“He didn’t hear you,” said Coleman.
The driver pulled up in front of the Davenport residence and honked the horn.
Serge yelled again: “Go up to the door and knock like a human being!”
“Why are you so upset?” asked Coleman.
“That guy’s pushing my buttons. And he’s much too old to be going out with Debbie.”
“It’s Jim’s business.”
“I know,” Serge said with resignation. “I promised I wouldn’t interfere.”
Debbie never came out of the house, and the Laguna took off up the street.
“What I’d like to do to him!” said Serge.
“Remember, you’re going straight.”
“I know, I know. What would Jim do in a situation like this?”
“Look,” said Coleman. “He’s turning around.”
“I’ll have a talk with him. I think his name’s Scorpion.” Serge jumped off the porch and ran down to the corner. He waited at the stop sign.
The Laguna screeched to a halt.
“Hi,” said Serge. “Would you mind driving just a tad slower around here? We have a lot of children who play—”
The driver raised his middle finger. “Fuck off, pops!” He peeled out.
Serge walked back to his porch.
“Did you talk to him?” asked Coleman.
“Yep.”
“Well?”
“It’s a start. You have to begin the healing somewhere.”
Coleman pointed. “He’s coming back.”
Serge ran down to the corner again. “Excuse me, Mr. Scorpion,” he said, “I was trying to point out that we have a lot of little kids—”
The driver flicked a cigarette at Serge and sped off.
Serge returned to the porch.
“How’s it coming?” asked Coleman.
Serge was looking down at his chest. “He threw a cigarette at me.”
“It made a burn mark.”
Serge scratched the spot with his finger. “This was one of my favorite shirts.”
There were more tire sounds up the street. The two men turned and looked.
“I can’t believe it,” said Serge. “He’s coming back.”
“And look. There’s Jim’s car right behind him.”
“Maybe I can stop them both, and we can all sit down and have a civilized talk.”
Jim Davenport was heading home from the grocery store in the Aerostar when he pulled up at a stop sign behind a ’76 Chevy Laguna. The Laguna turned left onto Triggerfish, and Jim turned left behind him. In his stress, he accidentally honked the horn.
Jim saw brake lights on the Chevy. The driver got out and ran back to the SUV. “Don’t you ever blow your fucking horn at me!”
“I wasn’t—”
Before Jim could finish, the Laguna’s driver had opened the door and pulled Jim into the street.
Serge and Coleman jumped to their feet: “Road rage!” They sprinted for the corner.
The driver was sitting on Jim’s chest, delivering a flurry of punches.
“Hey! Get off him!”
Scorpion looked up and saw Serge and Coleman running down the street; he jumped in the Laguna and took off.
They got to Jim and sat him up. “Are you okay?”
He was far from okay. His shirt was torn. Gravel filled his hair, and blood and mucus ran down his neck. His lower lip was split and both eyes were starting to swell.
“Let’s get you back to your house,” said Serge.
They helped Jim up the porch and into the living room. Serge and Coleman ran around frantically for ice cubes, peroxide, and Band-Aids.
Jim stared at the floor. Serge returned with a washcloth full of ice.
“Look up,” said Serge.
Jim didn’t look up.
“You’ll have to look up.”
Jim was breathing hard. “I don’t want them to see me like this.”
“Nobody’s going to see you like anything,” said Serge. “I’m going to fix you up like new.”
“Are you kidding?” said Coleman. “With shiners like that?”
“Shut up, Coleman!” Serge turned back to Jim. “I have to see where to put the ice.”
Jim slowly raised his face. He looked worse than Serge had expected. He bundled up the ice and showed Jim how to hold it against his eyes.
Jim’s lower lip started to vibrate.
“No!” said Serge. “Don’t! You better not!”
The vibrations increased.
“Stop it! Stop it right now! Don’t you dare!”
Jim couldn’t stop.
“I’m warning you! Stop it this second!”
Jim leaned forward and put his forehead down on Serge’s shoulder and began shaking with quiet sobs.
Serge took a deep breath and put his arms around Jim’s back and began patting him lightly. “There, there. It’s going to be all right.”
The front door opened and Martha walked in. She screamed when she saw Jim’s face. She ran up to Serge and began pounding him on the chest with her fists. Serge let her.
“What have you done to my husband? Get out of our house! Get out! Get out!”
Serge opened his mouth to say something, but he changed his mind and left.
Two a.m.
Floor buffers hummed inside the local twenty-four-hour home-improvement store. Serge pushed his shopping cart down an empty aisle in the electrical department. He grabbed a box of security lights off the shelf.
A stock clerk came up. “Finding everything all right?”
“Got a question,” said Serge.
“Shoot.”
Serge held out the box. “Is this right? Only $19.95 for a motion-detector floodlight?”
“The bulbs are extra,” said the clerk.
Serge put two boxes in his shopping cart. “Where are the bulbs?”
“Aisle three.”
“Glass cutters?”
“Two kinds. What kind of glass are you looking to cut?”
“Floodlight bulbs.”
The clerk looked at Serge.
“Just tell me where both kinds are,” said Serge.
“Aisles seven and eight.”
“Gas cans?”
“Twelve.”
“Orange vests for highway construction sites? Reflective signs?”
“Thirteen and fifteen.”
Three a.m.
The driver of a Chevy Laguna flicked another cigarette out the window and bobbed his head to the stereo. A baffled expression appeared on his face. Something shiny in the road up ahead. He turned off the stereo and leaned over the steering wheel.
“What the hell?”
The driver hit his high beams. He thought he was seeing things. Someone was sitting in the middle of the road in a lawn chair. He wore an orange vest and held up a crossing-guard stop sign.
The Chevy rolled up slowly, and the man in the vest came around to the driver’s window.
“What are you, some kind of lunatic?” said Scorpion.
“Yes,” said Serge, sticking a .44 Magnum in his face. “Now tuck in your fucking underwear.”
Four a.m.
Scorpion was standing in the middle of an aluminum shed in a darkened backyard. It was the shed behind a college rental, used to store tools to take care of the yard. Nobody had been in it for months.
Scorpion’s wrists were bound tightly, and another rope stretched his arms up over his head and tied his wrists to an eyebolt in the shed’s ceiling. His mouth was duct-taped.
Serge sat cross-legged at the man’s feet, tongue sticking out the corner of his mouth in concentration, wiring the motion detectors. He had one detector on each side of the man’s feet, eighteen inches away, facing outward.
Serge looked up at Scorpion and smiled. “These new low-watt bulbs are incredible. The filaments will burn almost forever in the inert gases inside...”
Serge continued scratching away with the glass cutter until he had made a complete circle. Then he held the bulb upside down over his head and tapped the circle lightly with the butt of the cutter. The round disk broke free.