In the parking lot, Mo Grenadine got out of a Lincoln Town Car and walked over to George’s Aston Martin. He reached under the bumper and removed the metal box held to the car with a magnet. He walked over to the Barracuda and slipped it under the bumper. He got back in the Lincoln and unwrapped a beef jerky.

  Serge told Coleman he needed to go out for more equipment and to keep an eye on Veale. He returned in forty minutes with a bag from Radio Shanty and another from Space Shuttle Hardware and Paint. He sent Coleman down to the car to bring up more stuff.

  Serge spread out the bags’ contents on the avocado carpet: copper wire, twelve-volt electric motor, twine, more duct tape, folding sawhorse, batteries, solenoid switch, tin shears, souvenir space shuttle key fob and Apollo 13 baseball cap. Total: $61.78.

  Veale had lost the Harpo wig and hat in the initial struggle, taking refuge in the vending machine alcove and fending off Serge and Coleman with the plastic ice-machine scoop. Serge put the baseball cap on Veale’s head and began assembling his purchases. Coleman made two trips to the car and brought up three brown grocery sacks, a giant bag of Doritos sticking out of one. Also, a Styrofoam cooler, a case of Busch and two large foam fish that clamped on a person’s head to indicate support for the Florida Marlins professional baseball organization.

  Coleman held up the teal fish and studied it with a single knitted brow.

  “I completely forgot,” Serge said, pulling one of the fish onto his head, “the World Series is on tonight. Marlins and Indians tied two games each. Boy, have we been out of the loop.”

  Coleman wiggled the foam fish onto his head, a tight fit. Serge turned to Sharon. “Sorry, I only got two.”

  “I’ll live,” she said.

  She sat on the edge of the bed with her back to him, a crossed leg swinging. Smoking and staring at a lithograph on the wall of a clown and two fat ladies at the beach.

  Coleman dumped the grocery bags out on the bed. Onion dip, kaiser rolls, roast beef, Dijon mustard, sesame sticks, beer nuts, rolling papers, pickled cauliflower, grapefruit juice that wasn’t from concentrate, microwave Tupperware, spicy fried chicken, three newspapers, deli packs of German potato salad, coleslaw and Swedish meatballs, six postcards for a dollar, a four-pack of C batteries, and a half-size souvenir World Series baseball bat.

  Serge tossed the batteries underhand to Sharon, and they bounced on the mattress next to her. “I got those for your little vibrating friend,” he said. “Lock and load!”

  He turned to Coleman: “I made sure the whole food pyramid was represented. You got your nacho food group, the beer group, the hoagie group and the buffalo wing group.”

  “Why’d you get Busch? You got fifty thousand in that shaving kit,” said Coleman, arranging the beer cans in the cooler for maximum storage.

  “Habit of the damned,” said Serge. “Like a rat that gets electric shocks so long he forgets to leave the cage when the door’s open.”

  Serge tossed one of the beers to Coleman. “Kill that,” said Serge. “I need the can.”

  Coleman popped the top on the Busch and took a motel pen sitting on some stationery and slammed it down on the can, puncturing a second hole on the other side of the top. He raised the can and shotgunned it. He tossed the empty to Serge, who clipped it apart with the tin shears.

  The television was on Florida Cable News. A gray-haired man behind the anchor desk reported near tragedy at a state motor vehicle office, where a man who had failed the eye exam pulled a gun and fired fifteen shots at the staff, hitting nobody.

  With unflagging persistence, Coleman poked at the remote control, getting no results. He Cheech-and-Chonged on a joint and switched the TV back and forth from video mode, changed the clock, switched it from stereo to mono, turned the set off and on and ran the volume bar left and right across the screen. He found the channel button and mashed it through sixty channels, accompanied by his stoned narrative: “…William Shatner’s personal tragedy, remove unwanted facial hair with electrical tape, the gallery of unsellable homes, fishing with Jimbo, Jazz with Junkies, phone sex for shut-ins…”

  “Gimme that!” Serge smacked Coleman on top of the head with the remote. He switched the TV to the NASA channel. Seven astronauts in orange pressure suits waved as they walked to the launch gantry. “It stays on that channel!” Serge said, and he threw the remote in the toilet.

  Coleman broke out the cocaine, jarring Sharon from her indolent stupor. She picked up the plastic space shuttle tray next to the sink and flung the cellophane-wrapped shuttle cups into the corner. Urgency got the better of precision, and they dumped a gram and ran two lumpy lines across the tray with Coleman’s driver’s license. Sharon leaned her face down and made one long, guttural pull.

  “What’s that? More crank?” said Serge.

  “No,” said Coleman, “blow,” and leaned over to take his turn.

  “Shit, every day it’s something else,” said Serge.

  “If it’s Thursday, this must be cocaine,” Coleman replied.

  “One day it’s meth, another day psilocybin; you drop acid on Sunday and Percodan on Monday,” said Serge. “Then it’s Thai sticks. And what about the time you boiled those flowers that were supposed to be like Aborigines’ curare darts? Can’t you just pick a drug and stick with it?”

  Coleman said, completely serious: “I don’t want to get hooked.”

  Sharon interrupted in a silly, pouting voice, “My other nostril’s jealous.” So they tore off two more mondo lines.

  “Look, a microwave!” said Coleman. “Let’s make some crack!”

  Coleman ran downstairs to the Launch Pad Food Mart and came back with an orange brick of baking soda. He produced a sandwich bag with the rest of his cocaine, and mixed the batter in the Tupperware. He slid it in the microwave and he and Sharon watched it through the window with their faces two inches from the glass.

  “Hey, Betty Crocker, you ever heard not to watch the food cook?” said Serge.

  There was a pop and a bright flash, and flames flicked inside the microwave. “Fuck!” said Coleman. He popped open the microwave door and a bunch of smoke came out. The Tupperware was empty. Sharon craned her neck and sniffed at the cloud of smoke. She turned and punched Coleman in the chest. “You stupid dickwipe! You just burned up a whole fucking eight-ball! And it was good, too!”

  “I got some meth left,” Coleman said sheepishly.

  “Give it to me!”

  He handed it to her wrapped in BC Powder paper. She went to the bed and turned into the corner of the room, protective, a cavewoman just handed a barbecued pterodactyl wing.

  Serge installed a tension rod in the top of the bathroom doorframe and stuck his feet in antigravity boots. He grabbed the rod and swung his feet like a gymnast to attach the boots with special hooks. He hung upside down, crossed his arms over his chest and did inverted sit-ups.

  On TV, the astronauts were at the top of the gantry climbing into the shuttle. Coleman said he and Sharon were going out for ice and cigarettes.

  “Get some Perrier,” said Serge, looking like a bat.

  When he got down, Serge resumed work on his contraption. He tied the space shuttle key chain to the end of the copper wire, where it hung like a plumb bob. His project complete, he said “Ta-da!” to Veale.

  Coleman and Sharon returned, and Coleman sat on the bed near the window, dipping Doritos. All the other food was open and arranged around him in a semicircle, equidistant to his hands. He converted the motel-room garbage can into an auxiliary cooler, icing down four beers on the nightstand.

  “Move over,” Serge told Coleman. “And beer me.”

  Coleman butt-walked sideways a foot and a half, making room on the bed for Serge, and handed him a beer dripping ice water. Serge tasted how cold it was and told Coleman good work. He slipped it into a NASA can insulator, lay back against the headboard, and reached for the window.

  The curtains were motel grade that blocked X-rays, and when they were drawn it was a moonless night. Serge yanked down on the pulley, and the afternoon sun squeezed their pupils.

  Anyone walking along the second-floor balcony of the Orbit Motel would have seen two men with foam marlin on their heads sitting up against the backboard of one bed covered in wing sauce. On the other bed, a gorgeous coke floozy licking the inside of a burnt Tupperware container like a Saint Bernard. And toward the bathroom, a man tied up and gagged with a shotgun strapped to his neck and an intricate contraption in front of him that looked part train set, part time machine.

  After a single beer, Serge was half drunk and thoroughly insane. He ranted about the importance of the space shuttle program and the national imagination. He got up in a squat on the bed like he was telling a spooky campfire tale about the Cold War and the space race. In a rapid series, he imitated a beeping Sputnik, the average terrified American and a laughing Nikita Khrushchev. He adopted the German accent of Werner von Braun. He made himself rigid and narrow like a Redstone rocket, and he flailed around the floor like Gus Grissom after his Liberty Bell capsule sank. He floated in slow motion for America’s first space walk.

  Even Sharon was listening now, lying on her stomach and leaning forward on elbows.

  For linear tension, Serge downshifted to pianissimo as he told of the Christmas flight of Apollo 8 and the astronauts seeing the first earthrise. He built furiously through the liftoff of Apollo 11. For climax, he reenacted a splashdown off the USS Kitty Hawk, jumping in the air, bonking his head on the ceiling and coming down in a cannonball on Coleman’s bed. Food flew everywhere—nuts, chips, salads and cold cuts. A glop of slaw hit Veale in the ear. Sharon was standing, and two meatballs thwacked her on the shirt.

  “Wow,” Coleman said.

  “Look at my fucking shirt!” screamed Sharon. They slapped the daylights out of each other. She punched him in the stomach and pulled him down on top of her on the bed. She pounded her hips into him fast. “Say more about rockets, hurry!”

  Veale watched in terror as Serge finally called out: “Godspeed, John Glenn!”

  “Yi-Yi-Yi-Yi-Yi-Yi-Yi-Yi-Yi!”

  “Hey!” Coleman yelled at Veale. “Don’t be looking at them! What are you, some kind of sicko? That’s a very special and private thing.”

  Sharon stood in front of the bathroom mirror pulling out a world-class coke booger. But it still had a lot of coke on it, so she put it back. Coleman lit a spliff, held the toke and said, “What happened after the moon missions?”

  “That brings us to the space shuttle,” said Serge.

  He walked over to Veale. “You’re probably wondering what all this is,” gesturing at the wires, motor and switches. “George, you ever see a shuttle launch? You ever feel a shuttle launch?”

  Veale blinked and looked over at Sharon and Coleman. “George, you’re not paying attention.” Serge flicked his nose. “This is important.”

  Serge pointed at the space shuttle dangling on the wire next to Veale’s chair. “That little shuttle is the vibration sensor. If it swings far enough side to side, the wire it’s hanging from will make contact with the collar—that’s the piece of the Busch can. That, in turn, sends the electric current to the solenoid, turning on the motor, which winds up the string attached to the trigger, and boom!”

  Veale was pixilated.

  “Trust me,” said Serge.

  He pointed at the television set, where a giant digital countdown clock at the Cape was under two hours and counting. Serge turned the TV set to face Veale.

  “That okay? Loud enough?”

  George was blank.

  “Good,” said Serge. “Now when the shuttle first takes off, you won’t hear anything, because of the distance. Give it, say, a minute, and you’ll start to hear a rumble. A few seconds later, the shock waves hit. That’ll make the little shuttle swing. As the real shuttle gets louder, it’ll set up a harmonic rhythm with the little shuttle, making it swing more and more until it contacts the collar and sets off the shotgun. Whattaya think? Pretty clever?”

  Still nothing from Veale.

  “Now, if you’re brave, you can try to counteract the swinging motion by shaking the chair a little, but it’s really hard and you’ll probably set the gun off early.

  “And if you try to escape, it’ll set it off too.”

  Serge shook the side of the chair and the shuttle swung into the beer-can collar, making a spark. The motor clicked on and the string pulled the trigger, making a dry click.

  Veale felt the dry fire of the trigger vibrate through the barrel pressed against his throat. He thrashed wildly and screamed under the tape.

  “It’s not loaded yet,” Serge said.

  But Veale kept jerking around anyway, trying to wriggle the tape off his mouth.

  “George,” said Serge, “are you trying to tell me to take off the tape? You want to say something?”

  Veale nodded yes urgently, his chin hitting the barrel of the shotgun. Serge pulled back the tape.

  “I swear, I’ve told you everything!” said Veale.

  Serge smiled as he put the tape back on Veale’s mouth. “I know you have.”

  Fifteen

  In what should have been a lazy sunset, thousands of motorists headed up A1A, bumper to bumper, a necklace of headlights along the shore from Satellite Beach to the Cape. They came from all over, in sedans, vans, sports cars and station wagons, ready to tailgate.

  Sean and David drove over the causeway bridge near Port Canaveral. Sean, behind the wheel, turned onto the Kennedy Parkway and headed north until the security checkpoint. David had gotten a visitor’s pass through work, and the guard noted the red placard in the windshield and waved them through.

  Sean pointed out the Vehicle Assembly Building to David. As they approached the causeway at the Banana River, the space shuttle appeared over the water, in a crossfire of spotlights.

  He followed the other cars onto the grass and parked. People unloaded lawn chairs from trunks, and kids ran around in pajamas. Parents broke out pizzas and KFC boxes. A souvenir trailer did brisk business in NASA pennants, mugs, hats, shot glasses and freeze-dried astronaut ice cream.

  Back at the guard station, an untuned Barracuda backfired and the radio played “Tear the Roof off the Sucker” through the open windows.

  Serge, in the driver’s seat, sipped a steaming cup of Addiction World coffee and obnoxiously flapped a visitor’s pass at the guard. Back at the convenience store, Serge had traded a hundred-dollar bill for the pass with a stunned family from Ocala.

  The guard bent down and saw Coleman in the passenger seat, wearing the Marlin hat and raising a Slurpee cup to him in toast; Sharon sat in back with arms crossed, almost biting through the cigarette in her mouth. The guard couldn’t wait to wave them through.

  They parked on the causeway and spread motel towels. “What do we do now?” asked Coleman. “I mean about the money?”

  “Nothing. We’ll have to wait until that guy checks in at the Purple Pelican. Until then we’re on vacation,” said Serge. “How’d you like to see the real Florida?”

  Sharon sneaked back in the car and snorted crank off a floor mat. Coleman sat on the edge of the Banana River drinking seven beers. Serge said he should probably move back from the water. The river is normally full of alligators, he said. But before each launch, trappers come in and secretly remove them. They’re bound to miss a few.

  “I think I see one!” said a drunk Coleman, pointing at a piece of cheeseburger floating by.

  “I think you’re right,” said Serge, and Coleman scooted back to where Serge was sitting.

  Communications between launch control and the shuttle were broadcast from loudspeakers attached to poles and echoed by hundreds of car radios tuned to local coverage. There were brief waves of celebration and relief at the countdown milestones. One hour, thirty minutes, ten minutes…

  Sean and David sat in lawn chairs with binoculars and Chee-tos. They heard a commotion and turned up the riverbank. An intoxicated man with a foam fish on his head was beating a piece of litter on the edge of the water with a tire iron.

  The loudspeakers broadcast that the weather was acceptable, and a NASA voice told the astronauts to “have a nice ride.” Following the loudspeakers’ cue, Sean and David and the rest of the crowd shouted in unison: “…ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five…”

  In the distance were quiet pops and clicks. A flushing sound as tons of water hit the pad, a flicker of light, and the space shuttle disappeared as white smoke obscured everything. A David Copperfield trick. The crowd leaned forward, holding its breath. And after a theatrical delay, the space shuttle Columbia slowly poked its nose out of the top of the cloud, climbing sluggishly and twisting as the thrusters gimbaled.

  A deep, tunneling sound began to build, that giant worm from Dune coming straight at them, and the shock wave hit. It hammered up from the ground like they were standing on a big stereo speaker. A gray mass of birds filled the air in confusion over the distant marsh, and Serge thought of the Bible and locusts.

  Veale watched the shuttle rising on TV but didn’t hear anything. One of Serge’s half-finished Perriers rested on the dresser, and Veale saw the surface of the mineral water start to vibrate. He heard a faraway rumble and looked down at the little shuttle hanging from the wire, starting to swing gently.

  Veale prayed the shuttle would hurry up, get itself high enough in the air so the sound would peak before it was strong enough to trigger the booby trap. The little shuttle swung a bit farther, but still a good margin to go. And the big shuttle on TV now a healthy way up in the sky. Looking good for Veale. The distance and the speed of sound were deceptive, however, and a violent, tearing roar blew through the room. When the little shuttle swung into the collar and sparked, Veale had a massive heart attack.

  It felt like a wrecking ball was pressing down on his chest. He saw the electric motor click on and wind string. The shuttle was so loud that nobody back in Cocoa Beach heard anything when Veale’s eyes slammed wide open for good.