Torpedo Juice

by Tim Dorsey

  18

  Old Wooden Bridge Fishing Camp, cottage number five

  S ERGE STARED IN the bathroom mirror, admiring his torn and bloody race T-shirt.

  Coleman stared in the open fridge. “Only bottled water.”

  Serge returned to the sofa and opened a notebook.

  Coleman plopped next to him and turned on the TV with the remote. The Style Channel, Fashion Emergency! “What’s the plan?”

  “Now that I’m completely physically fit, we move on to Phase Two.” Serge flipped notebook pages to a freehand schematic. “I’ve chopped the islands up into grids, just like when they do population counts of the endangered deer. If Miss Right is within these quadrants, she won’t get away.”

  Coleman hit the remote again. “You know, most of my married friends, it was a chance meeting. They were simply going about their lives, and one day true love just fell in their laps.”

  “No time,” said Serge. “My clock is ticking.”

  “What about a mail-order bride?”

  “They’re always running up long-distance bills to Estonia.”

  Coleman idly gazed around the inside of the simple cabin. “I didn’t know you were staying here. I didn’t even know it existed.”

  “The Old Wooden Bridge? Absolutely! Couldn’t stay anywhere else! Just look at her!”

  Coleman looked. “So?”

  “So your paradigm’s all screwed up. The ideal motel isn’t someplace in walking distance of the strip-joint district and sports bars and flashing signs for Jell-O shots.”

  “It’s not?”

  “Check that beautiful water and sky. You need to get in harmony with life. Turn the TV off.”

  “But without TV we’ll die.”

  “Just try it.”

  Coleman clicked the set off. He clicked it back on. “I see what you mean.”

  “It’s like we just went to Mass.” Serge stood up. “Let’s rock….”

  The ’71 Buick Riviera chugged slowly south on Big Pine Key. Serge was driving with binoculars to make sure they didn’t run over any deer.

  “Can you drive better like that?” asked Coleman.

  “I’m not sure. It’s too dark to see anything.”

  Bang.

  “What was that?” asked Serge.

  “Used to be a mailbox.”

  Serge tossed the binoculars in the backseat and turned in behind Eckerd drugs. The Buick parked at a small, lime green building. MONROE COUNTY BRANCH LIBRARY.

  A dark van screeched around the corner and skidded up two slots down from the Buick. The side panel flew open.

  “Uh-oh.”

  “What is it?” asked Coleman.

  Serge got out of the car. “Thought I told you guys to leave me alone!”

  The cult people didn’t answer. They were all wearing identical custom T-shirts with a big picture of Serge’s face above a quotation: “I follow nobody.”

  “You’ve got to stop tailing me,” said Serge. “I’m jumpy enough as it is.”

  They sat on the ground and listened.

  “Okay, okay. I give up. How about this: We set regular weekly meeting times at the community center when I’ll come by and give a talk. But the rest of the time you leave me alone. Deal?”

  They nodded.

  Serge and Coleman headed toward the library.

  “You’re really going to go talk to them?” asked Coleman.

  “Actually, there are some things I’ve been meaning to get off my chest,” said Serge. “An audience is an audience.”

  They walked inside the library. Someone waved from the front desk.

  “Hi, Serge!”

  “Hi, Brenda!”

  “That’s Brenda?” whispered Coleman, checking out the tall, curvy blonde with killer dimples and Cameron Diaz smile. “The one they were talking about in the pub who’s hot for you? She’s about the sexiest woman I’ve ever seen in my life!”

  “Just a friend.” Serge started walking toward the desk.

  “Holy cow!” said Brenda. “What happened to your shirt! It’s all torn and covered with blood.”

  “Tough race.”

  “You were in the big race today?” said Brenda.

  “Was even leading for a while.”

  “How’d you finish?”

  “Pretty good, but those stupid race officials disqualified me.”

  “Why?”

  “I crossed the finish line in a Buick.”

  Brenda laughed. She reached across the desk and put her hand on Serge’s. “You have a great sense of humor.”

  “He’s getting married,” said Coleman.

  Brenda lost her smile and stood upright, then hid her disappointment. “Congratulations. I’m happy for you. Who’s the lucky girl?”

  Coleman explained.

  Brenda laughed again. “You crack me up.”

  “I’m ticking.”

  She reached and squeezed his hand. “You’re not the marrying type. We’re two of a kind that way. I get off in a half hour. What do you say we grab a bite at Mama’s? It’s really romantic at night in the back garden.”

  “Too busy,” said Serge. “You wouldn’t believe my workload. Injustice, disease, answering fan mail from Stephen Hawking…”

  “If you change your mind, here’s my number.” She wrote on the back of an index card.

  “Thanks.” Serge turned. “Coleman, where’d you get that six-pack? You can’t drink in the library!”

  “He can if he’s with you,” said Brenda.

  Serge wandered off for special collections.

  Coleman came up from behind with his beer. “What on earth are you doing?”

  “Looking something up.”

  “No, I mean back there with Brenda. She wants you.”

  “No, she doesn’t.”

  “Are you blind? Didn’t you see how she was leaning? Touching your hand like that?”

  Serge scanned bound volumes on a shelf.

  “She even asked you out for a date. What more proof do you need?”

  “That was only platonic.” Serge pulled down a volume and flipped through nineteenth-century deed filings. “I’m not going to punish a woman for being nice like the other men do.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He replaced the volume and pulled down another. “A woman can’t just be courteous in today’s culture. She always has to worry about striking a perfect balance. If she’s too distant, she’s a bitch on wheels. If not, some guy starts driving by her house two hundred times a day.”

  “I don’t understand you,” said Coleman. “You’re conducting this big search, and Brenda’s right under your nose.”

  “Not my type.” Serge found an entry in the deed book and marked it with Brenda’s index card. “You wouldn’t know it to look at her, but she’s a real party animal.” He stuck the volume under his arm and headed for the Xerox. “Appears ultimately conventional in the library setting, reserved clothes and demeanor. But run into her on the weekend and all bets are off. Hangs out at the clothing-optional Atlantic Shores and gets absolutely wasted. She’s got a clit ring, which she’s always losing, along with her cell phone and purse…. Coleman, where’d you go?”

  Coleman was grabbing a bookcase for equilibrium. “Jesus, Serge. If you don’t want her, I do.”

  “She’d rip you apart.”

  “Hopefully.”

  Serge raised the Xerox’s cover and flattened the deed book on the glass.

  Coleman finished his beer and threw it in the trash. He pulled another off the plastic ring. “Ever Xerox your balls?”

  “Let me think a second,” said Serge. “Uh…no.”

  He turned the deed book over and reached in his pocket. “I’m out of change.”

  “I’ll be at the computers,” said Coleman.

  Serge went to the research desk and pulled a one from his wallet. “Excuse me…”

  He hadn’t noticed her before. The demure little woman. Thick glasses, hair pulled back, wrong clothes but
toned to the neck.

  “What is it?”—not looking up from the novel she was reading.

  “Uh…Xerox…dollar…”

  She made change with one hand, never taking her eyes off the book.

  Serge floated back across the library to the main desk, little cartoon hearts in a conga line around his head.

  “Brenda…”

  “Hellllloooo there, stranger.” She leaned practically close enough to kiss.

  “Who’s that over there?”

  Brenda tilted her head to look around Serge’s. “Molly? She’s new. Just started this week.”

  “What do you know about her?”

  “As much as you.”

  “Think she’d go out with me?”

  Brenda involuntarily giggled. She covered her mouth. “I’m sorry. I just don’t see the two of you…”

  “She’s the one.”

  Brenda covered her mouth again.

  “No, really. I think she’s crazy about me.”

  Brenda composed herself. “Did she even look at you?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “She doesn’t look at anyone. Barely talks.”

  “I sense something. A soul-mate connection.”

  Coleman came over from the computers. “They blocked the porn on those things.”

  Brenda pointed across the room. “Coleman, what do you think of her?”

  “Who? That goofy chick?”

  “Serge thinks he’s found his soul mate.”

  “I’m going to ask her out.”

  Brenda and Coleman watched Serge stiffly approach the reference desk. Coleman popped another beer. Brenda checked her watch. Ten minutes till closing. “Can I have one of those?”

  It was a short, one-sided conversation on the other side of the room. Molly kept reading her book. The discussion ended without her ever making eye contact. Serge came back to the front desk.

  They were prepared to console him.

  “She said yes.”

  “You’re kidding,” said Brenda.

  “I pick her up Saturday at seven.”

  Serge and Coleman left the library and headed toward the Buick. Coleman stopped and whispered something to Serge.

  Brenda flicked off the lights and went to lock up the front. Serge and Coleman were waiting outside. She opened one of the doors. “Yes?”

  “Coleman has something he’d like to ask.” Serge poked him in the ribs.

  Brenda waited.

  Coleman looked at the ground and played with his belt buckle. “I was sort of wondering if you maybe, you know, might want to go on kind of a”—his voice dropped to inaudible—“double date?”

  “I couldn’t hear you,” said Brenda.

  “He wants to double-date,” said Serge.

  Brenda suppressed the gag reflex. Then she thought quickly. It was one step closer to Serge. “Sure.”

  “Really?” said Coleman. “I mean, great! Pick you up at seven!”

  19

  T HIS IS EYEWITNESS FIVE correspondent Maria Rojas outside the Miami courthouse, where we’ve just received word that the jury has reached a verdict in the infamous airbag-murder case…”

  The courtroom was hushed. The jury foreman stood.

  “As to the single count of negligent homicide in the first degree, we find the defendants…not guilty.”

  Yahoo!

  People jumped up from the defense table. Hugs and high-fives. Prosecutors quietly filled briefcases with papers. Someone jumped up in the audience. “You call this justice!” Bailiffs grabbed the man, the father of the Margate woman who hit a retaining wall on I-95 and went headfirst into the undeployed airbag full of sand.

  Pristine Used Motors made a killing fixing up totaled cars and not telling. They bought the wrecks at auction. Head-ons, T-bones, cars sheared in two. Sometimes they welded together halves of different cars. The junks were practically free, the bodywork done by underpaid wizards with no green cards. They replaced grills, straightened fenders, somehow got them running and, most crucial of all, a nice wash and wax. Out on the lot they went, under the balloons and strings of flapping pennants, big orange numbers on the windshields: $3999!

  One of the biggest profit zones was the airbags that had opened in the wrecks and were required by law to be replaced. But that was hundreds of dollars. Sand was free. Other dealerships moved more cars, but Pristine Used Motors was all about the margin. The owners had become quite wealthy and now drove fancy luxury vehicles purchased from reputable dealers because they wanted to make sure the airbags worked.

  The odds began to hit. One fatal head-on, then a second, paramedics peeling open cars with hydraulic jaws. Prosecutors took it to the grand jury. The owners were a step ahead. They had compartmentalized the operation, assigning only one mechanic to airbag duty in a locked garage after hours. Then, every other month, an anonymous tip to immigration, and the mechanics were somewhere in Tijuana when the D.A. came looking for witnesses.

  The defense: Hey, we’re as outraged as you are! The mechanics were working on commission and did this without our knowledge. They skated on the first case. Prosecutors weren’t allowed to introduce the acquittal at the second.

  The postverdict celebration spilled down the courthouse steps, where a red BMW full of scuba gear was waiting at the curb. The three defendants had decided in advance that they were going to let off some serious steam if they got out of this one. They jogged to the street and piled in the car.

  A reporter ran after them with a microphone.

  “Are you guilty anyway?…”

  The BMW headed south.

  THE ’71 BUICK RIVIERA neared the eastern end of the Seven-Mile Bridge. It had a newly installed trailer hitch.

  Coleman fired a doobie. “Where are we going?”

  “Have to start preparing for the wedding.”

  “You mean the date.”

  “That’s just a formality,” said Serge. “We’re meant to be together.”

  “Aren’t you getting ahead of yourself?”

  “That’s the best place. I’m going to ask her to marry me.”

  Coleman took a big hit. “Can’t believe I’m actually going on a date tomorrow.”

  “Weddings are incredibly complicated,” said Serge. “A million arrangements to be made. That’s why you have to get a huge jump.”

  “I thought the women took care of everything.”

  “Are you kidding? The guy has all kinds of responsibilities leading up to the big day.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you need to hurry up and buy all the shit your wife would never let you get after you’re married. I’ve always wanted an airboat.”

  “Hey, look!” said Coleman. “A waterspout!”

  “I see it,” said Serge. “Out by the Sombrero Key light. It’s a big one.”

  “Whenever I spot one, I feel special.”

  “Me, too,” said Serge. “I’m going to make a wish.”

  “You can’t make a wish on a waterspout. Only shooting stars and magic wells.”

  “That’s just politics.”

  “The spout’s gone,” said Coleman. He took a big hit. “Now I’m bored.”

  “Let’s look for irony.”

  “Okay.” Coleman took another hit. “Does something I already saw count?”

  “If it’s worthy.”

  “Then I’m calling it. That store back on Stock Island. Paradise Guns and Ammo.” Coleman licked two fingers on his right hand and slapped Serge hard on the forearm.

  “Ow,” said Serge. “My turn. Let’s see…. Over there. That Suburban with the PROTECT THE MANATEES specialty license plate.”

  “What about it?”

  “It also has a Florida Cattlemen’s bumper sticker: EAT MORE BEEF.”

  “So?”

  Serge licked two fingers. “Save the seacows, fuck the land cows.” Slap.

  “Ow.”

  “Here’s Pigeon Key coming up.” Serge pointed north at the remains of the old Seven-Mile Bridge r
unning parallel to the new span. “That gap is where they blew it up in True Lies, just before Schwarzenegger reached down from the helicopter and pulled Jamie Lee Curtis out the sunroof of a limo plummeting into the sea. And over there’s where the van transporting a drug smuggler crashed through the railing in James Bond’s Licence to Kill. In that same movie, then-Florida Governor Bob Martinez makes a two-second Hitchcock cameo as a short-sleeve guard when Timothy Dalton gets out of his cab at Key West International…. Coleman? You all right?…”

  Coleman was giggling. “Pussy Galore…”

  “Different movie. Low-water mark of Bondian humor.”

  Coleman couldn’t control his snickers. “It’s just too funny. Know what I mean? How do they ever think up that stuff? See, her first name is, you know, and like her last name…Zow! Good weed!…”

  The Buick neared the end of the bridge and the shore of Vaca Key.

  “What’s that new building over there?” said Serge.

  “Which one?”

  “That big one on the shore. When did they start putting it up?”

  “Looks like it’s already up.” A swarm of workers in white caps painted the outside with rollers.

  “It’s a monstrosity,” said Serge. “It’ll wreck my views from the Seven-Mile.”

  They came off the bridge. The Buick pulled into a strip mall on U.S. 1 and parked in front of Marathon Discount Books.

  Ting-a-ling.

  “Hi, Serge.”

  “Hi, Charley. You got the new Keys history book in? That Viele guy?”

  “Right in front of you.”

  “Coleman, come here.”

  “What?”

  He swept an arm over the local-interest section. History, fishing, zoology, cooking, oversized pictorials—all faced out. “Charley values tradition. Let’s go to the bathroom.”

  Charley watched skeptically as they walked to the back of the store, squeezed into the tiny, one-person rest room and closed the door.

  They came back out. “Cool,” said Coleman. “Autographed literary posters while you take a leak.”

  “The chains don’t understand anything.”

  Charley rang up Serge’s book. “Twenty-six, fifty-seven.”

  Serge tapped the counter. “Listen, Charley, do you think maybe you could put it on the tab?”