“What?”

“I need to drop you ’cause I gotta meet the Look-Alikes for our gig… Anyplace you want me to take you?”

Art looked up and saw a billboard and pointed. “Take me there.”

Three miles down the road, they shook hands again and Jethro dropped Art at Crazy Charlie’s Gun Store. (“Our assault rifle prices are so low because we’re absolutely insane!”) Art went inside and quickly picked out a Colt Python.357, nickel, six-inch barrel.

“That’s a beaut!” said the clerk, running Art’s credit card. “You can pick it up Thursday.”

Art looked bewildered.

“It’s the law. Three-day cooling-off period.”

Art leaned forward. “No, no, no! I don’t want to cool off! Cooling off is bad! It’ll ruin everything!”

“You’re preachin’ to the choir,” said the clerk. “Tell it to our commie government.”

“Isn’t there anything you can do?”

“Well, if I was a private collector selling one of my own guns-instead of a licensed dealer-there’d be no waiting period.”

The clerk then looked around the store suspiciously. He took off his baseball cap embroidered with “Crazy Charlie’s” and replaced it with one embroidered “Private Collector.” He picked up the gun Art had selected and stuck it inside his jacket. He looked around again and then cocked his head toward the back door. “Let’s take a walk.”

They ended up behind the clerk’s car parked in the alley. He handed Art the gun, and Art felt the weight, liked the balance. But he shook his head and handed it back. “I only have credit cards.”

The clerk opened his trunk and took out a magnetic credit-card swiper and plugged it into a cell phone.

“That’ll be six hundred.”

“But it was only five hundred in the store!”

“I’m a private collector! I can’t compete with those prices!”

Art sighed and he forked over his Visa. Then he caught a cab for Beverly Shores. They were just about done building the stage. Art cased the place. He asked someone what time Boris the Hateful Piece of Shit was supposed to arrive. The nearest accommodation was the Hammerhead Ranch Motel next door. Not exactly the luxury digs he had intended, but this was business.

He checked in with a Diners Club, tuned a radio to Boris the Hateful Piece of Shit and began cleaning the Colt.

25

The next morning Serge cut across the grass to the sidewalk in front of room one and turned the knob. Before he had the door open, he smelled strawberry incense; Buffalo Springfield was on the radio. Inside, the beds were pushed against the walls to create a large expanse of carpet. Everyone was sitting cross-legged on the floor. City held her breath and passed the alligator bong to Lenny, who did a double-clutch toke and passed it to Country, who then passed it around a circle of eight guys that Serge didn’t recognize. They represented all races and creeds. There were coats on the beds: kabuki robe, Nehru jacket, dashiki. On top was a turban.

“What the hell’s this?” said Serge. “Get High for UNICEF?”

“It’s the International Olympic Committee,” said Lenny. “They’re here scouting for 2012. I wanted to do my part to bring the games here.”

The men looked up and smiled at Serge and ate potato chips and salted almonds and passed the Lucite alligator.

Serge shook off the scene, then held up a videocassette with satisfaction. “I found The Cocoanuts, the first Marx Brothers movie. It’s about the Florida land boom back in the twenties. Groucho plays a Miami innkeeper who tries to rip everyone off.” He nodded toward the delegates. “We-Are-the-World can stay, but only if they obey the theater rules.”

By now Serge and Lenny had the routine down, and they began moving like a precision drill team. Serge sealed the windows with tape, and Lenny zipped around the room moving chairs and rationing out snacks. The circle of guests fanned into two rows, for optimum viewing. Serge hit the cooler, grabbing a grapefruit and mineral water. Lenny was by the TV, and Serge turned to throw him the videocassette.

“Lenny! Catch!”

“What?”

Lenny turned with the bong as the cassette zinged past his ear.

There was a scream. The videotape hit the Burkina Faso delegate in the left eye, and he grabbed his face and jackknifed in pain, right into a globe lamp. Now there was broken glass, blood and panic. A stoned Lenny picked up the videotape, stuck it in the VCR and started watching the Marx Brothers. People ran around the room in an international commotion. Groucho flicked his cigar: “Why, when I came to Florida three years ago, I didn’t have a nickel in my pocket. Now, I have a nickel in my pocket…”

Serge’s jaw fell. Then came anger. “Everyone out! Now! Come on, let’s get!”

Serge held the door open as they filed by, smiling, bowing and thanking Serge.

Serge looked over at City and Country, who were back into the pot.

“’Ere,” City said without exhaling, handing the smoking bong to Country. “This is some nuclear weed!”

“You, too!” Serge yelled. “Be gone, young dope fiends!”

Country didn’t leave. Instead she sidled up to Serge with a whimsical, sexy swagger.

“How ’bout it, big boy?” She was feeling mischievous and wanted to toy with Serge-see him go slack-kneed. But she saw something entirely different in his eyes. Serge took a step forward, and it was Country who went invertebrate. Serge whisked her up in his arms like he was carrying a bride across a threshold. She put her arms around his neck to hold on, scared but feeling his energy.

Serge marched quickly to the bed and threw her on her back, and she bounced a foot and a half. He turned to Lenny and City. “Would you excuse us?”

It was not tender lovemaking. It was the kind of vigorous workout described in brochures for expensive isokinetic machines. Country was noisy in bed. She moaned and yelled and screamed. Lots of “Yes! Yes! Yes!” Soon they were drenched in perspiration, bodies sliding all over. They were going so hard that Serge was constantly in danger of sailing off the bed like a luge taking a turn too fast. Country writhed with her eyes closed and whipped her head side to side, her golden hair a damp mop, and it matted on her cheeks and fell in her mouth.

Suddenly she reached up and grabbed Serge by the back of the head. Breathing hard, she rocked her hips into him, parted her wet lips and gave Serge a predatory, squinting look that would send most men’s prostates flying like a tee shot.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked, hyperventilating.

“Pioneer landmarks, historic graveyards, Andrew Jackson…” he said, keeping pneumatic rhythm. “… East Martello Tower, Pigeon Key, Stiltsville, the Don Shula Expressway, Larry Csonka…”

“Csonka? You gay?”

“I’m not picturing him naked. I’m imagining him splitting the linebackers in the Orange Bowl.”

“Oh, I’ve heard of guys thinking stuff like that to prolong sex.”

“I’m not,” said Serge. “I’m trying to accelerate it.”

Country started to give him a weird look, but Serge thrust again and hit pay dirt, and Country’s eyes rolled back in her head. Then her eyelashes began to flutter. They reached simultaneous peaks, and Country surprised herself by making a squeaking sound like someone repeatedly stepping on a cat toy.

Serge arched up. “Remember the Maine!”

And they collapsed together in an exhausted, panting tangle.

S erge became something of a guru to City and Country. They were mesmerized by his patter on All Things Florida, especially when they were high. They started following him everywhere like ducklings, and Serge accommodated with a running commentary as a kind of Florida docent-at-large.

The next day, about noon, he led them into The Florida Room, and they walked around the inside of the place at museum pace, taking inventory of the stuff on the walls. Dominant were the trophy fish. None of the taxidermy work looked newer than fifty years-chipped, faded scales and yellowed eyes. Serge identified the largest over the bar-blue marlin, swordfish, sea bass and mako shark-and the midsized stuff on the north and south walls: sailfish, tarpon, white marlin, wahoo. Then, above the western windows facing the water, the “small” fish: bull dolphin, king mackerel, barracuda, permit.