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.