To set the mood for the upcoming protest rally on the beach, RayRay pounded the drum skins and slammed a high-hat cymbal with the primitive power of a caveman banging brontosaurus bones on a boulder, belting out a tribal solo as the leader of the bar’s Saturday night house rock band.

Outside on the cracked cement sidewalk sprouting tufts of grass in front of the Elbow Room, Sam Bennett strolled up and down past overweight patio diners dripping butter from shoveling stone crab claw meat into their mouths, calling attention to the informal organizational meeting with a sandwich board he made from cardboard box panels front and back with packing twine shoulder straps.

Both sides displayed the same message in black marker: PROTEST MEETING TONIGHT!!! SAY NO TO DEVELOPERS!!! SAVE THE GULLS!!!

Durkin arrived at seven looking for a double margarita with extra salt, taking a seat in the middle of the bar, not planning to protest anything. He wore clean black jeans, a short-sleeved shirt decorated with an alligator print and lime after shave to match the tropical moment in his mind. Durkin had never before visited Florida and saw the palm trees as exotic, making him feel like he made the right decision to move to Clearwater Beach. White sand did, however, make him think of his past life in Stone Harbor.

The woman on the stool next to him nodded, offering a weak smile. Once a cop always a cop, Durkin could see business cards spread in front of her imprinted with the name Kim Phillips in raised gold letters, a glitter mermaid corporate logo and the words Paradise Coast Real Estate. Sliding a card his way with the ease of a professional blackjack dealer the woman’s husky voice spoke of menthol cigarettes and clear alcohol, reminding him of his dead mother.

Extending a thin veiny hand she said, “Nice shirt. I’m Kim. In case you’re ever in the market.”

“Marty,” he said.

“Vacation, Marty?”

“I just relocated down here.”

“From where?”

Unlike RayRay playing Rolling Stones songs, Marty Durkin missed a beat. Kim quickly picked up on her bold mistake and blushed through her tan.

“I ask too many questions,” she said.

“No, that’s OK,” Durkin said. “I’m from New Jersey. Maybe you can help. I’m looking to rent an apartment.”

Pointing at Sam Bennett marching outside, Durkin sounded like a cop.

“What’s with him? What are you protesting?”

“What do you got?”

Durkin’s mind shot back to the loud demonstrations against him in New Jersey.

“That’s a famous movie quote, you know,” Kim said.

Durkin had no idea what she was talking about, never having seen the legendary Marlon Brando motorcycle flick from which Kim drew the line. Durkin didn’t watch movies, pursued no hobbies and never went on vacation. Living in Stone Harbor all his life was supposed to be one big vacation.

Then he killed the kid.

Tyrone Lark.

Of course the district attorney called 15-year-old Lark’s death a good shooting, an accident that could have happened to anybody sworn to protect and serve. Black activists from Philadelphia and Camden filled buses to come to the DA’s press conference. The dead boy’s parents gave a tearful statement to the press. Several television stations broadcast live from outside the courthouse.

Durkin’s lawyer told him to keep his mouth shut. But just one day after the DA’s decision he stood in the municipal building parking lot talking to reporters when he got off the night shift, crying, apologizing and offering whatever help he could provide for the family.

The boy’s mother responded by calling him a white devil. The boy’s father called him a honkey-assed fascist pig. By the end of the week dozens of Stone Harbor neighbors posted on Facebook that his presence anywhere in town would reduce their property values. Durkin sold the house that week and moved, choosing Clearwater Beach because he read a story in the travel section of the Atlantic City paper that the town was clean, safe and family-friendly even though he lacked a family.

Kim waved her hand in front of Durkin’s face.

“Kim to Marty, Kim to Marty, come in please.”

Snapping out of it, Durkin said, “Sorry.”

Kim explained how she and about a dozen regulars were protesting Boris Popov, a Russian billionaire developer who planned to build a jumbo hotel/condominium tower on the beach. Popov greased every outstretched palm he could find to get all the necessary permits, variances and easements he needed to proceed. Longtime residents, mostly senior citizens who lived modestly near the property, also wanted to fight him, his money and his power.

“He’s buying up the beach,” Kim said. “He’ll push old people out of their homes. Ruby who works here says he’ll destroy the ecosystem. Sam says he’ll hurt the gulls. But look at us. We’re no match for the Russian mob.”

“You have evidence he’s a real Russkie mobster?”

“No, but we just found out he let his maniac brother Ivan manage the monstrosity they detonated this morning and move into the Spyglass Apartments he owns where Sam lives. The former owners loved Sam and put in writing that he can live on the property and pay the same low rent as long as he lives no matter who builds there. Boris Popov agreed to the deal thinking Sam would pass any minute. That was five years ago. Sam’s still going strong.”

“Gull power,” Durkin said.

“Fight like a gull,” Kim said.

They laughed like old friends.

Outside Sam Bennett was wearing his gull mask and flapping his arms as people laughed. When a kid as round as a $2 plastic beach ball in a snot-green polo shirt threw a french fry at Sam, his mother slapped the boy in the back of the head with an open palm and hissed that he should behave or she’d kill him.

“I met Sam on the beach the other day,” Durkin said. “He’s a real character.”

“A genius, too. RayRay says Sam memorized the whole U.S. Constitution,” Kim said.

“I can’t even remember my cell phone number,” Durkin said.

Raising his finger to get RayRay’s attention to order a drink, Durkin leaned in to Kim with a showstopper of a question. Durkin always had a million questions.

“Sam can live at the Spyglass as long as he lives?”

Kim stopped drinking her Mai Tai in mid-sip, looking up over the little umbrella stuck between the ice cubes, catching the serious tone in Durkin’s voice and the insinuation in his question.

“I didn’t think of it like that,” she said.

“I’m an ex-cop,” Durkin said.

“You think Sam’s in danger?”

“Instinct says I know Sam’s in danger.”

Intuition failed him on the beach that awful night, but this time Durkin’s gut told him he was right.

From a tight corner table for two at the back of the dining room a very Black man sat alone and watched Durkin’s every move. Muscled, lean and handsome as Shaft, the observer wore a full black Afro with wide sideburns cut straight razor even at the bottoms of his ears, a purple and red dashiki, maroon slacks and spotless white leather designer espadrilles.

On his left pinkie finger he wore a thick gold signet ring as big as a sweet Bing cherry imprinted with a black onyx clenched fist. Sipping ice water, he smiled an actor’s smile when a masked Ruby brought his Cajun grouper burger with extra hot sauce.

“Thank you, sister,” he said.

One by one, about a hundred gulls appeared in the sky from the east, circling the paint-chipped dinghy that bobbed like a homemade fishing lure about 100 yards off the Clearwater Beach coast. Making worse noise than an English new wave band, the man duct-taped to the mast couldn’t get away from the mad cacophony of gull calls or the threat of their attack.

The first bird dive bombed like a sushi-fueled Kamikaze pilot. But instead of exploding on impact, the gull hit and ran, snagging awful fish offal stuck to the man’s shoulder with edible glue normally used to decorate cakes. The second bird hit the target in the forehead, leaving a cut where its beak seared skin when the winged raider skimmed a piece of fish gut off the victim’s head. Countless fish entrails stuck to the fat man’s naked body as dozens of gulls struck, starving for the gutsy gull delicacies.

Ivan Popov grunted helplessly as his eyes bugged out like flashing red buoys in the sea. Duct tape across his mouth muffled his pleas. Like a buffet table at a St. Petersburg funeral lunch all he could do was provide sustenance for the hungry crowd.

Coming in at 12 o’clock high the next gull nosedived into Ivan’s chest, right above his Vladimir Putin tattoo, fluttered in a spray of feathers, rolled like a Messerschmitt in a dog fight and banked to the left, screaming high into the glare with the zeal of a Luftwaffe ace. Attacking in a swarm now, more gulls bombarded Ivan from every angle, ripping skin with beaks and claws, slapping him sillier than ever with webbed feet as they tore at hunks of fish organs pasted to their prey’s body and then flew into spacious cerulean sky.

Slipping in and out of consciousness after hours of serving as the main course, Ivan finally heard the whipping blades of a Coast Guard chopper hovering overhead.

Sam Bennett watched from the shore.

“That’ll teach him,” he said. “Mess with my birds and see where it gets you.”

Sam found Ivan drunk and asleep on the beach at 4 a.m. that morning as Sam walked alone trying and failing to coax anger from his mind, clearing his head of mean, vengeful thoughts. The Russian slob stank of vodka and curdled sour cream, snoring through his mouth with exhalations that sounded like the beginning gusts of a Siberian storm.

Hightailing it home, Sam returned 15 minutes later carrying a pillowcase stuffed with fish guts he collected earlier from his buddies cleaning grouper and snapper by the Intracoastal and kept in the alley behind his apartment to feed his gull friends later in the day. He also brought a few jars of the edible sugar paste he bought on sale on a whim at the Albertsons supermarket two years earlier when he thought about baking gull-shaped cakes to give away as gifts on special occasions. And he always carried silver duct tape in his knapsack because you never knew when you might need silver duct tape.

Sam, stronger than he looked, undressed the unconscious intoxicated goof and pulled, pushed and lugged Ivan’s nude body into the abandoned wooden rowboat that sat moored in the same place for the past two years, equipped with a broken teetering mast that nonetheless remained firmly bolted to the floor. A faded and tattered Jolly Roger skull and crossbones flag still hung from the makeshift crow’s nest. Hauling the skiff into the water Sam watched waves gently lift the craft and carry it off into the distance.

Now he watched as two rescue swimmers stuffed Ivan into a wire basket and hoisted him up and into the helicopter.

After a restless night in the hospital, a bandaged and aloe-laden Ivan Popov took a cab home to the grubby penthouse in the otherwise empty, crumbling condominium complex he managed on behalf of his billionaire brother Boris, who sat in a sticky leather Barcalounger recliner in the living room awaiting his numbskull brother’s arrival.

Ivan spit out his words like bad beef stroganoff.

“You couldn’t pick me up at hospital?”

“No,” Boris spit back. “You are embarrassment.”

“Police asked who did this to me.”

“CIA plot like you always claim when you find trouble in America?”

“I told evil government agents I went fishing.”

“With duct tape?”

Ivan Popov hobbled to his brother’s side, trying to ignore the sunburn and bird nips, bites and scratches all over his hairy body. Looking down he sneered like a fat Russian Elvis impersonator at an embassy cocktail party.

“I need raise,” Ivan said. “My international management skills in great demand in free country.”

Boris tightened the Windsor knot on his black silk necktie decorated with red double-headed eagles and straightened the matching silk puff stuffed into the pocket of his $5,000 custom-tailored white linen suit jacket.

“No raise for you,” Boris said. “Raise for me. I raise highest Clearwater Beach hotel tower ever built right here on beach.”

The oligarch’s plan puzzled Ivan.

“How you make new building at place where old building exists?”

“Blow up one. Make room for other,” Boris said.

Ivan fumed.

“What about me?”

“You move to seedy Spyglass Apartments. Only one tenant lives there. We deal with him later to build Russian Mafia mistresses’ fancy bachelorette pads. I implode this property tomorrow.”

Despite months of secret government service in Ukraine torturing civilians and calling in air strikes on dairy cows, Ivan flinched.

“Boom?”

“Boom,” Boris said.

At that very moment Sam Bennett was nosing around outside the condo parking garage, knowing Ivan lived there and already plotting how to get even more even with the Russian goon who dared insult Ruby and his precious avian pets. Building contractors had been on site all week preparing for the blast and left a variety of equipment and supplies in preparation for the implosion.

The boxes they unloaded that morning caught Sam’s eye. That night he made four trips, carrying three loads each time, storing them in the spare apartment where he carved his beloved driftwood gulls. When he opened the first box he felt his heart pick up speed and sensed his blood pressure rise. Tearing at each box he soon discovered they all contained the same item.

Detonators.

Sam now owned hundreds of stolen explosive blasting caps.

This time when Sam Bennett walked away flapping his arms, he felt his muscles gain strength. Goose bumps appeared amid thin hairs of his forearm, making him imagine the beginning of fluffy down taking root inside the genomes of his body to one day cover his wings in luxurious plume, a coat of many feathers that would sparkle in heavenly rays white as soft sand when he finally took flight and ascended, climbing, climbing, climbing into the wild, blue yonder.

No doubt about it.

One day Sam Bennett would fly.

First Sam brushed the driftwood gently to remove sand and dirt. Then he softly blew on the wood from all angles to alert whatever unseen organisms might live on or in the wood, giving the tiniest specks of life a chance to move out or fly away. Then he soaked the driftwood in a pail of diluted bleach for two days and let it dry in blistering sun that burned into the windowsill above the kitchen sink.

Picking up his folding carving knife he started to pare, alternating between the two blades he lubricated after each use with a dab of vegetable oil he used to cook home fries on the greasy stove in his cramped quarters at the Spyglass.

Sam fashioned a gull a week.

At 13 inches tall by 9 inches long by 3 inches wide, the sleek gray, white and yellow gulls he painted with model airplane paint lined shelves he built from driftwood and bricks in the empty apartment next door he sneaked into and used as a workshop.

Sam sometimes sat cross-legged on the floor in the room like a Zen Buddhist monk and talked with the birds.

“You’re my babies,” he said each evening as he bid goodnight to his flock.

About 250 molded gulls with colorful seashell eyes stared back.

Sam Bennett loved his gulls. They represented peace and freedom. The birds symbolized love.

Nobody at RayRay’s knew about Sam’s woodworking talent. Of course the regulars experienced his obsession with gulls every time he performed his famous gull impression, but he never mentioned his art. The essence of the deepest art is private. Motivation often remains hidden. After serving 20 years in the Navy, he only started carving when he turned 65. With his monthly military annuity, meager savings from repair jobs tinkering with clocks and other mechanical gizmos and a monthly Social Security check, all his needs were met.

Sam Bennett survived comfortably.

More than enough pocket money jingled in his shorts to pay rent, buy food and drink daily martinis with a dollar tip. Sometimes he drank too much, sometimes until his face started to bleed. The porous blue broken veins in his nose pulsed while his skin cracked and oozed. RayRay stepped in about a year ago and told him, “Sam, please don’t take this the wrong way, but I won’t serve you when your face bleeds.”

Sam apologized, from then on watching his gin intake. Responsible, kind and loyal, Sam Bennett wanted to be liked, respected. But he only went out of his way to impress people he liked and respected. Sam could count his friends on the fingers of one hand minus his thumb and pinkie.

Shortly after Sam started drinking at RayRay’s a woman at the bar flirted with him, but he ignored her overtures. Pretty, gaudy and recently widowed, her exclamation mark-shaped rhinestone earrings glistened with rainbows in the overhead lights. Sam had seen her type before, Geritol television commercial material, a senior citizen who knew she controlled every eye over 60 in the room.

Not Sam’s, though.

The most beautiful living creature Sam ever saw was a single lone gull that put the woman’s beauty to shame. Perched on the railing behind Frenchy’s fish shop where the workers gutted grouper after the crew delivered their catch, the bird sat feather smooth and dignified, waiting for her dinner to be served with a view.

Sam named her Princess.

You could keep your dogs and cats and slinky widows.

Sam was for the birds.

On Saturday night when Sam took his seat in the middle of the bar at RayRay’s, he quickly heard the Russian accent thick as cabbage borscht with heavy cream.

“What do you mean you have no deep-fried Barbecue Gullps?”

“We have conch fritters,” Ruby said.

“No, Ivan want deep-fried Barbecue Gullps.”

“I’m really sorry,” Ruby said. “I never heard of Barbecue Gullps.”

Lying, of course, Ivan strung Ruby along with his tall tale he made up on the spot.

“These mouthfuls are great snacks in my country,” Ivan Popov said. “Better than boneless wings, tasty birdy bits to get you in mood for more vodka. You like to get in mood, American girly?”

“I am an American woman, mister,” Ruby said. “And you’re gross.”

“Gull meat not taste like wild boar or deer or alligator,” Ivan said. “Gulls are tastier than quail. Dainty meaty morsels like you.”

“You’re a wild bore,” Ruby thought.

Ivan licked and smacked his lips. Looking over her shoulder, Ruby called for RayRay.

Sam clutched the edge of the bar.  

His face started to bleed.

A roadmap of blue veins in his nose started to pulse.

Adjusting the N95 mask with the hand-painted gull beak Ruby made him, Sam Bennett spun off his stool with surprising speed. Stepping toward Ivan Popov, slowly but surely he began flapping his arms, picking up speed as he stared into the dull dead pools of the Russian’s eyes. Leaning forward, head down and heaving upward, Sam made what experts describe as the “choking call” of a gull territorial dispute, repeating the long call yelping “keow keow keow.” The wild squawks resonated above the din of the Allman Brothers’ song playing on the jukebox, actually harmonizing with Duane’s slide guitar and Gregg’s Hammond organ as they howled their soulful southern rock growls.

Ivan Popov recoiled.

“Birdman crazy,” he said.

Growing silent, Sam Bennett turned, walked fast to the door, got on the red bicycle he built from spare parts and pedaled into the night.

Just like that, out of nowhere, Sam Bennett delivered to a stranger on the beach an impromptu ornithology lesson.

“A gull can eat up to 20 percent of its body weight in food each day,” the shriveled sun-cured senior citizen said.

“That’s a lot of french fries,” Marty Durkin said.

“A group of gulls is called a colony,” the 70-year-old said.

“Like founding feathers,” Marty said.

Instead of laughing at Marty’s wit, the old fellow rattled off his odd list of fun gull facts for kids.

“Gulls can fly at speeds of up to 30 miles per hour.”

Durkin let him prattle.

“There are around 50 different species of gulls in the world. About seven of those species are regularly seen here on the Gulf Coast,” Sam Bennett said.

Looking for nothing more than a thoughtful walk on the white sandy shore, maybe seeing a dolphin or two surface and dive, Marty still wanted to be polite, especially to a doddering golden ager sporting a gull mask.

“You live around here, buddy?”

Sam Bennett threw a thumb up the beach.

“The Spyglass Apartments,” he said.

Marty, 45, sensed the disheveled beachcomber wanted to talk. Dressed in a faded pink RayRay’s Elbow Room tank top, baggy violet polyester board shorts and scuffed oxblood wingtips with no socks, the grizzled beach bindle seemed lonely and more than a little lost. Jaded but empathetic Marty asked the senile beach townie a sincere question.

“I just moved to town,” Marty said. “You know a good bar around here?”

Sam Bennett pointed to his shirt. Having finished what he wanted to say, he casually strolled away, slowly flapping his arms up and down and picking up speed as he bent his hands at the wrists. For some strange reason Marty wondered how he’d react if the old buzzard really did take off, lifting, flying and cruising high into the sky above the coastline. Nothing would surprise Durkin anymore.

He’d check out RayRay’s later that night.

Walking the beach he saw a group of young men running pass patterns and throwing a football.  Back in the early 80s Marty’s late father, Joe, gave him an official Notre Dame football for his fifth birthday. Until they moved out of West Philadelphia when Marty was 12 he never once played catch with the kid. City police Captain Durkin was too busy stockpiling enough cash to buy the small house in Stone Harbor, New Jersey, a one-story cottage built in the 40s that needed paint and repairs to the wooden shutters. Nonetheless, that comfort afforded Marty, his mother, Mary, and Joe a full-time place “down the shore,” as Philly people said, and got them out of an increasingly Black neighborhood.

For years his dad regularly wore a T-shirt with the words “Retired Cop” stamped on the front and one of those vintage yellow straw pork pie hats with empty Budweiser beer cans attached above the brim. Of course the hat made Joe look like a real ass, but he enjoyed the scornful stares he got from wealthy retirees, mostly widows in supermarkets, or from aging patients at his increasing medical appointments. He was convinced that flaunting the absurd attire advertised his defiant independence.

The only freedom Joe Durkin truly possessed sprang from not having the South Philly mob dregs looking over his shoulder, telling him what to do, paying him with fat envelopes but always there as a menacing presence. Joe finally broke free from these young Guidos, usually the sons of men whose names once struck fear in police and public alike, whose bribes and kickbacks financed his leisurely retirement and Stone Harbor home ownership.

Just listening as a teenager to his father and mother argue in the kitchen alerted Marty to the sad truth. His dad never talked to him about rumors in town that he had been a dirty cop. His mom went to Mass as often as she could. Marty blocked shameful thoughts when he heard whispers at school. Irish and Italian cops’ kids in Philadelphia took official police corruption for granted. Bad cops would always rule. At 21 Marty joined the Stone Harbor Police Department and became a good local cop who honestly protected and served.

One day six months ago, way ahead of schedule, Marty quit the police force, selling the cottage and abruptly leaving town. Putting flowers on his parents’ graves never crossed his mind. He had more than enough of his own problems to last a lifetime. With a pension from 20 years with the police department and the proceeds from selling the house, at least he had money in the bank.

Lifting his nose, Marty sniffed the salt air. Spreading out the towel he bought at celebrity former professional wrestler Hulk Hogan’s restaurant the night before, a full-sized orange towel imprinted with a life-sized likeness of Hulk raising his arms above his head in victory, Marty kicked off the brown leather flip flops he bought that morning for $85 at a surf shop. Playing the part of happy retiree would be tough. But the time had come to start a new life. Taking off the baby blue three button polo shirt staff at the Stone Harbor Library gave him last year for reading a book about alligators to first graders, he stretched out in the sand. Five minutes later he slumbered in a deep sleep. One minute after his first snore the nightmare hit.

A tourist had called 911 and reported a Black man on the beach with a gun. The kid’s eyes blazed like raging coals in a furnace. The 14-year-old’s black skin shined with sweat in Marty’s flashlight beam. A dull sheen reflected off the barrel as the kid held out the object. A gunmetal flash of silver tube pierced Marty’s heightened awareness. The blast came fast. One shot.

Marty fired one shot that caught the kid between the eyes, penetrating his skull and lodging in the soft tissue of his brain. Approaching with the vigilance of a jungle lion stalking an antelope calf, sweat dripped from Marty’s brow. Dry mouth made him gag. The trigger finger on his right hand trembled as he struggled to keep the gun pointed at the victim who still held his weapon.

Kicking away the firearm Marty saw the deadly weapon wasn’t a firearm at all. A nickel silver piccolo lay in the sand, a musical instrument the child had come to play alone on the beach so nobody would laugh at him for practicing.

Waking in a nauseous panic, Marty struggled to sit upright.

The boy’s name.

He forgot the boy’s name.

Marty buried his face in his hands.

He cried tears that dripped into the sand.

Marty Durkin knew he’d never escape himself or what’s-his-name.

Every man, woman and child in the civic arena rose to their feet when little Sally Rumple took the podium. Dressed in a camouflage patterned sun dress, the freckled second grader wore blond pigtails and a sunny smile.

“I can shoot the eyes out of a potato,” she said into the microphone in a Minnie Mouse voice.

You could barely see the sleek black leather shoulder holster in which the eight-year-old carried a loaded Glock.

The crowd went wild.

Then Sally Rumple drew her gun with the ease of Annie Oakley, shot the eyes out of a potato – actually six potatoes set up as stationary targets on the stage – and again faced the crowd.

“I won’t die in a school shooting,” she said. “I will defend myself, my classmates and my teacher.”

The crowd screamed.

“YES!”

Turning to the tractor-trailer-sized stars and stripes flag that hung behind her, little Sally Rumple placed her hand over her heart and led the Pledge of Allegiance, reciting some new words that Congress recently added to accommodate a new atmosphere throughout the land.

“One nation,” she said. “Always armed. With liberty and justice for all.”

The crowd waved clenched fists in the air.

“HELL YEAH!”

Sally’s mother and father, a traditional American family, approached their daughter from the right wing of the stage.

“I have a surprise for you, honey,” Mrs. Rumple said.

Little Sally Rumple holstered her gun and beamed. Mr. Rumple handed Sally a letter. Sally looked at the crisp whiter than white paper and squealed.

“It’s from the White House!”

“From the president,” Mrs. Rumple said.

Little Sally Rumple read the letter out loud.

“Dear Sally,” the president wrote. “I am pleased to invite you to the White House to teach me how to shoot as well as you do. I want to shoot bad guys whenever they raise their ugly heads like zombies in a first person video shooter game. Maybe we can play Call of Duty together in the Oval Office. Remember, the only thing that stops a bad president with a gun is a good president with a gun.”

Little Sally Rumple looked up at the audience with tears in her eyes.

“The same goes for the Girl Scouts,” she said.

The crowd went wild.

Little Sally Rumple gazed out over the crowd. Smiling devilishly she reached under the podium and raised a previously hidden AR-15 rifle.

“Locked and loaded, baby,” she said.

The arena erupted in cheers.

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.”