After running six red lights, Johnny parked his gull-wing Porsche GT1 behind a beach house. The couple stumbled and giggled together as they struggled up the front porch steps facing the dunes and bright sun over the Atlantic. Liquor, anticipation. She embraced him hard, and they crashed against the gingerbread trim next to the front door. Her mouth went to his ear again. “I’ve never told anyone this before, but my secret fantasy is to . . .”
The rest was inaudible except to Johnny’s eardrum. Bubbles hit his brain. Johnny fell one way, and Sasha the other, both landing on their asses. They stared at each other a second, then giggled even louder. Johnny dug in a pocket for house keys with renewed urgency. Yes! The streak is over!
Sasha got up and looked around. “Where’s my shoe? I lost a shoe . . .”
Johnny’s trembling hands fumbled with the keys, dropped them, and fumbled again. Sasha wandered in unsteady circles on the porch. “Where are you, shoe? . . . Come here, shoe . . .”
Keys hit the ground again. Anxious fingers snagged them but had trouble aligning the end of the key with the lock. “Let’s
“Here shoey-shoey . . . Where are you, shoey? . . .” Sasha staggered around the corner of the house. “Motherfuckin’ shoe, where are you!”
The lock finally popped. Hooray. The door creaked ajar, but Johnny wasn’t looking inside. He stared off the side of the porch. “Sasha, the house is open . . .
Then he finally looked though the front door.
“What on God’s earth? . . .”
In the background, squealing tires.
The cops arrived fifteen minutes later.
Johnny sat on the top porch step, face in his hands again. Shoulders shaking with sobs.
A detective approached the officer in charge of the crime scene. “Magruder, what have we got here?”
“Seems pretty open-and-shut.” The sergeant closed his notebook. “Our pal Mr. Vegas here spent all night in one of the local clubs with some young thing he had a chance meeting with yesterday afternoon, and he came home this morning to find his place stripped to the walls.”
“Another dating bandit?”
“Except a new wrinkle.”
“How’s that?”
“This one was female.”
They became distracted by a louder bout of weeping from the porch steps. The detective jerked a thumb sideways. “What’s his problem?”
The sergeant shrugged. “He’s been crying off and on ever since we got here.”
“Doesn’t he know insurance covers this?”
The sergeant raised his voice in Johnny’s direction. “Mr. Vegas, just call your insurance company . . . The important thing is you’re safe. She didn’t even touch you.”
The crying became deafening wails.
“Wow.” The detective turned toward the sergeant. “He must have really loved that furniture.”
FORT LAUDERDALE
Fingers impatiently tapped a counter in a strip mall. Hanging from a pegboard: chew toys, catnip, fish pellets, and electronic dog collars that create an invisible fence around your yard.
An employee rushed back to the register through a vortex of animal-waste aromas that combined to smell exactly like all pet stores everywhere.
“Sorry for the delay.” He wiped something green on his shirt. “How may I help you?”
“This is a rescue intervention,” said Serge. “You’ve seen those news stories about heroin-addict mothers forgetting baby strollers on escalators while they shoplift?”
The employee scratched his head. “I’m not following.”
“I need you to take in a hamster.”
“We don’t buy hamsters,” said the clerk. “They’re multiplying fast enough as it is back there. Unless you bought it here and it’s sick or something, then I’ll need a receipt.”
“No, I didn’t buy it here and I don’t want to sell it.” Serge reached in his hip pocket. “I want you to adopt it. His current owner needs parenting classes. He’s passed out in the Firebird right now . . . Oh, and he may have a drug problem.”
“Your friend in the car?”
“The hamster, too. He’s being raised in a toxic environment. And when Coleman lost consciousness a few minutes ago, that was my big chance to save him, so it’s not really a kidnapping, right?”
“But I don’t think—”
Serge set the furry critter on the counter. “His name’s Skippy.”
The clerk looked down, then quickly up again with an odd expression.
“What’s the matter?” asked Serge.
“That’s not a hamster.”
“What is it, then?”
“A mouse.”
“Does that affect the adoption?”
“Well, we can always use mice.”
“Good.
“Yeah,” added the clerk. “We feed them to the snakes.”
Serge’s eyes flew wide. He snatched the small animal off the counter and clutched it to his chest. “Not Skippy!”
“But it’s just a mouse.”
Serge crashed backward into a sales display. Tiny aquarium castles plunged to the floor. “What kind of monster are you!”
“Look, they pay me shit.”
Serge ran out the door to a jingle of bells.
Coleman sat up in the backseat when Serge peeled out. “What’s going on?” He looked around the car. “Where’s Skippy?”
