by Tim Dorsey
The applause was overwhelming.
“What? What the hell’s this?” said Zargoza.
The television camera pulled back to show C. C. Flag on a large stage.
This isn’t Vista Isles, thought Zargoza. This is the condominium next door. Standing onstage next to Flag, applauding his every word, was Malcolm Kefauver, the incredible shrinking mayor of Beverly Shores. Behind them hung an American flag and a giant banner: “Proposition 213.”
“Holy shit,” Zargoza yelled. “This is that stupid anti-immigration thing. This can’t be happening!”
The TV panned over the large crowd in front of the stage. Several people waved signs: “They don’t look right!” “Different is evil!” and “If you can’t understand something, kill it!”
Zargoza leaped to his feet in front of the TV. “You bastard! You stupid, stupid bastard! What are you doing to me! Somebody give me a gun so I can kill myself.”
One of the goons handed him a gun.
“No, you fool!” He slapped the gun away. “Go get Flag, now!”
Three goons ran out the door.
Zargoza squatted like Yogi Berra in front of the TV set, punching a fist into an open hand. On TV, there was a commotion up onstage. Flag struggled with three men, then disappeared off the back of the scaffolding.
Moments later the door to Zargoza’s boiler room slammed open, and the goons hustled C. C. Flag inside and pushed him to the ground.
“You wanted to see me?” Flag asked, standing up and brushing off his pants.
“Have you lost your mind! What do you think you’re doing!”
“I met the mayor. Real nice guy. His main speaker for the rally didn’t show, so he asked me to fill in.”
“Shut up! I know what you were doing. But why? We’ve got state and federal investigators all over us, the Diaz Boys are running around like the James Gang, there’s probably a hit man after me, and I send you to fix a little problem and you turn up on TV coming off like Son of Sam!”
“That might be a little strong.”
“I want you to stop it! Now!”
“I can’t.”
“What did I just hear?!”
“I can’t stop it. It’s grown too big. My charisma has become a force to be reckoned with.”
Zargoza knocked Flag to the carpet and began kicking him in the rear. “Reckon with this foot in your ass, you ultra-nationalist prick! Now get over to the nursing home!”
27
C. C. Flag slammed two more shots of Irish whiskey from the decanter in the office at Vista Isles. The press was gone; and so was the Vista Isles staff. Zargoza had ordered Flag over to the home after the Proposition 213 fiasco. He’d done his best to explain away all the missing Medicare patients by changing the subject and bashing immigrants. Now he deserved a reward. He hit the intercom and called the night nurse.
She arrived in his doorway with her medication cart. “You buzzed me?”
She was young and curvy with long sandy hair. Not too hard on the eyes, Flag thought.
“Come over here and have a drink with me,” he said.
“I’d love to, but I have to make my rounds.”
“Don’t worry about your rounds. I have a lot of pull around here.”
“But these are prescription medications. These residents are on a very rigid schedule. Some of their lives depend on it.”
Flag picked up a medicine container. “Oooooooh! Dilaudid!” He dumped the pills in the breast pocket of his safari jacket.
“Hey! Those are for a patient who’s gonna die from cancer!”
“My point exactly.”
“Wait!” she said. “I’ve seen you on TV. You’re the Proposition 213 guy. You’re my hero. You really tell it like it is. I’m so tired of how migrant workers keep exploiting us.”
She strolled over to the desk. “Well, I guess one drink won’t hurt anything.”
“Now you’re talkin’!” Flag poured her a double over rocks.
By the time the first drink hit her bloodstream, she was on her third. Then Flag forced more liquor into her. Then she was bent over Flag’s desk without panties. Then she was bent over the toilet, hair hanging in the water. Funny, thought Flag, I could have sworn she was more attractive earlier.
“Hey, baby. I gotta use the restroom,” said Flag, banging on the door. “Get a move on.”
She only moaned and her head lolled over the bowl.
“Damn,” said Flag. Already smashed, he poured another. When she was still in there fifteen minutes later, he could wait no longer. He decided to use the restroom down the hall. He was down to his underwear and socks, so he grabbed a Vista Isles bathrobe from the closet and headed out the door.
A little after midnight a brown panel truck pulled up outside the veranda of Vista Isles and two of the Diaz Boys climbed out.
They flashed corporate ID at the front desk and made their way to the third floor and poked around.
Weaving up the hallway toward them was an old man in a Vista Isles robe. They watched him smack into a doorjamb and bounce off a fire extinguisher.
The man walked up in his bathrobe and socks, and he put out his hand to shake. “How ya doin’, young fellas. I’m C. C. Flag. Hope ya’ll will vote for Proposition 213. Take the state back from the fuckin’ Latins.”
The two Diaz Boys looked at each other and smiled.
“I’m the Daddy-O of Rock ’n’ Roll. I’m a famous radio personality, loved and admired by millions,” said Flag, swaying off balance.
One of the Diaz Boys whispered to the other: “Classic dementia.”
The second one turned to Flag. “Sir, are you a Medicare patient?”
“Medicare?” said Flag. “Absolutely! I’m an American. I deserve my Social Security and my Medicare, goddammit!”
The two looked at each other again and grinned. This was too easy.
They slapped electrical tape over Flag’s mouth and carried him down the fire escape to the waiting truck.
A n hour later, Flag’s Vista Isless robe was gone and he was dressed in homeless rags in anticipation of his drop at the Tampa bus station. The Diaz Boys took the Twenty-second Street exit on Interstate 4 so they could catch a little of the Latin Heritage parade on their way downtown. They pulled onto a side street next to Seventh Avenue and found a parking space with a good view.
The parade hadn’t started yet, but the two Diaz Boys were already talking excitedly about the Gloria Estefan Revue. “It’s supposed to sound exactly like her,” said Juan.
They turned around and looked behind them. The back doors of the van were open and Flag was gone. The two looked at each other and shrugged. Bus station, Ybor City, what’s the difference? They looked back out the windshield and waited for the parade.
Three Latin Heritage Festival officials were at the parade staging area on the east end of Seventh Avenue, going over their clipboards. Everything was ready except the grand marshal hadn’t arrived and two road-tour members of Miami Sound Machine were still in the can. The officials saw an old bum in tattered rags wobbling toward them.
One pointed with his clipboard. “What’s this comin’ at us?”
Another official was about to run the bum off when he felt a twinge of recognition. “Hey, you’re someone famous… I got it! You’re that guy on the sweepstakes envelopes!…C. C. Flag.”
The chairman of the Latin Heritage Festival grabbed Flag’s hand and pumped it enthusiastically. “I’m a big fan.”
“Is he our grand marshal?”
“He’s got to be,” said the chairman. He turned to Flag. “You done parades before?”
“Of course I’ve done parades.”
“I dunno,” said the first official. “That’s not what it says on my clipboard. It’s supposed to be someone from the mayor’s office.”
“That’s got to be an out-of-date program,” said the chairman. “You want somebody’s nephew when we can have a bona fide celebrity?”
“So what’s with his rags?”
/> “You idiot! He’s supposed to be one of the refugee rafters,” said the chairman. “That’s this year’s theme. Weren’t you at the meeting?”
The official threw up his hands in surrender. “Whatever you say.” He turned to the parade’s support crew and clapped his hands to get their attention. “Okay, let’s get this show on the road.” He turned and yelled at the row of blue portable toilets: “Miami Sound Machine-time to shit or get off the pot!”
The festival chairman waved over two assistants, who placed a silk sash across Flag’s chest and helped him up on the grand marshal float.
The Diaz Boys were enjoying the parade immensely, especially the Gloria Estefan Revue, which featured a prerecorded tape of Gloria regretting that she couldn’t appear at the festival in person and then cuing her latest album while bitter members of the Miami Sound Machine danced and played backup.
Then came the next float, carrying a realistic replica of a Cuban refugee raft. Standing in the middle of the raft and waving to the crowd was C. C. Flag, wearing a gold satin sash that read “Mr. Latin Heritage- Tampa Bay.”
Juan and Rafael Diaz suddenly recognized the man on the float going by, and they exchanged worried glances.
“Whoops,” said Juan.
He started up the van to get the hell out of there. He was about to pull out of the parking space when a black Jeep Eagle sped by and skidded up to Seventh Avenue. Three members of the Posse Comatose jumped out of the Jeep, charged through the spectators and climbed up the grand marshal’s float. They began whaling on Flag.
Because of concerns of violence surrounding the upcoming vote on Proposition 213, the parade was attended by a contingent from the militant Hyphenated-Americans Defense League. For security reasons, the members attended the parade in disguise. And when C. C. Flag came under attack, the brass section of the Miami Sound Machine jumped down from its float and charged the Posse Comatose. It was a near-riot. Flag fell off the back of the float and was scooped up and pulled to safety by unlicensed gypsy nacho vendors working the skirt of the crowd.
28
The day that City and Country left Alabama for Florida, they didn’t know they were going until they were already driving.
Friday, nine A.M., City began her shift at Piggly Wiggly on register eighteen, ringing up an economy box of candy corn, off-brand hair spray and ninety-nine-cent false eyelashes. Back at the apartment, Country put on her uniform and nametag and walked out the front door. On Monday, Country’s Pinto had blown a gasket, whatever that meant. The mechanic had put the Pinto on the lift, wiped his brow with a greasy rag and undertaken the highly technical diagnostic procedure of trying to guess the maximum amount Country would agree to pay. The figure was way off, and the Pinto had sat ever since in a sea of disabled, gutted cars and free-range dogs behind Big A1’s Garage and Beverage at the county line on State Road 67. When their boss, Mrs. Frigola, learned that Country depended on City for transportation, she staggered their shifts an hour, and Country was forced to buy a fifteen-dollar banana bike with a loose chain at Crimson Tide Pawn. For the third day, Country climbed on the high-handlebar child’s bike and pedaled off for work four miles away. The first two days, Country arrived at the supermarket sticky, tired and late. Frigola said if it happened again, she was fired.
Ten A.M., City rang up a sack of pork rinds and checked her watch, then the front door. No Country. She looked over at Frigola, who was watching the door with a blend of rage and delight.
Ten-forty A.M., City saw Country through the front window of the Piggly Wiggly, drenched, walking a banana bike dragging a broken chain, forty minutes late. Country leaned the bike against the shopping carts and walked through the automatic door. Frigola waited until she was well inside and loudly fired her in front of everyone.
City bit her lip. She prayed: Country, don’t say anything. Don’t hit her, and definitely don’t cry.
Country didn’t. She just turned and walked out. City stopped ringing up items mid-customer and ran after her.
Frigola yelled, “You leave and you’re fired, too!” but City never looked back.
Ten P.M., City and Country were peeling the labels off their fourth beers at The Hole in the Wall, a dive on the far side of town from campus favored for the eighty-five-cent longnecks. City’s Torino was two hundred yards down the road from the bar, where it also had broken down. All in all, not a good week for the girls. As the house band mangled “Brown Sugar,” City and Country resigned themselves to the most constructive course of action. Unwind, maybe get a little wild, and put the day’s events behind them. Get a good night’s sleep and start checking the classifieds.
The bar was bare bones. Every surface was wood and had been gouged and regouged with large knives. There weren’t any windows, just thick wire mesh and roll-down shutters. In the men’s room, the urinal was a long trough along one wall filled with ice and disinfectant cakes, and the sink was a large rounded trough on the other wall. There was a sign above it: “This is a sink!”
It was a loud crowd and City and Country had to shout to talk. The crowd was almost all locals, but there was a table against the side wall with two frat boys and a sorority chick who’d decided to go slumming. From the trio’s plurality of affections, it was clear neither of the guys was the woman’s steady, but both wanted in her pants. It was also clear that Sorority Sister was a damn fine juggler, holding both their interest without committal. City nudged Country and pointed. One of the guys was looking their way, then both were looking. Soon they were waving City and Country over.
The guys didn’t look too shabby, kinda young and adorable-Andrew McCarthy types-and City winked at Country and they stood up.
City and Country counted ten empty longnecks and the dregs of five pink poodle drinks as they arrived at the table. The frat brothers stood and held out chairs as City and Country sat down, but Sorority Sister’s body language said the fur was standing up on her back.
The sister was an eye-catching Marilyn Monroe blonde with a name straight from the heart of Dixie -Billie Joe Bob (“Bo”). She was five-six with a string of add-a-beads, a cute little Valerie Bertinelli nose, big tits showcased in a tight pink sweater. But in the end, she was a peroxide-and-pancake makeup beauty, whereas City and Country were the Real McCoys, and everyone at the table knew it.
Five minutes into the conversation. “So you girls work at Piggly Wiggly…” said Billie Joe, and she let a snicker escape. “That’s just lovely. How bucolic.”
The men were overcome with beer-chuckles and grinned at Billie Joe.
City smiled, too, as she noticed the three triangles of the Delta Delta Delta sorority on the woman’s sweater.
“I heard a good joke,” said City. “If you can’t get a date, tri-Delta.”
The guys broke up laughing even harder this time and turned to the unamused Billie Joe, and the guys’ expressions retreated to serious.
The band rolled into “Born on the Bayou,” and the guy on the left shouted, “I love this song!” He started to ask City to dance, but Billie Joe clamped onto him and nuzzled into his neck. Before she knew it, the other guy had taken Country’s hand and headed for the dance floor. One of the juggling balls had just fallen.
When that guy got back from the dance floor and sat down, Billie Joe put a hand on his thigh under the table-and the other guy popped up and asked City to dance. It went on this way for hours; Billie Joe could keep a grip on either one she wanted, but not both. A game of sexual brinksmanship, the old bird-in-the-hand dilemma, and the longer it went on, the more Billie Joe knew she risked losing both.
The alcohol kept coming-more longnecks and poodle drinks-everyone getting seriously bent. Billie Joe leaned over the table to Country. “Want a taste of this? It’s really good.” As she leaned, she whispered “bitch” and dumped the whole pink drink square in Country’s chest.
Everyone was on their feet, suddenly awake. “I’m such a klutz,” said Billie Joe. The guys were grabbing napkins from nearby tables. Billie Joe
smirked at Country.
Then things took an unexpected turn. In the chaos, both frat boys were soon leading City and Country to the dance floor as the band began “Long Cool Woman” by the Hollies. Billie Joe was aghast-all the juggling balls had hit the floor.
“…Saturday night I was downtown, working for the FBI…”
Both couples had their arms around each other’s neck. Back at the table, Billie Joe found an unfinished beer and drained it, grabbed her purse and got up.
On the dance floor, Country broke off from her date. Under the influence, she closed her eyes and did a sexy grind in the middle of the floor. She threw her hips in synch with the music and ran her hands slowly down the outside of her legs.
“…Suddenly we heard a siren, and everybody starting to run-jumpin’ up across the table when I heard somebody shootin’ a gun…”
Space cleared around Country and everyone else’s dancing slowed. The floor was in dim red light, and Country now started running her hands up the inside of her thighs. Her hips gyrated in a slow circle to the song’s chorus. Her eyes were still closed but her full lips had opened wide and hungry. One of the Andrew McCarthys took a step back and said, “God damn!” Even the band was distracted.
Then, just as her hands reached the tops of her thighs-in perfect time with the tempo change in the last verse-Country’s arms shot up over her head, and she began shaking her shoulders and hips like a go-go dancer.
With that signal, everyone else joined in and danced their heads off.
“…I told her don’t get scared cause you’re gonna be spared-I’d rather be forgivin’ if I wanna spend a livin’ with a long cool woman in a black dress…”
At the end of the number, everyone on the floor cheered and clapped for themselves. City and Country pecked the men on the cheeks and excused themselves for the ladies’ room, giggling along the way like schoolgirls.
