The Stingray Shuffle

by Tim Dorsey

  Teresa suddenly straightened up and got out her organizer. “We should make a list.”

  “Of what?”

  “Things to do as a group to break out of our ruts. Adventures, risks.” Teresa clicked her pen open. “Okay. New bylaw. Everything that goes on the list we all have to do together. No exceptions.”

  “Sounds like disaster,” said Sam.

  “The psychology of group behavior. It’ll embolden us to do things we’d never attempt as individuals.”

  “That’s how we got suffragettes,” said Rebecca.

  “And lynchings,” said Sam.

  “I don’t think I want to lynch anyone,” said Maria.

  “What about your ex-husbands?”

  “New bylaw,” said Teresa. “Those in favor?”

  “Aye.” “Aye.” “Aye.” “Aye.” “Nay.”

  “What sort of things do we put on the list?” asked Paige.

  “Stuff like sky-diving,” said Maria.

  Teresa sat poised with pen. “Item number one. Anybody?”

  “Sky-diving,” said Rebecca.

  “Sky-diving,” Teresa repeated as she wrote. “Number two?”

  “Okay, I’ve changed my mind. Let’s lynch my husbands.”

  “I’m being serious.”

  “So am I.”

  “Who’s got ideas, besides Maria, who needs to get in the proper spirit?”

  “Get a tattoo.”

  “Use a powerful man before he uses you.”

  “Watch the New Year’s ball drop in Times Square.”

  “Skinny-dip.”

  “Shoplift.”

  “That’s going too far,” said Sam.

  “We’ll give the stolen item right back,” said Teresa. “It’s the principle of the thing.”

  “I know,” said Rebecca. “Let’s get arrested at a protest.”

  “What kind of protest?”

  “Rocks and bricks and Molotov cocktails.”

  “No, I mean what cause?”

  “World peace.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Let’s meet Ralph Krunkleton.”

  “That’s a great idea,” said Teresa. “We’ve read what? Five of his books now?”

  Rebecca nodded hard. “He’s our newest favorite author, now. New.”

  “You might want to slow down on those shots.”

  “Why for?”

  Sam grabbed the purse off the back of her chair. “I’m going to the rest room.”

  “It’s outside around the corner,” said Paige.

  Sam walked down the corridor under the lobby, mumbling to herself; they were her friends and all, but their judgment was stinking up the joint. Sam found the door to the men’s room, stopped and looked around for the women’s. They were usually in pairs; she was hoping this wasn’t one of those places with some artsy unsymmetrical layout. She kept walking. Where was it?

  A man came around the corner. She could ask him. As he walked closer, Sam got a better look. Trim, muscular, flowing black hair, tight tennis shirt, solid chin. Rrrrrrrow! This could be two birds with the same stone. She’d ask where the women’s room was, and it would also be a perfectly innocent icebreaker.

  The man smiled as he got closer, great teeth.

  “Excuse me,” said Sam. “Can you tell me where—”

  The man took off running.

  “My purse!” Sam broke into a sprint.

  People lounging by the pool sat up and turned as the pair raced by the tiki bar, the man glancing over his shoulder, darting down the garden path, crashing through palm branches. He came out in the alley for the service vehicles, climbed up on a Dumpster and jumped over a fence. He ran another few yards, slowed up and turned around to see Sam jump down from the fence. He cursed and took off again. They were soon running along the wharf, past oyster bars and sailboats and antique shops. Sam was twenty yards back, not gaining but not falling off the pace either. They came around a street corner, running up a sidewalk by a multilevel parking deck with fresh graffiti: They paved over paradise and put up a parking lot. The man looked back again. Sam was still there. What was her problem? He ran through the streets of Old Town. Historic wooden cottages, gingerbread trim. He stopped and panted in front of a picket fence with pineapple-shaped holes. He looked back. Finally lost her. No, wait, there she was, coming around the place with the Bahamian shutters. He took a deep breath and charged south on Elizabeth Street, coming to an iron fence too tall to scale. He ran along it until he found an open gate. Ten seconds later, Sam dashed in the gate. They zigzagged through the cemetery, Sam catching glimpses of him between palm trees, above-ground crypts, whitewashed mausoleums and royal poincianas. The man stumbled, chest heaving. Sam cruised at the comfortable aerobic pace of daily after-work runs. The man finally put out his arms as he crashed into a crypt with a cement cherub on top. He turned and braced his back against it and flicked a stiletto knife open. Sam broke stride and stopped a few feet away. The man waved the knife weakly in the air, his back slowly sliding down the side of the crypt until he was in the sitting position, gasping for breath, the knife resting in a hand on the ground that he no longer had the strength to raise.

  Sam stepped forward and picked up her purse without interference. She turned and started walking away, the sound of desperate breathing behind her, then a single, barely audible word.

  “Cunt.”

  Oops.

  Sam stopped and stood a few moments with her back to him. The man was beginning to catch his breath and pushed himself to his feet. He picked up the knife. “Yeah, you heard me.”

  Sam spun around. She took a half-hop step at the start of her run, like a gymnast beginning a floor exercise, and galloped toward him with measured strides. She hit the brakes three feet away, where she correctly anticipated the knife swing. It lacked energy, and the blade floated by without menace. Before the man could begin the backslash, Sam planted her left foot and cocked her right leg to her flank, the way they taught her at the police academy when they let the prosecutors work out. The man only saw a blur as the side kick punched his lower ribs. Something snapped inside. He flew back against the crypt and went down to stay this time. The show was over, but Sam took the key-chain tear gas out of her purse anyway. She heard gagging and high-pitched screaming as she soaked him down good, for instructional purposes.

  When Sam got back to the hotel room, the others were mixing something in the blender, all wearing T-shirts from Captain Tony’s. Paige’s face had been painted by a street artist.

  “Where the hell’d you go?” asked Maria.

  “We thought you were taking a big dump or something,” said Rebecca. “But we couldn’t find you in the rest room.”

  “I went for a walk.”

  Teresa threw some more ice in the blender. “You missed all the fun.”

  13

  The pink Cadillac raced east out of Orlando on the Bee Line Highway.

  Unfortunately it was in the westbound lanes.

  Serge and Lenny screamed their lungs out as honking, swerving dump trucks and tractor-trailers passed by on both sides. All four of their hands tightly gripped the steering wheel, Serge pulling one way, Lenny the other.

  Serge: “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

  Lenny: “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

  The stretch of highway was currently undergoing roadwork, and cement retaining walls on both sides of the highway prevented the Cadillac from escaping down the grassy shoulders. Pickup trucks and Harleys split and passed around them.

  “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

  The Cadillac began weaving back and forth across all three lanes of highway, dodging head-on collisions. A minivan came straight at them; the Caddy veered left. Then a PT Cruiser; they swung right.

  The construction zone ended and Serge pulled hard on the steering wheel, taking the Eldorado down into the median strip, bounding back up the far side and into the correct lanes. He gave the wheel back to Lenny, who put on his right blinker, slowed and pulled over in the breakdown lane. He
and Serge stared at each other, both sheet-white, feeling their hearts pound through their chests like the coyote after the roadrunner almost runs him off a cliff.

  “What happened?” said Lenny, taking shallow breaths.

  “How much of it do you remember?”

  Lenny shook his head.

  “You don’t remember anything?”

  He shook his head again.

  “It all happened pretty fast…”

  Ten minutes earlier.

  Lenny stubbed out a joint in the Cadillac’s ashtray. “Are we there yet…hic…?”

  “A half hour to the Atlantic Ocean, then we swoop down on the money,” said Serge, holding the global tracker in both hands like he was flying a model airplane. “We have a solid transponder lock now, which means we should be able to pinpoint the briefcase’s signal within a half meter. We’re ‘go’ all the way!”

  “What do you plan to do with the money?…hic…Crap. These hiccups won’t go away…hic…Maybe if I smoke another joint and calm down…hic…” Lenny stuck a twistie in his mouth and fired up.

  “You know, I actually thought of taking up drugs once,” said Serge.

  “I thought you were against getting high…hic…”

  “I wouldn’t do it to get high,” said Serge. “I just like the sneaking-around part. You have to gain the confidence of your connection, set up the meeting, make the buy, hide your shit, make preparations whom you’re going to do it with, where, how, all without detection. Sort of like being a secret agent.”

  Lenny beamed proudly. “You mean like me?…hic…”

  “Afraid not, Condor. It’s just a matter of time before you gift-wrap yourself for the police. You’re the guy who gets caught after triggering a twenty-car pileup on the freeway by simultaneously trying to shotgun a beer and fire up a six-foot Cambodian bamboo peace pipe.”

  Serge opened a book.

  “What are you reading?…hic…”

  Serge showed him the cover of the book. Hypnosis Made Easy. “I got the idea from reading The Stingray Shuffle.”

  “The what?”

  “This novel by my favorite author. I first picked it up because it had a lot of stuff about Florida. And trains. Lots of trains. But it also had a bunch of hypnosis stuff, so I decided to research further.”

  “What kind of a name is Stingray Shuffle, anyway?”

  “You’ve never done the stingray shuffle?” asked Serge.

  Lenny shook his head.

  “When it’s stingray season in Florida during the summer, stingrays lie on the bottom of the water near the shore, under a thin blanket of sand, and you can’t see them. The stingrays would much rather flee than fight, but if you walk normally in the water and step on one, you pretty much pin it to the bottom and leave it no choice but to hit you in the leg with its poisonous tail barb.”

  “That’ll wreck a buzz.”

  “So instead of walking normally when you’re in shallow water, you shuffle your feet along. That way, if you accidentally come across a ray, you just bump it on the edge, and it spooks and swims away. It’s also a perfect metaphor for the on-your-toes, aware-of-your-surroundings, ready-to-jump-any-second dance you have to do every day in Florida to stay alive and ahead of the dangerous humans.”

  Serge opened his hypnosis book again. Lenny leaned across the front seat and looked over his shoulder, trying to read along.

  “Why are you reading about hypnosis?”

  “Because I’m into it now. I’ve decided to completely dedicate my life to the study of hypnosis.”

  “I thought you’d dedicated your life to trains.”

  “Trains and hypnosis.”

  “That’s an odd combination.”

  “I’ve learned not to question my muse…” Serge pointed forward at the road. “Will you please?”

  “What’s the book about?…hic…”

  “I told you. Hypnosis.”

  “…Hic…I know that from the cover.”

  “That’s what it’s about. I can’t change it.”

  “I mean, what specifically about it?…hic…”

  “Well, there’s a story here about a hypnotist in Europe who killed a woman onstage in 1894 by commanding her soul to leave her body. She had a heart attack.”

  “Oh…hic…right!”

  “I wasn’t there, but that’s what it says…. Lenny, you can’t read over my shoulder and drive at the same time. Pick one.”

  Lenny reluctantly returned to his side of the car and the approved ten-o’clock, two-o’clock steering-wheel grip.

  “Okay, Mr. Skeptic,” said Serge. “Want to get rid of those hiccups?”

  Lenny nodded. “Hic.”

  Serge turned sideways in his seat and spoke in a monotone. “Concentrate on my voice.”

  “What are you going to do?…hic…”

  “Make your hiccups leave your body.”

  “Not with my soul!…hic…”

  “Good point. I’ll try to make sure I get the pronouns right in the incantation.”

  “Don’t you need to swing a pocket watch…hic…or have me look at a pinwheel or something?”

  “That’s bullshit. Besides, you’re challenged enough with just the road.”

  “Hurry up,” said Lenny. “I hate hiccups…hic…”

  “Focus on my voice. Relax. Take deeper and slower breaths. Hiccups cannot survive at low rates of respiration….”

  “…Hic…I still have the hiccups.”

  “Shhhh! Don’t listen to the hiccups…. Only my voice…. You will continue to relax, the interval between hiccups growing longer each time…. Each hiccup is one less until they’re gone for good…. Okay, I’m not talking to Lenny anymore. Hiccups, do you hear me? I’m talking to you now. I command you—in the name of Christ, leave Lenny’s body!”

  Serge heard a rattling sound. He turned forward and saw they were off course, running over the raised reflectors as they crossed the inside breakdown lane, then down into the narrow median. Serge looked over at the driver’s seat and saw Lenny’s head slumped to his chest. He reached over and grabbed the wheel, but it was too late. They had already entered the construction zone, and the temporary cement retaining walls funneled them into oncoming traffic.

  “Lenny! Wake up!”

  “Huh? What? What is it?…Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

  “So that’s what happened,” said Lenny. “I hate it when I wake up driving.”

  “How are your hiccups?”

  Lenny thought a second. “They’re gone.”

  “What do you think about hypnosis now?”

  “Gimme a break,” said Lenny. “That didn’t do it.”

  “What do you mean? It did it and then some. You were fuckin’ out.”

  “That was the weed,” said Lenny. “It was already making me feel like nappy time.”

  “Atheist.”

  Lenny lit another joint, started up the car and pulled back on the road. Serge put down the hypnosis book and picked up the morning paper as they passed a thousand-acre brush fire.

  “Anything good?” asked Lenny.

  “Second-grader brings gun to school. Jesus, what ever happened to just sticking out your tongue?”

  “I still do it.”

  “Here’s an item on a drunk bridge tender who sent a car airborne,” said Serge, oblivious to the wall of flame down the side of the highway. “And someone stole the Picasso cat again from the Hemingway House. A funeral home is being sued for putting voodoo dolls in a chest cavity. Eleven more Floridians die from smoke inhalation trying to stay warm by barbecuing indoors. Man convicted of killing his dog because it was homosexual….”

  “How did he know?”

  “It says the Yorkshire made advances on another terrier named Bandit. That’s when the owner decided to put a stop to the godlessness.”

  “What is it about this state?” asked Lenny. “All my friends up north keep asking me: Does the freak show ever take a break down there?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talki
ng about.” Serge looked back down at his newspaper.

  Up ahead, Lenny saw a small stampede of flaming rabbits running from the brush fire and into the road, where they were snatched up by turkey buzzards circling overhead, whose claws were singed by the burning fur, and the rabbits began dropping by the dozen on passing vehicles, one splattering on the Cadillac’s windshield and bouncing over Lenny’s head.

  Serge looked up from his newspaper at the sound of the thud. “What the hell was that?”

  Lenny’s jaw fell open, the joint sticking to the spit on his lower lip.

  Serge pointed at the bloody stain on the windshield. “What kind of bug did you hit?”

  “It was a bunny.”

  “How’d you hit a bunny with your windshield?”

  Lenny pointed up at the sky.

  Serge shook his head. “You’re higher than a motherfucker.” He went back to his newspaper.

  Lenny took the joint out of his mouth, looked at it a second, then threw it out of the car.

  “Serge.”

  “What?”

  “Do you think I’m dysfunctional?”

  “No, Lenny. You know those nagging sensations you’re always having? Total alienation, utter lack of self-worth, chronic-masturbation guilt and perpetual dread of impending death?”

  “Yeah?”

  “That’s all normal. Feel better now?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Your problem is you lack focus. The key to life is hobbies, otherwise you’re asking for trouble. You know what they always say—if Hitler only had a train set…”

  “Who says that?”

  “Nobody ever says that. I have no idea where I get some of these thoughts, and you know what? I don’t care! Because I’m alive and the sun is shining!” Serge reached in his back pocket and pulled out a folded-up piece of paper.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s my Life List.”

  “What’s a Life List?”

  “The list of things you want to accomplish before you die. The idea is to keep you planning for the future or else you end up seventy years old on your porch with a rusting chain-link fence around a front yard full of barking Dobermans and a dismantled Skylark, and you never know why.”

  “Where’d you come up with this list idea?”