“I guess we were wrong,” the TV director told his cameraman. “They’re staying for the reading. Some of them still seem a little weird, but on average it’s about what you’d see in any mall around here.”
The owner slid up to the cashier and whispered out of the side of his mouth, “How are you keeping the books with the cocaine separated from the others?”
“How am I doing what?”
Ralph stepped to the front of the chairs. “Good evening and thanks for coming. I’d like to start by reading one of my favorite passages—”
“What the heck’s this?” interrupted a woman in back, holding up a little white baggie.
“There’s one in my book, too,” said a man on the other side of the room.
“Me, too!”
“It looks like cocaine.”
“What’s going on here?”
The owner stood on a chair in the corner, holding a match up to an emergency sprinkler head.
“Come on! Come onnnnnnnnn!”
“Why are all those police jumping out of those vans?”
15
Collins Avenue.
The BBB lounged behind dark sunglasses and recovered with morning coffee on the front patio of the Hotel Nash.
Sam stared into her decaf.
“Sam, were you listening?” asked Rebecca.
“What?”
“I was saying you missed all the fun.”
“Where’d you run off to?”
“After missing the book signing, I decided to head back to the room and call it a night.”
“It was because you didn’t want to skinny-dip with us in that hotel pool, wasn’t it?”
“I can’t put anything over on you.”
“We only did it for ten seconds,” said Maria.
“Just long enough to check it off the list,” said Rebecca.
“We were careful,” said Teresa. “Slipped our clothes off, held them in our hands, slipped ’em back on again. No big deal.”
“It was the alcohol,” said Sam.
“Of course it was the alcohol,” said Teresa. “That’s the whole
Sam pointed at their rented Grand Marquis, parked at the corner. “What’s wrong with our car?”
“What do you mean?”
“The back end’s riding low. And dripping.”
Maria stood up and smiled. “I was going to surprise you. Come on.”
They walked over to the car and Maria popped the trunk. A mountain of ice cubes covered dozens of beer cans and mini wine bottles.
“I discovered something new about rental cars,” Maria said proudly. “The trunk is a self-draining cooler.”
They went back to their spot on the patio and looked up as the shadow of an inbound 747 crossed Collins Avenue and their table. Men sat at other tables, behind Porsche sunglasses, leering at the book club. The café society was in full swing, everyone aloof, clandestinely checking each other out, posing, trying to get laid by acting like people who got laid way too much. The bouillabaisse of sexual tension caused those least likely to have sex to play their stereos at top volume, and the street was quite noisy. But the designers at Mercedes-Benz had anticipated this, and the interior of a white Z310 was virtually soundproof as it rolled north up the avenue, the air conditioner set at a nippy sixty-six. A red light stopped it outside the Nash. Five dark-haired men in tropical shirts filled the Benz, two in front, three in back, eating ice-cream cones, nodding heads slowly to easy-listening hits. Its trunk was also dripping, holding five soggy cartons of paperbacks.
“Boss, what are we going to do about all those books?”
“Shut up!” said the driver. “I don’t want to hear about books right now.”
The light turned green; the driver prepared to go. Before he could, a horn blared and a purple Jeep Wrangler whipped around the Mercedes and passed in the oncoming lanes. The Benz’s driver hit the brakes. He felt something cold and stared down at the ice-cream cone squashed on the front of his tropical shirt.
The Jeep accelerated toward the intersection at Hispañola, but it got boxed in behind a slow-moving Oldsmobile. The light ahead turned yellow, plenty of time to make it, but the Olds slowed to a crawl and stopped.
“Motherfucker!” screamed the Jeep’s driver, punching the roll bar. He and his three passengers were muscle-bound from constant weight lifting and creamy protein shakes, and they experienced considerable difficulty turning their torsos to exit the Jeep. They walked toward the Olds, arms swinging well out from their bodies because trapezius muscles were in the way. All four were in their early twenties, wearing baseball caps and T-shirts from a “world-famous” little-known sports bar.
They reached the front door of the Oldsmobile and began kicking it, causing the tiny old man behind the wheel to turn up his hearing aid and look around. He got the Beltone adjusted in time to hear, “Come out of there, you fuck!” The Oldsmobile’s door was jerked open and the old man dragged into the street. They threw him to the pavement and began stomping him in the stomach. People froze in horror. An elderly woman dropped groceries on the sidewalk and screamed.
“Where’d you learn to fucking drive!” Kick.
