Hammerhead Ranch Motel

21

Shortly after Serge and Lenny had set up their bunker in room one, City and Country showed up at Hammerhead Ranch, unable to find the two guys they were supposed to meet from Daytona. They considered it a plus.

City and Country loved Hammerhead Ranch the second they drove up. Between the beach and the open-air bar and the pool and freezing air-conditioning in the room, they had everything they needed for a much-needed vacation.

They didn’t leave the motel grounds for the first two days except to walk across the street to the Rapid Response convenience store. Actually it was more of a run. They were barefoot, and the sun had turned the pavement to hot coals. It started out: Wow, this hurts a little, and then, How fast can I move and still be ladylike? By the time they hit the shaded sidewalk in front of the store, they were both in gangly, loping gallops, and when they got inside they made fun of each other.

It was a regulation Florida convenience store. A man talked to invisible people at the newspaper boxes as a drug deal occurred by the car vacuum. There was a quiet aridness to the place, like a dusty tumbledown gas station with a squeaky metal sign swinging in the sagebrush outside Flagstaff, except with a row of bright beach rafts out front. No shortage of crap inside, either. Inflatable rings with horsey heads, umbrellas, sunscreen, novelty cans of Florida sunshine, suggestive postcards, beach towels with unicorns and Panama Jack and Jamaican flags, and a tall spinning rack of paperbacks next to the Great Wall of Beer. City opened the cooler and stuck her face in with eyes closed, and a cloud of frosty air fogged the glass. City grabbed a four-pack of passion fruit wine coolers. The clerk looked seventeen with fresh row crops of acne. A healthy self-image prompted him to shave his skull, grow a goatee and tattoo his neck with barbed wire. He installed what looked like tiny trailer hitches in his pierced eyebrows and smoked sub-generic cigarettes.

A police officer walked in and tipped his hat. City and Country tensed up and looked away. The cop bought a Wild West gunfighter magazine and caffeine tablets and tipped his hat again and left.

“How are you ladies today? Finding everything all right?” the clerk asked with a smile that revealed another trailer hitch in his tongue. The accent was Scottish.

City and Country put the wine coolers on the counter and grabbed two ice cream bars from the minicooler by the register. City smiled back at the clerk. His name tag said “Doom.”

“Hope you’re having a wonderful time on our island,” he continued. “We pride ourselves on the peacefulness out here.”

He took a horrific double drag on his cigarette and scratched his cheek rapidly like a mouse.

The pair left the store, and Doom watched through the glass as they bounded across the street. He looked down and kicked the ribs of the tied-up and gagged clerk stuffed under the counter.

“Where’s the goddamn safe?”

City and Country put the wine coolers on ice and took paperbacks out to the bar. They grabbed a table in the corner by the ocean. It was midafternoon, siesta time, and the bar was empty. Fine by them. Everywhere they ever went, men flocked. They ordered a fad Mexican beer because they wanted to play with the lime slices. They set the beers on the windowsill and leaned their chairs back and began reading. It was shift change on the beach-the last of the morning people packing it in, the afternoon people setting up.

When the wind was still, they heard the yells of high school kids throwing Frisbees in the surf, and when it wasn’t, they heard the bar’s license-plate wind chime. Then they heard this odd, sucking sound that they couldn’t quite place. It was near. They put the books down and looked around but couldn’t locate it. They stuck their heads out the open window and it grew louder. They looked straight down. Lenny Lippowicz sat on the ground with his back against the side of the bar, glancing around nervously and rapid-fire toking on a roach he had curled up in his hand.

“What are you doing?” asked City.

“Aaaaauuuuuuuu!!!” Lenny yelled.

The roach joint went flying and Lenny spun and ended up on his back in the sand.

“Don’t ever sneak up like that!” he said. “Oh man, now my head’s in a bad place, and I have to get my heart rate down… Can I have a sip of your beer?”

Country handed him her bottle and he killed it.

“Hey!” she yelled.

“Sorry, I’ll pay you back,” he said, sifting through the sand for his roach and coming up with cigarette butts and a diamond ring.

“Damn! It’s lost!” he said. “Now I have to go back to my room for another. You wanna join me?”

“To smoke marijuana?” asked Country.

“That’s the plan, and I’m the man.”

She looked at City and shook her head. “We can’t!”

“Definitely not!” said City.

“I’ve never done it, and I’m never going to,” said Country.

“Me neither!” said City.

Five minutes later they were cross-legged on the floor in Lenny’s room, smoking a fattie.

“We shouldn’t be doing this,” said City.

“We’re so bad,” said Country.

“Don’t talk-hold the smoke,” said Lenny.

“What’s that music? It’s so great!” said City. “It’s the best music I’ve heard in my whole life.”

“I think it’s ABBA,” said Lenny.

Country tried to talk but each time she opened her mouth, she broke up laughing. “What I’m trying to say…”-helpless laughter-“…I don’t know why it’s so funny…”-more laughter-“but I’m starving!”

“Me too!” City giggled.

“I don’t have anything, just a moldy old box of Cheese Nips in my suitcase.”

“Give it to us!” Country shouted. They didn’t wait for an answer before tearing apart the luggage and attacking the orange box.

“Got anything else to eat?” City said with a dry mouthful of masticated crackers.

“You guys are so stoned!” said Lenny.

“No we’re not!” said City.

“You are too!”

“I don’t feel a thing,” said Country.

“First music, now food,” he said. “That’s two out of the Big Three.”

“What’s the third?” asked City.

Lenny was about to respond when Country slammed into him on the blind side like a crack-back block. She knocked him to the floor and ripped open his belt and zipper.

“City, quick! Help me hold him down!”

“I’m not resisting!” said Lenny.

City came up behind Lenny and knelt over his head, pinning his arms with her knees. Country pulled off his pants and then hers and mounted him. Fifteen minutes later, she and City switched places.

An hour later City and Country were back at their regular table in the bar. Four fresh empties lined the sill, and they drank Bloody Marys, chewing the celery stalks as if they were smoking cigars. Their eyes were red and glazed. The bartender arrived with a platter of Hurricane Andrew Nachos-tortilla chips fanned out in the circular swirling pattern of a cyclone and smothered with picante and melted cheese. They devoured it without the aid of utensils. Halfway through the nachos, with mouths full, they waved the waiter over and ordered smoked mullet. When that arrived, they asked for the dinner menu.

Lenny walked like a zombie into the bar.

The bartender recognized him and pointed over at the women. “Hey, check those two in the corner-they’re eating me out of the place… Lenny?…Lenny?”

Lenny didn’t answer. He staggered through the bar and walked out the back door, where he sat down in the sand with a dazed smile until the sun went down.

The next morning, Lenny opened the door to go out for a paper and City and Country were already standing there. They each held out a five-dollar bill. Country said loudly, “Can we buy ten dollars of pot?”

“Shhhhhh! Jesus!” Lenny replied. He looked around quickly and yanked them into the room, then closed and bolted the door.

An hour later, City and Country were down the street at the International House of Belgian Waffles. They sat at the semicircular corner booth with a fire-rated capacity of eight. Covering the table were blueberry flapjacks, silver-dollar pancakes, sunny-side-up eggs with steak, French toast, scrambled eggs and hash browns, a side order of link sausages, a small bowl of whipped butter and pouring jars of maple and boysenberry syrup.

Back at the hotel, Lenny lay in his jockey shorts spread-eagle on the bed, unable to move. He was in love.