Serge continued staring out at the bay with hands on his hips. “You’re closer to the phone. Why don’t
“Because I don’t know everything that’s going on like you do.”
“In this phase of the plan, it doesn’t matter who answers the phone,” said Serge. “Just as long as someone does.”
“Cool.” Coleman got up. “I’ve always wanted to answer a phone but you never let me.” He grabbed the receiver off the nightstand. “Hello, you got the one and only Coleman . . . Yes? . . . What? . . . Oh my God! . . . Holy shit! . . . Fuck me! . . . Appreciate you calling.”
Coleman hung up.
There was some background noise as Serge enjoyed the flickering lights of a cruise ship off the coast. Suddenly he noticed something alarming in the window’s reflection, coming up fast from behind. He spun and tackled Coleman.
Porcelain exploded.
“Coleman, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“That phone call.” Coleman panted and pulled a sliver out of his palm. “The guy at the front desk said there was a gas leak and I had to immediately break out the big window with the toilet-tank lid.”
“That’s why I told you
“When?”
“When we first got in the room.”
“You were talking to me?”
A calamity of sound began coming through the door. Frantic voices in the hallway. Sprinkler heads snapping off. Fire extinguishers.
“Forget it.” He grabbed Coleman by his shirt. “We have to hurry!”
They ran to the front of the suite. Serge gently opened the door a foot. The crazed voices from the foam-soaked hallway were now but distant echoes as people galloped down the stairwell instead of taking the elevator. Serge left the door ajar, then hustled Coleman into the bathroom, cut the lights and hid.
The stairway echoes faded until the hallway was silent. Just Serge and Coleman breathing in the bathroom and trying to adjust their eyes to the dark.
“What are we waiting for?” whispered Coleman.
“Shhhh, I think I hear it.”
The hallway silence was broken by a herd of padding footsteps. Then doors creaking.
“What’s going on?” asked Coleman.
“They’re hitting the other rooms,” said Serge. Footsteps grew closer. “No more talking.”
Coleman’s heart pounded in the still bathroom. The door to their own room slowly began to creak.
“Hello? Anyone home? . . . Excellent. And they left their wallets right out on the dresser . . .”
Serge listened until he could tell by the sound that their new guest was sufficiently into the suite, then he tiptoed out of the bathroom to the room’s hallway door and pushed it shut behind him without concern for noise.
The intruder spun around in surprise.
“Actually someone
Coleman climbed onto one of the beds with a sigh. He was bored. Coleman generally figured out what was coming next because he’d seen that show a hundred times. He clicked the TV on with the remote and searched for something to watch. He had known Serge for almost two decades, and their traveling hotel lifestyle had become so routine it was now utterly predictable: Serge tore off a generous length of duct tape. Coleman sucked a bong rigged from the room’s ice bucket. A clown put out birthday candles by beating off.
Fifteen minutes later, Serge gregariously slapped his lucky contestant on the shoulder. “That chair comfy? Didn’t tie you up too tight, did I? Good!” He dragged over a table, turned his back to the hostage and reached into a duffel bag. “Today we’re going to play show-and-tell. I loved show-and-tell as a kid, but I don’t think my teachers were really into it. Like if you’re doing the model volcano for science, and instead of following the directions with baking soda for a cute little milk shake of a volcano, you buy potassium nitrate at the drugstore and mix it with iron filings, which creates a spectacular nine-hundred-degree pyroclastic blast, which should get you to the top grade. Except they never mention that if you scorch the blackboard and melt the floor, it’s an F.”
He began laying out a variety of weapons on his show-and-tell table.
“Serge,” said Coleman. “I’m now going to watch
“You do that.” Serge continued arranging a switchblade, kung fu stars, a billy club, guns, a noose, and a bottle with a skull on the warning label.
“Rico just overcharged a housewife at his transmission shop, but she can’t afford the whole amount and asks if there’s any way they can work it out.” Coleman turned up the volume. “I wonder where they could possibly be going with this story.”
Serge stepped in front of his captive and formed an enchanting smile with a tube clenched in the corner of his mouth.
“Now they’re down in the lube bay,” said Coleman.
“. . . But I’m also open-minded and maybe misjudged you.”
