by Tim Dorsey
Martha came out the front door. “You honked?”
7
S IX STUDENTS FROM the University of South Florida slouched on ratty sofas in the living room at 857 Triggerfish. The Wizard of Oz was on TV, no sound. The stereo was extra loud—Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. The only textbook in sight was under the leg of a wobbly coffee table, where residual smoke curled out the cylinder of a giant Lucite water pipe. The front door was wide open.
One of the students walked to the refrigerator and pulled the lever on the beer tap drilled through the door, refilling a large plastic stadium cup. He returned to the living room and nodded at the others; they nodded back.
“Dude.”
“Dude.”
“Dude.”
“Dude.”
The student with the fresh beer was Bernie, a freckled white kid with a huge red afro from The Paper Chase. His classmates, clockwise around the room from the Che Guevara poster over the Guatemalan oolite incense frog: Frankie “Slowhand” Pagnetti, wanna-be rock musician who had taken up the electric bass because it was the easiest instrument to fake and played in a very bad band consisting entirely of bass players called “No Drummer”; Chip “Memory Chip” Perkins, who had the guts of four salvaged computers spread across the kitchen table and was trying to hack into the Pentagon with a reconfigured copy of John Madden Smash-Mouth Football 6.0; Jeb “Siddhartha” Youngblood, formerly devout southern Baptist who had moved in a week ago, accidentally ate a hash brownie, became self-aware for the first time in his life and now endlessly wandered the rental house in a solipsistic daze; William “Bill the Elder” Moss, forty-two years old with twelve hundred credit hours carefully distributed among seventeen academic disciplines so as not to inadvertently precipitate graduation; Manny “Waste-oid” Wasserman, on academic suspension, scraping out the bong. They respectively majored in English, philosophy, English philosophy, French poetry, art history, and no declared major, and they all expected to land easy, high-paying jobs immediately after graduation without trying.
“Check it out!” said waste-oid, pointing at the TV. “The movie’s in perfect sync with the album. See how the heartbeat from Dark Side matches up with Dorothy putting her ear to the Tin Man’s chest? You can’t tell me that’s a coincidence. Floyd planned the whole thing. They were fuckin’ geniuses!” He fired up the bong.
“How did you do that again?” asked Bernie.
“You wait until the second roar of the MGM lion at the beginning of Oz, then start the album.”
Frankie “Slowhand” Pagnetti stood next to the TV set, playing air bass along with the CD.
Bill the Elder shook his head. “Floyd’s playing in B minor.”
Frankie looked down at his empty hands. “You’re right.” He made the necessary adjustments.
Bernie refilled his beer; Siddhartha sat in a corner, staring at his thumbprint and weeping.
Lance Boyle appeared in the open doorway unnoticed.
“Listening to Dark Side and watching Oz, eh?” said Lance.
The startled students turned to the door. Lance came inside and walked around the room like Dean Wormer in Animal House. The students stashed dope and paraphernalia behind their backs.
“Relax,” said Lance. “I know you’re getting fucked up in here. You got everything you need? Enough weed?” He pointed at Waste-oid, hiding the bong behind him and holding a toke.
Waste-oid nodded.
“Good, good,” said Lance. “What about beer? How you fixed?” He opened the refrigerator and saw a keg with a clear tube leading to the tap in the door. “Excellent. You guys are pretty responsible.”
Lance looked up at the olive army surplus parachute hanging from the ceiling, then over at the shelving system of discarded lumber and milk crates. “You must tell me who your decorator is.” He went over to the stereo. “Sure this is loud enough?” He turned the volume all the way up.
“…Kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown…”
Bernie cleared his throat. “Uh, dude, I mean Mr. Boyle, about the rent…My folks are real sick…”
“Mine are dead,” said Lance.
“Oh.”
“Don’t worry about the rent,” said Lance. “The main thing is to make sure you’re enjoying yourselves. You are enjoying yourselves, aren’t you?”
They nodded.
“Good,” said Lance. “Look, I’m in a bit of a rush—got an appointment with some new tenants. But I wanted to drop by and find out if you’ve been throwing any parties in here.”
“Absolutely not,” said Bernie.
“Then start. Say on a weeknight. This Tuesday. I’ll have some kegs delivered. Any questions?”
Bernie raised his hand. “Why are you doing this?”
“That’s just the kind of person I am,” said Lance. “Always giving.”
8
M ARTHA DAVENPORT heard a midmorning knock at the front door.
Gladys Plant stood on the daisy welcome mat and uncovered a tray of Danish. “I still can’t believe they arrested Old Man Ortega the other night. He sure didn’t look like a war criminal.
Martha tasted the pastry. “The paper said he used to run a death squad in Central America. They found mass graves.”
“Right under our noses on this street,” said Gladys. “Makes you wonder what else we don’t know about.”
They heard music coming from somewhere. Martha tried to place it. “Is that Dark Side of the Moon?”
Suddenly, a screech of car brakes, and a beat-up ’65 Barracuda skidded to the curb in front of the former Grønewaldenglitz residence and into a garbage can, scattering pork chop bones and Q-Tips. Two men and a woman got out and headed for the house.
Martha scrunched her eyebrows. “This looks less than positive.”
Lance Boyle was standing on the college students’ porch when he spotted his three newest tenants. He headed across the lawn with a smile and an outstretched hand.
“Who’s that?” asked Martha.
“The landlord. That’s the guy I’ve been telling you about who’s buying up all the houses on the street.”
“Looks like a real prince.”
Lance picked through an assortment of keys and opened the front door of 867 Triggerfish, welcoming Serge, Coleman and Sharon to their new home. Lance had a really good bad feeling about them. The chubby one, Coleman, was drunk and promptly broke a flowerpot. The sex kitten, Sharon, never took off her dark sunglasses, fidgeting and sniffling the whole time. And Serge. Well, Serge was carrying a Black’s Law Dictionary and an electronic stud finder.
The previous tenant, Mr. Grønewaldenglitz, had left in a hurry, in the night. Lance chuckled awkwardly as they entered the living room. “A regular fixer-upper. Lots of character…”
The falling-out with the previous tenant had been particularly nasty. Serge stared down at the carpet, where obscenities had been written with hydrochloric acid. Off to the side, an old bloodstain had been worked on with bleach.
Lance slid the sofa over the dirty words, revealing other words, even more vile, and slid it back.
“We want to look around,” said Serge.
Before Lance could stop them, they headed for the kitchen.
“Oh, the kitchen,” said Lance, putting out an arm to warn them. “I didn’t really get a chance…”
Too late. They looked in the sink. It was the same as all the other sinks in the house—filled with concrete that had been mixed with hundreds of little metal springs from clothespins for added tensile strength, like tiny rebars. That impressed Serge.
They headed for the laundry room. Serge opened the washing machine. Full of roofing tar. Then the dryer. Five gallons of satin polyurethane outdoor deck coating, cured solid.
Serge turned to Lance. “That’s a lot of rage.”
Lance put up his hands in a go figure gesture. “People…” He flipped the latches on his briefcase and pulled out a contract. “If you’ll just sign…”
Serge ignored him a
nd headed for the master bedroom. He opened the door, completely dark. He tried the light. Nothing.
“I don’t have a flashlight,” said Lance.
“I do,” said Serge. He pulled his sentimental halogen from a hip pocket and shone it into the room. All the windows had been nailed shut and aluminum foil Super Glued to the glass.
“What’s that on the walls?” asked Coleman.
Serge shined his light on some large smears. He walked over and tested it with his fingers. Sticky.
He tasted it.
“Honey.”
“Honey?” said Lance.
They headed for the master bath, making crunching noises as they walked. Serge pointed his flashlight at the floor. Hundreds of insect carcasses.
“Bees?” asked Lance.
“You’re allergic to bees, aren’t you?” said Serge.
“How’d you know?”
“You must not have checked this property for a while. Someone was expecting you to walk into this dark room while the bees were still alive…”
“Why would anyone want to hurt me?”
Lance was curious now, and he took the lead. He stepped in the master bath and went to throw the light switch, but Serge grabbed his arm.
“What’s the matter?” asked Lance.
Serge pointed up at the naked lightbulb, a pool of amber liquid in the bottom of the glass. He motioned Lance out of the bathroom. Then he reached back in from around the corner, flicked the switch, and pulled his arm away fast.
A fireball blew out the doorway.
Lance turned white. “What was that?”
“They used a pinpoint diamond drill and poked a hole in the metal base of the lightbulb,” said Serge, stomping out little fires on the floor. “Then they used a syringe to fill it with gasoline.”
“Where’d you learn that?”
“Prison.”
“They did that in prison?”
“No, we watched prison movies in prison. That was from The Longest Yard.”
Serge headed back to the living room, and the others followed. He pulled out his stud finder and ran it along a wall. It began to ping and flash. Serge turned it off and went to manual—tapping the drywall with a two-fingered physician’s thump.
“What are you doing?” asked Lance.
“Shhhhh!” said Serge, then: “This is non-load-bearing, right?”
“What are you planning?”
“Nothing.” Serge went over and sat down on the couch in front of a glass-top coffee table. Lance sat down and pulled out the contract again and set it on the glass. Coleman sat down and put his feet up on the table, and the glass shattered.
Lance picked the contract out of the broken pieces. “We can sign it on our laps.”
“This place gives me the creeps,” said Sharon. She sniffled. “You need to drive me somewhere.”
“Shut it right now or you know what happens!” said Serge.
Sharon crossed her arms in a show of defiance and marched off into the master bedroom, then realized it was dark and came out and marched somewhere else. Coleman popped his first beer of the half hour.
Serge began reading the contract. Lance uncapped a pen and held it ready. Serge was the first prospective tenant ever to read the entire contract, all twelve pages of fine print. He asked questions about every paragraph and got out his Black’s Law Dictionary to look up words. Serge had appeared ready to sign a dozen times, and Lance kept offering the pen. But Serge would always hold up a hand to wait, then look up another word. It went on like that for an excruciating hour. Just as Lance had lost all hope and was ready to drive the pen into his own brain, Serge snatched it out of his hand and gave the contract an autograph of beautiful looping calligraphy.
Lance handed Serge the keys. “You’re going to love it here.”
The light in the living room began flashing on and off. Serge and Lance looked over at the light switch. Coleman was flicking it up and down.
“It works,” Lance called over to him. Coleman flicked it a few more times and staggered away.
“I think his parents dropped him,” said Serge. He looked down at the floor, and bent over and picked up a tiny gasket. “What’s this? Part of a crack pipe?”
Sharon heard Serge from down the hall with ultrasonic addict hearing. She ran back in the room, dropped to her hands and knees at Serge’s feet and finger-scraped the rug.
“Sharon! Behave!”
Lance waved good-bye, and Serge pulled a typed agenda from his pocket.
“We need to make a supply run,” said Serge. “Then the games begin!”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Sharon said from the floor.
“Don’t you know what day this is?” asked Serge.
Sharon ignored him, inspecting something from the rug before deciding it was a toenail clipping and throwing it over her shoulder.
“It’s June twenty-first,” he said. “The solstice.”
“The what?” asked Sharon.
“I can tell by the thoughtful look on your face that you’ve gotten it confused with the vernal equinox,” said Serge. “A lot of people make that mistake. No, the solstice marks the first day of summer. And you know who invented summer, don’t you?”
“Who?” asked Coleman.
“The Wham-O Corporation.”
9
S ERGE SCREECHED AWAY from the curb for his supply run.
Moments later, the Davenports’ front door opened, and the family headed for the Suburban and their own supply run. Saturday was errand day in the Davenport household. Martha had the checklist, and Jim drove. Walgreens, Publix, Home Depot, Burdines.
“Look,” said Jim. “There’s a Suburban just like ours. Same color and everything.”
Martha nodded. “They’re popular.”
“You ever get that weird feeling when you see a car exactly like yours?” asked Jim.
“What do you mean?”
“You know—you’re not really paying attention, day-dreaming about stuff, and you see the same car coming the other way. And for a split second you think it’s your car, and maybe you’re inside it. But then who’s inside this car? Like a mirror universe thing. Know what I mean? Ever get that feeling?”
“We’re switching to decaf.”
Jim checked his watch. Twelve-thirty. “Melvin, you want a Happy Meal?”
Melvin nodded.
Jim pulled into a McDonald’s, and the family started getting out. Martha looked in her purse. “We don’t have enough cash.”
“There’s a bank next door,” said Jim, getting back in the driver’s seat. “You guys go on inside. I’ll drive over with Nicole and be right back.”
A WHITE SUBURBAN sat at the curb in front of the bank’s ATM. It was in the fire lane. The driver glanced in the mirror and noticed a police car enter the parking lot and roll up behind him.
“Uh-oh.” He put the vehicle in gear and pulled out of the fire lane.
Jim Davenport drove into the bank’s parking lot just as the other Suburban and the police car were pulling away. “There’s that same car again,” he told Nicole. “It’s just like ours.” Jim parked in the fire lane in front of the ATM.
A tall man in sunglasses and a baseball cap sprinted out of the bank with a green canvas bag. He jumped in the Suburban’s passenger seat.
“Hit it!”
“Who are you?” asked Jim.
“You’re not Henry!” said the man.
Alarms started going off outside. Jim felt a gun in his ribs.
“Drive!”
Jim put the car in gear and pulled onto the highway. Nicole began crying.
“Shut that fucking kid up!”
“I’ll take you wherever you want to go. You’ll get away. Just don’t hurt us.”
The man hit Jim over the right eye with the butt of his pistol. “Shut up!…Goddamn Henry! This is all his fault! I have to think.”
Nicole continued wailing.
“Shut that brat up or I’ll shut her up!”
“She’s just a child.”
The man smacked Jim again with the gun. Blood was getting in his right eye, making it hard to see. It was happening in seconds, but adrenaline had Jim’s brain on overdrive, thousands of pages of data flying through his analyzer. Nicole wailed louder.
“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” The man turned around in his seat and pointed his pistol at the toddler. “Shut the fuck up!”
In the nanosecond the gun swung toward his child, Jim’s brain reached Option X.
“There’s cocaine in the glove compartment,” said Jim.
The man spun around. He opened the glove compartment and leaned over. “I don’t see it.”
“It’s way in back,” said Jim. “I hid it in case I ever get stopped.”
The man was so eager, his head was practically inside the glove compartment. “I still don’t see it.”
“You will,” said Jim. He turned on the radio.
PANDEMONIUM.
Police, TV trucks, onlookers, a sheet-covered body next to a Suburban on the edge of the highway.
Martha was hysterical, clutching Nicole hard, trying to kick the body under the sheet while cops restrained her.
Jim was at the back of a squad car, quivering, giving his version of events to a sergeant with a clipboard. A patrolman handed Jim a cup of coffee, and half of it spilled on Jim’s shaking hand.
“Is he really dead?” asked Jim.
“Pretty much,” said the sergeant. “Airbag broke his neck like that”—snapping his fingers.
The patrolman patted him on the back. “You did everyone a favor.”
“Saved the state a lot of money,” said the sergeant. “Skag McGraw was a real dirtbag.”
“One less McGraw brother society has to worry about,” said the patrolman.
“Brother?” asked Jim.
“Five in all,” said the sergeant. “Or were. Now there’s four. But I wouldn’t lose any sleep. The rest are all locked away in prison and won’t be getting out for a long, long time.”
