Florida Heatwave (11 page)

Honest to God, you could have knocked me over with a feather. Tina had said the word, and I became the item—the fiancé. Suddenly, I was a man with a future and not just a parade of todays. Like they say in the Bible, the word was made flesh. I was so happy or dizzy or something that I bought the house a round. I kissed Tina, and I realized when she blushed that her words had cast a spell on her, too. Bobby G. told Herbie we were cool. Herbie looked at us and said, “I don’t want to see any funny business in here.”

Tina’s waitress pal at the IHOP, Lourdes, told Tina the Hard Rock was hiring experienced waitresses, and Tina wanted to apply. I said, “What’s wrong with IHOP, Tina? She said, These Canadian snowbirds don’t tip. She said she could triple her income at the casino. But you’d be back on nights, I said. We’ll never see each other. She said, Quadruple it, even. I’m trying to improve myself, Elvis.” And that’s when I got this roller-coaster feeling in my stomach. I saw myself left behind selling smokes to jerkoffs from the homeless shelter while she’s serving cocktails to high-rollers at the poker tables. Well, she got the job. I figured to make the best of it, and I suggested we pool our money now that we’re engaged. She thought she’d open her own account, thanks. I was worried. I’d seen love turn to shit overnight before. My friend Trini’s wife left him for a woman. He said he should have known something was up when he came home from work one night and saw a newspaper article taped to the fridge with the headline “All Sex is Rape.”

Me, I didn’t get any warning. Or maybe I missed the signs. I was working eighty to ninety hours a week. Tina told me one morning that she’d met someone. And then she turned and walked out our door. Left everything she owned. Nothing I do is ever enough. When I almost reach a pinnacle at something, it’s taken away. Always taken away. I know if I achieve a certain something, it will be snatched from me. So why bother? And that’s about the time my toothache started, the toothache I’ve had for fifteen months. I found out later from Lourdes that Tina moved to Jamaica with her boyfriend Neville. She’s never coming back. Never ever, she told Lourdes.

The woman I assaulted yesterday, Dorie Hansen, I met a while back at the Hess. She’d been a regular customer, lived in the neighborhood. She liked her salty snacks and Diet Pepsis. I’d always talk with her about this and that, joke around. I gained her trust, you could say. When we met, I was still with Tina, so Dorie, I suppose, didn’t see me as any kind of romantic nuisance like the street vermin she was used to dealing with, who only got the one thing on their simple minds because they know that no matter how quick and indifferent the sex is, it’s still the best thing that’s going to happen to them all day. Then after Tina split, Dorie felt kind of bad for me. She’d listen to me whine and never say “Get over it” or “It is what it is” or “It’s all good” or any of that bullshit.

And when Tina left, I have to tell you, my life went south in a New York minute. At first I didn’t know what to do with myself. There’s only so much time you can spend at the gun range, only so much time staring at the TV. By then I’d saved three grand, and I figured I’d take a long weekend, buy a ticket to the Bahamas, and enjoy myself. Even Dorie thought it was a good idea—be sweet to yourself, she said; you deserve it. So I went to the bank, filled out the withdrawal slip, and gave it to this little teller with a laughable emo haircut. He told me he was sorry but there was no money in my account. I said, Thatcher, there must be some mistake. Then I spoke with the bank manager, who pulled up the account records, and sure enough, the cash was gone.

She said, “When your wife closed out your joint account, we apparently asked her if you would be wanting to close out your personal account as well.”

“My wife?” I asked Ms. Condon if I could take a look at her computer screen. There it was, the bad news in black and white and the copies of the two driver’s licenses, Elvis’s and Angel’s. Only Angel’s name was Marta.

“And it looks like you came in on Friday, and you closed it.” Ms. Condon looked at the driver’s license and then at me and then back at the license.

That son of a bitch Engdahl, the fucking thief, was trying to beat me out of $3000. I didn’t see that I had any choice here. He certainly wasn’t going to give me, some Joe Schmo he didn’t know from Adam, the money in his account. So I set his house on fire. I didn’t need to burn it down; I needed to flush him out while I stood across the street with my Chief’s Special. When he ran out the door in his boxer shorts, I’d shoot the bastard, and I’d let Angel live so she could think about what a calamitous series of events she set in motion with her greedy behavior. I filled a five-gallon gas can at the Hess, rolled up a blanket from home, and walked to Engdahl’s house. This was before dawn. I doused the blanket, draped it over the propane grill by the back door, threw the match, and scooted across the street. I sat at the curb between a Chevrolet and a pickup. When the propane tank ignited, it must have blown out the back of the house. The ground shook. Flames leaped over the roof. Lights came on next door. The front door flew open, and I raised my pistol, and then these two kids run out, followed by the parents, and they’re all Chinese! Engdahl didn’t live there anymore. The joke was on me.

After that I was on edge a lot of the time and swabbing my throbbing tooth every twenty minutes with Orajel. I found out that if I kept a cheek full of bourbon on the tooth, it worked just as well, so I hid a fifth of Fighting Cock behind the counter at work. Then one night I caught this homeless half-wit stealing an Almond Joy, and I pulled out the Special and put it in his face. He cried like a baby. I didn’t want cops involved, for obvious reasons, so I let the derelict go. But he squealed to Stavros. I denied everything, of course, but there it all was on the surveillance video. I lost my job. Since then I’ve been living in a financial prison. I was back to selling the
Sun-Sentinel
on street corners. I had no future, just like those children I killed today have no future, only that was something they didn’t know and didn’t have to be tormented by.

I want you to know that I’m not a monster. I’m just like you. And I’m not crazy. People might say I don’t know what I’m doing, but I don’t shit myself. I don’t piss my pants, do I? I know what I’m doing. And something has to be done so something like this doesn’t happen again, where someone can’t arrive at a point where they might be capable of slaughter. This should not happen. You should put me up against a wall and shoot me. You really should.

Then I ran into Dorie at Los Incos de Oro. She was eating veal hearts and yuca. She was like my only friend in the world. She said she’d heard about the unfortunate business at the Hess. I said, “No good deed goes unpunished.”

Dorie likes taking walks, so I started going along. We’d walk to the beach, stroll the Broadwalk and stare at all the overweight French-Canadians in their bikinis and Speedos. I began to imagine the two of us together. Dorie isn’t much to look at, but she’s sweet and genuine, and that counts for something. Then I began to imagine us having sex. I hadn’t been with a woman in a while. I pictured her naked and hot, glazed and delicious. I figured I had to get her alone, away from the crowds and into the mood. Get a little lubrication in her maybe. I bought some peppermint schnapps. Then I suggested we take an evening stroll, maybe by the Dania Beach pier where it’s quiet, and we can talk. When she agreed, I figured she’d done the addition and knew what was up.

So we’re on our backs in the sand by the lifeguard shack, staring up at the stars, and I was thinking
Can I do this?,
and Dorie said she didn’t understand how anyone could see a bull or a crab or anything else up there in all that confusion. I touched her arm. She said, “What are you doing? I turned on my side and slid my arm across her waist. She said, What do you think you’re doing? I put my hand on her shoulder and my leg over her legs. Elvis, she said, don’t!” I moved my hand over her stomach and down there to Yeehaw Junction, and she slapped me. I guess I went into a kind of shock. I was on top of her, but it didn’t feel good like I wanted it to. Dorie fought back, and I was impressed with her spirit. I like a woman who fights back, who thinks she’s got something valuable to protect. It angers me when they don’t put up a fight. That just proves they’re whores. I only slapped her once. It wasn’t
violent
violent. I saw the horror on her face, though, and it … it just broke me. So anyway, I couldn’t keep it up, so to speak. Her will won out. No release, no penetration. I realized that this would have gone better with a perfect stranger. I cared about Dorie, and that was the wrench in the works.

After the incident, after I apologized, I took a drink of schnapps, and we talked, and I thought things weren’t that bad—she wasn’t hysterical or anything, but I was guilty as hell, and I said, “You got a right if you feel you need to, to, you know, call the cops or whatever, because I remembered the three or four minutes of horror she went through. I told her to think of a punishment for me—anything, I said, and I’ll do it. I’ll be your slave if you want. You want someone hurt, I’ll hurt them. You can hit me in the head with a tire iron. I thought she might smile at that idea, but she was trembling and crying and nodding her head and reassuring me that she’d be okay, but she sounded iffy. Any kind of punishment system you devise, I told her, I’ll go through with it.” I mean she did endure those few minutes of hell because of me. I left her there because she wanted to be alone. To collect herself. I was hoping she wouldn’t call the cops, but apparently she did because when I got to the corner of Harding and Twentieth, I saw the flashing lights of the police cruisers parked in front of my house. I don’t blame Dorie for what would happen next.

I waited until I saw the cops leave. And then I waited some more. I crept through a few backyards and scaled a couple of fences and snuck into my place through the back door. I grabbed my backpack and sleeping bag. I was in and out in under a minute. This is what I mean about being prepared. I had my firearms, a box of ammo, a flashlight, waterproof matches, and a first-aid kit in the backpack. I knew the house of cards was crumbling down, and I needed to sit somewhere calmly and think. I went to Arby’s and got a coffee. I couldn’t eat anything what with the constant toothaching.

After what I did to Dorie, I knew I’d be labeled a sex offender, and that would scotch things with my kids if I ever got the desire to see them again, which I figured was a good possibility. I knew when the cops picked me up, I wouldn’t be Elvis Engdahl anymore. I’d just be me, derelict dad, fugitive from justice, check bouncer, assault-and-batterer. I felt like a loser, and I was tired. I walked to the beach and fixed myself a little camping area in a thicket of sea grapes. There’s feral cats in there, possums, raccoons, and at least a half-dozen people from what I could tell. There’s like a whole little community living out of sight right under everyone’s nose. Time was running out for me. What future did I have? I just didn’t have a future. And I suddenly knew I’d never be leaving this beach, and that knowledge was a great relief. And then I understood what I had to do.

I thought at first about mowing down as many people as I could. I’d wait till noon or so when the beach crowded up with spring breakers, climb the lifeguard shack, dispatch the lifeguard, and then turn the Sub 2000 loose on the swimmers and sunbathers. Then I’d wait for the cops to show up and start picking them off one by one until I ran out of bullets, and then the cops would take me out. I wasn’t going to kill myself. Suicide is spineless. My fantasy was beginning to look like a bad mall movie where all the wild but appealing teenagers get slaughtered by the psychopath. I got a better idea.

I set up on the edge of the sea grapes. I couldn’t be seen, but I had a clear view of about twenty yards of beach. I lay on my stomach with my weapon at the ready. Whoever entered my line of sight would be punished. Simple as that. It would be completely random. I would not choose—God would, or Fate would. I’m nearsighted, but I’m a crack shot. I might have had a career in paintball, but Patti convinced me I sucked at it, and I was pussy enough in those days to believe her, and that’s another reason why I hate that twat. Pardon my French. I waited. The sun came up. I heard laughter and then voices—a man and a woman—approaching, and then silence. I may have fallen asleep. Before I knew it, the shadows of the coconut palms had shortened.

And then out of nowhere come these eight kids. I pegged them for high-school age. Four lanky boys, all wearing wrap-around shades, and four adorable girls with cute little figures in these scanty bikinis. They didn’t look like anyone I’d ever met in my life. These young people today, they aren’t like us. They’re like some beautiful alien life-form. The boys tossed a football to one another while the girls arranged blankets, beach bags, and towels. Would you believe it?—I had to pee. I wondered if I should give them time to spray on the sunscreen and settle in. That way I could see how they coupled up. I sized up the boys. I was a tad concerned about the hero factor. Sometimes you’ll run into some Mighty Mouse who wants to save the day. I guessed that the tallest of the boys, the boy with the barbwire tattoo around his bicep and zinc oxide on his nose might like to think of himself as a super hero, so he was going down first. I stuffed in my earplugs. I had the Special by my right elbow. I aimed the Sub at the boy’s chest and fired. His knees buckled, and he dropped. One girl screamed and yelled his name. “Eric,” I think she said. I shot her. The others all dove to the sand and rolled themselves into balls with their hands over their heads. Six little pillbugs. I started spraying prey. Pop! Pop! Pop! I have to say it was like shooting fish in a barrel. One of the boys got up and ran. I shot him and then fired at the only person still moving, the girl in the teal bikini, who was crying now and crawling toward the water and reaching out like the ocean was going to save her. Her body twitched for a few seconds, and then it didn’t.

This was not done for pleasure. Pleasure was not a part of this operation.