by Tim Dorsey
“Right,” said Rebecca.
“Okay, Rebecca’s an easy lay. Who else?”
“I’d do that guy over there,” said Maria.
“The cheap Tom Selleck?”
“That’s the one.”
“Same terms as Rebecca?”
“Except that he also can’t smell bad after an hour or two. Or bob his head in the car to some song that he tells me perfectly captures the kind of person he is. Either of those two things, and it’s no Big O for Maria.”
“Are you talking about Charlie?”
“How’d you know?”
“I warned you not to go out with him, but did you listen?”
“Yuk is not a warning.”
“I’m starting to not want to date anyone who’s eligible,” said Paige.
“I know what you mean,” said Maria. “It’s like availability automatically disqualifies them. If they’re single and never been married, they’re either playboys or have some kind of psychological defect that prevents them from forming healthy relationships, like a private sexual ceremony you only find out about when you’re innocently going through his dresser and find the baby pacifiers and vibrating butt plugs and he accuses you of spying…”
“Charlie again?”
“Did I use any names?”
“And if they’ve been married and gotten divorced, what did they do to deserve it?” said Paige. “You don’t want to hire someone who’s just been fired…”
“And if she was the bad unit in the marriage, then his judgment is suspect…”
“The only decent ones are married, and if they fool around, what does that say?…”
“That means the only guys worth considering are widowers…”
“And you can’t go out with them because it’s way too depressing. Every few minutes some little thing reminds them of their dead wives, like a certain brand of perfume or a car horn, and they either stare off for an hour or cry real loud in a crowded restaurant.”
Sighs.
“So,” Sam said to Serge with overt contempt. “What’s with the tape recorder?”
“Preserving the show for future historians.”
The chemicals were undergoing a tidal shift in Serge’s head. He was now a man of mystery, currently involved in some kind of high-stakes smuggling game with the Russians. And these women…well, a good female agent will use any weapon at her disposal; Serge was determined not to let any of them lure him into the classic espionage “honey trap.”
Sam snickered. “You’re a historian?”
A historian was as good a cover as any. Serge nodded.
A tipsy Rebecca leaned toward Serge, brushing her shoulder against his. “Wow, a historian. I’ll bet that takes years of study and hard work.” Rebecca looked around at the others, and she could see it in their eyes: Slut!
This Rebecca could be the Mata Hari, thought Serge. But then, so could any of them. Watch your step.
A small redheaded man took the stage. Serge pressed a button on his recorder.
The Dixieland jazz began whimsically and slow but built with reckless precision. At one point, Serge had an uncontrollable urge to ask if he could sit in on trombone. Why not? It was a chance of a lifetime. But that would risk his cover because he didn’t know how to play the trombone, and national security had to come first.
Rebecca leaned cozily into Serge again. “Can you believe what this is costing?”
“Believe it,” said Serge. “You got your sixty-dollar entertainment charge, eighteen dollars for the appetizer if you want to cheap out, drinks, cab fare, coat check, tips. It never ends! Russell Baker was right. In New York, you hemorrhage money!”
The women smiled and tapped along with the music. With the exception of Sam, they were all starting to fall for Serge, so dashing and charming and funny—no clue he was crazier than a whirligig beetle—sitting there bouncing jauntily and playing the “air clarinet.”
An hour later, the room erupted in applause as Mr. Allen packed up his instrument and left the stage. White noise of conversation filled the room. Serge asked where the women were from, and they told him.
“Really? I’m from Florida, too!” he said. “What about family?”
“Most of our kids also go to school there,” said Teresa, “but a couple are out of state.”
“You have kids?” said Serge. “Pictures!”
Teresa opened her wallet and handed it to Serge. “He’s a fine one!…Okay, the rest of you!”
The others dug out wallets except Sam, who finally got moving after an elbow from Maria. Serge carefully lined the photos up on the table like a collection. “That sure is a blue-ribbon crop. You must be mighty proud parents! What do your husbands do?”
“We don’t have any.”
“Not anymore.”
“Irresistible women like yourselves?” said Serge. “Available?”
“Please!” Sam said under her breath.
“So you’re all single moms?” asked Serge.
They nodded.
“What the heck is this, a club or something?”
They nodded again.
“Well, you got all my respect. Single moms are my heroes. No tougher or more important job in America today, that’s a fact! I was raised by a single mom. I didn’t really think about it much at the time, but looking back—what she must have gone through! You may not know it to look at me today, but I was quite a handful.”
Sam muttered again.
“Did you say something?” asked Serge.
She smiled. “Nope.”
“Anyway, hats off to you. The country can’t do enough—Congress should come up with a medal!…”
His stock with the gals was going through the roof. “…If it was up to me, you’d get hazardous-duty pay, yes sir!…”
Rebecca looked at the others. “He has to come with us!”
“Yes, you have to!”
“We’ve got a limo.”
“How can a man say no to such lovely ladies…”
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” said Sam. “No offense, but we don’t know anything about him.”
“She’s right,” said Serge. “I’m a complete stranger you’ve just met in New York. God only knows what I’m capable of.”
“Who are you kidding?” said Rebecca. “You look so normal.”
“It’s the normal-looking ones you have to worry about,” said Serge. “You’re not going to end up in a sex dungeon because you went off with a wacky-looking guy.”
Rebecca laughed and put a hand on Serge’s shoulder. “You’re so funny!”
32
A small newsstand stood on the corner of Madison and Fifty-fifth. No business. A thin Guatemalan shivered inside the booth and rubbed his hands together in their mittens. A small battery-powered TV sat atop a stack of unsold tabloids. John Walsh walked angrily toward the camera. “Tonight on America’s Most Wanted, we’re on the lookout for a merciless serial killer who has been terrorizing south Florida and leaving a trail of bodies from Tampa to the Keys…”
The clerk turned up the volume on his little black-and-white set as a stretch limo rolled by on Madison Avenue. Sam sat in the backseat, turning up the volume on the little color TV flush-mounted in the wet bar.
“…We’re going to get a rare glimpse inside the twisted mind of a psychopath with some astonishing footage that will be shown for the first time anywhere right here on America’s Most Wanted!…”
Sam listlessly resumed watching TV with her chin in her hands. Her friends were acting like such fools. Look at them, standing up through the moon roof, whooping, hollering and dancing with that Serge guy, their hair blowing in the cool night wind below the skyscrapers.
“Hey, Sam,” Paige shouted down through the opening in the roof. “Why don’t you join us?”
“I’ll take a rain check.”
“…In the next few moments, you will hear the actual voice and see real footage of the suspect from a chilling videotape seized by police in Mi
ami. Pregnant women and those with heart trouble are asked to leave the room…”
“Come on, Sam!” “Yeah, come on, Sam!” “Don’t be a party pooper, Sam!”
“Oh, all right!”
Sam stood up and stuck her head through the moon roof as the image on the TV set switched to a thin, fortyish man sitting on a stool in front of a sky-blue portrait-studio backdrop. There was a banner over his head: SOUTH BEACH DATING SOLUTIONS.
An off-camera voice: “Ready anytime you are.”
The man cleared his throat. “Hi. My name is Serge. Serge…uh…Yamamoto. And I’m looking for that special gal out there who enjoys quiet evenings, walks on the beach, fine wine, good conversation, fact-finding missions and exhaustive library research…. You must be fun-loving, have a sense of humor, an open mind, incredible stamina and experience at rapidly loading cameras and firearms under hectic conditions…. Smokers okay, no hard drugs….
“I’m thirty-five, keep myself in reasonable shape. A spiritual army of one. No hangups that I’m comfortable talking about. Hobbies: genealogy, first editions, conch-blowing, my prize poinsettias, celestial navigation for the car, warning the populace about the impending social collapse. Scotch: Dewar’s.
“Turn-ons: women who use big words, women who wear glasses, women who work in libraries and state forests, women who perform in theme park marine mammal shows, bedroom role-playing involving the first territorial congress.
“Turn-offs: women who react to big words like somebody cut the cheese, women who change the color of their hair, women who change the size of their breasts, women who want to change you, women who know the names of MTV personalities, women who go to bars in groups complaining about men while hoping to be approached by them.
“Turn-ons: growth-management plans, no-wake zones, the annual return of the white pelican, the tangy scent of the orange blossom, Spanish doubloons, Saltillo tiles, Marjory Stoneman Douglas.
“Turn-offs: the unexamined life, deep-well injection, people who call radio shows and say ‘Mega dittos,’ politicians who pretend to like NASCAR for votes, stupid Floridian jokes, stupid Floridians…”
Off-camera voice: “Okay, that’s enough.”
“I’m not finished.”
“That was great. You’ll do fine.”
“But I have more to say. I have to present the whole picture.”
“Please get up. We have to start filming the next guy.”
“No!”
Two men appeared from behind the camera and approached. “Okay, buddy, on your feet.”
Serge pulled a pistol from his waist and coldcocked one over the head, dropping him to the ground in front of the stool. He pointed the pistol at the other one, who raised his hands.
“Get back there and keep filming until I say to stop.”
“You got it.”
Serge tucked the gun away and sat back down, an unconscious man at his feet. “…So if you’re searching for that special someone, if you’re tired of the bar scene, generously misleading personal ads and blind dates that turn into restraining orders, look no further….”
The limo beat a red light at Thirty-eighth Street, a tight cluster of people sprouting through the moon roof. “And there’s the Chrysler Building,” said Serge. “The spire contains the penthouse where Walter Chrysler once lived, lucky bastard, except he’s dead….”
Maria chugged a plastic glass of champagne and swayed. “Isn’t he the best tour guide ever?”
Teresa blew a paper noisemaker, which unrolled and hit Sam in the side of the head.
After a quick series of stops on Serge’s A-Tour of New York, the limo pulled up outside the GE Building. Serge jumped from the backseat. “To the Rainbow Room!”
They took the elevator to the exclusive bar on the sixty-fifth floor, facing the Empire State Building. “I saw them film Conan in this building. O’Brien, not the barbarian. And once I sat next to Katie Couric at the table right there. Scorcese opened his 1977 opus New York, New York in this room with Tommy Dorsey on the bandstand…. Let’s go!” Serge heading for the elevators.
“We just got here,” said Teresa.
“We just ordered,” said Maria, holding up a full beer.
But Serge was off to the races. The women chugged a few sips and ran after him.
“…And this is Sparks Steak House. Paul Castellano got whacked right there…. Back to the limo!”
They stopped at the corner of Broadway and Fifty-fourth; Serge ran down some stairs to a basement.
“And this is Flute, used to be a speakeasy. The acerbic writer Dorothy Parker came here all the time. Now that was a broad! Used to answer her phone: ‘What fresh hell is this?’”
“I was just about to say that,” said Sam. Teresa elbowed her.
“Back to the limo!”
“Slow down!” yelled Teresa. “Do you always move this fast?”
“No. When I’m alone, I move faster,” said Serge. “Like when I came to see Conan last year. I arrived four hours early and still almost missed it. As usual, I built in a vast cushion of time because I always have a lot of anxiety that I’ll be late. I didn’t plan on the museums.”
“The museums?”
“East side of Central Park, Museum Mile. You got the Met, the Frick Collection, National Academy of Design, the Museum of the City of New York, the Whitney, Cooper-Hewitt. I knew they were nearby. I just thought I had the willpower.”
“But you just couldn’t resist?” said Sam.
Serge nodded. “Which still wouldn’t have been a time problem until I remembered the Museum of Natural History was on the other side of Central Park. That’s where they have the Star of India, the world’s largest sapphire, stolen in 1964 by flamboyant Miami Beach playboy Jack Murphy, portrayed by Robert Conrad in the delightfully campy Murph the Surf. After the arrests and a lot of negotiation, an anonymous phone tip led detectives to an outdoor bus locker in Miami, where the sapphire was recovered and later put back on display. The caper is so carved into my brain that I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to see the gem in person. I made good time crossing Central Park to the museum, but then more trouble. To get to the gem room, you have to go through the Hall of Biodiversity. I really got hung up in there. Thousands of species on display, bacteria to great blue whales, phylums and families, marsupials, nocturnals, a rainbow of butterflies, blind fish from cold depths with no light, eels with scraggly teeth, bugs the size of your head, birds that can’t fly, squirrels that can, some shit with webbed toes and all these eyes, something else with dangling prongs sticking out its forehead. Then the other rooms, ancient civilizations, Neanderthals, dinosaurs, geological forces, continental plates, the stars and the cosmos, and finally, the Big Bang Room. My time-management was shot; started looking bad for Conan. Then, complete panic. My consciousness was expanding, id shrinking, the exhibits making me feel utterly insignificant, that life was a mere flashbulb going off, and I had a sensation of falling, trouble breathing, and I realized what it was. All this knowledge and awareness—I was getting closer to God. Which can be stressful. Takes a lot of intellectual curiosity and courage, and also you’ll get a bunch of heat from religious types because it involves evolution and science, which actually only points all the more to the existence of a deity, unfortunately not the kind you can use to boss others around….”
“So did you see it?”
“See what?”
“The sapphire.”
“Oh, the sapphire! Yes, I saw it. It was an unbelievable experience, the way the light breaks into six points across the oblate, azure surface. I got goose bumps. I was shaking so much I could barely hold the glass cutter steady.”
“A glass cutter,” said Rebecca, laughing. “What a riot!”
“Yeah, it was pretty funny. The guards had never heard that alarm before, and they didn’t know what to do. Two ran head-on into each other. I was laughing so hard I couldn’t finish getting through the glass. It’s a lot thicker than you’d expect.”
Maria tapp
ed her watch. “Eleven o’clock.”
“Right,” said Serge. “We better get moving.”
The chauffeur parked as close as he could to the blocked-off streets, and they all began walking west on Forty-sixth, working their way through the packed crowd to Times Square. They reached the corner of Seventh Avenue and looked up. In one direction, a twenty-foot cup of steaming ramen noodles. In the other, the lighted New Year’s Eve ball.
“I’m hungry,” said Maria.
“Me, too,” said Rebecca. They went in a Sbarro’s for pizza by the slice.
Except Sam. She withdrew. She stood outside the restaurant watching a sidewalk portrait artist with no customers working on a charcoal of Tina Turner.
Serge left the restaurant and stepped up beside her. She knew he would.
“You don’t like me, do you?” he said.
Sam turned and looked him strong in the eyes. “I want you to leave my friends alone. I want you to start walking right now and keep going.”
“What?”
“I know what you are. You’ve got a record somewhere, and if you stay I’ll find it and turn you in. So get going!”
“That settles it,” said Serge. “I’m in love with you.”
“What?”
“I know what you are, too,” said Serge. “Intelligence and confidence are always sexy in a woman.”
Sam grabbed the back of his head and kissed him hard, then stepped back. “I have no idea why I just did that.”
The other women came out of the restaurant with slices of pepperoni on paper plates, cheese stringing to their mouths.
“Where’d those two go?” asked Paige.
“Maybe we should go look for them,” said Rebecca.
Teresa shook her head. “We’ll lose our spot. We don’t want to miss the ball drop.”
Dick Clark was on TV, counting down.
Men’s and women’s clothes trailed across the carpet of the posh, dark room.
Serge was staying on the fifty-first floor of the Millennium Hotel. He was in bed, on top of Sam. Sam usually preferred the top, but Serge had flipped her with an illegal wrestling move. He reached beside the bed and yanked a cord, opening the curtains on the floor-to-ceiling windows. The night air was white with light, thousands of tiny people jamming Times Square far below.
