Tiger Shrimp Tango полностью

“That’s right, the Tupperware party was invented in Florida!” said Serge. “And not more than a stone’s throw from right here.”

“Tupperware’s got my respect,” said Coleman. “And all the stoners, too. Plastic burp lids may not be our bag, but stoners know from parties, and we have to give a major nod to their munchy spreads. My old group had a couple heads who knew how to cook—not too many, because the rest of us compared notes and found products in the supermarket where you could open the package, stick your hand in, then stick your hand in your mouth. That was our version of cooking. But a few of the guys actually did all that unnecessary stuff and whipped up some boss nibbles for after the weed guy finally arrived except the weed guy was always late, and everything got too cold or warm and started drying and looking funky, and you called the weed guy and said, ‘You’ve fucked up the burritos again, dude’ . . .”

“Coleman—”

“But the best stoner munchie layout isn’t in the ballpark of even the weakest Tupperware party. Deviled eggs were just the beginning: You had your celery with cream cheese, tomatoes stuffed with tuna salad, olives with toothpicks, Ritz crackers and Velveeta. That’s real food.”

“It was a magic time,” said Serge. “They made me go to bed, which just made me want to stay up. So I snuck down the hall and watched my mom preparing with the local rep, stacking lettuce tubs in perfect pyramids on top of a card table in front of the Magnavox. And I couldn’t believe my eyes: I’d never seen the tube off in the evening. Tupperware was even bigger than TV!”

“Like the Beatles and Jesus . . .”

“And later the party got so effective that it spilled into our backyard with mosquito torches and Harvey Wallbangers, and I spied on the adults by sticking my head through my bedroom curtains and watching the rest of the night as they continued drinking, buying more and more Tupperware and lighting the wrong ends of cigarettes. Except back then, God knows why, they made some bedroom curtains with tiny pieces of fiberglass in the fabric, and all the next day my neck itched like a bastard. Same as now whenever I go to the barber and they put on that whole bullshit charade of wrapping the paper strip around my neck and sprinkling talcum powder and finishing off with that home-plate-umpire brush, and I say, ‘Let’s dispense with this Cecil B. De Mille production once and for all. We both know a bunch of little hair pieces will get down in my neck no matter what you do, and it’ll itch like crazy. So the sooner I pay, the sooner I can go jump in the ocean like I always do.’ And the whole time I’m thinking of Tupperware.”

“You’re a complex person,” said Coleman.

“And yet I’m content with the simplest things.” Serge reached in a pocket and smiled as he unfolded the one-dollar drawing from a bearded guy.

A cell phone rang. Serge checked the display and sighed.

Mahoney.

OceanofPDF.com

Chapter Seventeen

DOWNTOWN ORLANDO

The hallway ran past offices with giant windows and massive banks of TV monitors.

The rooms were dim; colored lights blinked on vast control panels that looked like they belonged in launch control at Canaveral. Red digital numbers flickered to measure whatever they were measuring in thousandths of a second.

The hallway continued past the offices until its carpeting abruptly ended in dust at the entrance of a dingy corridor with a plain concrete wall. Across from the wall was a barrier of unpainted plywood held up with two-by-fours. It was the framework of an illusion. Backstage.

On the other side of the plywood: the cheerfully bright television studio of Live Action Eyewitness Orlando News 12. But it was just after ten A.M., so there wasn’t any action or news, just the local mid-morning feel-good show, Feel Good Orlando! A lone anchorwoman sat behind a clear acrylic anchor desk that was internally illuminated with fiber optics. It was specially designed for high-def, because good feelings were better in digital. She read introductions off the teleprompter before tossing the show around to a series of mini-sets located throughout the studio’s plywood maze, where the various segments featured a middle school math team, a doctor who used lasers on unsightly veins, someone demonstrating how to get your neighbor’s dog to stop barking with an ultra-sonic transmitter disguised as a birdhouse, and a trainer from the local zoo with a misbehaving hedgehog that got loose and ended up in the fake kitchen where viewers would soon discover guilt-free cheese cake.

Past the studio, the illusion faded into conventional administrative offices.

A phone rang.

The person who answered it was unimpressed at first, but then began taking copious notes.

He hung up and went to another office, where an assignment editor dispatched a video crew to a run-down motel near the Orange County line.

It was about telegenics. The footage would lead the next day’s show.

The next day’s show: