Nuclear Jellyfish

NEXT MORNING

An AMC Javelin raced down A1A and took a small, low bridge across the Tolomato River. It turned south on San Marco Avenue. Serge alternately glanced out the windows and down at his cluttered lap: glossy eight-by-ten satellite photos, View-Master reels, vintage postcards in protective plastic cases.

“Holy cow,” said Coleman. “Look at all those shoppers at that big freakin’ mall made of old stones.”

“How many times do I have to tell you to keep the joints down!” said Serge. “And it’s not a mall. It’s Castillo de San Marcos, the massive four-hundred-year-old masonry fort-“

“-to protect St. Augustine inlet as part of Spain’s early coastal defense.” Story looked back down at her history text. “Coquina rock quarried from Anastasia Island. And it’s three hundred years old, not four. The first century they used a series of wooden battlements.” Serge’s heart went pitter-pat.

Coleman exhaled another huge hit out the window. “You know all those new malls that are made to look old? And how instead of inside, all the store entrances are outside, and everyone walks around fake brick courtyards getting sweaty, and you can’t find a place to park for shit unless it’s a mile away, and by then you forgot what you came to buy and now just want a taco, but have to settle for elephant ears at the county fair until the guards smell your weed behind the Tilt-A-Whirl, and you’re exhausted by the time you escape back to the parking lot and decide to go to the mall. I am really, really high.”

“Just keep that joint down.”

“I want to buy something,” said Coleman. “You sure it’s not a mall?”

“Fairly certain.” Serge held an encased, circa 1960 postcard up to the windshield for roadside comparison. “Ever seen that commercial about your brain on drugs?”

“I love that commercial.” Coleman fired up another number. “It’s a scream if you’re toasted. ‘Look, my brain’s an egg!’ I’m hungry. Do we have any eggs ?”

“I’m trying to concentrate,” said Serge.

“I’m trying to study,” said Story.

“I’ll look for eggs,” said Coleman.

The riverfront road swung south onto Avenida Menendez. Tourists jammed sidewalks and narrow alleys. A horse pulled a carriage of Norwegians with disposable cameras. Coleman toked; Story highlighted her textbook; Serge held up a postcard. Nothing matched. He checked the satellite photo and clicked through a View-Master reel. No hits. “I could swear it’s around here somewhere.”

“We just passed a place with eggs.”

“I’ve definitely driven too far.” Serge made a U, retracing his route north.

Coleman pointed out the window again. “Now I know where we are. There are those giant cats that scared the piss out of me last time.”

“The Bridge of Lions,” said Serge.

“But they’re just statues made of stone. Why was I so scared?”

“You were on mescaline.”

“That would do it,” said Coleman. “Once the phone rang and it was after dark before I came out from under the bed.”

“Coleman!” snapped Story, gesturing with annoyance at the book she was trying to read.

“Sorry.” He turned to Serge. “What are you looking for?”

“Site of the famous Monson Motor Lodge.”

“What’s that?”

Story clapped her book shut in frustration. “Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested during a sit-in at the Monson.” She reached for her organizer and a term-paper rough draft. “June 11,1964.”

“Resulting publicity broke a House filibuster,” said Serge. “Paving the way for passage of the historic Civil Rights Act.”

“Senate filibuster,” said Story.

Serge adjusted his underwear to accommodate the growing bulge.

Coleman tapped an ash. “So what’s with the postcard and photos?”

“The Monson was demolished, but I was able to get this old postcard of the motel off eBay, which I triangulated to within a three-block range with my vintage View-Master collection. Then I went on Google Earth at the library and hovered over the resulting target zone looking for landmarks.”

“Find anything?”

Serge unscrewed the top of a thermos. “They razed the motel, and never in a million years would I have recognized the new one. Except they kept the original pool and built around it. Must have been cost prohibitive to rip it out.” He tapped a kidney-shaped spot on the satellite photo. “The configuration is distinctive, and it’s the only pool on the strip that sits up against the sidewalk, just off the west end of the last palm tree-lined median strip.”

“So why can’t you find it?”

Serge chugged straight from his thermos and threw up the other hand. “That’s what I don’t understand.”

“We’re passing the fort again,” said Coleman.

Serge pounded the steering wheel with his forehead. “This is bullshit!” He made a skidding U-turn and headed back. “I triple-checked all my calculations and sources, so the only possible answer is enemy action.”

“Dear God,” said Coleman. “Who do you think’s behind it?”

“Someone who’s going to pay.” Serge killed the rest of his thermos, pulled a 9mm automatic from under the driver’s seat and racked the slide.

Story looked up from the backseat. “Want me to tell you where it is?”

“No!”

“It’ll save you all this silly driving back-and-forth.”

“Please,” Serge said patronizingly, holding a gun in one hand, looking through a View-Master and driving with his elbows. “Doesn’t it look like I know what I’m doing?”

Story shrugged and turned a page.

The Javelin drove up and down the strip five more times, Serge punching the dashboard, clawing upholstery and ripping down ceiling fabric.

“Fuck it,” said Story. “I can’t take this stupidness anymore. It’s the Hilton. They put up a tall cement privacy wall. That’s why you could see the pool in the aerial photo but not from the street.”

Serge stopped at a red light, wiping bloody knuckles on a towel and squinting into the rearview. “You just couldn’t stand to see me having fun.”

Mahoney had gone bloodhound.

The smell was all Serge.

The agent currently hunkered in a dark corner of a mangy old roadhouse near the ocean just east of Jacksonville. The tavern spoke to Mahoney. It said: The farther north you drive in the state, the more south you get. Definitely Florida, but no mistaking this for Madonna’s Miami Beach. Longnecks replaced mojitos, dark wood paneling, framed photos of Bobby Bowden and Bo Jackson, pool tables, yellowed stuffed fish over bottles of budget whiskey for package sale, handwritten liquor license, signs giving the heads up for loose women. The doors remained propped open to bright light and warm salt air. It was noon. They didn’t take plastic.

Mahoney wouldn’t have been caught dead with a laptop, except he thought the just-out-of-the-box Toshiba on the table in front of him was a 1932 Smith-Corona with a “magic screen.” He found Serge’s travel website. Fingers hit six keys: PETE’S.

Up popped a dispatch dated twelve hours earlier: “117 First Street, Neptune Beach, converted from Pete Jensen’s Market at the end of Prohibition. John Grisham used the joint as a setting in one of his novels, and you can sit beneath a charred oak barrel hanging from the ceiling that marks the spot where the Mississippi scribe sat while doing research, and-you’re not going to fuckin’ believe this!-the commemorative plaque on the barrel misspelled the book’s title. Finding that golden footnote made my whole week …”

Mahoney looked up and read the side of a barrel. “… The Bretheren.”

He nodded gravely. Serge was close, real close.

Mahoney tapped down to the bottom of the website. The last item was a thumbnail of the state flag over words: “This is my e-mail button. Serge really wants to hear from you! I promise to write back. In fact, you may have trouble getting me to stop writing back. Change your life forever: Click now!”

Mahoney clicked the button, hit an invisible carriage return and began typing with one finger.

The Javelin angled up the steep, cobbled drive of the St. Augustine Hilton and parked by the office.

Serge hit the bell ten times at the front desk. Someone appeared. He kept hitting the bell.

“You can stop ringing now.”

“Sorry. Surplus excitement about my life. One regular room please. And don’t think a free upgrade to your top suite will get you excellent marks in my travel company’s widely viewed website, even though it will.”

“I can upgrade you anyway. It’s pretty dead.”

Serge winked. “Of course it is.”

The trio checked into their suite and dropped bags. Coleman went in the bathroom. Serge meticulously stowed and restowed his gear, then cleared the dresser, nightstands and all other horizontal surfaces of ubiquitous welcoming literature, local guidebooks, stand-up cardboard advertisements and cable channel guides, stuffing them all in a bottom drawer “to preempt optical confusion.”

Story climbed into a one-piece swimsuit, and knocked on the bathroom door.

From inside. “Who is it?”

“I need a towel. I’m going to lay out by the pool.”

“Almost done.” Humming.

“You’ve been in there forever.”

Coleman eventually opened the door. “Serge, look at all these cute little bottles. What’s this stuff called ‘conditioner’?”

“In your world, background noise.”

“Jesus,” said Story. “Close the door!”

“Thought you wanted a towel.”

“That smell! It’s like a slaughterhouse. What have you been eating?”

“Stuff.”

She pinched her nose. “Screw it, I’ll air-dry.”

Serge slipped into his own trunks and grabbed a small, flexible cooler. “I’ll join you.”

Coleman came out of the bathroom with toilet paper trailing from his pants. “Wait for me …”

Story led the way across the parking lot and pushed open the safety gate. A small pool sat empty in the middle of a tiny patio with a narrow walkway between the far edge and the high concrete wall buffering the racket of unseen traffic. Story settled into a lounger with sunscreen and textbook.

“Look!” yelled Serge. “A bronze plaque!” He raced to the wall and delicately ran fingers over the lettering. “It commemorates Dr. King’s achievement! And I never would have found it without all my expert research skills!”

Story looked up with raised eyebrows.

“I was just about to find it when you blurted it out!”

She smiled and looked back down.

Serge grabbed a notebook from the side pocket of his cooler. “This is incredible. When corporations tear down all the special places, they usually don’t give a hoot about leaving plaques I can touch and make rubbings.” He held one of his book’s pages to the plaque and lightly brushed it with the angled tip of a pencil. “This gets the hotel Serge’s highest seal of approval, plus a personal thank-you note to Paris Hilton.”

Coleman climbed down into the pool with a six-pack and street clothes. Serge joined him and waded over with his cooler. He placed it at the side of the pool, removed three bologna sandwiches and began ramming them in his mouth as fast as he could, accelerating the process with swigs of bottled water. His cheeks bulged like a squirrel stowing nuts.

“That’s disgusting,” said Story.

“I normally have excellent table manners.” Serge crammed another bite. “But I’m field-testing a travel tip. This is about science.”

“Science?”

“I’m going to swim without waiting an hour after eating.” He pushed the rest of a sandwich in and finished the water bottle. “Nobody’s ever considered challenging the prevailing wisdom-nobody’s ever dared!”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“You think it’s just one hour, but the loss in job efficiency becomes astronomical over an entire career.” Serge donned swim goggles. “Time management is critical for Fortune 500 travelers on the go. If my hunch is correct, the labor-saving windfall could rock the international exchange rate … Coleman, what’s that on your head?”

“My new hat. I found it with those little bottles in the bathroom.”

“Coleman, that’s a disposable shower cap.”

“How do I look?”

“Like Coleman, except… what’s that look on your face?”

“What look?”

Serge felt the water around his legs grow warm. “Damn it, Coleman! Not in the pool! And not right before my big swim!”

“At least you’re wearing goggles.”

“You always do this.”

“I do not.”

“Coleman, one time you even did a number two.” “That was in the ocean.”

“We’re not finished discussing this.” Serge took a deep breath and dove into the water. His lack of properly coached, hydrodrag mechanics was compensated for by manic, wild-man splashing. He reached the end of the short pool in seconds, executing an Olympic flip-kick against the wall. He splashed a few more seconds and flipped at the other wall. Then another lap, and another. Coleman covered his beer each time Serge thrashed by. Story shook her head.

He continued for a solid, twenty-minute calorie burn, then popped up in the shallow end and whipped off his goggles. “Just as I thought! Come on, Coleman, we have to get back to the room and alert Wall Street. Story?”

“I have more studying.”

The guys took off. She exhaled a breath of relief and uncapped a yellow highlighter. “Finally …”

The hot Florida sun tacked across a clear azure sky until afternoon clouds rolled in from the peninsula. Story looked up and checked her watch. “Wow, four already?”

She gathered belongings, strolled back to the room and opened the door to horrible screams.

“What the hell’s going on in here?”

Serge was doubled up on the bed as Coleman applied a wet washcloth to his forehead.

“… Cramps! Bad! Ooooooo! …”

“You idiot.”

Serge writhed and moaned in agony. He finally managed to lift his chin. “Coleman …”

Coleman cradled his head. “What is it, buddy?”

“Can you leave Story and me alone for a half hour. We’re going to have sex.”

“What!” said Story. “Have you lost your fucking mind?”

“But last night… Don’t you like me anymore?”

“You have cramps!”

Serge shook his head. “The key to life is pushing on through cramps. I do it all the time when field-testing how long you can keep convenience store sandwiches on the road without refrigeration. General rule of thumb, two days, except tuna fish, which is one with absolutely no wiggle room. Oooooooooo! God it hurts! Ahhhhh!… You may be right. Just give me a blow job.”

“That’s it. I’m going for a walk.” She changed out of her wet suit in record time. The door slammed.

“What a bitch,” said Coleman.

“She’s not a bitch,” said Serge. “Women can’t help their mood swings. Try to be more sensitive like me.”

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