Nuclear Jellyfish

JACKSONVILLE

Midnight

Two young men walked along the bank of the St. Johns River, sporting shaved heads, sleeveless T-shirts and bituminous eyes that proudly announced: MINIMUM WAGE 4 LIFE. They gripped baseball bats halfway up the barrels.

“I hate fuckin’ bums.”

“So where are they?”

“Supposed to be a bunch of them right around here.”

“Just like fuckin’ bums.”

There had been a light rain, and warm mist rose from the road. Work boots slapped across glistening tar and splashed through moonlit puddles. They approached the underpass of the Fuller Warren Bridge.

“Where the hell are those damn bums?”

“Hold up.”

“What is it?”

“Over there.”

“Where?”

“Shhhhh. Get your camcorder ready …”

A two-tone 1971 AMC Javelin with split upholstery sat in darkness and trash beneath a downtown bridge over the St. Johns River.

“Theories abound concerning the phenomenon of the nation’s trash elite inexorably percolating down to Florida like industrial toxins reaching our aquifers …”

A beer can popped. “You’re doing it again.”

Serge wrote furiously in his notebook. “Doing what?”

“Talking to yourself.”

“No I wasn’t.” More writing. “… This travel writer places his money on time-release scumbag DNA …”

Coleman burped. “You always talk to yourself and then say you’re not.”

“I am? Really? That’s embarrassing.” He leaned over his notebook. “… The scumbag genetic factor is like hereditary blood disease or male-pattern baldness. At progressive age milestones, a series of rusty, chain-link twists in the double helix trigger a sequence of social tumors: Buy a pit bull, buy an all-terrain vehicle, get a DUI, sponsor a series of blue-ribbon slapping matches with your wife in the middle of the street, discharge a gun indoors, fail to appear in court, discharge fireworks indoors, get a DUI, forget where you put your Oxy-contin, crash your all-terrain vehicle into your pit bull, spend money to replace missing front teeth on large-mouth-bass mailbox, get stretchered away by ambulance for reasons you don’t remember, appear on COPS for a DUI, run out the back door when warrants are served and, in a trademark spasm of late-stage dirtball-ism, move to Florida …”

Serge finished the transcription and turned to a fresh page. There was a period of silence in the two-tone Javelin (orange and green) sitting under the Fuller Warren Bridge. Then, a crunching of wax paper. A soggy tuna sandwich appeared. A travel mug of cold coffee came off the dashboard.

“Serge,” said Coleman. “What did you mean before, ‘We’re on stakeout’? We’re not police.”

“Common mistake everyone makes, like the Constitution’s reserve clause for states’ rights. Just because cops do it, doesn’t mean we can’t.” Serge took a sip from the mug. “This is our new job.”

Coleman finished unwrapping the sandwich. “I thought our new job was visiting hotels to fill out checklists for that travel website.”

“And on every hotel listing, there’s a section called ‘local things to do.’”

“I’m not sure the websites want to send their customers under bridges at night in dicey parts of town.”

“That’s my offbeat niche: I give the people what they want before they know they want it.”

“But your new boss specifically said no more offbeat reports.”

“Everyone does what their bosses ask, and that’s precisely why you need to distinguish yourself from the herd.” Serge killed the coffee. “I stun them into paralyzed respect with my withering insubordination. First impressions are important.”

“They usually call security.”

“Because I made an impression.”

Coleman checked one of his pants pockets, then another. He pulled out his hand and raised the twisted corner of a Baggie to his eyes. “Where’d it all go? Did mice chew through here? Oh well …” He bent over.

“Thought you’d outgrown that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Everyone now knows coke is fucked up. You had an excuse for a while, because our hypocritical government lost all credibility by lumping pot in with crack to court the weed-bigot vote. Meanwhile, congressmen crammed all orifices with huge wads of cash from tobacco and liquor lobbies. But who would have guessed they were actually right about that stupid white shit?”

Coleman raised his head and sniffled. “I just do a little bump now and then so I can stay up and keep drinking beer.”

“For a second I thought you weren’t being productive.”

Coleman’s head suddenly snapped to the side. He pointed out Serge’s window. “What was that?”

Serge turned. “What?”

“Something moved under the bridge.”

Serge returned to his notebook. “Nothing’s there. You’re hallucinating again.”

Coleman squinted a few more seconds, then shrugged. He stuck his tongue inside the empty bag and reached under the seat for another Schlitz. “We need to make some money.”

“That’s what I’m doing now.” Serge flipped a notebook page, stopped and tapped his chin with a pen. “I need travel-writing tunes.” He reached for his iPod, synched it with an RF transmitter to the Javelin’s radio and cranked the volume. “… Fly high, oh, Freebird, yeah!…”

Coleman rewrapped his tuna sandwich. “You’ve been listening to Skynyrd all day.”

“We’re in Jacksonville. I’m required to listen to Skynyrd.”

“Why? Skynyrd’s from Alabama.”

Serge began punching the steering wheel like a speed bag. “Everyone thinks they’re from Alabama! They’re Floridians! Apocryphal motherfuckers …”

“Okay, okay, they’re from Florida.” Coleman set a wax ball on the dashboard. “I don’t know this stuff like you.”

Serge pointed at the ball. “You’re messing up my horizon.”

“The sandwich is soggy.”

“Soggy’s better.”

“Fuck that shit.”

“Your little chestnuts complete my life.”

“So Skynyrd’s really from Florida?”

“Too many of our state’s native accomplishments are credited elsewhere. First Skynyrd and Alabama, then everyone thinks the Allman Brothers are from Georgia.”

“They’re not?”

“South Daytona Beach.” Serge flipped down the sun visor and gazed up at a photo attached with rubber bands.

“You sure keep looking at that picture a lot.”

“I think I’m in love for the first time in my life.”

Coleman leaned for a closer view of a smiling woman in a NASA pressure suit. “But it’s just that crazy astronaut.”

“So?”

“So she’s a basket case. Got obsessed with some rival babe, filled a tote bag with tools, and drove like twelve hours straight through the night to kidnap her at the Orlando airport.”

“Exactly.” Serge took the photo down and kissed it. “This chick’s focused.”

A dark form stepped out from behind a bridge pylon. It slowly approached the Javelin from the driver’s blind spot.

Coleman looked down at his lap. “Serge?”

“What?”

“I don’t want to wear a diaper anymore.”

“Then don’t drink so much beer. We always have to pull over while I’m doing research.”

“Ever since you heard of that batty astronaut-“

“Don’t talk about my woman!” Serge replaced the photo and flipped the visor back up. “Besides, if I can wear a diaper, so can you.”

“But why are you wearing a diaper?”

“Maturity,” said Serge. “I’ve always wanted to be an astronaut, but my psychiatrist taught me to accept things I cannot change.” He wiggled into the driver’s seat with a plastic crinkling sound, then looked out the window at the stars and smiled. “This may be the closest I get to going into space.”

INTERSTATE 10 CORRIDOR

Toby Keith on the juke. Expense-account martinis covered several cocktail tables that businessmen had pushed together in a smoky motel lounge called the Pirate’s Cove. The decor was saddles and spurs and branding irons. The sign remained a lasting testimony that pirates don’t sell drinks in north Florida, and cowboys don’t sell enough for a new sign.

Swinging saloon doors creaked; a familiar face rolled luggage into the cove.

“Steve! Get over here, we saved you a seat!”

“It’s now Sh-teve.”

“Sh-teve?”

The adjoining tables were inhabited by a race of subterranean, combed-over business travelers with the physiques of water balloons resting on something flat. They racked up massive 41-cent miles and a gold-card number of hotel nights due to very good or very bad marriages. The chair they’d saved was at the head of the first table because the rest of the gang lived vicariously through Steve’s sex stories. They were all false, of course, but the guys believed him since he was the youngest and the best looking of the bunch, which was beyond relative and little coin in the realm of getting any.

“Why ‘Sh-teve’?”

“Babes dig it. Still spelled the same.” He plopped down and looked back toward the swinging doors. “Did you check out that piece of ass at the reception desk?”

“Couldn’t miss. Looks like she’s still in high school.”

Steve leaned back arrogantly.

“Don’t tell me you did her.”

“A gentleman doesn’t talk.”

“Come on!”

“Okay, first I grabbed her ears …”

They were an hour east of Tallahassee, just off I-10, in the state’s Spanish-moss belt girding the Georgia line. The nearest dots on the map were Live Oak, Madison and Shady Grove. It was a modest but sanitary motel, kept to chain standards, that went up quickly when economy at the exit ramp exploded with a convenience store and fast-food franchise that did morning biscuits right.

The lounge side of the property sat in the shadow of the highway overpass, and long-haul truckers rumbled by at such an acute angle as to suggest landing aircraft. Beneath the bridge’s eastern berm stood the lighted motel marquee-WELCOME DIVERSIFIED CONSOLIDATORS - and below that, someone in a dishwashing hairnet manipulated a twelve-foot telescoping aluminum pole to capture black plastic letters. He left the WELCOME up and changed the rest to DATA IMPLEMENTERS. The WELCOME had an off-putting slant in the middle because they were short on L’s and flipped over a 7. The largest conference room had a fire-marshal capacity of eighteen.

The gang in the hotel bar-like all gangs in all hotel bars-had a universal familiarity. Some was the result of actually knowing each other, traveling identical job circuits and enrolling in the same reward-points program. The rest had never met but recognized their own kind. Like Darin and Frank.

“I’m Darin, he’s Frank. Join you?”

Another table slid over.

“What’s your line?”

Frank removed a plastic straw convention hat. “World Congress of Data Implementers.”

Someone pointed at the military ribbons on Darin’s jacket. “What are those?”

“Seven straight quarters, most data implemented.”

“Nobody can touch Darin,” said Frank. “They call him the terminator.”

Beer bottles clinked. A toast to data.

Frank turned to Steve. “Who are you with?”

“Southeast Rare Coins. Finished a show in Tallahassee, getting a leg up on Jacksonville tomorrow. I’m Sh-teve. This is Ted and Henry.”

“Nice to meet…”

“Saw the billboards,” Frank said respectfully. “That big expo with the stamp collectors.” Ted winced.

Henry made a silent, slashing gesture across his throat with a finger.

“I say something wrong?”

Steve stared down into his cocktail. “Stamps guys are faggots.”

Ted crouched and lowered his voice. “Some exhibitors pulled out of the tour. Forced to let philatelists in or we’d get creamed on the hall deposits.”

“Speaking of exhibitors …” Ted looked around the room. “Where’s Ralph?”

“Stayed back at the conference,” said Steve.

“What? The hotel where we had the show?”

Steve nodded curtly, biting an olive off a plastic spear.

“But Ralph should know better. You never stay at the show hotel.”

“He’s an adult.”

“So was Buffalo Nickel Bill.”

“How’s he doing?” asked Henry.

“Getting out of the hospital next week.”

“Who would have thought he’d be hit in Panama City?”

“Whole state’s gone crazy.”

“Police think it’s one of the new professional gangs.”

“Good,” said Steve.

“How’s that good?”

“Because pros only hit when they’re absolutely sure you’re out of the room. And we’re insured.”

“Then why’d they jump Bill?”

“Must have varied his routine and come back at the wrong time.”

“I’m worried,” said Henry.

“You all worry too much,” said Steve. “It’s an isolated incident …”

“… That required sixty stitches.”

“Listen,” said Steve. “Bill got sloppy.”

“And some punks got lucky,” said Henry. “Police found a few loose gems in the carpet that were scattered in the attack. How’d they know there’d be such a score?”

“Back up,” said Ted. “What was Bill doing with stones? He’s a coin guy. Not even good coins. Warned him about loading up on buffalo nickels.”

“Do you have to talk about him like that while he’s still got tubes ?” said Henry. “We all took a beating when the buffalo bubble burst.”

“But what was Bill doing with stones?”

“Police said they were definitely pros who knew exactly what they were looking for. Didn’t even touch the nickels.”

“Screw the nickels already! What the hell was Bill doing with stones?”

“Just telling you what I heard.”

“Makes perfect sense now,” Steve said with authority. “Read all about it in the paper: the latest thing …” Everyone turned and waited.

“… Traveling businessmen secretly moonlighting as diamond couriers.”

“Diamond couriers?” said Henry.

“Little-known fact, but secret networks of highly trained couriers are crisscrossing Florida at all times. With the state’s insane growth, there’s more than enough work to go around, and they’ve started recruiting part-timers.”

“Don’t they use armored cars?” asked Ted.

“Sometimes.” Steve opened his wallet, removing an iridescent plastic card. “But you do the math: too many jewelry stores and not enough vehicles. Plus, those trucks are neon advertisements. So couriers go under the radar, no security, dressing down, the last people you’d ever expect, like Bill. Unfortunately, there’s also a secret network of professional robbery crews who know the deal, and it’s become a high-stakes game of cat and mouse from Pensacola to Key West.”

“But if couriers are undercover, how do the gangs find out?”

“Police theorize paid informants …” Steve tilted the shiny card back and forth in the light. “… People very close to the couriers, possibly the same line of work. Maybe even staying at the same hotels …”

Everyone at the tables hushed and leaned back. In their minds, Vincent Price played the pipe organ. Eyes darted from person to person in a round-robin of suspicion. Steve’s card found the perfect angle; a hologram appeared.

“When did you reach platinum?” asked Henry.

“Last week.” He began sliding it back into his wallet.

“Can I touch?”

“No.”

MEANWHILE …

Serge grabbed a briefcase from the Javelin’s backseat and opened it in his lap. Pockets brimmed with tourist pamphlets aggressively harvested from hotel-lobby racks, then alphabetized. Florida Theater, Fort Caroline, the symphony, the zoo …

Coleman cracked another beer. “When do we get to the part about making money?”

“We’re already there.” Serge pawed through flyers. “This is the perfect spot to take in all the bridges.” A digital camera sat on the dash, and Serge rotated it ten degrees at half-minute intervals for an overlapping panorama of time-lapse night shots. “I love bridges, and Jacksonville loves me! Hard to find more spans in one spot except Pittsburgh, but then you’re in Pittsburgh. Here we have seven bridges downtown alone, because of the mighty St. Johns, and even more downstream.”

“What about tunnels?”

“Love them too, but in the current climate of homeland security, authorities now frown on my tunnel routine of taking twenty photos while standing in the moon roof steering with my knees. I think they frowned on it before as well.” Serge hit the recline lever on the driver’s seat for the required bridge-appreciation angle, smiling as he scanned sparse evening traffic crossing respective west-to-east spans: Corporate climbers from skyline insurance buildings heading south to the suburbs after another late night at the office, rental cars and hotel shuttles driving down from the northside airport, Disney-bound families in minivans with New York and New England plates getting some last miles under their belts before putting up, a stretch limo full of non-limo people who’d pooled money for a birthday party, a windowless white van with ladders on top and magnetic licensed-contractor signs on the side.

Outside the Javelin, in Serge’s blind spot, an ominous shadow grew larger.

Serge raised his eyes toward old girders of the bridge they were beneath. He grabbed his travel mug off the dash and refilled from a thermos. “Now I’m milking the last few moments of simple pleasure.”

Coleman crumpled a beer can. “From what?”

“Lightbulbs. I can’t get enough of the bulbs.”

“Bulbs?”

“Blue. All along this bridge as well as the neighboring John T. Alsop built in 1941. Rare remaining treasure of a center-steel sensibility.”

“Why blue lightbulbs?”

“Monday Night Football.” Serge chugged his travel mug. “Jacksonville now has the Jaguars, and network people are always broadcasting nightscapes of whatever city they’re in before cutting to commercials. But downtown Jacksonville was about as hopping as the Andromeda Strain when everyone’s dead from an extraterrestrial virus. TV cameras might as well have been panning the dark side of the moon. A PR windfall from professional football was about to turn into national disgrace.”

“Dear Jesus,” said Coleman. “What happened next?”

“Genius struck!” Serge took another long pull of coffee. “Someone who will forever go unrecognized said, ‘Let’s put blue lightbulbs all over the bridges.’ It’s dark; they won’t see the rest of the shit. Shazam! For pennies on the dollar, they created the illusion of a modern civilization.”

“Wow,” said Coleman. “And all because of Monday Night Football?”

“Just a guess, but fuck it: I’m going with that anyway!”

“You’re at the party!”

“Damn straight!” Serge stared down at his wristwatch, counting along with the sweep-second hand. He looked back up at the bridge. “Aren’t those lights absolutely beautiful? I feel drunk just looking at them. My soul wants to devour it all so badly that it makes me want to weep. Those lights scream Jacksonville to me. More Skynyrd for everyone!” He clicked the iPod and looked back at his watch. “Ten, nine, eight…”

“… Seven years of hard luck …”

“What are you counting down?”

“… from the Florida border …”

“They turn off the lights this time each night to save money … three, two, one …” Serge looked up. The bridge went dark. The shadow behind the car grew closer. “Damn. Now I’m depressed. All life eventually dies. How could God have allowed Hitler to be born?”

“Remember your psychiatrist?” said Coleman. “Accept what you can’t change.”

“Good thinking.” Serge closed his eyes and smiled. “The bulbs are still on in my mind.”

A sharp knock on the driver’s window. Serge and Coleman jumped.

A bearded man stood outside making a vigorous twirling signal with his hand.

Serge rolled down the window. “My name’s Serge. I’m wearing a diaper for the space race.”

“Have any money?”

“Yes, but you’re only going to buy beer.”

Coleman leaned across and handed him a Schlitz. “Thanks.”

“Coleman!”

The man pointed at the wax ball on the dashboard. “Food?”

“Tuna salad,” said Serge.

“Soggy,” said Coleman.

“Soggy’s better,” said the man.

“Right-o.” Serge tossed the ball out the window.

The man peeled paper and took a bite. “Is that Skynyrd?”

“We’re in Jacksonville,” said Serge. “I just drank a lot of coffee.”

“I love Skynyrd.”

“The lightbulbs are still on in my mind.”

The man pointed beneath the underpass. “I need to get back to my cardboard box.”

“Have a pamphlet.”

“The zoo?”

“Who’s to say?”

“Later.”

Serge rolled up the window.

Coleman pulled a joint from over his ear. “What now?”

“Next bridge.” He reached for the ignition. Something caught the corner of his eye. “What was that?” He turned quickly. Two more dark forms appeared and moved fleetly toward the underpass.

“Who are they?” asked Coleman.

“Skinheads with baseball bats and a camcorder,” said Serge. “In certain societies, that’s a sign of bad luck.”

“What are they doing?” asked Coleman.

“Oh my God!” said Serge. “They’re beating the shit out of that cardboard box!”

“They’re attacking a Skynyrd fan!” said Coleman.

Serge was out of the car in a flash, followed by Coleman at a lesser marijuana rate.

The bearded man spilled from his box and curled defensively on the ground. “Don’t hurt me!”

A Louisville slugger came down hard in his ribs. “Fuckin’ bum!”

A second bat found a kneecap with a nauseating clack. “You make us want to puke!”

The man screamed like a child.

The first skinhead turned on the camcorder and held the glowing viewfinder to his face. “Hit him again!” The camera kept filming, but there was no swing.

“What are you waiting for?”

The answer came in the sound of a baseball bat bouncing impotently on the pavement.

The first skinhead lowered the camcorder to see his partner with a knife at his throat. “Who the hell are you?”

“The Lone Road Ranger,” said Serge. “We’ve had complaints of aggravated stupidity. I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to come with us.”

“Fuck you!” said the one at knifepoint. “We’re not going anywhere!”

“You’re a traitor to your race!” shouted the other. He began pumping a fist in the air. “White pride! White pride!…”

“White pride?” asked Coleman. “What’s that?”

“You’ve heard the joke,” said Serge. “White pride is rotating the tires on your house.”

100 MILES AWAY

A young woman took a sip of Diet Coke on the rocks. Slender, freckles, sandy-blond. Severely sexy, but dressed down in a way that was deliberately trying to hide it, which only made her more so. A purse sat next to a small backpack with the name of a community college. She turned the page in a history textbook and asked for a refill.

The woman escaped notice of not a single businessman in the hotel lounge, staring shamelessly at her tight bottom on a stool at the bar.

The gang had already nominated their designated hitter. Someone elbowed Steve again. “Go for it.”

“I am.”

“You’ve been saying that for the last hour.”

“Leave him alone,” said another voice. “He knows what he’s doing. Don’t you, Sh-teve?”

“These things need to be handled very delicately.”

“Someone buy him another drink …”

New guys came through the lounge entrance, rolling a pair of styrene expo-booth organizers. “Jerry, Tom, National Association of Trade Shows …”

No hellos.

Jerry looked at Tom, then back at the tables. “Something wrong?”

A data implementer nodded toward the bar.

“Holy mother,” said Jerry. “Where’d she come from?”

“Sh-teve’s about to make his move.”

Steve, already sloshed, fortified himself with a final drink and stood up. The rest of the gang scooted chairs around in stadium configuration as he staggered toward the bar and grabbed a stool on the woman’s left. “You live around here often?… Ha! I got a million of ‘em!”

No answer.

“My name’s Sh-teve. What’s yours?” Still staring down at the textbook. “Story.”

“Story? What kind of name is that?”

“Like Musgrave, the astronaut.”

“You have a man’s name?”

She highlighted something with a yellow marker.

“That’s okay,” said Steve. “Lots of two-way names now. Alex, Mickey …” He extended a hand to shake.

She gave it a look like it was covered with raw sewage.

Steve changed tactics and opened his wallet. “Let me buy you a drink.” He set a twenty on the counter and raised a finger. “Bartender!”

She grabbed the bill and stuck it in her pocket.

The barkeep came over. “What can I get you?”

“Uh, nothing.” Steve turned. “What brings you to town?”

“Meeting my brother.”

“What are you reading?”

She sighed deeply and closed her eyes.

“Something bothering you?”

“An asshole sat down next to me.”

“Look,” said Steve. “If you don’t want company, just say so.”

“I don’t want company.”

“That means you’re lonely.” He grinned. “And there’s only one cure for what ails you: Sh-teve!”

“Go away.”

“I got coke.”

“I’m not going to ask you again.”

“Can I have my twenty back?”

“No.”

Steve bit his lip in thought. Then under his breath: “Bitch.”

Story slowly raised her head, eyes boring holes in a blank spot on the wall. Blood pressure zoomed into the red zone. The bartender was looking at them. He smiled. She smiled back until he turned around to run an American Express card. Like lightning, her left hand shot out, seized the hair on the back of Steve’s head, and smashed his face down into the bar. It happened so fast, the guys in the cheap seats weren’t exactly sure what they’d seen. Then, just as quickly, her hand withdrew before the bartender could spin around at the sound of the attack.

“Good God!”

Story looked up from her textbook. “What?”

The bartender ran over with a thick stack of napkins and handed them to Steve, blood pouring from his nose all over the counter. “You okay, fella? What happened?”

Between booze and kissing the bar, Steve could only manage incomprehensible slurring.

“I think he’s drunk,” said Story, turning a page.

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