A half hour later, Serge was at the writing desk, playing with a Junior Wizard chemistry set he picked up at Toys “R” Us during the previous day’s supply run. Different-colored liquids and powders filled the beakers and flasks and a rack of test tubes. In the middle of the desk was a glass distillation chamber over an unlit Bunsen burner.
Lenny asked to borrow the magnifying glass to examine his dick because “something’s not right.”
Serge didn’t answer. He concentrated on tweaking the ratios of isotopes he had extracted from household cleaning products and fast food. Sodium palmitate, paraffin, naphthene hydrocarbons. Then he poured in a test tube filled with Bacardi 151.
“What’s that?” Lenny asked as Serge added another test tube containing a clear, unidentified syrup.
“Eleven herbs and spices.”
He lit the burner, and the solution began to boil and snake through a coiled glass tube into the condensate vapor trap.
Lenny sniffed the air. “Smells like bananas and coconuts.”
“Then I must be close,” said Serge. He looked out the window and saw the sun setting, so he killed the burner and let the solution cool. He grabbed his camera bag and a thick three-ring binder from one of the desk drawers and headed out the door for the water.
Zargoza sat near the shore in a cheap beach chair with frayed straps. He still wore his business suit, but his shoes were off and his toes deep in the sand. He was blinking and swallowing fifty percent more frequently than the average person, and his blood pressure made his head feel like a thermometer bulb. His left thumb had developed a slight involuntary shake. He drank haughtily from a large tumbler decorated with scuba flags, trickles of fluid running out each side of his mouth. The tumbler was filled equally with rum and Coke, and Zargoza constantly checked his watch, impatient for the alcohol to take effect and deliver him from the anxiety attack. It was a half hour till sunset, and he was as far up to the water as the fluffy, dry sand went. In front of him was the damp, packed sand of the littoral and the beach’s pedestrian traffic. The day crowd was gone, the young body-watchers and pickup artists and beer guzzlers. This was the sunset club, a slightly higher sensibility. Beachcombers in their forties and fifties, joggers, people setting up camera tripods and long lenses. They walked down from their beach houses and condos and rentals and motel rooms; most had light jackets or sweat pants rolled above their calves.
Behind Zargoza were two goons/bodyguards, also in street clothes, sitting on a beach blanket playing poker.
The goons saw someone violate their no-fly zone, and they went for rods inside their jackets. Zargoza turned when he heard the commotion. “It’s okay. Let him through.”
Serge pulled up a stray beach chair and sat alongside Zargoza. He stuck his camera bag under the chair and set the three-ring binder in his lap.
“What do you have there?” asked Zargoza.
“My sunset album.”
“Hmmmmmm.”
“The pictures are arranged geographically,” said Serge. “That’s up in sawgrass at Yankeetown, and these are the flats off Homosassa. Here, the sunset reflects in the bayou at Tarpon Springs, and here it is from the Hurricane bar just down the road. This is over Lido Key, and here’s Siesta Key and Boca Grande through the sea oats…”
Zargoza was looking, not listening. He felt spiked walls closing in.
Serge began pulling all the photos from their slots and rearranging them chronologically and then alphabetically, then by hue. He took them out again and shuffled them and stuck them back in the book under some other criteria. He looked at it, shook his head, and started pulling the photos out again.
Zargoza reached over and slammed his palm down on the book. “Stop it! Just stop it! I’m nervous enough as it is!”
“No problem,” said Serge. He put the book under his chair and pulled out his camera bag. Five minutes to sunset, the beach foot traffic slowed and then stopped. They produced binoculars and camcorders.
Serge aimed his camera at the sea and focused. He didn’t like the lens. He changed it, then changed it back and refocused. He adjusted the aperture. He tried the camera body vertical and horizontal. Then tried it both ways again with the other lens.
Zargoza didn’t even turn to face Serge. He hissed through his teeth: “Just take the picture or so help me I’m gonna hammer-throw that fucking camera in the ocean!”
Serge pressed the shutter button. Click. Again. Click. Advancing the film. Click, click, click, click, click. Zargoza closed his eyes and strangled the armrests of his beach chair.
26
The next day, Boris the Hateful Piece of Shit was wrapping up his morning shift in the heavily air-conditioned broadcast studios of radio station Blitz-99. “Remember, don’t let your parents give you any crap, because they don’t know squat! This is Boris the Hateful Piece of Sh-AHH-OOOO-GAH!”
As he stepped into the station’s parking lot, he pressed a button on his keychain and his new Corvette beeped that it was unlocked. Boris planned to head over to the beach and the Proposition 213 rally, where he was scheduled as the main speaker that evening. Boris was not political, but he latched on to the Proposition 213 spearhead when he found it was a great way to score with bigot babes, who tended to be easier.
Because of his bulk, Boris could only get into his Corvette through a deliberate, time-consuming insertion like Wally Schirra. It was at least a fifteen-minute effort, and that was with the custom detachable steering wheel that snapped back on the column once he was in place. Boris didn’t mind. The Corvette’s sleek lines and sharp, bullet exterior concealed the gelatinous lines of Boris’s decidedly parabolic fuselage. He had the driver’s seat rigged extra low, with as little of him visible above window level as possible. Once inside, Boris the Hateful Piece of Shit became Boris the Disembodied Head in a Sexy Sports Car. He pulled out of the parking lot. His bumper sticker read: “It sucks to be you.”
A crowd gathered immediately when Boris’s Corvette cruised into the parking lot at the Calusa Pointe condominiums. Boris got out of the car wearing dark sunglasses and a size XXXXXL metallic silver jogging suit that was designed to deflect heat and sometimes caused Boris to show up on radar. There were two Cuban cigars in the shirt pocket of the jogging suit, and he removed one and lit it. He signed dozens of autographs with a simple circle as he headed straight for the bar next door behind the Hammerhead Ranch Motel.
The Proposition 213 rally wasn’t for another four hours, and the bar was as good as place as any to get chicks. He walked inside and didn’t take off his sunglasses. He took a seat against the wall, leaned back, crossed his arms and thought: Come to Papa.
Boris had a few nibbles in the first hour. The teenage girls had been star-struck, but not quite enough to overcome the gag reflex to Boris’s appearance and hygiene. After the last gaggle walked away, Boris looked out the window to check the progress of the workers preparing the outdoor stage for the rally behind Calusa Pointe. He looked closer up the beach and saw smaller, separate preparations under way for another function-a VIP waterfront luau for the visiting Olympic delegation. There were a few rows of beach chairs, a small podium and a giant work-shaped dish that was a replica of the Olympic stadium torch and doubled as the barbecue.
Boris heard some laughing in the bar and turned his attention to City and Country. He liked what he saw. He realized they weren’t going to come to him, so he chugged another beer and began working his way to his feet.
“What’s shakin’?” Boris asked when he arrived at their table.
Country turned around and let out a startled yell upon first seeing Boris, which he did not take as a good sign. They tried to ignore him, but Boris couldn’t take a hint, and he hovered over their table like a weather balloon.