.

  Their classrooms had special, washable paint, floor padding, and no sharp corners. Three grades were combined, six-to-eight-year-olds, emotional disorders. Courtney cried all day, Jason had to wear a football helmet, Gary was permanently stuck making a beeping sound like a truck backing up, and Alex threw feces.

  That was just Barbara’s class. Patrick was stabbed at least once at the beginning of each day, even though it was only a Popsicle stick.

  “I stab you! Stab! Stab! Stab!”

  “That’s nice, Jeffrey. Now time to sit down.”

  Then Harry’s turn: “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”

  And all the other kids in unison: “I’m telling!” “I’m telling!” “I’m telling!”

  As he did every morning, Patrick picked up an acoustic guitar. The students magically settled down, more or less, and sang along.

  The McDougalls were unflagging. First to arrive at school, last to leave. And every single student got extra attention. They spent hours on the phone with parents and made house calls.

  At the end of the first year, the children had become, well, a year older. Still the same by measurable test standards. But there was a difference only a parent could notice. They were more reachable.

  At the PTA meetings, some parents had tears. Bar and Pat were nominated and heavily favored for teachers of the year, but the award instead went to someone whose family barbecued with the chairman of the school board. The principal put in for special merit-pay raises, but the district gave it to a phys ed teacher who turned the football team around.

  A lot of people complained.

  But not the McDougalls. They were happy as long as they were with their students.

  So they were laid off.

  Chapter Four

  KEY LARGO

  Two men sprinted frantically from a post office and jumped in the front seat of a ’76 Gran Torino.

  “I got to get the hell out of here.” Serge turned the ignition and floored it. “I know I said I was into patience, but that was like waterboarding.” He grabbed his camcorder and rewound the film. “All that footage was worthless. Just people standing around. It was too real.”

  Coleman’s shaking hands cracked a beer. “Don’t ever let me go back in that place. It’s enough to make me give up pot.”

  “I thought you said you had a good buzz.”

  “I did. It was excellent weed,” said Coleman. “That’s the problem. I was totally grooving, and suddenly I realized I’m in a brightly lit place crowded with people that’s super-quiet. And they all just knew I was stoned, man. Except they all acted like they didn’t, which is how you know they can tell you’re totally baked. Your pulse races, you can’t catch your breath, and your face and palms get all clammy, which just makes it more obvious. There’s nothing so terrifying as when they all know, man.”

  “Coleman, I really don’t think anyone knew,” said Serge.

  “Of course they didn’t know,” said Coleman. “It was just the drug creating this horrible effect. That’s how you can tell it’s excellent weed.”

  “I had my own horror show back there,” said Serge. “Like one of those bad science-fiction movies where an alien ray gun shoots a plasma beam at the town square, and it acts like a giant blob of glue.”

  “I thought it was only the pot that made them seem slow to me,” said Coleman. “Could have sworn the guy working that one counter had died.”

  “No, it wasn’t the pot,” said Serge. “He actually had a near-death experience. His heart stopped and he was clinically dead while handling three or four customers, then when he came back from the tunnel of light, he’s thinking: ‘All this rushing isn’t good for me. I’m going to smell the roses.’ ”

  “Is that when we were almost to the counter, and he suddenly put out his ‘Position Closed’ sign and went backstage?”

  “Must be where they keep the roses,” said Serge.

  “I thought your head was about to explode when he left,” said Coleman.

  “It was,” said Serge. “It only fed my post office psychosis. Whenever I’m in one, and almost to the counter, I keep repeating to myself: ‘Please don’t put out the “Position Closed” sign; please don’t put out the “Position Closed” sign; dear God, don’t let him put out the sign; please, please, please, I’m almost to the counter! I made it! I finally made it! He didn’t put out the . . . Wait, what’s he reaching for? . . . Fuck!’ ”

  “You did yell ‘fuck’ pretty loud back there.”

  “But I quickly apologized to the crowd and pointed at the sign,” said Serge. “You could tell they had all been repeating the same thing.”

  Coleman fiddled with a lighter that was low on butane. “That was a brutal wait. There were only two people at the counter, but a whole bunch of guys in the back room. You could see them through the doorways. What were they all doing?”

  “Standing in groups just out of sight behind the doorway. Then, one by one, they send someone across to the other side so we think that actual activity is happening. But they’re just walking to stand in a circle painted on the floor until it’s time to be sent back the other way. Except for the one guy who’s assigned to come out of the back room every fifteen minutes and walk up to a ‘Position Closed’ sign, and all the customers joyously weep and praise Jesus, but he just opens a drawer for some scissors and goes back.”

  “How do you know all this?” asked Coleman.

  “I don’t,” said Serge. “It’s too easy to make fun of the post office. And ironic, considering their deceptively amazing efficiency. For less than the price of a newspaper, I can stick a small square on an envelope, and two days later my letter is a thousand miles away being dusted for prints by the cops. It’s a modern miracle.”

  “But then why does everyone make fun of the post office?” asked Coleman.

  “To feel good about ourselves,” said Serge. “We used to brighten the day by shitting on ethnic and religious minorities. But that got ruined just because it turned out to be very, very wrong. So now the post office is one of the last prejudice sanctuaries left, like bad-mouthing airline food: Fire at will! . . . Except I genuinely like airline food because of the cool packaging, and it’s not the postal employees’ fault about the waiting lines. Management messes up staffing and sends a million people to one post office with no customers, and vice versa. The jokes are unfair and cruel.”

  “So you’re going to stop telling them?”

  “No, it’s fun,” said Serge. “Plus,
there’s a lot of responsible things you need to do while waiting, like reading the sign that says it’s a federal crime to assault a postal employee. Okay, that’s always good to be reminded of. Then I check the FBI photos to make sure I’m not up there. Now I’m free to kick back and enjoy checking out the photos of who is up there. What a bunch of losers! Those creepy mug shots are one of my very first memories as a tiny kid. Killers, kidnappers, people who assault postal employees. I was only four, and still thought logically: These pictures are up here, so it must be a system that’s working. I mean, they’re not asking us to spot people in Seattle; all these guys obviously live in my neighborhood. And they wondered why I was a jumpy child.”

  Coleman pointed his joint at the windshield. “Where are we going now?”

  “To find an ATM,” said Serge. “I’m low on cash.”

  “There’s one,” said Coleman. “But how do you get a bank account?”

  “Most people think that if you’re a fugitive, it’s harder than it actually is, but establishments aren’t as strict with ID when you’re giving them money,” said Serge. “Any kind of fake photo ID will suffice, like an annual pass at the zoo, and you rent one of those private PO boxes at a strip mall that appears to be a real street address. Does that answer your question?”

  “I meant an account in general,” said Coleman. “I’ve never had one. But I’ve heard about them. And I see people going in and out of banks. Just curious.”

  Serge parked at a slot right in front of the machine. “We’re in luck. Only one guy in line.”

  They jumped out, and Serge took up a spot at the edge of the curb.

  Coleman leaned sideways. “Why are we standing so far back?”

  “Another tip to weld society together. Give the person up to bat at the ATM plenty of space so they’re not nervous about you peeking at their PIN number or slipping a blade between their ribs the second the money spits out.”

  “You said that kind of loud,” said Coleman. “I think he heard.”

  “Good,” said Serge. “Then he’s happy to know the knife isn’t coming.”