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And once again, I realized that it spoke the truth. I was hungry. Very hungry, in fact. I am blessed with a total lack of conscience, but my keen sense of hunger takes its place quite ably and keeps my feet on the proper trail. And with a jolt of guilt that very nearly approached panic, I realized I’d had no dinner. What had I been thinking? There was no excuse for such rash and careless behavior. Shame on Dexter.
With that clarion call of duty ringing in my ears, I remembered that I had said I would meet Brian for breakfast. I glanced at my watch: seven-fifteen. I had plenty of time—but on the other hand, it wouldn’t hurt to get there early and get a head start on the doughnuts.
I sat up—or to be accurate, I tried to sit up. The bed had wrapped its soft and spongy tendrils around me and locked me into a kind of death
grip and it would not let go. I struggled, I fought, I rolled to one side—and the edge of the bed completely collapsed under me and dumped me onto the floor. I landed badly, hitting my left elbow and right knee. And even as I felt a new pain blooming in my elbow, I could not help noticing that the floor was wonderfully firm. Perhaps I could sleep here tonight.
I pushed myself up carefully into a sitting position. That hurt even more. Between the unaccustomed exercise of the day before and the dreadful clutch of the bed, there was nothing left of my back but a vast area of numbness and pain. I tried stretching, twisting from side to side, and after only a few minutes I was somehow able to stagger to my feet and totter to the bathroom. I was quite sure that if I could only get a nice hot stream of water pouring onto my back, my spine would loosen up and return me to something that approached functioning.
And it may well be that I was right. Sadly, we will never know, because the ancient showerhead in the bathroom put out only a thin trickle of rust-tinted water, none of it warmer than room temperature. Nevertheless, I clenched my teeth and stood under it as long as I could, and if nothing else it did wake me up and put me in a proper mood to face what was certain to be a truly awful day.
I climbed out of the shower and stood there dripping, looking around for a towel. I finally found one—but only one—and it was about the size of a large washcloth. I did my best to dry off anyway, more or less pushing the water off me and onto the floor.
I got dressed in a brand-new set of clothes: underwear and socks right out of the package, jeans still stiff and smelling like…well, like new jeans, I suppose. I topped this chic ensemble with one of Walmart’s finest and most fashionable guayaberas, and I was ready for anything.
Just to show that things were finally going my way, my little red rental car was right where I’d left it, in the space closest to my room. Even better, the key still fit, and the car started right up with the first try. What a wonderful thing life can be when it puts a little effort into things.
I drove north on U.S. 1, and the morning traffic was already thick enough to make me wonder whether I would get there on time, let alone early. At 216th Street a large truckload of tomatoes had spilled out onto the road. Behind the truck where the load had spilled, a very big man with a shaved head was slugging it out with a shorter man who sported a black ponytail. It looked like the short man was winning. They stood up to their ankles in tomatoes, slinging punches with very bad intentions, and traffic slowed to a crawl, and then even less than a crawl.
I am not made out of stone; I understood full well that the spectacle was worth watching, even if it meant slowing and making several thousand people late for work while you watched and hoped both fighters would fall into the tomatoes before you crawled past. But it was precisely because I am not made of stone, and I felt very urgent hunger pangs clawing at my stomach, that I did something that can only be called a Classic Miami Move. I twisted the steering wheel, fought my way over to the shoulder, and with two wheels completely off the road, I drove the half block to the closest cross street.
Several angry horn blasts followed me, but I ignored them. It would have been more proper, or at least in keeping with tradition, to extend my middle finger, but I kept to the high ground, maintaining my poise and returning only a lofty sneer. After all, I learned to drive here. I know my rights.
I worked my way a half mile north on side streets and then turned back up onto U.S. 1. The traffic was much lighter now, since the flow had been so thoroughly choked off at the scene of Tomatopalooza. I pulled into the lot and parked at the doughnut shop thirteen minutes early. There was no sign of Brian, so I collected a large coffee, a bear claw, and a cruller, took a booth at the back, and sat facing the door.
I had disposed of the cruller and half of the bear claw when Brian came in. He looked around, careful but nonchalant, and then bought himself a large coffee and two cream-filled doughnuts with brightly colored sprinkles on top. He slid into the booth facing me and took a large bite. “Mmm,” he said.
“Yes, but really, Brian,” I said. “Sprinkles? Are you already in your second childhood?”
He smiled, revealing a row of teeth bedecked with cream filling and rainbow-colored sprinkles. “Why not?” he said, his voice thick with doughnut. “I never actually got my first one.”
“Well,” I said, looking with quiet satisfaction at the remains of my steady, no-nonsense bear claw, “no accounting for taste.”
“Mmp,” he said agreeably, and shoved half of the doughnut into his mouth. He washed it down with coffee and started on his second doughnut while I finished my bear claw and wondered whether it would be considered greedy if I topped it off with a couple of Bavarian creams. I decided that no one could possibly criticize me for having only one, and I bought one and used it to help the rest of my coffee go down smoothly.
Brian made one more trip to the counter, too, returning with a cake doughnut smeared with maple frosting, leaving me to ponder once again the vast marvels of heredity versus environment.
“Well,” Brian said, as we sipped at the last of our coffees. “Where shall we begin?”
“I suppose with my new address,” I said, and I told him the location of my little Shangri-la. He nodded and took a sip of his coffee.
“And on to new business,” he said happily. “How should we stay alive today?”
“I have no idea,” I said. “But you have to remember that I have my own agenda, too. I want to stay out of jail.”
He arched his eyebrows at me. “Yes, of course, but really,” he said, “isn’t staying alive more important?”
“Give me liberty or give me death,” I told him.
“Death is much easier to arrange, I’m afraid,” he said, shaking his head.
“Maybe,” I said. “But I have to do what I can.”
“Well,” he said, “I suppose you’re not much good if you’re in jail.”
“Exactly my point,” I said.
He waggled a finger at me. “But sooner or later, having two separate agendas is going to cause trouble.”
