A Very Tight Place
A Very Tight Place
Curtis Johnson rode his bike five miles every morning. He had stopped for a while
after Betsy died, but found that without his morning exercise he was sadder than ever.
So he took it up again. The only difference was that he stopped wearing his bike
helmet. He rode two and a half miles down Gulf Boulevard, then turned around and
rode back. He always kept to the bike lanes. He might not care if he lived or died, but he respected the rule of law.
Gulf Boulevard was the only road on Turtle Island. It ran past a lot of homes owned
by millionaires. Curtis didn’t notice them. For one thing, he was a millionaire himself.
He had made his money the old-fashioned way, in the stock market. For another, he
had no problem with any of the people living in the houses he passed. The only one he
had a problem with was Tim Grunwald, alias The Motherfucker, and Grunwald lived
in the other direction. Not the last lot on Turtle Island before Daylight Channel, but the second-to-last. It was the last lot that was the problem between them ( one of the problems). That lot was the biggest, with the best view of the Gulf, and the only one
without a house on it. The only things on it were scrub grass, sea oats, stunted palms, and a few Australian pines.
The nicest thing, the very nicest, about his morning rides was no phone. He was
officially off the grid. Once he got back, the phone would seldom leave his hand,
especially while the market was open. He was athletic; he would stride around the
house using the cordless, occasionally returning to his office, where his computer
would be scrolling the numbers. Sometimes he left the house to walk out to the road,
and then he took his cell phone. Usually he would turn right, toward the stub end of
Gulf Boulevard. Toward The Motherfucker’s house. But he wouldn’t go so far that
Grunwald could see him; Curtis wouldn’t give the man that satisfaction. He just went
far enough to make sure Grunwald wasn’t trying to pull a fast one with the Vinton Lot.
Of course there was no way The Motherfucker could get heavy machinery past him,
not even at night—Curtis slept lightly since there was no Betsy lying beside him. But
he still checked, usually standing behind the last palm in a shady stretch of two dozen.
Just to be sure. Because destroying empty lots, burying them under tons of concrete,
was Grunwald’s goddam business.
And The Motherfucker was sly.
So far, though, all was well. If Grunwald did try to pull a fast one, Curtis was ready to empty the holes (legally speaking). Meanwhile, Grunwald had Betsy to answer for,
and answer he would. Even if Curtis had largely lost his taste for the fray (he denied this to himself, but knew it was true), he would see that Grunwald answered for her.
The Motherfucker would discover that Curtis Johnson had jaws of chrome…jaws of
chrome steel…and when he took hold of a thing, he did not let go.
When he returned to his home on this particular Tuesday morning, with ten minutes
still to go before the opening bell on Wall Street, Curtis checked his cell phone for
messages, as he always did. Today there were two. One was from Circuit City,
probably some salesman trying to sell him something under the guise of checking his
satisfaction with the wall-hung flatscreen he’d purchased the month before.
When he scrolled down to the next message, he read this: 383-0910 TMF.
The Motherfucker. Even his Nokia knew who Grunwald was, because Curtis had
taught it to remember. The question was, what did The Motherfucker want with him on a Tuesday morning in June?
Maybe to settle, and on Curtis’s terms.
He allowed himself a laugh at this idea, then played the message. He was stunned to
hear that was exactly what Grunwald did want—or appeared to want. Curtis supposed it could be some sort of ploy, but he didn’t understand what Grunwald stood to gain
by such a thing. And then there was the tone: heavy, deliberate, almost plodding.