“Goodness, so testy,” Jeremy said, his voice melodically Southern, not the Frenchified accent he affected with others. “I’ve been busy, Carson. No time for your idle chit-chat.”
“Idle chit-chat? I had no idea whether you were in Kentucky or Florida or … worse.”
“You mean back home in dear ol’ Alabammy?”
“Jail,” I said. “Prison. You might have been caught and I’d never know.”
“Don’t I get one call? I’d probably call you, Carson. Unless I used it to order a pizza.”
“You’re fine, then?” I sighed. “You’re still in Kentucky?”
“I’ll look for clues. I see endless trees outside my window, Carson. And the goddamn whip-poor-wills are screeching like banshees. Yes, I’m in Kentucky. Why do you ask?”
“Last year you implied you were moving to Key West. It never happened. The whole Key West thing … it’s just to unsettle me, right?”
My brother was a world-class manipulator and since he lived in isolation with no one to jerk around, I got to be the puppet.
“Why would I wish to unsettle you, dear brother?” he said, his voice a study in innocence.
“You enjoy keeping me off balance,” I said. “It’s your hobby.”
“Such drama,” Jeremy yawned. “I’ve simply been traveling, Carson. Too busy to return your calls.”
“Travel is dangerous for you. Traveling where?”
My brother’s face was on every Wanted list in the country. The photo was from his last year at the Institute, when he’d done a Brando before sitting for the photographer, filling his cheeks with tissue, propping his ears forward, flaring his nostrils. Though never expecting – at that time – to escape, he had planned for the occasion, the just-in-case kind of thinking that exemplified my brother’s mind. As a result of his planning, Jeremy resembled his photo only slightly, but a seasoned eye might see through the façade, and it would be over.
“Traveling hither and yon,” he said. “Seeing old friends.”
“You have no friends.”
“Don’t be a Negative Nelly. Of course I have friends.”
“Who?”
He changed course, affecting the high and tremulous voice of an elderly woman. “I’m … muh-muh-moldering here in the w-woods, Carson. Now th-that I’m … nearing my duh-dotage … I need h-human cuh-cuh-contact.”
“Spare me the routine. You’re not even forty-five yet. And human contact means danger.”
“I disagree, Brother,” Jeremy said, back to normal voice. “In populations where the locals are known for a live-and-let-live attitude and a soupçon of eccentricity, I can hide in plain sight if I’ve planned well.”
My irritation was turning to uneasiness. When my brother grew restive, bad things occurred. He was being cryptic as well, another dark sign.
“Planned how?”
“I’m building my final chapter, dear brother. I’m coming back to the world.”
He chuckled and hung up.
Coming back to the world? Heeding a shiver at the base of my spine, I folded my chair and retreated from the roof, suddenly feeling small and vulnerable under the vast dark plain of sky.
The megaphone on the wall of the south Miami bar is a two-foot tin cone that legend has stolen from ancient crooner Rudy Vallee while on a swing through Florida in the 1930s. If true, it’s safe to say that while in Vallee’s possession the cone was not embellished on both sides with a twenty-inch-long penis rendered in pink glitter, the penis aiming toward the conic apex, making the user appear to be, well … the point is obvious.
The bartender pulls the megaphone from its pegs and climbs atop the bar. He’s wearing skin-tight black jeans and an orange bowling shirt. Those who notice begin yelling No! into an atmosphere of beer, sweat and a hundred lotions, potions, and colognes.
The disco music dies in mid-air. Sweat-dripping dancers flail for a few seconds as more yells of No! echo from the walls. The barkeep raises the megaphone to his lips to catcalls. “Last call,” he says, the peniphone giving his words stentorian depth. “We close in twenty minutes. ONE drink a person … None of this ordering five, you ladies hear me?”
The barkeep takes a showy bow. Good-natured hoots follow him to the floor. The music returns. A dozen young men rush to the bar as a pair of waiters race from table to booth to take orders. “A last drink, hon?” the waiter passing Debro yells atop the shuddering bass line.
Debro shakes his head and averts his face to tap out a fake message on his phone. The waiter sprints away as Debro pats his knit cap and turns his gaze to a young man beside a table. The man is wearing a safari-style shirt atop coral shorts and for most of the evening kept his tanned legs crossed as he entertained a succession of friends and friend wannabees.
But now the feet are on the floor and legs spread wide as the man clutches his belly. For the second time in five minutes he rushes to the bathroom. Debro presses the illumination on his watch: forty-seven minutes since slipping across the shadowy bar and – pretending to stop and read one of the racy cocktail napkins – squirting five drops of the mixture into the young man’s drink. Debro has also been watching the bathroom, empty until the man entered, everyone frantic for a final drink.
He pulls his knit cap tight and walks quickly to the restroom, hearing vomiting from the far stall. He checks the other stalls to assure no one’s hooking up, arriving at the final stall as the man exits, wiping his lips with toilet paper.
“You all right, brother?” DB’s eyes frown with concern.
The man leans against the stall divider for support. “I think I just puked up my liver. Jesus, all I had was three daiquiris. Ooops …” The man spins back for another round of vomiting.
“It’s probably Fraturna Mortuis,” Debro says, knowing Jacob Eisen has no connection to Latin or medicine. Eisen turns and blinks in confusion.
“What?”
“The virus causing it. Gut started aching ten–fifteen minutes ago? Dizziness? You feel weak, right?”
The man nods. “You a doctor or something?”
“An intern,” Debro lies. “You got a ride home, right?”
“Walking. I live eight blocks away.” Eisen turns green and grabs his belly.
“How about I give you a lift, bro?” Debro says. “This will pass fast, but you’re gonna be too sick to walk.”
“I … I already am. Damn … can barely stand.” Eisen’s head spins to the left as his eye widen to their limits. “Holy shit.”
“What?” Debro asks.
“I just saw a fucking parrot. How’d a parrot get in here?”
Time to move fast, Debro thinks. Eisen’s knees buckle and Debro keeps him from dropping. The attack passes and Eisen wipes cold sweat from his forehead and studies Debro through pain-tightened eyes. “You look fum-uliar,” Eisen says, his words garbled. He touches his throat with fear. “Wha- t’ fu? My froat … I -an’t – alk.”
“Laryngitis from the virus,” Debro says, pulling Eisen close. “Here, lean on me. We can go out the back.”
“Fanks,