Two women entered with duffel bag straps over shoulders. Country began coughing. “What’s all that smoke?”
City fanned the air in front of her face, staring at the dozen students toking up around Coleman. “Who are all these people?”
“Coleman likes to bring home strays.” Serge reached for Country’s bag. “Let me help you. Any trouble with the landlord?”
“Doesn’t know yet.”
“Smart thinking.” Serge threw the duffel in a corner. “Skipping out on rent always prevents those sentimental farewells.”
“It sucks.”
From across the room: “City! Country!” yelled Coleman. “Welcome to Party Central!”
The students were agog at the sight-“They’re gorgeous!” “I’m in heaven!”-and even more stunned when the women took seats on the couch next to them and grabbed joints.
“Coleman,” asked one of the students, “you actually know them?”
“We go way back. Very close friends.” He turned to the sofa. “Aren’t we?”
“Shut the fuck up.”
Serge waved for Country to come over. She handed the number to City and met him by the kitchenette. “What is it?”
“Let me give you the grand tour.” He led her inside the suite’s bedroom and locked the door.
Soon, the rest of the unit was silent, everyone listening to ecstatic female shrieking through the wall.
“… Fuck me harder!…”
Students gulped.
The bedroom door opened and a bare-chested Serge stuck his head out, wearing a Gatorland baseball cap. “Coleman, my souvenirs…”
“Got you covered.” Coleman grabbed an antique cigar box from a dresser drawer, walked over and handed it to Serge.
“Thanks.”
The door closed. Listening resumed.
“… Oh God, oh God… I’m almost there… Fuck me faster!… Don’t stop!…”
“… And this swizzle stick is from Alabama Jack’s. That’s Card Sound Road in Key Largo for those playing along at home…”
Twenty minutes later, Serge emerged with a towel around his neck and a cigar box. Behind him, Country stumbled out of the room and bounced off a wall, looking like she’d just finished a triathlon.
The couple went out on the balcony. City joined them and closed the sliding glass door. They gazed out across the calm, moonlit Gulf of Mexico.
“What a great view,” said Country.
“Incredible,” said City, turning to Serge. “But don’t ever leave us stranded like that again.”
“I told you it was just a big misunderstanding.”
The sliding door opened. “Excuse me,” said Coleman. He stuck the end of a Heineken bottle in the door frame. The cap popped, followed by foam. A student behind him made a check mark on a sheet of hotel stationery. Coleman closed the door.
City looked through the glass. “What kind of stupidity now?”
“Who knows?” said Serge. “We’re in uncharted damage-deposit territory.”
The trio went back inside. Coleman wedged the end of another Heineken under the TV and gave the green barrel a quick smack with his fist. A cap flew. A student made a check mark.
Serge turned to someone in a Rutgers T-shirt. “What’s going on?”
“Nobody had a bottle opener, so Coleman’s showing us one hundred and one ways to open bottles with his bottle opener.”
“What’s his?”
“The room’s the bottle opener.” He read the checklist. “So far he’s shown us the flange method, pneumatic, heat exchange, friction damper… and he also got into a wine bottle with only a safety pin.”
“The guy’s amazing,” said another student. “How does he do it?”
“Easy,” said Serge. “He’s been on spring break since 1977.”
City rummaged through the mini fridge. “Country, screwdrivers?”
“I’m in.”
“Serge?”
“Coffee.”
The three huddled and watched the proceedings from the relative safety of the kitchenette. Coleman stood on a chair and raised a bottle toward the smoke detector.
City opened cabinets fully stocked with spotless plates and cups. “Impressed.” She closed them. “When you offered your place, I pictured a dump.”
“Got the one-bedroom suite. It has everything, which reminds me…” Serge opened a closet door and grabbed an electric cord. “I heard a comic say this is what separates us from animals, but I beg to differ.”
“You’re going to do housework?” asked Country.
“Observe.” Serge plugged in the vacuum cleaner.
A beer bottle shattered on the floor, and Coleman ran and hid in the bathroom.
Chapter Twenty-One
PANAMA CITY BEACH
Tradition continued.
Bars closed in the wee hours.
Ten minutes later, the night people appeared. Silhouettes on the beach against the edge of the surf. They stumbled through the sand, individually and in bunches of five or six, trying to find the way back to their hotels. Some made several passes in both directions. A freshman carrying a pizza box tried climbing over the locked back gate of the Alligator Arms.
Serge used low-light mode to film the spectacle from his balcony, then went back to bed.
Country opened her eyes. “Where’d you go?”
“The documentary continues.”
“What’s that yelling?”
“Kids on other balconies. After last call, the ones who make it back to their hotels resume partying where they’re most likely to take dangerous falls.”
Down on the pool patio, a night security guard in a smartly pressed uniform made rounds. His shoulder patches featured gallant eagles that projected the intimidating authority of someone who has cheap shoulder patches. He walked across the patio, helped a student up off the ground and peeled pizza from his chest. Then he returned to his post, stationary, back against the fence on the far side of the pool.
Staring upward.
At hotels in other cities, night watchmen patrol for muggings and car break-ins. In spring break towns, they’re on balcony duty. Some of the cheaper, off-beach joints along the Panhandle had seen enough and didn’t need the liability headaches. Balconies overlooking the pool were caged in with burglar bars or chicken wire.
These options weren’t available to the higher-priced waterfront properties, where that kind of low-rent eyesore would run off a profitable slice of their rest-of-the-year clientele. Hence the guard right now behind the Alligator Arms. Tonight he had his hands full, eyes on five different balconies spread across the back of the hotel. Kegs and coolers and shouting.
He continued round-robin surveillance, scanning two seconds on each balcony. The guard saw something three floors up and dashed around the pool. He clicked on his flashlight. “Hey!…”
A kid sat backward on the balcony railing, swaying with a plastic cup. The beam hit the side of his face. “What the hell?” He looked down.
“Are you crazy?” yelled the guard. “Get off that.”
“Sorry.”
The guard went back to his post, taking deep breaths to lower heart rate. It was the same all night, every night, like monitoring a kindergarten class issued razor blades, racing to head off the next brainless crisis almost before the last had ended.
Inside Serge’s one-bedroom suite, a crash.
Country raised her head. “What was that?”
“Don’t know…” Serge listened. More bad noises, things banging. He threw the sheets off his legs. “But I have a good idea.”
He went out to the living room. “Coleman?”
No Coleman.
He turned the corner. “Oh my God! Coleman! No! Don’t do it!”
Coleman was on the balcony. He’d climbed atop a plastic chair, braced his left arm against the side wall and put an unsteady foot on top of the railing.
Serge ran forward. “Whatever it is, we can talk about it! This isn’t the answer.”
Coleman got his other foot on top of the bar, and without hesitation: “Wheeeeeeeeeeee!…” -voice trailing off as he disappeared.
Serge sprinted for the balcony.
Down below, the security guard assisted another student who’d taken a nasty spill over the locked gate. His back was to the pool when he heard the explosion of Coleman’s cannonball.