Whatever it took to save the world, Ruby Arenas worked all the shifts she could get as a server at RayRay’s Elbow Room to earn money for her master’s degree in environmental science at the University of South Florida in Tampa. RayRay promised to hire the 25-year-old nature lover fulltime as soon as he had an opening. He fit her into the schedule as often as possible.

A committed vegetarian who hated her parents’ beloved Cuban sandwiches loaded with roast pork layered with ham (two kinds of pig), Ruby bit her tongue at work to keep from spreading bad news about eating any kind of meat that walked, crawled or swam including seafood. Grinning and bearing her burden, serving heaping platters of chicken wings, grilled grouper burgers, conch fritters, honey-crusted salmon and anything else you could blacken or broil became the orders of the day.

Ruby liked people but felt closer to manatees, turtles and birds, particularly loving plant life on the planet. No place brought her into closer contact with Mother Nature than mornings when she swam in the Gulf. Sprinting across the white blanket of sand, she’d dive into bulbous whitecaps before starting smooth long strokes that guided her a hundred yards into the soft comfort of a salt water womb. Imagining herself as a mermaid, she sometimes held her breath so long underwater she almost lost consciousness. During those times she floated inside her own body as serene as a Zen fish becoming one with the deep.

That’s when she knew she was unique.

Humanity’s creatures of the sea origins remained imbedded in Ruby’s spiritual core, propelling her through the water, protecting her from harm, sending her to another level of supreme existence. No matter what any critic might say, her cosmic connections rang true with pristine purity.

Too bad the same couldn’t be said of the tousled, ruffled and bedraggled beast that washed up on the shore. Frowzy as a discarded feather duster gathering grime in a no-tell-motel gutter, the floppy sopping pile caught Ruby’s eye as soon as she emerged Saturday morning from her swim. Sand washed over the clump as she sensed slow, small motion but movement nonetheless. Bubbles emerged too, tiny bubbles forming, popping and disappearing like greasy, soapy foam on a worn wet kitchen sponge,

An emerald green parrot splayed on the beach now gasped for air near the water line. Reminding Ruby of a terminally hungover RayRay’s regular, she knelt by the bird’s side and brushed seaweed off his beak.

“Sonofabitch,” the parrot said.

Stunned, Ruby scooped up the parrot and cradled him to her shoulder. Opening his eyes, the bird looked at Ruby and addressed her like a conversation was the most natural thing in the world for a bird to do.

“What hit me?”

After a bath, hot towels and fresh-squeezed orange juice for her and the bird Ruby fed the parrot guacamole on tortilla chips with chipotle hot sauce. Ruby bundled him in a handwoven palm basket, took him to the bar and showed RayRay what fate had shipped her way.

“I’m not allowed to keep pets in my rental cottage,” Ruby said

“The bar could use a mascot,” RayRay said, his eyes lighting up like a big, fat joint in the front row at a Cheech and Chong film festival.

Within a week RayRay taught the bird to roller skate around the circular bar on black rubber toy truck wheels RayRay attached to triangular plastic bases connected by black plastic roll bars the bird clutched in his talons. RayRay made a tiny hockey stick out of swizzle sticks he taped together and taught the bird RayRay named Dillon to slam a mini puck (another rubber toy truck wheel) into the net in the corner of the barroom while RayRay screamed, “He shoots, he scores!”

Named after classic television sheriff Matt Dillon, this cock of the walk easily adapted to the saloon with an allure that sometimes outclassed regular patrons who flaunted their own freaky flair whether they possessed any real style or not. That sounds complex because it is. Personality disorders can get complicated.

One day Dillon started to insult a relatively new patron who now came into RayRay’s every afternoon at five for happy hour.

“Braaak! Braaak! Look at that fat whale. Look at that fat whale,” Dillon said lifting his leg to point a claw at the vodka-guzzling patron.

“I kill this bird,” said the hulking Russian sitting at the end of the bar.

“I like your gold teeth,” RayRay said trying to change the subject.

The drunken Russian went for the slight of mind distraction.

“You know how much teeth cost?”

“Lots, I bet. You look like a Moscow rapper on parole from the gulag.”

The hulking whale roared with laughter.

“Moscow hippie hoppers die before they get to gulag,” he said. “No rappers in Moscow. Just Cossack dancers. You want to see Cossack dance?”

“Uh, look, buddy, no, that’s OK.”

Too late.

Leaping from his bar stool, 40-year-old Ivan Popov crossed his arms across his chest at the elbows. Bending at the knees, he first shot out his left leg. Pulling back his ankle, he shot out his right leg, then the left, then the right. The big clod repeated the kicks about a dozen times.

An Alcoholics Anonymous group that had fallen off the wagon together and met for drinks each afternoon began to clap in unison. The lead boozer tried to do the Cossack dance and fell flat. Another drunk took his place. Other AA dropouts howled. Before you could say “we will bury you” a half dozen other inebriated customers were Cossack dancing like VIPs at the season debut of The Alexandrov Red Army Ensemble.

Now Dillon flew into a fit of Cossack dancing, too – on roller skates.

Out of breath Ivan fell on his back and screamed for more vodka. Impressed, RayRay thought about putting some Russian music on the jukebox and booking Ivan for Cossack night during the winter slow season, but thought better of it with the Ukrainian invasion and all. When Ivan took the vodka bottle RayRay handed over the bar, this heavy breathing bear of a man asked a serious question.

“You like my teeth then?”

Specialized cosmetic dental surgery cost Ivan $14,000 to smooth over the hammer and sickle engraved for the past decade on the front of his two 24-karat gold front teeth, making his big smile gleam but not terrify.

“Better than George Washington’s,” RayRay said.

“Stalin was better father of country.”

“You’ve had enough to drink,” RayRay said.

“Bye-bye, Baldy,” Dillon said.

Ivan Popov staggered to his feet and went home to a spacious penthouse condo facing the beach his brother’s real estate development company built in 2002 and Ivan managed, a 14-story behemoth that now stood mostly empty and leaking because of Ivan’s shoddy management.

Watching the moon over the Gulf, he remembered the smell of the young woman who was coming into the bar as he was leaving, a woman with a scent like orange blossoms he’d never forget.

He knew she liked him.

He’d find out more about this sweet piece of bird’s milk cake (traditional Russian dessert) with a few phone calls to his Russian Mafia brothers in Florida. After all, he was the new mob boss who planned to take over what was left of beach bars, restaurants, apartments and other commercial property one business at a time. Thick-headed oligarch brother Boris would no doubt build the highest skyscraper on the beach. But Ivan Popov would win the prize.

Ivan Popov would marry this woman he saw at the bar. Ruby, that’s what the bartender called her.

Ruby, Ivan Popov’s bride-to-be.

Ruby, the future mother of his many Cossack crime family children.

For Sam Bennett the end of the world didn’t seem all that far away.

Standing on a wobbly left leg covered in mosquito bite scabs, he faced the smeared full length mirror he hauled from a Dumpster and leaned against the wall of his bedroom. Putting both thumbs under both arms, he began to flap his elbows in a slow methodical manner. Looking like a decrepit Qi Gong practitioner doing Chinese breathing and stretching exercises in a Shanghai park, he fluttered his arms until his breath came in spurts. Staring into the runny red eyes looking back, he envisioned himself lifting off, banking to the right then to the left as he glided over the gumball blue Gulf of Mexico.

“One day,” he said to the little man in the mirror. “One day.”

Sam Bennett wore an N95 mask his friend Ruby Arenas painted to look like a seagull beak. Coronavirus, or SARS-CoV-2 as Sam called the disease, concerned him as much as the avian flu.

Most people dismissed the danger. Even with thinking brains the size of a small bag of potatoes, as far as Sam was concerned, the real birdbrains knew less than other species. Humans couldn’t stay underwater like manatees. They couldn’t spray like skunks. They couldn’t climb trees like monkeys. Of course people could reason and talk, but in the big scheme of social disorder where did that get us? After assigning human brutes to the bottom of the universal pecking order, Sam respected all other varmints and animals of all shapes and sizes.

Mostly birds.

Because more than anything, before he died Sam wanted to fly. Not in an airplane or in one of those inflatable suits you wear to jump off the edge of a cliff. Not beneath a parachute. Not in a hang glider. Free. Free as a bird. Apocalypse could happen at any moment. Unless every living creature went extinct only the strong would survive. Like always, cockroaches would make it.

Lively Clearwater Beach bugs ran day and night up and down the hallway at the Spyglass Apartments where Sam lived in cramped dingy digs with a fried egg grease-spattered kitchen stove, a mildewed mattress on the floor covered with a purple tie-dyed sheet and a hair-ridden bathroom sink and toilet. Not easily rattled, Sam enjoyed the pests’ company, calling his skittish roommates palmetto bugs that some people called water bugs and most people called roaches. Call them what you want; after fighting the system and wondering how long he’d be able to hang on, Sam truly appreciated the creepy crawly critters’ ability to persevere.

Sam didn’t get excited even when the super insects crawled up the shower curtain or flew from the wallpaper like fighter jets. After serving several years in the Navy, mostly on an aircraft carrier, aeronautics intrigued Sam Bennett, his interest in takeoffs and landings constituting one reason he appreciated anything that soared.

Bees, for example, served special purpose in Sam’s outlook on life. Marveling at honeybees and fat striped bumblebees, Sam loved the way they worked together, getting pollination done while maintaining their sacred place in the ecosystem. But humans were killing them off, too. Humans were killing off everything, including themselves.

Sam loved gulls best. Gull beauty made Sam think of his youth when he believed anything possible. The world seemed fresh and he did, too. Laughing gulls, herring gulls, ring-billed gulls – the particular gull species mattered little. Sam embraced the birds as his best friends.

Later on this hot summer day Sam sat on a bright green painted stool at the center of RayRay’s Elbow Room beach bar and raised his forefinger as he always did when he ordered a drink.

“I’ll have a martini, please,” Sam said.

“Coming right up,” said RayRay who owned the joint, a popular establishment young tourists on social media now called a dive bar. That appealed to a special breed of locals who hated tourists and dove into anything you put in front of them – smoked fish spread, steamed clams or stone crab claws with hot salted butter, a pitcher of red sangria or low-rent life itself.

RayRay considered Sam a fixture and always gave him special attention. He felt sorry for the old-timer who always wore a cheap white sea captain’s cap with yellow string braiding and a cracked black plastic brim. Sam also wore scuffed brown wingtip shoes with no socks, telling RayRay he sported wingtips because the “wing” reference reminded him of gulls and birds in general.

“The gulls are in danger,” Sam once whispered to RayRay at closing time. “Developers don’t care about our environment.”

A man of somber principle, RayRay hated real estate developers, too. That’s the kind of guy RayRay Gagliardi was, a no-nonsense, good-natured fellow with a blue collar social conscience who loved hockey and rock music. A former professional puck enforcer from Buffalo, New York, RayRay now only wanted to have fun. With a tribal beat forever pounding through his DNA, he played drums with the bar house band every Saturday from 11 to closing at 3, banging out Stones songs mostly with the occasional surf solo classic “Wipeout” whenever RayRay got hyper-energized.

Wielding his varnished hockey stick he regularly fired empty shot glasses into a corner of the bar he set up to look like a goal. RayRay slammed those old-fashioned extra thick glass biscuits into the basket with all the intensity of Buffalo Sabres legend Gilbert Perreault launching a slap shot from center ice. When the glass sometimes shattered RayRay bought the bar a drink.

Sam didn’t like many people but he sure liked RayRay. He liked Kim Philips, too, another bar regular and struggling real estate agent who got Sam the annual lease at the Spyglass a few years back and often apologized profusely ever since they signed off on the paperwork.

 “I’m so sorry, Sam,” Kim said. “Had I known they’d let the place go like they have, I would never have steered you there.”

“It’s OK, young lady,” Sam said. “I’m the last man standing, the last tenant living at the Spyglass.”

Nobody ever called Kim a young lady to her face. Strong feminism would have responded quickly to anyone foolish enough to make that mistake. Sam was different, a gentleman cut from the cloth of a wrinkled brown Goodwill suit, taking politeness to the next level with traditional manners. Kim liked his style even if most people thought him odd.

“People call gulls ‘sea gulls,’ ” Sam said. “But there is no such bird.”

Kim cocked her head.

“Really?”

“They’re just gulls. Did you know they stamp their feet to imitate rainfall?”

Kim looked into Sam’s bloodshot eyes, the pupils reminding her of port wine drops glistening on the stained wooden bar.

“Why do they do that, Sam?”

“They imitate rainfall to bring the earthworms to the surface so they can eat them.”

Kim didn’t know that. Kim didn’t know what was going on in Sam’s head, either. Sam asked another question.

“If they did call them seagulls, do you know why they’d fly over the sea instead of the bay?”

Kim played along.

“I have no idea, Sam, why?”

“Because if seagulls flew across the bay, they’d be bagels.”

RayRay grabbed a wooden mallet from under the bar and hit the bronze Chinese gong he kept suspended from the ceiling behind the bar, making the hammered metal explode with a full resonant sound. Despite sitting calmly on medication, a soused senior citizen couple of newlyweds on their honeymoon jumped when the crash came out of nowhere, knocking over the bride’s margarita. When the groom stood to complain RayRay hit the gong again. Happy with the attention Sam clapped his hands. Kim bought him a fresh martini. RayRay poured himself a shot of Sambuca and sent a bottle of sparkling wine over to the golden agers. They immediately stopped complaining. Everybody held their glasses high.

“To the gulls,” Sam said.

Pointing at Sam’s mask, RayRay took the opportunity to ask a question that had been bothering him ever since the bar reopened after the COVID pandemic closures almost sent him into bankruptcy. With business back to a reckless normal only a handful of customers and staff chose to wear masks. Sam wore his even when he drank his martinis through a straw.

“When you going to take off that mask, Sam?”

“When Zorro takes off his,” Sam said.

“C’mon, Sam, I’m serious,” RayRay said.

“When the virus permits,” Sam said.

“I’m with you, Sam,” said Ruby, the college student server who had presented Sam with five N95 masks she bought online and hand painted to resemble a gull’s beak similar to the Dr. Plague masks physicians wore to ward off bubonic plague “germs” in the Middle Ages.

Sam loved the masks and wore one everywhere he went. Ruby felt sorry for Sam and had taken him under her wing, so to speak. With his cheap captain’s cap and long beak, Sam looked like a commodore on a floating mental hospital. Neither Kim nor RayRay wore masks. Ruby wore a mask and constantly worried about everybody’s health.

Now the center of attention, Sam gulped down his equal parts gin and vermouth with the vermouth an even split between sweet and dry with a dash of orange bitters. Reaching across the bar, he grabbed onto the wooden edge and struggled not to belly up to the bar but belly onto the bar. Standing unsteadily he took a teetering stance.

Sticking his thumbs under his arm pits he flapped, performing the trademark gull imitation he had been doing since forever. Rolling his eyes RayRay repeated the same mantra he spoke every time Sam got so loaded he had to show off by trying to take off.

“C’mon, Sam, get down off the bar before you hurt yourself.”

Sam now stood on one leg as regulars and strangers alike applauded, whistled, howled and hooted.

At the end of the bar, sitting beneath a stuffed marlin, 6ft 5in, 298lb Ivan Popov, a wannabe Russian mobster in South Florida, watched the scene unfold and decided this Sam creature had to go.

One old degenerate drunk, the last Spyglass renter, posed the final obstacle at the beachfront property where Popov planned to build new condominiums for Russian mobster mistresses to sun themselves and their foofoo poodles free from worry and woe. Up the beach a mile or so his oligarch brother Boris (the real head of the Russian mob) planned to construct the tallest skyscraper in Clearwater Beach, a needle-like obelisk designed to draw international business magnets who appreciated unobstructed views of perfect sunsets and the self-absorbed lure of the American Way.

Da da, as Russians say, yes, right, Sam Bennett had to go.

All those dirty stinking seagulls, too.

Birds of a feather must die together.

Did the snotty kid who answered the phone yesterday in your Washington office tell you I called? Did he pass along my message as promised? Will somebody ever get back to me?

The little sneak probably never even wrote down my email address after I demanded he read my online handle back to me three times after he botched the recitation the first time.

I can see the snippy government urchin now, no matter how old he is, sitting on the edge of the desk, swinging his legs like a hyperactive 10-year-old on the playground seesaw, dirty sneaker shoelaces untied, the waxed point of a cowlick sticking up from his head like Alfafa in the Little Rascals.

I called because you’ve been texting me almost daily – at least that’s what the text messages say, that it’s really you personally reaching out. If I really believe you truly are the person using your polished thumbs to pound out capitalistic messages begging me for money, I would be a good candidate for the Secret Service banana farm.

But I know it’s not you, that some wired techno automaton campaign algorithm has been harassing me almost daily for the past few years. No matter what I do, text STOP 2 STOP, SCREW YOU, NANCY, the messages keep coming without shame or quarter.

That’s right, Nancy, years.

I want the ransom notes to end. I’m a Democrat for Christ’s sake and this is no way to make friends and influence people the way you want to influence people.

Political perturbation isn’t just coming from you, either. I’m getting pestered by Congressman and former prosecutor Adam Schiff and constitutional scholar Jamie Raskin as well as lapdog doofus Sen. Chuck Schumer and the whole goddamn D Triple C as in the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and a variety of “go blue” groups to whom some party insider likely sold my contact information with the ease of a dope fiend snorting coke in a House of Representatives men’s room toilet stall.

The only electoral group to which I currently belong is the one I just founded – Scranton Senior Citizens for Sanity. Make it stop, Nancy, you cold-blooded money-grubbing hustler, you.

I asked the attendant in your office his name so I could document my most recent human-to-human attempt at fixing this text infestation, but he refused to provide his identity. He said “we refrain” (that’s really what he said) from giving out “staff identifiers.”

Is it really too much for a member of the press to ask for your press secretary’s name and email address? Looks like it, because the office butler refrained from answering that probing question too.

Instead he wanted my email address.

But what about the press secretary? The lackey wouldn’t budge. He REFRAINED from spilling state secrets. Are American taxpayers in the 21^st Century actually funding nonpublic servants?

Both your telephone answering flunky and your press valet are public employees, as are you, come to think of it, whose names and even salaries are available from public records if I have the next few years to go through the hassle of making a formal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and wait for the clerks to catch up with my right to know.

This is shocking, stunning, I told the programmed gatekeeper who at this point I knew wasn’t a real human but a heartless Gen Z bot of some kind who’s no doubt related by political inbreeding to a cold Boomer grandfather clothed in a Brooks Brothers suit as he lurks and stalks Capitol Hill halls in his pinstripes when beleaguered secretaries have gone home to hide for the rest of the day.

This is like living in Beijing I told the telephone stenographer. I’m with the press for about 40 years I told him. I’m the Gonzo Today White House correspondent I told the little shit.

Still, he grilled me.

“What is the name of your organization again?”

“It’s not an organization, it’s a state of mind,” I said.

Astro (that’s what I named him) had no idea what I was talking about. I didn’t even tell him the worst part I was saving to lay on the press secretary.

The text messages often address me as Joann!

When I spoke on the phone about three years ago with a Washington DC media company grifter, he told me he was receiving myriad complaints from people all over the country suffering the same eternal fate.

Worse than mob shakedown artists, the Democratic Party hierarchy long ago decided to plague good citizens for cash, registered loyal voters who have enough to worry about in the midst of a continuing COVID crisis.

The company man in your Washington office at least volunteered that my complaint is the campaign’s fault.

That’s your campaign, Nancy.

Nancy’s campaign.

Nancy who’s hounding me.

Nancy the enforcer.

Nancy!!!

Nancy!!!

Nancy!!!

I’m losing it, I know, the battle for truth as well as what remains of my belief in the system.

Expect me to call again, though. But first do me a favor, will you, Nancy? Tell the kid who answers the phone to at least lie when I ask his name.

Tell the little drudge to say I can call him Joann.

Lovingly lay that angel hair into a pot of boiling tap water. Add Ragu sauce right out of the jar and into the bubbles. Drop in an unpeeled garlic bulb. Let it sink. Sprinkle some red pepper flakes. Pour olive oil into the spaghetti right out of the bottle. Stir for about 15 minutes. Serve with aplomb like Big Al Dante the neighborhood bookie does when he cooks at the church picnic.

Voila!

A homemade Italian meal makes any first date more than memorable.

That’s what 22-year-old Sal Russo told Carmella Rossi.

“This will be more than memorable,” he said. “Smells like Florence, Italy.”

Instinctively without thinking, 21-year-old smartass Carmella shot back.

“I bet you never been out of South Philly,” she said.

“I been down the shore a hundred times,” he said.

“Where?”

“Wildwood mostly.”

Not sure if Carmella had insulted him, Sal poured another big glass of Reunite and swigged in chugs the way he drank craft beers at the brew pub down the street from his South Street apartment.

“Good wine,” he said.

“The man at the liquor store said it’s real popular,” she said.

“My grandfather used to drink homemade stuff he got from the guys at the social club on 9^th Street,” he said.

“Dago red,” she said.

“You can’t say that anymore,” he said.

“That’s what they called it.”

“Yeah, but now it’s an ethnic slur,” he said.

“Not if you’re a dago,” she said.

“So it’s OK if I call you a wop?”

“Only if we’re playing,” she said.

“And nobody else can call you that if they’re not Italian.”

“We’re not Italian,” she said. “You got to be born in Italy to be real Italian.”

“So what are we then?”

“Italian American.”

“Half wops,” he said.

“Two wops,” she said. “Like that oldies music the Mafia listened to.”

Carmella had another getting-to-know-you question.

“You ever think about going?”

“Where? The shore?”

“No, Italy,” she said.

“I’d rather go to Iceland,” he said.

“Yeah, me too.”

“See them colored lights in the sky,” Sal said.

“You think they’re real?”

Sal raised both arms palms upward.

“Don’t ask me. But if Iceland’s so hip, why are we sitting here like a couple of grease ball guineas thinking about going back to the old country?”

“Don’t say that,” she said. “That sounded mean.”

“Answer the question,” he said.

Sal felt the snap and bite of his response, his impatience showing as soon as he said the words.

Carmella felt the edge, too.

“Your online profile said you’re Italian,” she said.

“I thought that would help me pull chicks, I mean get girls, I mean meet women.”

“It got me,” she said.

Sal grinned and watched as she turned to go to the stove to stir the angel hair.

Now he grilled her.

“So why don’t you want to go to Italy?”

“I’m afraid to fly,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said.

Raising her glass, she reached over to clink his.

“To us,” she said.

They laughed.

“I like you,” he said.

Lowering her voice she quizzed him again, this time more personal.

“You ever think about going to college?”

“I’m teaching myself guitar but I hate to practice,” he said. “I’m going to start my own band. I hate working at a fulfillment center. I don’t even know what that means.”

“Like, I hate my job at the hospital cafeteria, too,” she said. “I’m doing Tik Tok videos, but I’m so tired when I get home. I do dances I make up better than Black people do and I give advice about applying make-up and facing suicide anxiety.”

“These ‘orderbs’ are really good,” Sal said. “What are they?”

“Blueberry cream cheese on Saltines,” she said.

Sal Russo perked up.

“You know the world record for eating Saltines in a minute?”

“I can’t believe you know so much stuff,” Carmella said.

“Ten,” Sal said. “I read that online. Bet I can eat 15. One night on a bet I ate five cheesesteaks at Geno’s. Puked my guts out but I ate ‘em.”

Carmella turned off the stove and dug deep into the limp pasta nest with a fork. Holding Sal’s plate over the pot she piled high the dish with mushy macaroni into which she had poured the Ragu marinara sauce, sprinkled red pepper flakes, poured olive oil and, as a finishing touch, added whole mushrooms she forgot to wash.

“That looks really good,” he said.

“I hope you like my cooking, Salvatore,” she said.

“Hey, shit, look at that,” he said.

Panic-scanning the tiny third floor kitchen wall she worried a roach had run out of the cupboard.

“You got the garlic bulb,” Sal Russo said.  “That means good luck in Italy.”

Carmella blushed.

“I forgot the meatballs,” she said.

“You are a meatball,” Sal said.

“We both are,” she said.

Expecting an early morning Amazon delivery box of “Remote” energy bars, the current fad among many tattooed health conscious Gen Z women, 22-year-old Nicole Sutton rushed to grab the latest food craze from the front steps. Dropping to her knees in a hurry she tore open the carton and dug into the pink tissue paper. Excited about new flavors to review online, she actually giggled.

A twisted wire coat hanger lay at the bottom of the carton.

“Mom!”

Rebecca Sutton stepped into the foyer from the kitchen, drying her hands on a damp dishtowel covered in red embroidered cardinals.

“What’s wrong now, Nikki?”

“What is this?”

“Where did you get it?”

“Amazon just delivered it!”

Rebecca walked to the box. She lifted the flaps. Lowering the cardboard wings she rolled her eyes.

“There’s no address, either yours or a return,” she said. “It’s not sealed. Amazon didn’t deliver this. Somebody else put the box on the porch.”

“What about my Remote bars, Mom?”

“Please walk Bailey,” Rebecca said. “He might have to poop.”

“Don’t expect me to pick it up and carry it home like a Boomer lady holding a designer purse,” Nicole said.

As soon as she opened the back screen door Nicole saw the red paper bag by the top porch step, a nice gift bag decorated with blue and green glitter and tied with a yellow ribbon. The top of a twisted wire coat hanger protruded from the top of the bag.

“Mom! Mom!”

“Somebody must be playing a trick on you,” Rebecca said.

“How do you know the joke’s on me?”

“I don’t for sure,” Rebecca said. “But you’re the only one living here who might engage in these kinds of childish antics. Like that stupid show you stream, is that what you call it, stream, and watch on your phone. What’s it called, Punked?”

Nicole kicked the bag and ran back into the house. Rebecca picked up the twisted wire coat hanger, turned and went inside to finish washing egg yolk off the breakfast dishes. Nicole ran to her room to text capital letter angst to her friends from work where she contracted as a receptionist trainee at a startup marketing firm called Zoomers that catered to people just like her.

A bright blue gift bag lay on her bed.

By the time Rebecca heard her daughter’s screams and got to the doorway, Nicole was dripping tears. Her breath came in spurts. All she could do was point to the bag. Nicole didn’t come down for dinner even though Rebecca made her favorite mac and cheese with extra crunchy maple bacon.

Nicole went to work at the startup in the morning. A supervisor called Rebecca on the landline phone at 9 a.m.

“I’m sorry to bother you, Mrs. Sutton, but Nicole is having an episode worse than the others and we need somebody to come pick her up right away. We care about Nicole’s mental health here at Zoomers and want the best for her.”

“Her father will be right down,” Rebecca said.

That night James and Rebecca Sutton sat on the edge of the bed with Nicole who hugged a large 16-inch stuffed Chip the Beaver Squishmallow doll. Wrappers from the last of Nicole’s stockpile of cherry vanilla peanut butter Remote bars littered the floor. Billie Eilish sang about a bad guy in Nicole’s ear buds which she grudgingly removed when her parents entered the room.

“We made an early appointment with your therapist, honey,” Rebecca said. “She can see you first thing in the morning.”

After her parents tucked her in, Grandma Sutton appeared like a shriveled ghost in the doorway. With skin like a California raisin and a frail physique, Grandma never complained about dropping out of high school, working in a dress factory or anything else about the harsh life she led before marrying a fabric salesman who had health benefits and a life insurance policy. Grandma squeaked when she talked.

“Feeling better, sweetheart?”

“How did that hanger get in my room?”

“Somebody violated your privacy,” Grandma said.

“Who, Grandma? Why, Grandma?”

Grandma Sutton quietly closed the door behind her and stepped close to Nicole’s bed.

“Remember when you announced at the breakfast table how proud you were that you signed up to contribute money from each paycheck to your company’s political action fund to support a new state law that makes ending a pregnancy a felony?”

Grandma could barely hear Nicole’s response.

“To save the children,” she said.

Grandma stopped squeaking as her voice took on a thunderous tone.

“Remember when you said young women should go to prison for exercising their right to choose, yelling ‘lock her up, lock her up’ so loud you woke me from my nap?”

Nicole went pale.

“Abortion is murder,” she said.

“No,” Grandma said. “It’s not.”

Grandma Sutton gently pulled Chip the Beaver from Nicole’s arms and placed the stuffed animal facedown on the pillow. Pulling her hand from behind her back, Grandma waved a twisted wire coat hanger like a war club.

“You see this? My firstborn daughter, the aunt you never met and nobody talks about, bled to death after she used a coat hanger to end a pregnancy when she was about your age. Choice was even legal then. But she was embarrassed. Afraid. Felt alone. She didn’t have medical insurance. She didn’t have money and didn’t know where to go for help.”

Nicole grabbed Chip the Beaver and wailed.

“I don’t understand.”

“No, you don’t,” Grandma said.

Nicole got even more frazzled.

“You’re bullying me,” Nicole said.

“I’m teaching you,” Grandma said. “Maybe one day you’ll understand what living in America as a woman truly means.”

Nicole buried her face in the squishy comfort of Chip the Beaver. Grandma gently took back the stuffed animal, cradling the soft figure in her arms and giving it a kiss.  

“New generations of women don’t talk about reproductive rights as often as they should,” Grandma said. “Silence that equals death is the elephant in the womb.”

Spread your wings and get ready to fly.

Swan Dive! begins serialization Wednesday, May 18, at theoutlawcorbett.com website with a new chapter of my latest genre-defying novel appearing each Wednesday. I’ll post each chapter on my Facebook page as well.

Disheveled senior citizen beach bum poet Sam Bennett serves as chief protagonist in this offbeat story set in 2022 Clearwater Beach, Florida, where personality disorders, pathologies and mental quirks are as plentiful as seagulls on the warm white sand. These majestic birds also play a major role in the story that revolves around bar regulars who hang out at RayRay’s Elbow Room.

Sam loves the gulls and wants to save them from harm. The gulls love Sam and want him to save them from harm.  But an evil Russian real estate developer loves neither. He promises harm to both Sam and the gulls.

So be on the lookout for Ivan Popov, a hulking, Siberian mercenary and wannabe mobster who connives at all costs to scoop up the most desirable properties on Clearwater Beach on behalf of his billionaire oligarch Cossack brother, Borys, who plans to illegally drill for gas and oil in the Gulf within sight of the beach.

Looking-for-love condo real estate agent Kim Phillips, secretive retired cop and New Jersey transplant Marty Burke, aspiring conservation scientist and save-the-planet eco-warrior Ruby Arenas and other Gulf of Mexico creatures both lovable and otherwise make up one spicy conch chowder of mad mavericks who live life their way.

Former Buffalo, New York, hockey enforcer and Elbow Room boss RayRay Gigliardi is nobody to mess with either. Neither is Dillon, the establishment’s wild green parrot mascot that roller- skates up and down the bar wearing an eye patch, cursing patrons for carving their initials into the wood and picking up tips in his beak. Prone to violence and anxiety attacks, Dillon maintains the makings of a real hero.

Especially beware of the unhinged Florida swamp born-and-raised Duval twins who seek fame and fortune as professional wrestlers and simply cannot be trusted..

Most of the characters in Swan Dive! try to save the world or at least make a better place of their little piece of ground. Most possess redeeming social value. Most make for good drinking buddies. Even if you don’t drink, you should at least be able to find one human strength or weakness in somebody’s life with which you can identify.

A mood-swingy pathological newspaper editor once told me she wouldn’t like me if I were a character in a novel. I took her slur on my personality as a compliment. The best representatives of our species sometimes possess volatile character traits. For the record, the editor had more in common with a troglodyte.

My writing life nowadays is rich.

Rather than engaging in the cluster**** of provincial local city, county, regional and state politics and getting nowhere, instead of writing news columns I’ll be writing more disturbing novels and extreme short stories that appeal to enlightened readers.

My Avventura Press publisher, my editor and I decided a few months ago to publish an updated second edition of Paddy’s Day in Trump Town. COVID in 2020 derailed and curtailed a noisy public book launch, a free-spirited promotional journey throughout the northeastern United States and even an Irish book tour.

But continuing COVID concerns have once again changed our plans. The pandemic is far from over. Neither is increasingly unmasked public ignorance about behaving as we must as good citizens engaged in protecting ourselves and others.

Enter Swan Dive!

This weird tale of saltwater intrigue draws from what I learned on many vacation trips to Clearwater Beach over the past several decades. My reality-based fiction provides an ink-smeared, red wine-stained postcard celebrating a last stand among local beachcombers who will always yearn for never-ending sunsets and good old days that have disappeared forever.

Traffic congestion, unsustainable development, environmental attacks, off-the-rails population growth and a lack of government solutions pose increasingly serious concerns for Clearwater Beach residents and visitors alike.

Still, our planet’s most decent inhabitants will continue to fight the onslaught of greedy marauders who want to destroy the world as they profit. The ongoing health of our environment and what’s left of our majestic earth must remain sacred.

Swan Dive! provides holy communion for kindred spirits.

Everybody deserves to soar.

So buckle up sky pilots.

Atmospheric conditions are about to get turbulent.

This ride’s gonna be bumpy.

The Mathew Street pub near the Cavern Club in Liverpool, England, looked like it always did.

From where Lucy Campbell sat at the bar she could see the door, warming herself in the glow of youthful memories that showcased John, Paul, Ringo and George racing in from the rain on any number of cold Saturday afternoons, laughing and shaking water from their mops of hair like they just stepped out of the bath.

Long gone, those fab days still soothed.

Sixty years later Lucy still kept her secret.

Nobody would believe how on separate days she went home with them all, one at a time, nothing bad about her behavior because she truly loved them all. And they loved her. At least that’s what they said.

Closing her eyes she heard a voice at the back of her mind.

“Remember all you Cave Dwellers. The Cavern is the best of cellars.”

Lucy would never forget club emcee Bob Wooler introducing the band, laughing in his rumpled roly-poly mild-mannered way. No matter how he dressed, Lucy always saw him as disheveled, not to be taken seriously, leftover like cold mushy peas in the icebox.

She never went home with Bob.

Now 80, Lucy sat alone one day each month she could afford to have a drink and a bag of crisps at the bar. The newer bartenders didn’t know her backstory and the older ones assumed if she was telling the truth she was just some sort of former groupie who at the very most only saw The Beatles perform live and in person and never actually met them. When she told the pub owner she knew The Beatles he laughed and said he knew Queen Elizabeth.

Nobody had any idea Lucy really knew The Beatles let alone spent time alone with each of the young rising stars. As far as she was concerned, and maybe she was right, she was the only woman in the world who spent intimate time with each of the boys. None of them would ever consider her a groupie. All of them would defend her honor.

Only Lucy Campbell knew for sure, nobody else because she hadn’t ever told anybody about her private magical mystery tour. That knowledge made her feel rich, wealthier than all the pub owners in Liverpool put together.

Richer even than the Queen.

Finishing her drink one afternoon she thought maybe now she’d be worth a color feature in the Sun tabloid newspaper whose editors might even pay her. But that would be cheap of her, to exploit and capitalize on her relationships with the four whose privacy she still respected with all her heart. Who would believe her? Besides, what did her matters of the heart matter? Today’s young would pity her, make fun of her, disbelieve her and not even come close to understanding, knowing what those brilliant days were like, what the birth of real music meant or how Beatlemania truly changed the world.

Lucy Campbell knew.

Settling in beneath soft colorful quilts in her one-room bedsitter with the smallest fireplace where she burned newspapers for heat and drank tea naked with John, Paul, Ringo and George was better than sleeping with Jesus. The Beatles played the Cavern 294 times. Lucy estimates she attended 150 performances and caught them at their most innocent moments. Jesus didn’t show up at the club once. John was right. They were more popular than the Savior.

Life unfolded differently then. Mods and rockers, flowered bell bottoms and Puff the Magic Dragon inspired Lucy to want to live forever. Now she sensed forever is too long. Forever no longer existed. Forever is gone forever.

“C’mon, love, finish your drink unless you want another,” the barman said.

Shy and embarrassed, Lucy had enough money to pay for the one black currant and lemon plus a tip. Sliding slowly off the stool, she stooped to pick up her umbrella beside her feet when she got dizzy and fell. The voice she heard this time sure didn’t belong to Bob Wooler.

“Buy me a pint, Princess,” the man said.

Knowing only one man ever called her Princess, Lucy covered her mouth with both hands.

“But you’re…”

“Not today, I’m not. Just knocking about with this hooligan,” John said.

“I’m just back from India,” George said.

“You’re also …”

“I’d say we’re all alive and well today, Lucy,” George said.

“I can’t believe you’re both here,” Lucy said.

“You as well,” John said, his black leather jacket shining in the pulsing light of flashing green and red neon beer signs, his hair bouncing in his eyes as he leaned over to kiss Lucy on the cheek.

George seemed apprehensive.

“Does John know?”

“No and neither do you, George,” Lucy said.

John cocked his head, inquisitive as he lit an English Oval cigarette.

“What? What? Do I know what?”

Now George seemed truly puzzled.

“Not with John you didn’t, Lucy, did you?” he said.

“She did,” John said.

“With George, as well,” Lucy said to John. “Now who’s going to buy me a nice black currant and lemon?”

After the initial shock, that’s the way time unfolded with George and John lovingly rushing about to wait on Lucy even after she sheepishly told one about the other. They understood. How could either of them have resisted her charm?

“Wait until Paul hears,” George said. “He’ll go bananas.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” she said. “Well, actually you do. You two are only the half of it.”

John howled with laughter.

“Half? Me and George? That’s half? Paul and Ringo, too?”

“Yes, those two as well,” Lucy said. “You two and those two make quite a fab foursome.”

“Wait until they find out,” George said.

John grew serious.

“Hopefully that won’t happen for a long while,” he said.

Off in the distance Lucy heard a siren. She opened her eyes. Turning her head, she felt a warm puddle on the floor beneath her ear. Closing her eyes she heard sitar music. Lucy saw diamonds in the sky.

“Queer old bird said she knew The Beatles,” the barman said.

“I know bloody Queen Elizabeth, too,” the pub owner said.

Two Russian combat veterans wearing full dress uniforms, gold medals and bright red campaign ribbons walk into the plush bar of the private officers’ club in Moscow. Their leader’s state funeral has just ended.

”Vodka,” says Lev.

“Vodka,” says Boris.

Lev’s humming a tune.

Stone-faced, Boris questions his comrade.

“What’s that song?”

“Billy Joel,” Lev says. “We didn’t start the fire.”

Russia didn’t start the fire. The United States of America started the fire. The military officers swallow shots of the liquor that’s as cold as a Siberian stare. War is hell, of course. America loves fanning the flames of eternal immolation.

“Looks like the Kremlin will move forward with the strike,” says Boris.

After the Ukrainians sunk the warship Moskva, the Mariupol setbacks and unexpected resistance on the road to Kiev, as a display of power national decision-makers quickly and unanimously agreed on retribution for their president’s drone assassination. To not let the world know Russia still means business would signal the end of the motherland.

“More vodka,” Lev says.

“More,” says Boris.

Both men exhale loudly.

“To our murdered ruler,” says Lev.

“Our commander’s fighting spirit will live forever,” says Boris.

Two gulps provoke Boris to pour two more shots they quickly swallow.

“One bomb is all we need,” says Boris.

Lev isn’t sure.

“That’s all it will take?”

Boris recites an online Wikipedia citation he memorized to show Lev just how smart he is.

Standing at attention he says: “Kyiv is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. It is in northcentral Ukraine along the Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2021, its population was 2,962,180, making Kyiv the seventh-most populous city in Europe.”

“I heard the population increased to 3.3 million,” Lev says. “And half of those Nazis left in the past few weeks,”

“So how many vermin must we exterminate?”

“I’m no good at math,” Lev says. “Let’s say two million.”

“Like I said, one bomb,” Boris says. “Remember Little Boy and Fat Man?”

Lev gets so excited when he speaks white spittle appears at the corners of his mouth.

“Yes, America killed 70,000 to 135,000 in Hiroshima and 60,000 to 80,000 people in Nagasaki,” he says.

Boris bellows to the bartender.

“Two more vodkas.”

“No,” Lev says. “Bring the bottle.”

“I can drink more vodka than you,” Boris says.

“You might die trying,” says Lev.

Boris raises his voice and his refill.

“To the American firebombing of Tokyo,” he says.

“Yes, yes,” Lev says. “America killed more than 90,000 and possibly over 100,000 Japanese people, mostly civilians, and one million left homeless in the most destructive single air attack in human history!”

Pouring more vodka, the Russians gobble slices of pickled cucumber and toast white hot incendiary bombs.

“Always remember our biggest bomb is better than the American dog firecracker,” Boris says.

“Tsar Bomba,” Lev says.

“Here’s to October 30, 1961,” Boris says.

On that day the Soviet Union tested the most powerful nuclear weapon ever exploded, north of the Arctic Circle on the archipelago of Novaya Zemlya.

“Fifty megatons,” Boris says. “About 3,300 times more powerful than the 15 kilotons nuclear weapon USA dropped on Hiroshima.”

Lev shouts, drawing laughs and attention from other officers in the room.

“To Tsar Bomba, the king of bombs!”

More vodka brings more fire in their bellies. More vodka brings more vodka. In Russia, escalation is the name of the game. The Soviet Union will rise again.

“Another bottle, comrade,” says Boris.

The bartender brings a frosty quart and pours two drinks. The Russian officers hold their glasses up to sunshine streaming through stained glass windows bearing images of a double-headed eagle, a hammer and sickle and several gold stars.

“I am ready for anything,” says Lev. “Let us toast the end of the world.”

“Sooner than we think, perhaps,” says Boris.

Lev puts his arm around Boris’ shoulders.

“So,” he says. “Was Hiroshima a war crime?”

“Ask Billy Joel,” says Boris.

Selected amid cheers by colleagues who respected Max Shuler immensely, the government chosen one prepared for a big day the assembled experts agreed was anything but another day at the office.

“You get to push the button, Dr. Shuler,” a normally stern female physicist said.

“Please,” he said. “Call me Max.”

After an elite group of NATO leaders chose an intelligence team to scope out the mission, thanks to Max this crack recon unit surprised themselves by locating the target’s whereabouts in less than a week. They turned over their findings to a drone death squad Max now headed that represented six nations that assembled and prepared to deliver death from above.

Max Shuler knew the hit would be easy. As a seasoned pro with high-profile kills in Afghanistan and Iraq (what he laughingly called surgical strikes), he looked forward to the Moscow strike considering how the target had been asking for it and clearly deserved what Max called “the end time.”

“Five vehicles comprise his convey,” Max said. “We only hit the target.”

A colleague with eyes the color of freshly laid robin’s eggs questioned his decision.

“Why not kill them all?”

“I’m a Catholic,” Max said.

“Just war theory?”

“Yes,” Max said. “A sin is not a sin if it erases a greater sin.”

“So the Pope will understand?”

“Who better than Francis knows the history of his own church?”

“We’re all war drones,” the colleague said. “Human war drones.”

“Roger that.”

Max loved using military jargon. The black jumpsuit uniforms he requested for the assassination team and the unique project patch stitched on members’ shoulders announcing “Operation White Lightning” excited him as well. A skeleton holding a shot glass presumably filled with Russian vodka defined the surreal symbolism of the insignia Max wore at the pinnacle of his public service career.

Looking for life on Mars thrilled him when he worked for “Project Lost Worlds,” but finalizing a solution to preserve life on earth most inspired this career killer who on the weekends read and reread Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels while eating barbecue potato chips and drinking Colt .45 Malt Liquor from the can.

“Shaken, not stirred,” Max joked to Natasha, his wife.

At 6 a.m. on a bright spring Tuesday morning, Max sat before a massive color console mounted on the front wall of the secret underground bunker in rural Pennsylvania near the Gettysburg battlefield and the home of former President Ike Eisenhower. The five other team members sat stiffly in ergonomic swivel chairs behind their leader. Two of those five believed in God. None of the squad experienced second thoughts. Max rolled his shoulders like a heavyweight boxing champion before a title fight.

Resembling the beginning of a violent video game, the screen came to life with movement from a convoy of five black vehicles including two limos, two Mercedes sedans and a smaller car bearing the Russian leader. The trip began from a walled mansion about six kilometers from the Kremlin. No traffic in front. No traffic behind. The cars maintained the municipal speed limit.

“Music,” Max said.

A loud mix began: first, the grim sounds of a Russian death dirge followed by traditional German hiking music, a polka, the Star Spangled Banner and John Lennon singing “Imagine.”

“My wife likes the Beatles,” said a former Nobel Prize finalist and neurosurgeon team member with clandestine experience in surreptitious brain chip insertion, an up-and-coming concentration among surgeons recruited for black operations in which a surprising number of nations now expressed interest.

A thin set of crosshairs appeared at the center of the wall-sized video screen.

“Close up,’ Max said.

As the image zoomed in, Max saw the recognizable white face in the window. Beady dark eyes below a receding hairline blinked in a pasty oval face. Taking hold of the joystick with his left hand, Max ran his thumb back and forth across the top of the smooth chrome control, reminding him of the eight-ball gear shift on the vintage 1966 three-speed Mustang convertible he kept in the garage until the weather got better and he could cruise with The Beach Boys playing on the pristine 8-track tape player he cherished from the good old days.

Pulse steady.

A wry smile.

Exhale.

The free world’s most current pressing threat disappeared in a black and red explosion of smoke and fire.

At the morning meeting one of team drone’s three women gently laid her hand on Max’s shoulder.

“I bet you wish you could tell the world what you have accomplished,” she said.

“No country or individual takes credit or blame,” Max said.

“Of course we disavow all knowledge, but you saved the world,” she said.

“Our former target has daughters,” Max said.

“Yes,” the woman said. “He did.”

After dinner Thursday night the phone rang in Max’s spacious study furnished with handsome mahogany bookshelves and comfortable oxblood easy chairs that shined behind closed hand-carved pocket doors off the dining room.

“I’ll get it, honey,” Max said.

The international caller didn’t even say hello.

“When are you going to get me out of Russia?”

“Soon.”

“Just last week I got a big black Z tattoo on my shoulder like we paint on the tanks. That should draw some unwanted attention on American beaches with everybody there rooting for Ukraine.”

“Tell the sand bunnies you’re a Zorro fan.”

“Zorro who?”

“Never mind.”

“I’m serious, Max. I gave you top secret coordinates to make the hit. I was in the limo right behind him. Like Tony Soprano says, ‘Badabingbadaboom!’ ”

“You’re shamefully obsessed with 21^st Century American pop culture garbage.”

“The motherland’s young crave McDonald’s, Saturday Night Live, Beyoncé.”

“Russia possesses deep, rich history you should embrace.”

“Like my big sister does? How is Miss Saint Petersburg 2015, anyway?”

“Be respectful of my wife or I might tell some KGB veterans I know you ratted out the big man.”

“Don’t even joke about that.”

“I’m not joking.”

At the Pentagon Monday morning Max washed his face in the conference room bathroom near his office. When he returned to his desk, Space Force Lieutenant General Charles Reynolds was sitting in Max’s green leather chair with his ankles crossed and gleaming paratrooper boots resting on the desk.

“Have a little respect, Charlie,” Max said.

“You’re moving to Utah,” the three-star general said.

“Why?”

“Better than solitary confinement at the ADX Florence supermax prison in Colorado.”

“That’s for criminals.”

“You broke the law, Max. NSA surveillance picked up your phone call yesterday with your Russian wannabe hipster brother-in-law. When we say no communication, we mean no communication.”

“He called me.”

“You told us your extermination informant was Russian special forces.”

“True.”

“You didn’t say you’re related by marriage and promised to relocate the Russkie bastard here.”

“You’re talking about my brother-in-law, Charlie. The kid visited Atlantic City last summer. Now he wants to be a citizen. He wants to vote. Get into politics.”

“You didn’t say the informant knew the United States of America orchestrated and carried out the executive termination. We were going to blame Iceland if it came to that. So what if they nuked Reykjavik in retaliation?”

“We never would have located the target without the little shit.”

“We never would have found our weak link without him, either.”

“My wife’s brother was our ace in the hole, Charlie. We owe him.”

The general’s expression went stiff.

“America owes nobody.”

The Shuler residence landline rang early Saturday morning.

“Mrs. Shuler?” said a man speaking with a thick Cossack dialect. “We have some bad news for you about your late brother.”

Max checked into the Times Square hotel by noon. The telephone number for The New York Times international editor was more difficult to get than he thought.

“My name is Max Shuler,” he said when the editor answered. “Do I have a story for you.”

Cold words blew in one ear and out the other, benumbing Kim’s brain like a forgotten bag of peas stuck in the ice at the back of the freezer.

“I’m Becky,” the voice said.

“We need to relax, Kim,” the voice said. “I’ll meet you at RayRay’s Elbow Room for Happy Hour.”

Sure enough, Becky showed up at the Clearwater Beach bar for cocktails and fresh smoked fish spread.

Nobody but Kim could hear Becky. The doctor said Kim wasn’t crazy. Becky agreed. She wasn’t nuts and even the brain specialist said the voice was real to Kim. But the doctor did have questions.

“Who told you her name is Becky?”

“She did,” Kim said.

Scientists agree some people hear a voice or voices without being mentally ill. Voices seem to come out of nowhere, but what causes them? Whose voices are they? What could Kim do to silence this eerie vocalization she carried around each day like the fake alligator skin briefcase she depended on for her job selling used condos on the beach?

Kim decided to start a conversation with Becky.

“Who are you really?

“Your soul sister.”

“I don’t have a sister.”

“You do now.”

At 52 working real estate sales made Kim’s feet hurt. She was getting too old for the constant smiles that made her face hurt. Living alone made her heart hurt. She should own a dog but dreaded the thought of picking up and putting foul crap in little bags.

“So get out of the real estate business,” Becky said.

“Are you going to pay my condo mortgage and yearly maintenance fee? My Jeep payment? You going to buy papaya jam for my toast?”

 “I have enough problems,” Becky said.

She did, too.

Even voices sometimes hear voices. At the time nobody but Becky knew about Tara and Shannon, two drunken twin sisters who lived in her head even though she lacked a head. Nobody knew how they plagued her as daily eruptions of psychic disorder. Tara and Shannon stayed awake all night arguing and wailing like banshees whenever their psychological problems overwhelmed them. Becky tried to referee but always failed. All she could hope for was a level of intoxication so severe the colleens, as they called themselves, eventually fell asleep. Despite Becky trying to shield Kim from continuous bedlam, Kim heard the incessant bickering that made her lose hope.

With Tara and Shannon now calling most of the shots in more ways than one (Jameson, Bushmills, Paddy and Powers) and making Becky press Kim to join them more and more often for strong drinks and even pot parties, Kim just rode the wave like a stoned surfer on a tsunami to Hell. Kim, normally a social drinker partial to Chablis or chilled prosecco, now lived on the edge, too often drunk, depressed and terribly hung over when pointing out the beauty of a gray granite countertop in a waterfront condominium.  

Perhaps the deafening auditory hallucinations Kim heard every day defined her conscience, a blurred guiding light testing her, a psychic force of nature walking with her down uncertain forked roads of life.

Probably not.

Your conscience is you, not some voice or voices separate from you. Like when you’re thinking, that’s you thinking, not somebody else inhabiting your head. Your mind is your mind, right, unless you lose it. Then your mind no longer belongs to you. The hospital owns it. The government owns it. The scientific community owns it. Still, several competent doctors said Kim hadn’t lost her mind and wasn’t suffering a nervous breakdown.

One Sunday morning while Kim made scrambled eggs and vegan sausage, getting ready to settle in for the day with the newspaper, Tara interrupted, slurring her words and taunting.

“What, no liverwurst with those yolks?”

Kim jumped like somebody snuck up behind her and fired a gun beside her ear.

Tara shrieked.

“I always ate my liver.”

“Wait, what?”

Now Shannon howled.

“We always ate our liver.”

Kim trembled while vegan sausage links sizzled and burned in the pan.

Becky tried to help.

“Ignore them,” she said.

Kim went back to bed to try to forget.

Becky heard Kim crying.

“What’s the matter?”

“I‘m afraid of them,” Kim said.

 “They’re just figments of your imagination,” Becky said. “Like me.”

“They remind me of my mother,” Kim said.

“Took you long enough to figure that out,” Becky said. “Your German mother even terrorized your poor hapless father.”

Kim felt cold, sick to her stomach, lightheaded. Becky’s voice dropped to a gentle tone sweet as raisin pudding when she asked her most probing question.

“Do you remember when your mother locked you in the closet each Thursday night for a month for not eating the liver she made every Thursday for dinner?”

“Liver made me sick,” Kim said.

“Your mother was so upset she wanted to kill you.”

“I begged her to understand.”

“That first night your raving maniac of an Irish father got so mad screaming you should NEVER talk back to your mother, he knocked over his beer.”

Kim now remembered how every Thursday night at dinner for a year the old man screamed until she froze and once wet herself in her chair. Instead of ordering Kim to her room her mother locked the child in the closet off the small downstairs bathroom. One night during her imprisonment Daddy died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Mother said it was a firecracker when Kim screamed.

Kim moved out as soon as she turned 18.

“I was so scared all the time,” Kim said.

“You needed a friend,” Becky said.

“Maybe you can be my friend,” Kim said.

“You need to befriend yourself first,” Becky said.

“Even at my age?”

Becky spoke with confidence.

“Talk back to Tara and Shannon. Just don’t listen anymore. Put those voices in their places. You be the liver on their dinner plates.”

The next time Tara showed up to mock Kim, the frazzled Florida realtor garnered all the courage she possessed and spoke in a firm, steady tone.

“Leave me alone,” she said.

The tense few seconds that passed felt like an hour.

“What did you say?”

“I said back off.”

Shannon jumped in like a faded tattooed tag team wrestler.

“You shut up!”

“No, thank you, I won’t shut up. I’ll politely hear you out and then do as I please. You know there’s something seriously wrong with you, right?”

Becky whispered.

“Nobody ever talks to them like that.”

The twins roared at the same time.

“Eat your liver! Don’t talk back to your mother!”

It wasn’t like an exorcism or anything, but for the next two weeks the two demons tried their best and failed to commandeer Kim’s brain. In the end they simply tired themselves out. One day they moved out and disappeared, leaving Kim and Becky alone.

Kim took a week off and went back to work refreshed as she showed one and two-bedroom luxury homes by the Gulf of Mexico, enjoying Happy Hour wine spritzers at Ray Ray’s Elbow Room where KK, Canadian Mike, Chris and the rest of the staff welcomed her each night like royalty. Stone crab claws were Kim’s favorite. RayRay offered no liver on the menu.

In March Kim sold a record three waterfront condos in Belleair Beach. Every now and then she talked to Becky, not much, though, only when she needed a special friend to listen. Becky never talked back.

When she did, of course, Kim listened.