“Howdy!” Serge drained the foam coffee cup and aimed his camcorder.
Coleman: “Check out the chicks’ butts!… Ooooh, don’t feel good…”
An engineering major stood. “You guys from Girls Gone Haywire?”
“No,” said Serge. “I’m from the Florida Betterment Coalition of One, and my friend”-he gestured at Coleman, on all fours, burying his puke in the sand-“is working on his thesis.”
“What’s his freakin’ problem?”
“A special case I’ve been studying for years,” said Serge. “Coleman’s the only human afraid of vacuum cleaners.”
The student gave him a condescending up-and-down appraisal. “What the hell do you want?”
“Just a few questions for my documentary on the zeitgeist of today’s top scholars. Number one: pork and beans. Your thoughts?”
“Get lost!”
“I’m already lost. In my love of history! Did you know Colgate University started spring break in 1935?”
“Want to move along or be hurt?”
“That’s an easy one. Come on, Coleman… Coleman?”
Serge wandered the beach. “Coleman!… Where are you?…”
He came across a group of Yale premeds standing in a circle, looking down. Conversation in the back row:
“Amazing…”
“Some kind of genius…”
“Probably has a chair at MIT…”
Serge tapped a shoulder. “What’s going on?”
“This guy’s teaching us thermodynamics of maintaining proper beer temperature.”
Serge cupped his hands around his mouth. “Coleman!”
“Is that you, Serge?”
“Excuse me,” said Serge. “Mind if I slip through?”
He reached the inner circle. Coleman was on his hands and knees again, sand flying out between his legs as he rapidly dug a hole like a Labrador retriever. “… It’s best to start below the mean high-tide mark, then excavate until you reach the water table…”
“But what about our coolers?”
“Sun’s too hot out here,” said Coleman. “Wet sand is a better insulator. Someone hand me a sixer…”
A student complied. Coleman crammed it in the hole. “If you plan on power-partying into the late afternoon, insulation technique is absolutely critical.”
“Thanks, mister. Any other advice?”
Coleman scratched his crotch in thought. “Well, you got any events back up north where they allow coolers but not alcohol?”
“Yeah,” said a sophomore. “We try to hide the booze in plastic soft drink bottles, except they always catch us.”
“That never works.” Coleman stood. “What you want to do is get a clear liquor-vodka, gin-pour it into a strong Ziplock bag, then freeze the sack inside a block of ice.”
Serge filmed as Coleman was rewarded with a hearty round of back slaps and all the beer he could carry.
“I’m never leaving this town.”
DINNERTIME
A triangle bell rang.
Men came inside the stucco house south of Palmetto Bay.
A full-course meal awaited on the cedar table. Place settings precise as usual, except this time each also had a one-way plane ticket to Boston under the fork.
After saying grace and passing bowls, Juanita poured sangria for Guillermo. “You’re a good boy.”
“Thank you, Madre.”
“So Randall Sheets now calls himself Patrick McKenna?”
Guillermo mixed beans and rice on his plate. “Yes, Madre.”
Juanita smiled. “It only took fifteen years.” She reached into her apron and handed him a single-page computer printout. “From our private investigator. Those are the addresses of his home and business, plus vehicle information.”
They ate faster than normal because of flight departure.
At the front door, Guillermo gave Juanita a kiss on the cheek. “I’ll call as soon as we know something.”
She waved as the car pulled out of the driveway. “Be safe.”
NEW ENGLAND
A highway sign with a pilgrim’s hat went by. The Mass Pike.
The government convoy remained in tight formation.
“Get off me!” yelled Patrick McKenna.
“It’s okay,” said the case supervisor. “You can release him now.”
The shielding agent got up.
Patrick pushed himself off the van’s floor and pulled the coat from his head. “Was that really necessary?”
“Was it necessary for you to go on TV in front of the whole world?” asked a Boston agent.
“Why are you talking to him?” said Ramirez. “It’s not his job to know your job.”
“You Miami hotshots fucked this whole thing up.”
“Mother-”
Everyone blew. A loud, overlapping, profanity-laced exchange.
“Hey,” said Patrick. “Guys.”
Nonstop yelling.
Then, uncharacteristically: “Everyone! Shut up!”
They all stopped and looked at their star witness. “Sorry,” said Patrick. “But what about my son?”
“You have a son?” asked a Boston accent.
Ramirez shook his head. “Typical you didn’t know.” The Florida agent placed a reassuring hand on Patrick’s shoulder. “We’re taking care of him.” Then, with an edge of sarcasm, “Someone had to.”
“This isn’t going anywhere,” said the ranking Boston agent. “Let’s start over from right now. Status on the son?”
“My people should have arrived at the college the same time we got to Dorchester,” said Ramirez. He opened an encrypted cell phone. “I’ll check in-probably already have the son and are on their way back to meet us now…”
Chapter Eleven
PANAMA CITY BEACH
Serge tilted the viewfinder as he walked. Hair-care products went by on both sides. He turned the corner and headed up the toothpaste aisle.
“Serge,” said Coleman, “what are we doing here?”
“My eye-opening documentary must be the final word on spring break.” He zoomed in on an endcap display of paper towels. “The footage is more compelling than I’d hoped.”
“Wal-Mart is part of spring break?”
“Not until 2006.” Serge entered the pet section, filming bird seed. “That’s when Drake University sophomore Skyler Bartell decided to spend his entire spring break in a twenty-four-hour Iowa Wal-Mart.”
“That’s odd.”
“No odder than what we’ve already seen here.” He panned across litter boxes for all income levels. “From March nineteen to twenty-one, Skyler spent forty-one straight hours in the store before detection. I mean to break that record. Wild horses can’t drag me out of here before I succeed and am written up in medical journals.”
“Where did he sleep?”
“On toilets.”
Coleman wandered through electronics. “I don’t want to sleep on toilets.”
“You do it all the time.” Serge checked his wristwatch, then shook it and held it to his ear.
“What’s the matter?” asked Coleman.
“Thought my watch had stopped. Could have sworn we’d been here more than three minutes.”
“Seems like hours.”
“I’ve just made an important discovery of the galactic bent-space continuum. Time slows down in Wal-Marts.”
Coleman followed his buddy back toward the front of the store. “Serge, where are you going?”
“Leaving.”
“Thought you were staying for at least forty-one hours.”
“I may have already.” They approached automatic doors. “Back through the wormhole to check regular clocks.”
FIFTEEN HUNDRED MILES NORTH
The southern border of New Hampshire is guarded by a string of sales-tax-free state liquor stores, militarily positioned like pillboxes. Their parking lots are full of Massachusetts plates, half customers, half Massachusetts alcohol agents who follow residents back over the commonwealth line for citations. Except they can’t, because New Hampshire agents block them in until customers make a clean getaway. Such is the delicate fabric of the republic, no more evident than in a state with the motto “Live Free or Die” stamped on its license plates, which comedians note are manufactured in prison.
New Hampshire’s trademark is the Old Man of the Mountain, an uncanny, eons-old geological rock formation high up the side of Franconia Notch. Its profile is ubiquitous: postage stamps, the state quarter, a thousand highway signs, flags, welcome centers, the capitol rotunda, history books, maps, pot holders, paperweights, snow globes and every tourist brochure ever printed. Residents proudly identify with the Old Man in a fierce emotional bond, much like Parisians and the Eiffel Tower or Texans and the Alamo. On May 3, 2003, the face slid off the mountain and disintegrated.