“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.

U-Haul trucks filled several parking spaces beside the swimming pool wall at RayRay’s Paradise. Standing at the top of the state-of-the-art apartment complex stairs, Ruby Arenas waved with both hands at her new neighbors who prepared to unload and move into their new homes. Ruby got so excited at what she jokingly called “RayRay’s commune,” she clapped her hands.

Kim Phillips and Marty Durkin stepped out of a large 20-foot orange and white truck.

Randall Lark got out of his 26-foot extra-large truck in which he had loaded furniture and boxed belongings, most of which he bought at a discount just the day before from an estate sale that emptied out the mansion of a deceased former cocaine dealer.

Sam Bennett showed up looking like a wizard wearing a pointed paper New Year’s Eve hat, playing with a yoyo and wearing a backpack. A flock of seagulls circled his head serenading him with high-pitched squawks that to him sounded like a celestial choir.

In a good mood for the first time in a long while, RayRay had set up beside the stairway a banquet table he covered with a tablecloth decorated with skulls and crossbones. Piles of fresh bagels, fresh squeezed orange juice, lime marmalade, a variety of melon slices, tangerines, nectarines, mangos, coconut milk, soy milk, granola and other breakfast treats created a food mountain ready to climb.

 “I’m glad to see you took some of my advice about healthy eating, RayRay,” Ruby said. “But on such a happy day the tablecloth pattern leaves something to be desired.”

“I had the tablecloth left over from last year’s ‘Biker Pirate Night’ at the bar,” RayRay said.

 “How could I forget,” Ruby said. “Those bad boys brought a live alligator with them.”

“Without a leash,” RayRay said. “But that poor baby seemed under your spell. She even let you pet her.”

“We’re kindred spirits,” Ruby said. “I talked the Crushers Motorcycle Club president into setting her free in the swamp.”

“He was under your spell, too,” RayRay said.

“Witchy woman,” Ruby said.

Pointing to an empty U-Haul truck with the back door open RayRay radiated goodwill.

“I just rented two apartments to a couple of those wrestlers who stood up for Sam when the whole world except us was against him,” RayRay said. “They’re decent boys I might hire as doormen.”

Ruby frowned.

“Do we really need bouncers?”

“With that screwball billionaire gangster Borys Popov running all over with a checkbook and a chip on his shoulder, everybody in Clearwater Beach needs protection,” RayRay said.

“Even here in Paradise?” Ruby asked.

“The twins will work security here at the apartments as well,” RayRay said.

Rocco and Ricco, known in the raw professional wrestling world as “The Terrible Twins Tag Team from Hell,” stood at the edge of the storage shed roof where they had been sunbathing. Both men posed with their hands on their hips. Wearing matching fake leopard skin bikini bathing suits and black knee-high patent leather boots with purple laces, the men waved. Clean shaven and movie star handsome, their curly natural blond hair hung below their shoulders. Chests, arms and rippled stomach muscles glistened with sweat from an early morning workout. Carved as perfectly as a Michelangelo Renaissance masterpiece sculpture the lovable wild men stood as vigilant sentries guarding their newly established territory and extended family of beach misfits.

“Come on down, boys, and get something to eat,” RayRay said.

Rocco and Ricco raised their arms over their heads as if celebrating a victory. Then Rocco bent at the knees and leaped, his arms extended out at his sides, his lower back arched, his head lifted skyward with his arms raised above his head as he entered the brimming blue swimming pool with palms together as if in prayer, his powerful body cutting the water with almost no splash.

Ricco followed.

A champion Acapulco cliff diver could not have delivered more perfect plunges.

Despite the successful daredevil stunt, Sam Bennett began flapping his arms wildly, running in circles, laughing, shouting and repeating himself.

“No, no, no.,” he screamed.

The gulls looked at Sam like they wanted an explanation, apparently figuring he owed them something since they hadn’t dive-bombed the buffet.

“What, Sam? What?” Ruby asked.

“That’s not how you fly,” Sam said.

Relieved, everybody chuckled.

Rocco and Ricco climbed from the pool uninjured and headed for the granola. After eating, breaking bread together as the wrestlers put it, everybody moved into what they hoped to be meaningful new lives.

Trusting in the future, that afternoon Ruby kept her door wide open, her reggae music playing softly inside. Durkin set up the frame for the new water bed he wanted since he was a teenager. Randall hung framed Malcolm X and Huey Newton posters. Kim decorated with new purple drapes. Sam laid out his sleeping bag and constructed simple brick and board shelves where his drone gulls would roost. Rocco and Ricco decorated their place in a jungle motif complete with life-sized furry stuffed animals they won at carnival strongman competitions and lion roars on the stereo.

Paradise was living up to its name.

Sort of.

Nobody noticed Kim peering from the side of her new drapes. Nobody heard the two harsh hushed whispers crawl from her mind and from her mouth as she focused a laser beam stare on Rocco and Ricco when her dueling split personality took over.

“They don’t look so tough to me,” Shannon said.

“We can take ‘em,” Tara said.

“I want a cage match,” Shannon said.

“Bring it on,” Tara said.

At first nobody saw Borys Popov, either, as he watched the action from a parked and fully-loaded 2023 Chrysler Pacifica minivan. That morning, raising high-powered military grade binoculars to his eyes, he had peered and sneered at each face – Ruby Arenas, RayRay Gigliardi, Marty Durkin, Randall Lark, Kim Phillips, Sam Bennett and a couple of monsters he didn’t know, longhairs who reminded him of East German bodybuilders loaded with anabolic steroids.

A KGB-style assassination list fit the bill. With these American degenerates out of the way Borys could regain his power. Maybe he wouldn’t have to destroy Clearwater Beach after all. Nuking the beach still appealed to him, though. Maybe he’d just kill each nemesis first then nuke the beach with a ticking atomic time bomb. By the time a mushroom cloud appeared over RayRay’s Elbow Room he’d be safe in the arms of a couple of new Ukrainian brides in Ft. Lauderdale. Everybody else was moving. Maybe the time had come for him to move the base of his illegal operation, too.

After everybody got settled into their new digs Durkin stretched out on a lounge chair at the far end of the pool. Randall stretched out at the other end. Durkin and Randall noticed the van at about the same time. Randall nodded, seeing a familiar unwelcome face grimacing through the open window.

Both men got to their feet and converged on the gate.

“Let’s go,” Durkin said.

“USA, USA,” Randall said.

On this new day, this new team working together on the same side, two very different men – one white, one Black – headed up the street to have a talk with the Florida boss of the Russian Mafia.

Escaped again from his cage, Dillon watched the high noon confrontation unfold from his perch on a nearby telephone wire.

“Oh, shit,” the parrot said.

In the flickering glow of a blue candle Ruby’s face resembled a ghost, a soul shadow from the netherworld. Bathed in purple light from the fluorescent art deco circle hanging on the outside balcony wall of her new efficiency apartment her caramel skin blended to glow as a lush ripe plum. Sitting in a white plastic chair at a circular metal table she covered with a Mexican linen tablecloth embroidered with red roses, Ruby silently watched her date’s eyes for a sign.

Moving to a new one-bedroom apartment on New Year’s Day thrilled her. Most of her possessions still filled cardboard boxes in the dingy cramped place where she lived since relocating to Clearwater Beach. When RayRay bought the 15-unit waterfront motel and refurbished the place into a retro 60s-style long-term rental oasis, he invited Ruby to be his first tenant. Painted creamsicle orange and lime vodka green, RayRay’s Paradise overlooked Clearwater Harbor. The two-story building boasted a swimming pool and a dock leading all the way to RayRay’s Elbow Room.

Ruby loved communing with the water.

Mysterious spirits of the deep frolicked in the harbor each morning, entertaining her as she drank fresh orange juice. When not in class she conjured spells in the afternoon and extended good vibes at night across small lapping waves that rippled below the spacious dark sky. For the first time in her life she honestly felt like a bruja, a sorceress with the power of life and death in her hands.

On the other side of the romantic flickering flame, Randall Lark looked glum. Of course he felt good, better than good, when Ruby asked him over for champagne and fish spread, an exotic meal as far as he was concerned that only added to her allure. Being from Philly, Randall liked cheesesteaks, roast pork sliders and scrapple. But his mind was elsewhere.

Randall felt the adrenaline surge with his desire to take the law into his own hands the way he did when he killed as a soldier. Somebody needed to shoot that Russian billionaire. Maybe throwing his gun into the Gulf of Mexico wasn’t such a good idea. He could easily buy another, a sniper rifle maybe. Any number of targets loomed on the pastel horizon of corporate and government corruption. Ruby had talked with him about peace of mind for hours on the beach, while railing against dirty politicians and the harm they do to people like them.

People like his dead baby brother Tyrone.

People like his beloved mother and father.

White business executives killed his mother and father by pushing menthol cigarettes at them for decades with the ease of high-flying heroin dealers. Selling smokes is much easier, of course, because tobacco is legal. Feeding America’s nicotine addiction and destroying addicts with lung cancer, strokes and heart attacks also helps the medical and insurance industrial complex that’s worse than the military industrial complex.

As for Ruby, a drunken state senator smashed head-on into her parents’ car and crushed them both. Police charged the longtime elected official with DUI but the attorney general from the same political party ruled her parents at fault in the accident. Witnesses who disagreed with the judgment suddenly clammed up. The DUI charge quickly disappeared. The senator sued her parents’ insurance company for damages.

Maybe Randall should track down members of the cigarette company board of directors.

Maybe he should stake out the senator.

Nobody would know he pulled the trigger until they finally figured out his identity and motive. Maybe he’d call a press conference and announce his mission. He wouldn’t tell Ruby, but she’d know anyway. She seemed able to read minds, especially his. Ruby was right about corruption, of course. That’s one reason he liked her. She survived as a thinker brave enough to act, a witch, too, she told him proudly, who took seriously her calling on both sides of her Mexican/Cuban families.

A witch? Man, Randall thought, a witch. He dug her though. He dug her a lot. She could see right through him when he thought he kept the darkness hidden deep inside his innermost identity as a Black man.

Blackness meant something to him white people would never understand. Ruby wasn’t African American, but he knew she knew what made him tick like a time bomb. Randall sensed her ticking as well. Rage was cool as long as you kept the frenzy under control. Rage could and should be channeled. That kind of control could save the world. Rage turned to Black power meant a change was coming, but at what cost? Some of the brothers and sisters sold out for big money, rapping and seducing white girls dancing hip hop like they grew up in North Philly instead of the Jewish suburbs of Northeast Philadelphia. Some people were too poor to sell out because they had nothing to sell.

White people never understood.

White people never would understand the heart and soul of soul.

Slavery said it all. Slavery created America. If half the country could bring back chains and the auction block they would. Even well-meaning white people take their white privilege for granted with many arguing such privilege doesn’t even exist.

Maybe Randall should go back to the gun.

“Thinking those heavy thoughts again?” Ruby asked.

“Sorry,” Randall said.

“How’s the fish spread and crackers?”

“Great with the hot sauce,” he said.

Randall tensed when he heard the knock at the door.

“Relax, dude,” Ruby said. “It’s just our main course. Follow me.”

RayRay stood on the other side of the door holding a tray piled high with extra-large stone crab claws.

“You know the best part about these claws?” Ruby asked Randall.

“Other than they taste like some of your sweet hoodoo dipped in melted butter?” he said with a small laugh, trying to lighten up.

“The claws grow back,” Ruby said. “They really do. You remove the claws, throw the crab back into the water and in a year the claws are back. Like renewable energy.”

“Is that really true?” Randall asked.

“No illusion here,” Ruby said.

“Pity champagne doesn’t grow back when you finish the bottle,” RayRay said. “Let me know when you can make that magic happen, Ruby.”

“You never know, RayRay,” she said. “I hear that at RayRay’s Elbow Room anything is possible.”

Keeping secrets challenged most people.

Not Kim Phillips.

Even as a girl, Kim – who everyone knew then as Kate, Kate Leary – never gossiped, told tales out of school or spread rumors. She was no tattle tale. No snitch. As he father often said, “No rats allowed in this house.”

One morning about 4:00 when she was 10, Kate looked out the window to see the constellations because she couldn’t sleep and saw her father strangle bookie Tony Bilardi with his alligator belt in the front yard. Kate never said a word. When she was 12 Kate watched her mother invite the mailman in for a two-hour drink and kept her little yap shut. At 14 she fed rat poison to the neighbor’s cat and kept the caper to herself when the neighbor came out crying and calling, “Here kitty, kitty, kitty.”

Each time she maintained her silence Kate heard the voices tell her she was a good girl.

Kate heard the voices talking in her head.

“Be the hush,” her Irish gangster father James Patrick Leary told her from the time she was four as they sat talking at the kitchen table in their South Boston house. Just because she hated her father didn’t mean she didn’t listen to him. Just because he created a hostile childhood environment didn’t mean he didn’t offer sound advice. Just because he shot himself didn’t mean she loved him or ever thought of telling him how she really felt.

Years later living under the radar in Clearwater Beach with a false identity, other than a rapid-fire sales pitch for her real estate sales career, she still kept her mouth shut. But with the two “lasses” that formed her split personality now completely out of control and running amok, Kim Phillips knew she had to heal – permanently – or risk jeopardizing and maybe even outing her brother Kevin and his bogus identity as RayRay.

Truth would ruin everything. Kim loved her brother. Kim would sacrifice anything to protect him.

Agreeing to meet Russian mobster money man Borys Popov when he phoned with a dinner invitation went against her better judgment. She had expected his call. She knew he knew she saw through his thin veneer. She knew he knew she was seriously mentally ill. She knew he knew she meant trouble.

Her worse half, Shannon, or was it Tara, peaked Borys’ interest by flirting with the billionaire and eventually telling him his late brother Ivan’s plot to poison him, throw him out a window or tie cinderblocks to his legs and dump him overboard from his multimillion-dollar yacht he named “Cream of the Kremlin.”

Now, sitting alone on the couch in her waterfront condo, feeling weak, nervous and anxiety-ridden, smoking a joint and meditating on the beautiful expanse of Gulf water that rose to meet a thin line of amber horizon, Kim formulated a plan to do away with Borys Popov.

After all, she had some experience in these matters.

Kate Leary never told anybody what happened to her friend Deirdre when Deirdre disappeared when they were seniors in high school. She just told police she saw a man who looked like the singer Dean Martin driving a red Mustang follow Deirdre after cheerleading practice. Kate said she waved goodbye when the man stopped and Deirdre got in the car and kissed the man. Poor Deirdre, who talked about Kate behind her back calling her dirty names, one day just never came home from school. At the memorial service Kate made everybody cry with the heartfelt words she spoke about her “best friend” Deirdre.

After the service her brother Kevin winked at her. She knew he knew. Kevin knew everything.

If Deirdre could disappear so could Borys. Homicide as common as the thick black hair that covered her and her cousins’ heads seemed to run in the Leary family.

Kim Phillips knew Borys had figured out her psychosis and sensed the “Irish” woman he dated was a figment of Kim’s imagination. With years of high-level KGB psychological warfare training behind him he knew Kim’s fragile mind had careened off the charts. Unstable meant dangerous. It was only a matter of time before Borys put the pieces together and realized she was not who she said she was. Kim knew her instability also meant weakness. And weakness could get people killed, maybe even Kevin. Kim had served her purpose. She knew she had to go – one way or the other. That’s why Borys called and asked her to dinner – and a goodbye kiss.

Maybe Kim could get the jump on him. End it all for them both. Life might be easier dead.

RayRay could go on with his full good life minus her demons.

Pondering the future back at the Elbow Room, RayRay knew he needed to act before the mounting disorder in his family grew worse. Until now he gave Kim unlimited freedom, allowing her to live life as she pleased with no interference. Until now RayRay could live and let live because nobody created problems for her or for him. But the Russian botched everything, ruining RayRay’s personal paradise with plans for a beach real estate takeover and now a romantic relationship with RayRay’s secret sister. Forget about it if word ever got out that Kim Phillips was RayRay’s sister and RayRay wasn’t really RayRay but an Irish hit man who hit hit men.

Maybe he should just whack that whack job Russian. Justifying the hit would be easy. Borys Popov ruled as a Russian Mafia boss, a corrupt land developer who was helping kill the planet, a KGB asset and even a government hit man. Maybe the CIA would give RayRay a medal.

One last hit wouldn’t hurt for old time’s sake, would it?

Deep in thought, RayRay didn’t hear Sam Bennett stroll into the bar wearing his gull beak-shaped N95 respirator mask and slowly flapping his arms.

Dillon did, though.

 “Buy that man a drink,” the parrot squawked.

“Don’t mind if you do,” Sam Bennett said.

Spotting the grim look on his friend’s face, Sam Bennett said, “You look like somebody just died.”

RayRay met Sam Bennett’s gaze.

“Or is about to,” RayRay said.