Churning from the west, a waterspout funnel cloud would have received less attention.

Wide eyes followed the enormous parasail decorated with a smiley face as its canopy flailed from side to side in the darkening sky, spinning out of control above horrified crowds standing on Pier 60 and scattered up and down the rice white beach. No way could this tragedy in the making end well.

Randall Lark stopped in mid-lick of a double-decker pistachio ice cream cone. All that morning he had pondered leaving Florida and America for good. Heading back to Africa, like so many cracker white folks had suggested to his kind since the end of the Civil War, was looking better every day. People skills other than killing techniques he learned in the Army and put to work in Afghanistan might serve him well. He could work with kids and help villagers with health care, education or other economic empowerment projects – a one man Peace Corps.

Randall could turn the damning racist order around, make going back to Africa his own idea, claiming the slur the way some of the young brothers claimed ownership of the word “nigger.” Randall hated that word no matter who used it, but if anybody owned the epithet his people did. Blacks earned ownership with slavery, lost lives, chains, modern day-to-day oppression and perennial white-hot bigotry.

Go back to Africa, nigger.

OK, motherfucker, I’ll do just that.

Randall hated that crude word as well, insulting motherhood with a vicious smear he never understood. Who came up with the m-bomb as a password to brotherhood? He doubted Muhammed Ali ever used the word. But sometimes it just felt good to let loose with a bombshell profanity that made white people cringe.

Down the beach Marty Durkin abruptly ended his daily run and looked skyward. Just that morning he had decided to move back to New Jersey. He didn’t fit in Florida, missed good pizza and felt lonely. People were nice to him, but he carried too much mental baggage to relax and move forward. He’d go home, rent a small apartment near Stone Harbor, maybe in Ocean City. Durkin had failed to escape himself. Life would never be good again. He’d atone for his sins, visit his parents’ graves and grow old alone. If he gathered the courage, he’d visit Tyrone Lark’s grave as well. The boy he shot and killed in the line of duty deserved as much.

When RayRay spotted the parasail he stood calmly clipping his nails in a Pier 60 parking lot, wearing a black t-shirt, gangster Italian loafers with silk socks and a black pinstriped suit that drew every degree of 85-degree heat. He removed mirror-lensed wraparound Ray-Ban sunglasses as he stared at the accident waiting to happen. The two Russians who had threatened his sister Kim on the phone had agreed to meet him at the pier to discuss a real estate deal but hadn’t shown up yet. Kim’s crazed alter ego Becky had directed RayRay to the two Moscow hitmen as part of her forever unpredictable wheeling and dealing. RayRay planned for the mobsters to follow him to Sam Bennett’s old empty room at the Spyglass Apartments where RayRay had locked three hungry alligators and two Burmese pythons he bought special for this occasion from a redneck trapper husband and wife who lived in a cabin in the Everglades. RayRay befriended the young lovebirds at the Elbow Room when they stayed one weekend in Clearwater Beach on vacation. They never asked what he intended to do with his new pets. RayRay never told.

Even Rocco and Ricco, “The Terrible Tag Team from Hell,” stopped practicing their professional wrestling chokeholds on each other in the Pier 60 children’s playground to watch the drama unfold in the sky and prepare for the worst.

None of them knew Sam Bennett and Kim Phillips, let alone crazy Becky, hung and swung in the balance of the runaway parasail.

Only Dillon the Elbow Room’s drunken parrot mascot stopped slurping warm puddles of beer from overturned cans he found in the Dumpster long enough to scramble and take off like an F-15 fighter jet racing to Margot’s side as soon as he spotted his gull friend trailing the uncontrolled parasail that snared her friend Sam.

From where Ruby Arenas stood in the sand the apprentice sorceress knew exactly what was going down – actually going up, down and all around. Mexican death spirit Santa Muerte who infused Ruby with the power of the ancients also read the reality of the fierce sky. As she guided warrior women over the centuries in their secret battle against sexism and evil – the same offense – Santa Muerte empowered Ruby with a superhuman will to persevere.

In the parasail the battle to survive continued.

“Let’s crash, Sam,” Becky said. “Just like Romeo and Juliet. We’ll go to heaven together.”

“I don’t believe in heaven,” Sam said. “When we’re dead, we’re dead. We just disappear.”

“So let’s disappear,” Becky said.

“Nope,” said Sam. “I’m almost ready to fly, to solo like a bird.”

Becky’s insane cackle sounded like a truck full of chickens going over a cliff.

“You’re one strange bird all right,” she said.

Wind flared, gusting, blustery and primitive, twirling and swirling the parasail almost upside down as Becky menacingly waved her hook knife in Sam’s face. Calm as a gray stone garden Buddha, Sam continued to enjoy the view.

“Let’s cut the strings that bind us to this rotten life,” Becky said. “C’mon, cutie, let me cut our harnesses and drop free as your birds.”

“You’ve lost it, Kim,” Sam said. “Your split personality controls your life – even going so far as to advocate double suicide. You need help. I’ll help. We’ll all help.”

“Not me,” said Becky. “Not me.”

Becky’s babble picked up as did the wind, her shrieks building to a terrifying wail. Seconds later the wind stopped. Stillness filled the air. The parasail’s momentum slowed as the hulking smiley face descended gently into the water where lifeguards swimming and in boats prepared to haul the two passengers to safety.

Few people on the shore had noticed Ruby standing with tanned toes touching and her long arms extended, reaching, extending energy into the cosmos. Breathing slowly, mindfully, she had exhaled and directed with her mind each moment of the parasail’s surprising landing in the calm salt water.

Santa Muerte watched Ruby navigate the rescue all by herself.

“Continue to do good things,” Santa Muerte said.

“I promise,” Ruby said. “I only have one more enemy to kill.”

Santa Muerte’s eyes blazed.

“Who?”

“Becky,” Ruby said.

Santa Muerte showed a mouth full of polished teeth in the shape of skulls. Perplexed but knowing never to question her teacher, Ruby waited for the answer she knew would come. The skull teeth scared her. Sometimes Santa Muerte flashed fangs like a shadowy vampire ready to bite into the throat of another human sacrifice. Sometimes her teeth glistened like perfect precious pearls hanging from the neck of a movie star posing on the red carpet at a Hollywood premier.

“You might not have to kill one more,” Santa Muerte said.

Pointing a long bony finger tipped with a sharpened red fingernail, she gestured to the grandiose pastel pink hotel and condominium complex that stood like a palace on the road opposite the beach.

“He might do it for you,” she said.

A glint of sunshine flashed off the barrel of a rifle protruding from the penthouse window and caught Ruby’s eye. A former Russian special forces captain wearing a Yankees baseball cap and a cheap Hawaiian shirt decorated with hula girls dancing in a conga line squinted behind the sight of a 6S8 sniper rifle he pointed at the parasail. Intent on engaging what his orders called “two high priority targets” using powerful 12.7x108mm ammunition, the KGB assassin prepared to squeeze the trigger.

Santa Muerte showed her teeth.

“Now what, Ruby?” she asked.

All Margo could think to do was spin in circles.

That’s right.

Think.

Humans reject the notion that gulls like Margot think or feel or do anything but scarf french fries and crap ketchup. Humans scarf fries and crap ketchup too. But Margot thought deeper philosophical thoughts than most Florida tourists, residents or the sitting tyrant governor and his airhead wife.

Sam Bennett’s favorite gull spotted her friend flying high as soon as she drifted toward the beach and saw the speedboat pulling a massive yellow parasail imprinted with a smiley face climbing into the sky. Two passengers sitting side-by-side rose like souls ascending into heaven on Judgment Day, lifted above brilliant blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico beneath a billowing nylon canopy.

Becky hugged Sam Bennett’s arm like a child clutching a stuffed bear to help keep the monsters away.

“I’m so afraid,” she said, doing her best to stifle a laugh.

Kicking stumpy almost hairless bare legs the way he did as a disheveled little kid on a playground swing wearing the same kind of madras patterned Bermuda shorts he wore today, Sam felt his heart thump in his chest. He looked around excitedly, craning his neck left and right. Other than flying in Navy airplanes while in the military, he had never before soared this high, the connection between body and sky filling him with wonder.

“Fear not,” Sam said. “We are one with wind.”

 “You’re so strong, Sam,” Becky said. “This is the best first date ever.”

“We’re friends, Kim,” Sam said. “I only agreed to parasail when you invited me because I hoped you might come to your senses.”

Good-natured Sam worried Kim might have gone over the edge, that this grating unpredictable personality that called herself Becky might forever control Kim. Sam had never before parasailed, but the thought of flying in a harness provoked giggles. Obsession, training, dreaming and preparation to take off would soon culminate in a one-man maiden flight sans harness, parasail or parachute. In the meantime Sam craved anything even close to the hoped-for freedom of what he now called “the trip.”

Gliding past the fully inflated parasail Margot squawked to get Sam’s attention. But he ignored her for the first time ever, signaling an issue or problem and not a snub between allies. Turning and banking to the left, Margot flew past the frazzled passenger she didn’t know, a wild woman whose hair reminded Margot of the ratty abandoned nests mother gulls leave behind after sending their growing chicks on their way and into lives of their own. Missing her mother terribly, Margot had all the more reason to embrace Sam’s friendship. In turn she sensed his mission to one day join her in flight and ride the breeze side by side. Rooting for this unkempt human to succeed winging it made Margot feel a little human herself.

Gulls can and do think deep philosophical thoughts – whether humans know it or not. Sam knew. So when he ignored Margot she understood he faced a deep dilemma and needed help. But what’s a gull to do?

Leaning into Sam’s shoulder, nuzzling against the pineapple pattern of his faded polyester Hawaiian shirt, Becky patted his hand.

“How high are we, honey?” she asked.

“About 500 feet,” said Sam.

“Aren’t you afraid?” she asked, tugging on Sam’s harness straps she had sliced three quarters of the way through with a new hook knife when the boat was docked in the middle of the night. Cutting into the seat, back and leg straps she gambled that the harness would hold until they reached cruising altitude. Then she could whip out her sharp-edged blade and sever the rest, sending her enemy crashing into a watery grave. Who did this bum think he was trying to rescue Kim?

Becky had also cut partially through the tow line attached to the boat just in case she made up her mind to join Sam in plunging to their deaths. Tiring of living in an asylum for the terminally inane, maybe enough finally was enough. Maybe the time had come for her and Kim to find someplace else in the cosmos to hang out. She hated to admit it, but she missed those twin Irish devil spirits she already dispatched to Hell and hoped she could reconnect with Tara and Shannon in the afterlife. Those girls sure knew how to party.

But Becky couldn’t make up her mind – indecision shaping one of the main pitfalls of a split personality.

“This is great,” Sam said. “I want to go eight miles high.”

“Like the Byrds song?” Becky asked.

“Whoa, the Byrds,” Sam said. “I always dug the Byrds.”

Just as Becky started secretly sawing Sam’s harness the tow rope broke.

Up, up, up they went, gaining altitude on building wind gusts, climbing higher and higher.

Sam readily entered the moment.

“Fly!” he said. “Fly!”

“We’re going down,” Becky said.

“No, we’re going up,” Sam said.

“Down,” said Becky.

“Up,” said Sam.

Down.

Up.

Down.

Up.

Down.

Circling in a mad frenzy, all Margot could do was stay out of the way of the smiley-faced parasail that now surged sideways, picking up speed as it raced across the gray-streaked sky, blowing unrestrainedly toward Pier 60 crowded with senior citizens pointing to the sky.

Down.

Up.

Sideways.

Down.

Up.

Sideways.

Down.

“I miss Kim,” Sam Bennett said.

Tiny sparkling tears forming in the corners of Sam’s eyes reminded Ruby Arenas of little diamonds unearthed from an underground mine.

“We’ll get her back, Sam,” Ruby said.

“Where did she go?”

“Deep inside herself,” Ruby said.

  “So who is Becky?”

“Becky is a figment of Kim’s imagination who protects Kim from harm,” Ruby said. “Becky goes too far. She doesn’t know when to stop.”

Sam wiped his eyes with the backs of big hands covered in skin dry as sun-baked beach sand.

“Kim is always nice to me,” he said.

Ruby watched a rising black and purple cloud appear on the otherwise bright horizon in the morning sky over Clearwater Beach. Foggy darkness swirled like a waterspout, spinning until Ruby saw the face of her own protector appear in the smoky haze – Santa Muerte, the Mexican death saint who now loomed at the zenith of a pastel sky. Santa Muerte spoke to Ruby in a silky murmur so subtle and sharp her tone could cut your throat without pain, draining you of breath and being before you knew what sliced you.

“How might I help you, child?” Santa Muerte asked.

“Help me bring Kim home,” Ruby said.

“You’ll owe me if I do,” Santa Muerte said.

“I already owe you,” Ruby said. “For guiding me since we first met.”

A tender look passed over Santa Muerte’s normally somber features. Beneath the hood of her scarlet robe her eyes flared like burning coal fire embers on a frosty night. Santa Muerte remained calm. An abrupt haunting wind piped like an organ in a funeral dirge.

“I’ve been with you since before your first breath,” Santa Muerte said. “As I was to your mother and to her mother before her, I am your eternal godmother.”

 “I cherish the lessons you taught me,” Ruby said. “I’m learning control and discipline. I lost it when I killed that college boy. I don’t want to hurt anybody anymore.”

“You helped that boy disappear from a life of cruelty,” Santa Muerte said. “You witnessed him purposely kill a gentle dolphin. You saw him laugh about it. You merely helped Mother Nature even the score. We all die anyway, Ruby. One day. One way or the other.”

Now Sam spoke.

“Who are you whispering to?” he asked.

“My spiritual guide,” Ruby said.

“Is Becky Kim’s spiritual guide?”

“In a way,” Ruby said. “The wrong way.”

Afraid of what might come, Sam trembled.

“Will you talk with Becky?” he asked. “Will you ask her to leave Kim alone?”

“I will,” Ruby said.

“That’s good,” Sam said. “Because here she comes.”

Wearing an orange, green and yellow rhinestone bikini top and matching bottom that looked like fruit-flavored hard candy sparkling in a fragile glass dish, Becky strolled the beach like a model strutting the runway during Fashion Week in Milan. Flaming red framed sunglasses with blood orange-colored lenses glittered. A gold cross flashy and bright enough to make Jesus squint dangled from a thick braided chain around her neck. Gold hoop earrings big enough to tempt a seal to jump swung from tanned earlobes. Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes –really – shimmered like a tropical oasis mirage in sweltering sun.

“She scares me,” said Sam as he fled flapping his arms until he disappeared down the beach.

“Scares me, too,” Ruby said.

“Well, well, well, look who’s here,” Becky said. “Want to get high?”

“I’m already high, Kim,” Ruby said. “High on life.”

“Listen to Miss High and Mighty riding around on her rainbow-colored unicorn like she’s better than the rest of us,” Becky said. “And stop calling me Kim. Kim’s dead. Becky rules.”

“Becky doesn’t exist, Kim,” Ruby said. “Come out, come out wherever you are.”

Becky stepped in with a roundhouse haymaker, swiveling her hips behind the power blow. Leaning back out of range, Ruby easily slipped the punch. Becky went face-forward into the sand. Extending her hand, Ruby said, “Let me help you up.”

Grasping both of Ruby’s wrists, Becky came up with an awkward front kick. Easily turning her torso, Ruby deftly reached across her chest with her right hand and firmly grasped the edge of Becky’s right hand. Turning that hand toward her, Ruby gently controlled Becky’s arm and body. Becky dropped to her knees.

“It’s nice to be nice,” Ruby said.

“Says Little Miss Priss,” Becky said.

“Sticks and stones and all that, Becky,” said Ruby as she turned to leave. Within seconds lightning flashed, striking the empty lifeguard stand beside Becky’s head, splintering wood and scattering embers on Becky’s hair as she screamed.

“I’m burning! I’m burning.”

“You sound like the wicked witch in the movie,” Ruby said. “You remember where meanness got her.”

“Kim is mine,” Becky said.

“And you are mine,” Ruby said, feeling the awesome power of Santa Muerte energize her more than ever.

“By the way, Wonder Woman,” said Becky. “Where’s that he-man who rescued me from that sinking ship of fools?”

“I suggest you leave Sam alone,” Ruby said.

“Not until I personally thank that handsome birdman hunk for saving my life,” Becky said.

Sam Bennett watched from behind a rock a distance up the beach. Again he flapped his arms. For a split second he sensed he might lift off. Progress, he thought, is like peeing in the ocean. Every little bit helps.

Sam Bennett felt ready to fly.

When Becky answered Kim’s cell phone on the first ring the Russian accent on the line surprised her. The only two Russians she knew no longer existed. The world breathed easier in their absence. Rest in pieces, comrades, she thought.

“We have problem,” said the man with a tone colder than a vodka bottle in the freezer.

“Spit it out, honey,” Becky said.

“Is this Kim Phillips the fake beneficiary of Borys Popov’s will?”

“You have the wrong number,” Becky said. “Nobody by that name lives here.”

“Tell Kim Phillips we’re on way to cancel check,” the man said. “Permanently.”

Becky knew all about the phony will Borys’ late brother Ivan concocted so Kim would receive a windfall and Ivan would get the rest of his Russian mobster oligarch brother’s billion-dollar estate after Ivan killed Borys. Becky knew because Becky was Kim and Kim was Becky and like the old song says about love and marriage, you can’t have one without the other.

First Ivan called the document an insurance policy. Then he called the document a will. At no time did he call the document counterfeit – which, of course, it was.

The sham will promised Kim a two-million-dollar payday. Ivan forged Borys’ name on the bestowal and signed his own name as a witness so he could testify if need be that everything was copacetic which, of course, it was not. In another fake statement, Ivan wrote an addendum to the will swearing Borys loved Kim as a secret admirer ever since he saw her picture in a real estate brochure, wanting her to be financially sound and set for life in the event of his untimely death. Borys considered Kim his soul mate according to the bequest. Ivan forged his and Borys’ name to that narrative too.

Gullible Kim Phillips believed evil Ivan when he informed her of Borys’ wishes. Now, with both Ivan and Borys out of the way, Kim believed she truly stood to benefit. All she had to do was sit back and get rich quick, which in troubled times is always easier said than done –especially when a brutal band of Russian bruisers find themselves flailing for a new leader and falling over each other to cash in on their dead boss’ dreadful deeds.

“Like I said, lady, we have problem,” said the Russian on the telephone. “Beeg money belong to us.”

“Go suck a fish pie, Rasputin,” Becky said as she hung up.

So the mob wanted their two million in cash of which Kim had not yet taken possession. And the gangsters wanted anything else they could get their grubby paws on. Mocking the Russian Mafia caller in her own stilted Russian accent, Becky started talking to herself – which could get complicated.

“Wait till Rooskies hear about new English word I type into will,” Becky said. “Two million sounds beeg. Two hundred million sounds beeger.”

That’s just what Becky did shortly after taking total control of Kim’s mind. She squeezed the word “hundred” into the forged handwritten official record making Kim’s payout two hundred million dollars instead of a measly two million dollars.

Kim remained in a stupor, breathing softly like an infant unafraid and secure knowing her protectors would keep the big bad world at bay. Silent, really gone, absent from the chaos, Kim hibernated maybe forever. Perhaps Becky would simply stay on the job as Kim’s best bodyguard. But now Becky was starting to doubt herself. She wasn’t the best and knew it. Sometimes even guardians need help. Peace of mind is elusive even for a psychotic split personality. So who was the best?

Big brother RayRay ruled.

After mixing a White Russian with soy milk, vodka, coffee liqueur and ice in an old-fashioned glass, Becky opened the balcony door to her new Paradise Apartments home and watched the rippling water on the bay. On the dock below she saw Ruby Arenas cooling down from a run or a swim or some other body, mind and spirit exercise, a mindset that offended Becky.

Who did Ruby think she was? Everybody’s friend? All-American woman? Amazon queen? Mexican witch? Cuban hoodoo princess? All of the above? None of the above? A vision. An image. A dream of what should be in a better world? Becky feared Ruby’s power and worried the gentle college student who wielded wizardry might not let Kim sleep forever as easily as Becky had put Kim down.

That girl spells trouble, Becky thought.

Ruby Arenas has to go.

On the wall behind Becky the television news reported the continuing law enforcement investigation into the death of the missing South Florida Russian mob boss officials figured disappeared (in pieces) in the explosion that destroyed his yacht off the coast of Clearwater Beach.

The Russians were coming.

Maybe the cops too.

Maybe something worse.

For the first time in Becky’s shelf life of the mind, she felt afraid. She’d tell, that’s what she’d do. She’d tell on the Russians. Feeling like a child ready to run to mommy, Becky felt close to panic. She’d tell. Yes, she would. She’d tell RayRay. He’d know what to do. And so she did. She called RayRay and told. Becky told on the Russians.

“They threatened Kim,” she said. “They want to hurt her.”

RayRay took a long slow breath.

“Stay calm,” he said. “I’ll be over in about an hour.”

Standing before the mirror as he shaved, RayRay looked deep into the eyes of a master, not a thug or hockey enforcer, a master who once fixed a piece of the world that still and always needed fixed. Splashing on the fragrant Old Spice cologne he loved but never used anymore, the scent of another time, RayRay strode to his bedroom to dress.

Opening the closet door he slid hangars down the rod until he reached the end where his favorite special suit hung in a plastic bag. Black with white pinstripes and cuffs at the bottoms of the pants legs, the points on the double-breasted lapels looked sharp as a new stiletto, dark as death on a citrus sour sunny day. Black hand-tooled Italian loafers still fit like buttery slippers. The red and purple silk tie felt soft to his touch, the knot wide, perfectly tied and tight against his throat. A crisp white hankie protruded like a three-pronged claw from his breast pocket. Designer shades he purchased in Florence during one of his last hits helped cut the glare of what was to come.

Within minutes RayRay had slipped into that comfortable place where his mind hummed and his pulse beat steadily, a familiar feeling of confidence and purpose as he planned personal retribution, the fatal act of doing what was right even if it was wrong, of rectifying evil in the hearts and minds of bad men – bad women, too, if they chose the other side and hurt people without legitimate reason.

RayRay justified doing great harm if he erased a greater harm, a theory he learned in church as an altar boy among bad men who hurt children. A sin is not a sin if it erases a greater sin. You could kill a priest if you had good reason. The Pope himself called that the just war theory. Thou shalt not kill, my arse. God killed countless people every day – men, women and the most innocent children. God killed them with the pain of horrible disease. He killed them in wars. Killed them with famine. Crucifixion amounted to a summer walk compared to the grisly means of execution God thought up. What kind of God does that? How could he live with himself?

RayRay would get those God missed, the ones who really deserved to die, the beasts of our burden who weighed on goodness and righteousness and decency. If God’s boy, Jesus, or the Holy Spirit, whatever kind of ghost that was, couldn’t even get the job done, RayRay was up to the challenge.

Societal self-defense mattered.

America, an alleged nation of law, once depended on RayRay, then known as Kevin Leary, to do some of its dirtiest work. The job hitting Mafia hit men ended after he executed the top 12 La Cosa Nostra contract killers in 12 months. The mob died and backed off. With a new identity the U.S. government provided “RayRay Gigliardi” for assisting the clandestine and corrupt FBI war against the mob and keeping his mouth shut, America’s master exterminator and scourge of Mafia mobsters everywhere retired to Clearwater Beach, taking his vulnerable baby sister Kate with him.

Kate was nobody to push into a corner, either, having once dispatched Deirdre, a backstabbing bully from the old neighborhood. True to her Boston Irish environment, Kate knew how to get even. She didn’t even break a sweat terminating her former teenage best friend forever with the help of her first split personality, an alter ego as her big brother called the tough maniac personality that lived inside his baby sister’s head.

Once Kate hit the white sand on the beach, though, voila!

Kim Phillips felt right at home.

That same loving little sister now needed big brother’s help.

RayRay thought his dark life had ended. He thought he could live in harmony with the universe. He thought wrong. Rule number one: Nobody threatened his sister. Poor Kate Leary had enough problems. Nobody threatened Kate or Kim or whatever name you wanted to call her.

Slamming the apartment door behind him, Kevin Leary aka RayRay Gigliardi looked skyward and sneered at God as he spoke an oath to the heavens.

“Nobody,” he said. “And I mean nobody.”

Stretched out on a blue-and-white striped cushioned lounge chair on the top deck of Borys Popov’s Sunseeker 75 Yacht, Kim Phillips stared at the glistening Hawaiian Tropic suntan oil spread thick on her thighs. With the cold gaze of a fresh corpse, she stared through catatonic green eyes that recognized nothing and heard no one.

The billionaire oligarch and Russian Mafia boss recently bought the boat for a million cash from a coke dealer who needed cash before showing up for a 10-year federal prison sentence. After KGB training and years of spy missions and other nefarious operations Borys capably handled  yachts, T-90 Russian tanks and MIG fighter planes.

The thought that anybody would or could hold him prisoner on his own 75-foot yacht never crossed his mind. But there he was in the hands of Kim Phillips, a mental case real estate agent with whom he once thought he could share the wonders of the world.

Now she was a wonder of the world, a maniac saddled with three multiple personalities that controlled her and him – Shannon and Tara, mad Irish twins, and Becky who scared him more than anybody he ever met.

Agitated, Shannon spoke up.

“I’ll have another one of these mojitos like Che Guevara used to drink,” Shannon screamed over the powerful roar of Twin MAN V12 engines.

“Make mine a triple rum runner without the runner,” Tara shouted.

Gritting his teeth, Borys Popov stepped to the portable bar to mix the drinks. With his luxury yacht on automatic pilot, he moved freely about the deck. With this kind of endless crackhead chatter, these two lunatic devils would drive Borys out of his mind if he didn’t find some way to escape.

He already felt like he was slipping since he started seeing them as real people, individual human persons rather than manifestations of Kim’s psychosis, two personality disorders that had kidnapped her mind and his body, evil demon spirits that controlled his destiny.

Then there was Becky.

Dissociative identity number three held the loaded gun that always seemed pointed at his head or chest. Becky was the worst because she exhibited the most rational behavior. With Kim mentally comatose, if he died, Becky would kill him. So Borys had to figure out a way to kill her first. A counterattack would be best during the day, not after they tied him to the railing for the night. If he was going to make a move he better jump while he could, attacking with distraction of some kind to give him an opening to get the gun. Becky seemed sharp, though.

Borys pointed to the horizon,

“Look at sky,” he said. “Big seagull blocking out sun.”

“You really think I’m stupid enough to fall for that dumb stunt?” Becky asked.

With that the sun disappeared.

A black and gray cloud that resembled a coming storm blocked sunlight overhead as Borys craned his neck to look skyward. Not one gull but two dozen gulls flew in formation that would give the U.S. Navy Blue Angels flight demonstration squadron cause for alarm. Climbing higher into the wild blue yonder the birds banked in unison. Now they swooped lower. And lower. And lower. Again they climbed as if revving up speed for some spectacular maneuver. The birds drew closer and closer to the yacht.

Tara expressed deep disorientation.

“Why aren’t those geese honking?” she asked.

“They’re not geese,” Shannon said.

“Why so many gulls?” Borys asked as the first bird broke formation and headed right at them.

“They’re not gulls,” Shannon said.

Borys sensed danger from above.

“What then are big birds flying in sky?”

“Drones,” Shannon said. “Kamikazi killer drones.”

The first high-tech gull drone slammed headfirst into the bow exploding on impact as the dynamite-laden flying bomb tore through the front of the yacht. Following on its tail, a second explosive gull drone crashed through the smoke and flames blowing another hole the size of an open beach umbrella in the bow. A team of five gull drones circled the craft before diving at once before separating to fly parallel to the water. With lightning speed each drone tore through the air and shot through five separate portholes in the yacht’s stern, shattering glass as five explosions tore apart the head, the galley and three cabins, sending toilet paper, pots and pans and tropical print bedspreads soaring into the air.

“No gull poo this time,” Tara said.

“No shit,” Shannon said.

“That’s what I just said,” Tara said.

Over the past several months Sam Bennett carefully crafted dozens of perfect gull drones, hand carved birds he used in the original dirty dozen drone attack on Borys Popov’s ribbon-cutting ceremony when the drones dropped feces-loaded bombs that scored bullseyes on Florida Gov. Ronnie DeShifty and his First Lady Jenna. Then, using the dynamite cache he stole from Borys’ luxury beach condo construction site, Sam built gull feces-filled exploding golf balls to rain poop on Jenna’s parade of beautiful people in what Sam declared an act of societal self-defense. But the drones stood as his masterpiece – especially when he packed them with real explosives rather than crap and decided to terminate Borys Popov.

After talking about the benefits of peace and love with Ruby Arenas, Sam Bennett decided to sacrifice his sacred drones and cancel his plan to send them on endless search and destroy missions against developers and environmental polluters throughout Florida. Sam Bennett would relinquish his drones in one fell swoop.

The world would be better off without Borys Popov.

Sam watched his well-tuned attack from his position on the water in the little boat he salvaged from his last sortie against the evil Popov brothers, the wooden rowboat that sat moored and abandoned in the same weed-covered dune for two years until Sam duct taped Borys’ dearly departed brother Ivan to the mast and set him adrift naked and covered with fish guts pasted to his body. Always ravenous gulls ate well that day as one after another the birds attacked, scraping, pulling and pecking morsel after morsel from fat Ivan’s body, a meal that made Ivan feel part of the buffet. Thinking he was home free after a Coast Guard rescue, Ivan never thought he’d get his eyes pecked out by some of the same gulls that dined on fishy delicacies smeared and stuck to his thick, hairy torso.

Sam had rebuilt the washed-up hull and now rowed out whenever he could to harass and interfere with local fishing boats headed daily into the Gulf. In addition to the gulls, Sam had decided to help protect the dolphins, too. So sure enough, there sat Sam in the little boat, bobbing up and down in the water, watching his well-planned air assault unfold on the yacht. Mistaken that Borys would cruise alone, he knew he had to save Kim as soon as he spotted her standing on the boat that now burned in a brilliant patchwork of color as time ran out.

By the time Sam rowed to the wreck, it was over.

Kim calmly tread water in her life jacket. Throwing a waterproof bag containing her phone to Sam she climbed into the boat. The yacht had exploded the way you might see a yacht explode in a James Bond movie.

“Badaboomski!” said Sam.

Sitting quietly watching the yacht sink and bidding bittersweet goodbye to his drone friends, Sam said, “Peace is the answer. Really, it is.”

Kim Phillips nodded a robotic nod.

After she got home and showered she made herself a nice frozen margarita. Sitting cross-legged on the floor she listened to the recording she made on her cellphone before diving overboard as the boat blew billionaire oligarch and Russian Mafia boss Borys Popov into french fry-sized chunks real gulls snatched from the waves and swallowed.

The first voice on the recording panicked.

“I am not leaving my man, my billionaire, my love,” Shannon said in her thick Irish brogue.

Now Tara howled in her wild Celtic accent.

“Borys Popov loves me and I love him.”

Shannon bellowed.

“You shrew, Borys Popov and his money are mine.”

When the final explosion destroyed the yacht, the captain and his two maniacal mates, powerful Borys Popov and hellish Shannon and Tara, went down with the ship. When the smoke cleared, the last voice on the audio recording was that of a haunting voice – a wonder woman who survived.

“I am Becky,” the woman said. “Hear me roar.”

Of course Kim Phillips listened.

“We got Little Miss Goody Two Shoes now,” Shannon said.

Tara’s distinctive Irish brogue shrieked in response.

“Where’d you hide our wannabe Clearwater Beach realtor of the year?”

Shannon’s equally shrill voice sounded like an empty whisky bottle smashing against moss-covered rocks along a litter-strewn shore.

“Like I’m gonna tell you, you floppy old floozy.”

“I thought we were working as partners like those cute twin wrestlers who moved into the Paradise,” Tara said.

“You actually thought a real thought, Tara?” Shannon said. “One syllable or two?”

Billionaire oligarch and Russian Mafia boss Borys Popov marveled at the argument between these two otherworldly voices as he watched Clearwater Beach realtor Kim Phillips’ mouth move and her eyes bug out as she waved her arms above her head pacing the room and shouting to herself.

“What is wrong with you, Kim?” he asked. “Why talk to yourself in third person?

“You ever been kidnapped, caviar breath?” Shannon asked.

“Yeah, you ever been snatched and held for ruble ransom?” Tara asked.

Of course Borys couldn’t see the two women speaking to him because they didn’t exist – at least in body. In spirit these demented manifestations of Kim Phillips’ battered mind bantered and battled back and forth, fighting to incite Kim’s final breakdown. Sensing potential victory, Shannon and Tara had agreed to pool their insanity as Kim’s split personalities and tried their best to work together to hold her prisoner within her own sense of self. Kidnapping Kim and Borys at the same time would take some serious cooperation. Deciding what to eventually do with them would be equally challenging.

Pointing a silver .44 Magnum at Borys, Shannon barked a single sharp command.

“Sit,” she said.

Borys Popov eased his behind on the soft black leather couch.

“Good dog,” Tara said.

“Now listen closely,” Shannon said as she held the back of Borys’ head with one hand and with the other jammed three inches of the six-inch barrel into his nostril so the cold metal fit nice and snug. Counting silently to three for effect she slowly removed the gun barrel from the Russian’s broken beak. In an almost flirtatious tone Shannon politely asked if Borys had any cash laying around the house in case they needed to check into a motel while on the run and waiting for the ransom money, figuring Kremlin bosses would pay for their puppet’s silence and RayRay would cough up cash for his friend Kim.

“Money is in cheap suitcase in master bedroom beside red velvet-covered water bed,” Borys said.

The decision to take this lunatic Kim Phillips and her trash-talking split personalities with him into oblivion came easy. When Kim opened the suitcase Mr. Big gave Borys in exchange for the pee pee tapes the powerful nuclear device would set off the little dirty bomb big enough to level Clearwater Beach and some of the surrounding area all the way to Tarpon Springs to the north and Sarasota to the south.

So long grouper burgers with hot sauce.

So long stone crabs dripping with melted butter.

So long Borys Popov.

After wallowing in an adult life of luxury and political power, he finally had his fill of American exceptionalism. Freedom offered nothing more than free market folly marketed as an illusion by capitalist robber barons. Countless peasants overextended credit cards they didn’t deserve to possess. These self-absorbed buffoons lacked the basic common sense necessary to keep from going into crippling debt as they reached for a shred of the so-called American Dream.

To make matters worse, now Borys had to put up with liberal environmental protesters led by a senile old bird named Sam Bennett, an unkempt nobody who threatened his empire with gull shit. Was it really too much to ask for a luxurious condo tower on the beach, for people to just do what he told them to do or to let him run the Russian mob in Miami from a distance? Was it too much to want to spend his ill-gotten gains on a female companion – not some diseased stripper or gold digger beach hustler – but a nice girl like Kim Phillips? So what if Kim seemed more than a little spacy? So was Sputnik, the Soviet satellite that circled the Earth in 1957, promising new horizons for the future. Kim symbolized a similar promise of tomorrow’s new vistas for Borys.

But the crazy birdman destroyed his plans to retire in a penthouse where he could watch tangerine sunsets with his new czarina and live happily ever after. Now he wondered if Kim might not have been setting him up all along. Maybe she was CIA, FBI, DEA or some other governmental alphabet soup mix that controlled the American people through democracy’s own insidious brand of police state oppression, corruption and brutality. No difference existed between the KGB and the CIA except the lie that American agents worked on behalf of liberty. For that matter, no difference existed between Russian assassinations and gulags and the American prison system and robotic cops run amok with their fingers on the triggers.

Borys never liked Putin. He never liked Mr. Big. Russian spies and Cossack Mafia killers like him don’t like anybody. Kim Phillips might have changed his life, but no more. He’d be better off driving a tank in Ukraine.

Going up in a mushroom cloud suddenly appealed to him. In his one act of goodness in an otherwise merciless life, he envisioned provoking a detonation that would at least give humanity a chance to start again – to realize life’s fragility and how the human race can vaporize in an instant. Borys figured he could save the world by destroying one little piece of paradise. See what happens when those wannabe Manson girls open that cheap brown suitcase.

Badaboomski!

“I have big money,” Borys said. “Stacks of thousand dollar bills packed in suitcase beside water bed just like the one Burt Reynolds had in movie Boogie Nights.”

Shannon growled. She wailed. She performed a clumsy pirouette, imitating a prima ballerina on the Bolshoi stage.

“Show me the money, honey!” she said.

Tara brayed. She howled. She thrust her pelvis in an obscene hip hop dance move she saw during the Super Bowl halftime show on TV.

“Show me the money, honey!”

Kim Phillips sleepwalked into the bedroom. The second she found the suitcase, sprang the latch and popped open the lid, red, white and blue colors of the North Korean flag detonated in her face, discharging a massive burst of gold glitter and confetti. White and yellow fireworks’ sparks shot in all directions, filling the air with the high potency Chinese itching powder the Little Rocket Man dictator had given Mr. Big as a joke. Tingling and scratching even before the powder had settled, Kim clawed at her arms, shoulders, legs and other body parts she couldn’t reach. At least she seemed lucid. Shannon yowled. She howled. She whimpered. She scratched. Tara howled. She yowled. She hiccoughed. She scratched. Like mad dogs trapped in a room full of killer mosquitos, all three personalities scratched and scratched and scratched. Then they scratched some more.

Rushing into the room stunned by Mr. Big’s nuclear deception and actually happy to be alive, Borys Popov moved toward the gun on the floor that had slipped from Kim’s hand. One bullet would do it for Kim and these Irish basket cases that lived in her head. One bullet would take care of all three. As Borys bent to retrieve the gun, Kim beat him to it. Rising to full height she looked dignified, in control, steady and stable. She had also stopped scratching.

“OK, lover boy,” she said. “Put your hands in the air. Act like you just don’t care.”

Borys did as he was told. Something in her eyes looked peculiar, different, a focus he had only seen in the eyes of Russia’s most vicious elite assassins. The look in Kim’s eyes was worse, scarier, haunting.

“We can work something out, Kim,” he said.

“No, we can’t,” she said, pointing the gun at his chest.  “And stop calling me Kim. My name is Becky.”

Nervous and tearing up, Ruby handed RayRay the letter. After unfolding and reading the single paragraph Ruby printed out on white copy paper RayRay teared too. Words with the best intentions can still hurt.

“Thank you for being my friend and the best boss ever,” Ruby’s letter said. “Because of the continuing threat of Covid-19 I can no longer work as a server at RayRay’s Elbow Room. I haven’t been sick and don’t want to get sick. I don’t want to infect anybody. Please consider this note my official two week notice.”

RayRay used the thick heel of his palm to wipe his eyes.

“I’ll pay you through the two weeks if you need to go now,” he said in a gentle voice.

“I don’t want to leave you short-handed,” Ruby said.

“No, that’s all right if you’re nervous working here.”

“I am,” Ruby said.

Ruby failed to hold back her tears.

So did RayRay.

“I hope you understand,” she said.

“I’m not sure I do,” he said.

“I’m the only person here who wears a mask,” she said.

“Sam does,” RayRay said. “That one you made him that looks like a gull beak.”

“I mean the only person who works here,” Ruby said. “I’m the only person working here who takes Covid seriously enough to protect myself and others. I don’t want to get sick. I don’t want to worry about long Covid weakening my heart and lungs and mind. I don’t want to infect anybody. I don’t want to hurt anybody, RayRay.”

“We’re all vaccinated,” RayRay said. “Boosted, too. Remember when I asked the staff what they thought we should do. We agreed to get the shots and show proof we did. We agreed we were all in this together.”

“Our customers didn’t agree,” Ruby said. “Customers from all over the country, all over the world, can carry the virus, not show symptoms, not get sick, have a great time here at the Elbow Room and infect everybody they come into contact with –strangers, friends and family. Carriers can infect vaccinated people and boosted people and people not wearing masks who can infect others.”

“I thought Covid was over,” RayRay said. “Joe Biden said Covid is over.”

“Yeah,” Ruby said. “And the Biden administration declared it would bring an end to the Covid-19 public health emergency in May.”

“Shouldn’t the president of the United States know what he’s talking about?” RayRay asked.

Ruby stayed focused.

She voted for Biden.

“Elite politicians play Covid roulette with our lives,” she said. “Covid isn’t over. Covid might just be taking a breather, regrouping before mutating into a bigger badder disease.”

“I had Covid,” RayRay said. “And it wasn’t as bad as some colds I’ve had over the years.”

Ruby didn’t remember RayRay going into quarantine. He always showed up and worked. Yet she held back telling him off for risking staff and customers’ lives. Exhausted from nicely explaining her mask and her absence from public events and gatherings of friends and others, begging off with a tedious heartfelt explanation, Ruby wondered how people would feel if she leveled with them and told the truth.

What if she snapped at them the way some customers snapped at her? Why are people so willing to infect vulnerable men, women and children? Why aren’t otherwise smart people civic-minded enough to reduce the number of infections that could bring Covid under control? Why are people who claim to care about her risking her life for stupid selfish reasons?

Ruby also didn’t have the heart to tell RayRay the ugly details about long Covid and what awful health consequences he could face in the future. Most people who contracted Covid didn’t want to face facts about severe health aftereffects that might lie ahead. Covid survivors who continue to live recklessly run the risk of getting Covid again and again, possibly shortening their lives and the quality of their lives with each reinfection.

Each day Ruby faithfully read what epidemiologists tweeted. She read scientific articles they referenced and wrote. She put faith in research, science and real world, real time reality. What exasperated her as much as anything was how people prayed after they got sick. They prayed as they died and when loved ones died. Instead of using the tools science gave us they prayed.

Ruby had no time for religion or prayer. A committed pagan witch with no time for Christianity she nonetheless had to give credit to whoever wrote the Garden of Eden scene in the Bible. Here’s paradise, Adam and Eve. Avail yourselves of whatever pleasures you choose. Just don’t touch the apple. What did Adam and Eve do? Adam and Eve ate the apple. Their greed, weakness and ego helped create a rotten-to-the-core American society based on self-absorbed instant gratification that increasingly defined the human condition. Most people never had enough. Most people never appreciated the simple pleasures of their lives.

Snickers and dirty looks greeted her more and more when she appeared at work wearing a mask. Unmasked patrons sometimes asked what was wrong with her. One woman asked if she was immunocompromised and if she was why she didn’t stay home until she got over her weakness. That same morning Ruby had swum five miles in the ocean. People who got together after work no longer invited her. People talked about her behind her back.

Ruby still wanted to believe in people.

People no longer wanted to believe in Ruby.

Covid already killed over one million Americans.

More than 300,000 more died from Covid-related disease, what experts call excess death.

Ruby Arenas would do everything she could to decrease the odds of becoming a Covid statistic or adding to the body count.

Rarely indecisive, RayRay didn’t know what to say. More than a little embarrassed, he struggled for words. Most people said they wanted to do the right thing about Covid but got carried away by popular opinion which embraced the full-speed-ahead launch of a new normal as good as the old normal. For savvy businessmen like RayRay staying open defined business as usual. Closing was out of the question.

“Should I mandate masks on staff and customers?” he asked.

“You should,” Ruby said. “But mask and vaccine mandates are illegal here in Florida.”

“What can I do?” he asked.

“Install top of the line HVAC air filters,” Ruby said. “But they won’t do much for the people without masks or sitting outside on the patio where they still breathe strains of this airborne virus that travels as easily as cigarette smoke.”

RayRay never sought approval but for some reason wanted Ruby’s.

“Maybe I should close,” he said.

“You probably should,” Ruby said. “Covid kills about 500 people each day, more people than we know. If you knew wearing a mask might keep 500 cancer patients, including children, from dying each day, would you wear a mask?”

Ruby didn’t want to get angry or humiliate RayRay by calling out ignorance with data. The ongoing pandemic wasn’t RayRay’s fault. But the whole country was out of control. She changed the subject, hoping to talk more with RayRay later about measures he could take to stay open and reduce the odds of Covid at the Elbow Room.

“I can still pay rent, RayRay,”Ruby said. “Sam’s paying me a small salary to start a foundation with the donations people sent him for his fight to save the gulls. He said I can work from home and I’ll be careful outside when we have socially-distanced protest rallies. We’ll wear masks, RayRay. You can come.”

“I’ll wear a mask, Ruby,” he said.

“I know you will,” she said.

“I’d like to make a contribution to the foundation,” RayRay said.

Ruby wanted a hug but knew better.

“I’d like to cover your rent until you graduate from college next year,” RayRay said. “I want to help save the gulls. They need you and Sam.”

“And we need you, RayRay,” she said.

Their tears returned.

So did a steadfast resolve to help each other survive in a cruel world made worse when otherwise good people stopped looking out for each other.

“Thanks for coming,” Marty Durkin said.

Randall Lark walked into the small neatly decorated apartment.

“You armed?” Durkin asked.

Lark said, “What do you think?”

“Me too,” Durkin said. “You want to put the guns on the table?”

Randall Lark slowly drew a Ruger Max-9 from a shoulder holster and laid the loaded pistol on the kitchen table. Durkin drew a Sig Sauer P365X from a holster on his hip and laid it on the table.

“Truce?” Durkin said.

“Truce,” said Lark.

Minutes later both men, one Black, the other white, sat across from each other. They sipped from cold brown bottles of Pacifico beer. Durkin put out a bowl of pretzel sticks. He ate a handful.

“I threw my last gun into the Gulf of Mexico for peace of mind,” Lark said. “That was a mistake, so I bought another one.”

“I bought mine after I moved here,” ex-cop Durkin said. “After I met you and started wondering if you’d shoot me.”

Cool and calm, Randall Lark spoke with a touch of menace in his voice.

“Keep wondering,” Lark said.

“You’re always on my mind,” Durkin said.

“Good,” Lark said.

Randall Lark ran his forefinger along the barrel of his gun.

“What kind of gun did you use to kill my baby brother Tyrone?” he asked.

Durkin never knew how to answer Lark. Maybe he’d feel better if Lark did shoot and kill him the way Durkin accidently shot and killed Lark’s 14-year-old brother that night on the Stone Harbor beach when he mistook a piccolo for the silver barrel of a gun.

“That was a Glock 19 Gen 4 9mm,” Durkin said. “I turned it in that night.”

Randall Lark took a long sip of beer. Then he took another. He ate a single thin pretzel stick.

“You see the video of those Memphis cops killing Tyre Nichols?”

“I couldn’t watch it,” Durkin said.

“That’s a big part of your problem,” Lark said. “Hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil.

“I read about it,” Durkin said.

“You need to watch it happen, Officer Durkin,” Lark said.

“Don’t call me officer,” Durkin said.

“If you don’t see the murder with your own eyes you can offer thoughts and prayers, be done with it and do jack shit to find justice,” Lark said. “Justice for Tyre.”

Durkin looked at the bright oranges on the plastic tablecloth pattern.

“You think the cops are guilty?” Lark asked.

“Yeah,” Durkin said.

“Would you have punched Tyre?”

“No.”

“Would you have kicked Tyre in the head?”

“No.”

‘Would you have tased Tyre?”

“No.”

“You’d have just shot Tyre when he ran, right?”

With nowhere for Durkin to run he sat silently, anxious, not knowing what else to say or do.

“Answer me, officer,” Lark said.

“I’m not a police officer anymore,” Durkin said.

“You should never have been one,” Randall Lark said.

Durkin looked at his gun on the table. Maybe he should just pick it up and pull the trigger twice, ending the pain for them both. Lark looked at his gun and thought the same thought. Both men had killed before.

“I was a good cop,” Durkin said.

“You were a white cop,” Lark said.

“Those Memphis cops are Black, Randall,” Durkin said. “Like you.”

Lark clenched his fists. Struggling and desperate, Durkin pulled a trick question out of nowhere.

“You ever kill anybody by accident when you were fighting in Afghanistan?”

Lark never saw the curveball coming.

“You did, didn’t you?” Durkin said.

“War gets foggy,” Randall Lark said.

“So does the beach,” Durkin said.

“Different kind of fog, man,” Lark said.

Randall Lark sneered at Durkin.

“Too many of you white cracker cops with your shaved heads, pumped iron arms full of tattoos and mirror sunglasses think you’re special operations soldiers when the closest you’ll ever get to a real firefight is a video game.”

Durkin hated mostly white male police posturing. Macho control freak air poisoned pure law and order police culture. What happened in Memphis unleashed Black officers as bad as white officers exhibiting the same aggressive predation that mostly punished unarmed Blacks. Durkin sensed that some of that blitzkrieg assault mentality had rubbed off on him, making him too hyper, too ready to open fire. Maybe fear and temper, maybe even covert racism, made him too ready to kill a perceived Black threat even if that threat was an unarmed child practicing piccolo music on the beach.

Randall Lark nudged his gun forward with his finger.

“If I had the power I’d defund every police department in the country,” he said.

“Me, too,” Durkin said. “You know what else I’d defund?”

Randall Lark glared not sure if Durkin was mocking him.

“The military,” Durkin said. “I’d cut the Pentagon budget in half.”

Now he touched his gun.

“Me, too,” Lark said.

Durkin went for another two Pacificos. He liked his new apartment, his new independence, the feeling he was hip drinking Mexican beer. He had to admit his surprise, though, when Lark agreed to stop by when he invited him over to talk. Happy he had decided not to shoot Lark and that Lark decided not to shoot him, Durkin tried to lighten up just a little.

“So where do we put all the money we save with the budget cuts?” Durkin asked.

Randall’s face went grim.

“Restitution,” he said. “But no matter how much we pay countless victims around the world, we still won’t have enough money to pay for all the killing we did.”

Telling herself not every woman can juggle three voices in her head, four if she counted her own, Kim Phillips got ready for work. Selling luxury condos was getting to be a drag. She wondered if she could sell boats instead. Hawking yachts could be fun. But she hated rich people more and more each day, especially Russian billionaire Borys Popov whose days really should be numbered.

Becky’s voice came out of nowhere.

“Put your dancing shoes on,” the voice in Kim’s head said. “We’re going out.”

This third female presence that shaped Kim’s psyche arrived decades ago as Kim’s first childhood auditory hallucination. Becky promised to always defend her host in the fight to save Kim from herself. Until Becky showed up unannounced a few months ago, Kim hadn’t heard from her in almost 11 years when Becky just disappeared.

“I came back to rescue you for good,” Becky said.

So Kim went to her closet and pulled out the long red wig with bangs, a rainbow glitter halter top, pink bell bottoms and red high-heeled sandals, all items that clashed with her normally modest fashion taste and easygoing personality.

“Hot Mama,” as Becky now called her, got ready to party.

Taking over through the sheer force of her existence, as soon as Becky walked into RayRay’s Elbow Room the regulars at the bar who knew, loved and recognized Kim despite her makeover stopped mid-sip, gulp or guzzle to stare. Becky sashayed to the jukebox and punched in a few tunes. RayRay recognized the potential for trouble and easily handled the most public and severe display of Kim’s mental illness he ever saw.

“Your new look becomes you,” RayRay said smooth in his ability to handle a crisis yet hoping Kim wouldn’t blow their cover as brother and sister living the good life in a secret government witness protection program.

The last time Becky took over Kim missed work and got so riled she made an appointment with a psychiatrist who reassured her she was sane. A consulting neurologist said Becky’s influence was as real to Kim as Tara and Shannon, the evil Irish twin banshees who also lived in Kim’s head. The doctors wanted to know if Becky had met the demonic duo.

“What’s it to you?” Becky asked.

“Yeah, what’s it to you?” echoed Shannon.

“Quack, quack,” Tara said to the doctors.

Ultimately the specialists agreed Kim and her extended family posed no discernable danger to herself or others and suggested she try living with the illusive roommates, however real they might be to her. Reassuring herself that the experts had clearly diagnosed her malady, Kim tried her best to ride the brainwaves, hoping and failing more often than not to contain Tara and Shannon.

Becky could change Kim’s mind permanently.

Somebody could die.

Kim hoped she wasn’t the target.

As always Kim remained scared trying to cover terror with bravado that exhausted her. She clearly remembered when Becky made Deirdre the cheerleader disappear when they were teenagers and Becky simply had enough of that terribly mean girl. Becky might have spared Deirdre back then but chose otherwise. This time maybe Becky would save Kim once and for all.

Maybe Becky would kill the twins.

Sitting at the end of the bar in his reserved seat by the server’s station Sam Bennett seemed especially distressed by his friend’s appearance.

“Where’s your nice Hawaiian shirt with the seagulls on it, Kim?”

Turning on Sam with fire in her eyes, Becky pointed a long red fingernail.

“My name is Becky, birdbrain,” she said.

Before Becky could really open up on Sam with another snide retort, Ruby stepped from the kitchen and spoke in a voice as soothing as a warm bubble bath.

“Your hair is great,” Ruby said.

You could almost feel the brain cells dancing the hula in Becky’s head.

“You, too, can be a sexpot,” Becky said. “You want a wig? Yellow is your color.”

“Actually, no,” Ruby said. “Purple defines my moods, my essence, my being.”

“So what’s up with purple?” Becky asked.

Gently drawing Becky into her power circle, Ruby Arenas worked the soft magic of the ancients.

“Let me show you,” Ruby said.

Before turning to return to the kitchen she said to RayRay, “Buy all our friends at the bar a drink on me until I get back. Buy Becky two.”

“I’ll have two double flaming shots of Fireball whisky,” Becky said.

“Coming right up,” RayRay said.

The jukebox kicked into Becky’s first selection, “Psychedelic Shack” by the Temptations.

“Man, I hate that song,” Randall Lark said.

“I think it’s cool,” Durkin said.

“You would,” Randall said. “I’ll bet a white dude wrote it. Black people didn’t talk like that. Listen to the lame lyrics, ‘People walking around reciting poetry.’ Shit. You want poetry, read some LeRoi Jones.”

Durkin struggled for a comeback.

“So you don’t like Jimi Hendrix, either?”

“Jimi’s a trip, man,” Randall said. “Jimi felt the walls coming down. Jimi knew Black people would never be equals in America. So he beat you honkies at your own game.”

“What game is that, Randall?”

Randall stared into Durkin’s eyes.

RayRay set up the drinks.

“C’mon, you two,” he said. “Let’s not reignite the Civil War.”

Glaring at Durkin, Randall said, “The Civil War never stopped. Ask Dirty Harry here.”

Ruby re-emerged from the kitchen resplendent in a sparkling purple wig that hung to her elbows and would make Cher envious. Gliding into the bar on deep plum spike heels that made your feet hurt just looking at them, her mauve dress clung to her taut, muscled frame like lavender snakeskin. Mulberry gloss glistened wet on her lips. Eyeshadow dark as a blossoming lilac bush at midnight provided the finishing touch that rivaled the brilliance of fresh violets. An amethyst necklace and matching earrings rounded out her ensemble. Ruby’s aura shined purple.

Earlier that evening as she got ready for work, Rudy looked out the sliding glass door and saw Kim standing on her balcony. Becky had already taken over and was smoking a cigarette before putting on the finishing touches to go out for the evening. Calling on Santa Muerte Ruby asked for guidance.

“A cloak,” Santa Muerte said. “Disguise the power. Imitate the imposter. Only do it better.”

Ruby kept the dress and shoes from her senior prom. Until now why she held onto them was anybody’s guess. Santa Muerte must have seen Becky coming. The costume jewelry came with a collection she bought at a yard sale and she wore the wig on Halloween years ago. The makeup she bought when she made a quick run down to the drug store on the corner. Yes, Santa Muerte saw Becky coming.

“You are smoking,” Becky said.

Facing Ruby caught Becky by surprise.

“I think I might call it a night,” Becky said. “I’m feeling a little woozy.”

Ruby’s power bore into and neutralized Becky’s power.

“C’mon,” Ruby said. “I’ll walk you home.”

“Take the rest of the night off, Ruby,” RayRay said. “Maybe you and Kim, I mean Becky, I mean Kim, can have a heart-to-heart talk.”

Everybody at the bar sat stunned.

“Hey Randall,” Sam Bennett said. “‘Purple Haze’ even pales in comparison to Ruby.”

“Jimi would be proud,” Randall said. “I think.”

From his perch behind the bar Dillon whistled at the two women as they left arm in arm.

“Scuse me while I kiss the sky,” the bird said.

Sam and Randall both gawked at the parrot.

“The damn bird memorized Jimi Hendrix lyrics?” Randall said.

RayRay threw back a double shot of Fireball whiskey.

“At the Elbow Room any damn thing is possible,” he said.

Flapping his arms as he picked up what speed he could muster in the hard-packed sand nearest the water, Sam Bennett began his wobbly practice run up and down the beach. Every morning at seven he practiced his takeoff, running as fast as he could to gain enough speed to lift off. Sam knew he’d never take flight from the ground but believed he needed all the flapping practice he could get before one day soaring from the edge of a tall building roof or bridge.

Watching from a distance, Ruby Arenas asked Santa Muerte for help.

“Help Sam fly, Mother Death,” she said. “Just once.”

The notorious Mexican death saint only interceded when she saw fit. Maybe she would bestow generous favor on Sam Bennett as he struggled to save himself, the gulls and the planet. Santa Muerte knew a soul aligned with the universe when she saw one.

When Sam abruptly stumbled in his mad dash he seemed to hover for just a second, seeming to rise an inch or so from his forward momentum before crashing and coming down face-forward into the water. Getting to his knees he brushed himself off and slowly stood facing east when he spotted Ruby and watched her jog to his side.

“I felt it,” he said. “I felt the flutter.”

“I felt the flutter too, Sam,” she said.

The flutter was what Sam once told Ruby he called the natural instinct of real flight, a bodily sensation he knew he possessed that would lead one day to a full-scale climb into the heavens.

“What goes down must go up,” Sam said.

Ruby patiently let Sam riff on the aviation theory that worked overtime in his brain.

“I thought it was the other way around, Samuel,” she said.

Ruby was the only person Sam let call him Samuel. In return she knew he liked her formal attention. You could see Sam blush even through the crimson webbed complexion of broken blood vessels in his nose and cheeks the gin in his countless martinis had caused.

“Pay attention to the gulls,” he said. “When they’re high they dive, what I call a swan dive minus the swan, of course, then they catch a wave of air and pick up speed to climb like surfing the atmosphere. Riding the waves is like riding the music. Only then do the gulls dive. I wonder if they hear psychedelic music in their heads when they fly the way I do when I try?”

“Far out, Sam,” Ruby said. “You’re really too much.”

“If I sound crazy it’s because I’m not,” Sam said.

“You’re a conundrum wrapped inside an enigma,” she said.

“Yes, yes,” Sam said. “A puzzle. A riddle.”

“Keep practicing,” Ruby said.

“You, too,” Sam said.

About to leave Ruby stopped short at Sam’s suggestion.

“What do you mean, Sam? What should I keep practicing?”

“Your voodoo spells, the Mexican magic, the Cuban Santeria witchcraft,” he said. “Hoodoo mojo sorcery power for the people will help save the world. I sense that vibe the same way I feel the flutter.”

“What exactly do you sense, Sam?”

“We share a destiny,” Sam said. “I perceive goodness, courage, a vow to protect Mother Earth from evils our self-absorbed species wrought.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Wrought sounds like rot,” Sam said.

“Yes,” she said.

“You felt the flutter?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Did you know swans and gulls are friends?” Sam asked.

“Uh, no,” Ruby said.

“In ancient times gulls taught black swans how to dive, swan dive, if you will. Black swans taught white swans. One day gulls will teach me to swan dive as well,” Sam said.

How could Sam Bennett know black swans sometimes guided Ruby in her dreams, carrying her high as she rode into a sunset sky of purple and orange haze before gently lowering her on their wings into the bosom of soft green grass that blew on mellow winds nourished by clean clear water?

“I, too, admire swans, Sam,” Ruby said.

“I saw you once in the sky,” he said. “We passed by as we rode our black swans into the night.”

“I didn’t see you, Sam,” she said.

“Maybe that’s because my magic sometimes makes me invisible,” he said.

“Maybe we were both just dreaming,” she said.

“Maybe our dreams are real,” Sam said.

“Maybe we both can fly,” Ruby said.

“Maybe you are a swan,” Sam said.

“And maybe you are a gull,” Ruby said.

“Birds of a feather,” Sam said.

Turning and puffing out his chest he walked away flapping his arms and talking to himself, clucking and cackling like a chicken in a language Ruby trusted she, Sam and Santa Muerte clearly understood.