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

”Vodka,” says Lev.

“Vodka,” says Boris.

Lev’s humming a tune.

Stone-faced, Boris questions his comrade.

“What’s that song?”

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

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

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

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

“More vodka,” Lev says.

“More,” says Boris.

Both men exhale loudly.

“To our murdered ruler,” says Lev.

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

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

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

Lev isn’t sure.

“That’s all it will take?”

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

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

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

“So how many vermin must we exterminate?”

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

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

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

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

Boris bellows to the bartender.

“Two more vodkas.”

“No,” Lev says. “Bring the bottle.”

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

“You might die trying,” says Lev.

Boris raises his voice and his refill.

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

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

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

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

“Tsar Bomba,” Lev says.

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

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

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

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

“To Tsar Bomba, the king of bombs!”

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

“Another bottle, comrade,” says Boris.

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

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

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

Lev puts his arm around Boris’ shoulders.

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

“Ask Billy Joel,” says Boris.

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

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

“Please,” he said. “Call me Max.”

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

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

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

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

“Why not kill them all?”

“I’m a Catholic,” Max said.

“Just war theory?”

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

“So the Pope will understand?”

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

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

“Roger that.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Music,” Max said.

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

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

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

“Close up,’ Max said.

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

Pulse steady.

A wry smile.

Exhale.

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

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

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

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

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

“Our former target has daughters,” Max said.

“Yes,” the woman said. “He did.”

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

“I’ll get it, honey,” Max said.

The international caller didn’t even say hello.

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

“Soon.”

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

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

“Zorro who?”

“Never mind.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Don’t even joke about that.”

“I’m not joking.”

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

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

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

“Why?”

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

“That’s for criminals.”

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

“He called me.”

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

“True.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

The general’s expression went stiff.

“America owes nobody.”

The Shuler residence landline rang early Saturday morning.

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

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

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

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

“I’m Becky,” the voice said.

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

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

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

“Who told you her name is Becky?”

“She did,” Kim said.

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

Kim decided to start a conversation with Becky.

“Who are you really?

“Your soul sister.”

“I don’t have a sister.”

“You do now.”

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

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

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

 “I have enough problems,” Becky said.

She did, too.

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

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

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

Probably not.

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

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

“What, no liverwurst with those yolks?”

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

Tara shrieked.

“I always ate my liver.”

“Wait, what?”

Now Shannon howled.

“We always ate our liver.”

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

Becky tried to help.

“Ignore them,” she said.

Kim went back to bed to try to forget.

Becky heard Kim crying.

“What’s the matter?”

“I‘m afraid of them,” Kim said.

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

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

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

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

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

“Liver made me sick,” Kim said.

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

“I begged her to understand.”

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

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

Kim moved out as soon as she turned 18.

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

“You needed a friend,” Becky said.

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

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

“Even at my age?”

Becky spoke with confidence.

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

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

“Leave me alone,” she said.

The tense few seconds that passed felt like an hour.

“What did you say?”

“I said back off.”

Shannon jumped in like a faded tattooed tag team wrestler.

“You shut up!”

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

Becky whispered.

“Nobody ever talks to them like that.”

The twins roared at the same time.

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

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

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

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

When she did, of course, Kim listened.

At 63 the pale skin on Ronnie Kohr’s face looked like construction putty. Full cheeks felt like a doughy version of a wax museum dummy. Without the money to fly to Mexico for a full-scale face transplant, the professional Elvis impersonator knew he was finished.

Laid off from the pest control company after working off and on in the entertainment business for decades (at the age of three Ronnie Kohr’s mother Grace billed him as the youngest Elvis clone in the world), at least he still got a local gig or two around Christmas at the VFW or Legion hall. During his career Ronnie Kohr played small events in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and all points in between, including his high point sold-out concert in a bar in State College during the 1986 national championship football season.

Once when Ronnie was 14, he performed two great nights and four shows at a Tupperware convention in Las Vegas. Grace easily secured an annulment for Ronnie’s Elvis Chapel marriage to a pain pill addicted showgirl with one phone call to the woman’s husband who worked as a Las Vegas police officer. No bigger Elvis fan than Grace lived and she often told anybody who would listen how divine intervention blessed her with a son the Tarot card reader at the mall told her actually was Elvis in a past life.

“A sign,” she said, “a sign.”

Over the years Ronnie matured. The act got better. But in 2001 he started putting on some serious weight.

At least he kept his standards intact. In 2019 he turned down an offer to do a “nude Elvis” event that would have put $250 in his pocket for a three-hour show that would have left him singing wearing only his sideburns and white patent leather shoes. An undyingly polite Ronnie Kohr declined the offer even when the treasurer of the businesswomen’s association organizing the party offered $300. What would Ronnie’s dearly departed mother say had he agreed to put his hunka hunka burning love on display?

When COVID hit Ronnie got stuck home practicing his karate moves in the living room until he got hurt. A simple front snap kick tangled his foot in the leg of his bell bottom pajamas, tripped him and sent a tooth through his lip when he hit the coffee table face first. To make matters worse, the wound injured his sneering lip, the one that curled when he smiled and spoke in his perfect Elvis accent. Now his words sounded garbled, like a drunken imitation of a redneck salesman selling used pickups in Memphis.

For the next two weeks Ronnie pampered himself to heal, increasing his two daily peanut butter, banana and bacon sandwiches to four, eating one with his breakfast of bacon, eggs and bacon, one with deep-fried pickles covered in hot sauce for lunch, one with a man-sized dinner of chicken fried steak and gravy with black-eyed peas and one with sugar, cinnamon and whipped cream before bed. Sometimes Ronnie ate two bananas per sandwich which he figured is what sent his potassium levels off the charts. With a level of 6.3, six being fatal, doctors told Ronnie he should be dead by yesterday.

So he tried to change.

Ronnie really tried to change.

But by 2022 he weighed 360 pounds, ten pounds more than Elvis did when he died at 42.

The 21^st Century bode bad news for the future, far worse than the disco era when the King passed. Back then Ronnie looked real good. By the time he turned 19 he was dating a friend of his mother who managed a beer distributor that specialized in German brews. Young Ronnie drank like a Danube river carp and never performed onstage without bock beer on his breath.

When he met Rayleen that summer she didn’t drink. Working as the beer distributor’s young divorcee cashier subjected the young woman to flirtation, insult and even intimidation. That’s where Ronnie Kohr came in stepping through the doorway in a blue track suit with a gold stripe down the side and black Flagg Brothers’ shoes with Cuban heels and white leather lightning bolts on the sides. A svelte 195 pound light-heavyweight, he spotted a roofer tanned bronze and skinny as a rusty nail leaning over the counter asking Priscilla for a kiss.

Rayleen just turned 23 but Ronnie saw her as a 14-year-old named Priscilla wearing a black beehive hairdo and sporting a Munich accent which was really just Pennsylvania Dutch from Lebanon, PA, where she grew up. Elvis’ Priscilla was American and spoke perfectly despite being born in Brooklyn. Ronnie loved watching Rayleen ring up cases and kegs.

Pulling a derringer-shaped cigarette lighter with a fake pearl handle from his pocket, Ronnie lit a thin anisette-flavored cigarillo. Stepping toward the roofer he cleared his throat. Spotting the lighter and taking it for a real gun, the hungover roofer fled.

Rayleen blew Ronnie a kiss.

“My hero,” she said.

Three days later Rayleen moved to Florida with the contractor who put up the new drywall at the beer distributorship. A week later Ronnie rescued a stray cat from the Forever Care Paw Foundation. He named her Priscilla. A week later he rescued a stray kitten from the same shelter he called Lisa Marie. Until both famously-named felines ran away within a day of each other a few years later, they all lived together like one big happy family in Ronnie’s late mother’s one-story red brick house along the highway that paralleled the railroad tracks that paralleled the river.

After that, just like Elvis, Ronnie hated cats. He disliked women, too. For the record, Ronnie’s dad Ronnie Sr. died when he slammed drunk into the back of an ambulance stopped at a red light the day before his son was born. With his last words before he died, Ronnie Sr. whispered to the emergency room nurse that he had a baby boy on the way, a son who would be born with sideburns. Deep down as an underground septic tank, though, Ronnie loved everybody. In subsequent years, when Ronnie sang the words “always on my mind” he thought of his mom, his cats and his dead daddy, too.

For three hours last Tuesday Ronnie sat on the toilet waiting to die, reading Frank Adams’ “The Scientific Search for the Face of Jesus,” the same book Elvis was reading when he keeled over and fell from the throne. What a way to go. Ronnie envisioned paramedics struggling to roll him onto a stretcher. He could hear county morgue workers mocking his corpse, hearing their cruel laughter so much so he kept his silver aviator shades on in the shower that night to give the folds of his belly a darker shade that didn’t make his middle look so thick.

The Elvis angel showed up at the door the next morning.

“My name is Ginger,” she said. “Would you be interested in buying a set of cyclopedias?”

A sign.

A woman named Ginger waited in a king-sized Graceland bed for Elvis the night he took his last breath on the bathroom floor. The face of that woman was exactly who Ronnie saw when the saleslady stood on the cinderblock front steps. He knew it wasn’t the same Ginger, of course, but if he could dream, and he could, the spirit was hers.

“These ain’t Britannia cyclopedias,” Ginger said. “But just as good.”

Ronnie acted interested in the pitch.

“I have the first book, A, of the 26 volumes with me,” Ginger said.

“There’s 26 letters in the alphabet,” Ronnie said.

“You’re real smart already,” Ginger said. “You might not even need the books.”

“Thank you very much,” Ronnie said.

Each volume contained around 100 pages and you could buy them individually at select supermarkets.

“The set comes in paperback, too,” Ginger said.

“Maybe I can get one to keep in the Caddy,” Ronnie said.

“You have a Cadillac?”

“Two of them, a red 1978 El Dorado and a 1956 hearse.”

“You got it made in the shade,” Ginger said.

Of course he didn’t and still owed money on both cars.

“I’m sorry I don’t have a full set of cyclopedias with me,” Ginger said.

“That’s OK,” Ronnie said. “I’m not playing with a full deck, either.”

Even the freight train loaded with coal rattling by couldn’t drown the sweet harmony of their laughter.

“So I’ll see you tomorrow when you come back with the books and the paperwork,” Ronnie said

Ginger blushed.

“You’ll be my first full sale,” she said.

Now Ronnie flushed.

But Ginger reddened even more deeply.

“Can I ask a favor?”

“Shoot,” Ronnie said.

“Can I have your autograph?”

People didn’t ask Ronnie for autographs anymore.

Ronnie got real serious.

“How old are you?”

“I’m 42,” Ginger said.

Ginger was 21 years younger, the same age difference between Elvis and his Ginger.

Ronnie bit his sneering lip to keep from crying.

When Ginger returned the next day to sign the paperwork, Ronnie, having just ironed his best black and red jump suit, answered the door in full regalia, including cubic zirconia diamonds on every finger and a freshly dyed black pompadour.

“You can shut it out for a time, but it ain’t goin’ away,” Ronnie said, speaking a real live Elvis quote.

Confused, Ginger stumbled over her words like a country diner waitress tripping over a dropped platter of blackened catfish with hush puppies on the side.

“What ain’t going away?”

“Tenderness,” Ronnie said.

Ginger moved in the following Saturday, bringing her stuff in beer boxes from the motel by the truck stop where she was staying and paying $400 a week with no pets allowed.

“I’m allergic to cat and dog hair and peanuts,” she said.

With no peanut butter in the house, Ronnie laid off the bananas and bacon, too. You’d be amazed at how much weight he lost in the next few months, especially when Ginger taught him some yoga moves that strengthened his knees and allowed him to kick hard enough to make the fabric at the ends of his bell bottoms snap like a turtle before going into the soup.

Last week out of nowhere the social worker at the senior citizens center called because “The Human Eightball” cancelled her appearance to check into alcohol rehab and asked if Ronnie was available for a Friday night show.

“You’ll be much younger than our mostly female audience,” the social worker said. “They think you’re hot off the Ed Sullivan Show.”

“I won’t swivel,” Ronnie said.

“With these old girls you can swivel all you want, just duck when they throw their room keys at you,” the social worker said.

After the show, which, as you might expect, was a hit, Ginger asked Ronnie to marry her.

“Thank you very much,” he said.

“Oh, Elvis,” she said.

“I’m getting bad as the president,” Justin said.

Lisa looked up from the sink where she struggled to scrub barbecue shredded pork grease from the supper dishes.

“Germs,” Justin said. “I’m worried about germs like Trump.”

“Yeah, Trump’s a germ all right,” Lisa said.

“No I mean the president’s a germaphobe. So’s Biden from what I hear. Can’t say I blame either one.”

“Oh, honey, you just got back from your yearly doctor’s checkup, that’s all.”

“No, it’s worse than that,” Justin said.

Watching her now he noticed she only used one squirt of lemon dishwashing liquid on the sponge. He would have used three or four, maybe. And he wouldn’t use the fruit-scented stuff. He’d use some kind of extra strength bleach-based detergent or one with ammonia in it if you could buy such a thing. He wouldn’t use a sponge, either. You might as well scrub germs off your dinner plates with a petri dish loaded with Escherichia coli bubbles.

“E. coli,” he said.

Stopping in mid-scrape, Lisa scrunched a puzzled look on her face.

“You might as well ladle bugs on the dinnerware like gravy,” he said.

Embarrassed, Lisa wasn’t sure what to say.

“You’re kidding me, right?”

Turning abruptly, Justin stormed into the bathroom to wash his hands. Pulling down and using four squares of toilet paper to touch the faucets for the right blend of hot and cold water, he worried about picking up the bar of soap that lay in a glass dish shaped like a seashell Lisa bought at a Gen X hipster shop downtown. Spotting the quarter-inch mud smear, he knew Lisa must have last washed her hands after gardening that afternoon and contaminated the Dove with a streak of real outdoor germ-infested backyard dirt. Without turning off the water he bolted back into the kitchen where he caught Lisa off guard while she wiped her hands on the dishtowel.

“You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you?”

Before she could ask if he lost his mind, Justin was back in the bathroom, this time locking the door behind him. Justin’s condition didn’t happen overnight. For the past few weeks he felt germs looking at him, crawling on his arms during the day, sometimes walking on his legs in the morning or when they woke him up at night sashaying up and down his back like fashion models on the runway. Germs looking at him bothered him the most because they could see him but he couldn’t see them. It was only a matter of time before he encountered one face-to-face in the living room while he was watching the Discovery Channel on television.

Lisa’s light tap on the door startled him.

“Are you OK, Justin?”

Checking his watch he knew he’d been in the bathroom a long time. Turns out 20 minutes had passed from the time he first sensed germs on the bar of soap and Lisa‘s halting knock.

“I’m washing my hands,” Justin said.

“Just checking,” she said.

Twenty minutes later, she knocked again.

“You’re starting to worry me,” she said. “At least unlock the door.”

As he was turning the lock he saw a germ the size of a pepper fleck wearing what looked like a crewcut jump off the wall before it disappeared behind the shower curtain. In a panic Justin looked under the sink for the plunger. He had to fight back. Facing the shower curtain, his left leg began to shake. His fingers trembled. Tightening his grip on the plunger, with one hand he tore open the curtain, ripping it from several plastic rings. Jumping onto the edge of the tub he raised the plunger.

There they were, about 12 more germs, round buggers with legs, beady eyes and vicious scowls, hanging out by the drain mocking him like an outlaw motorcycle club taunting a weak potential victim while pounding down beers at a bucket-of -blood hillbilly bar. Backing up, Justin opened the door and eased slow motion into the hall.

Lisa met him with a lemon sponge cake in her hands.

“Surprise,” she said. “Your favorite dessert.”

Justin raised the plunger over his head.

Lisa held up the cake like a battle shield.

“Lemon, huh? Like the dishwashing liquid? Sponge cake, Lisa? Like a homemade treat designed for culturing bacteria and other microorganisms? Do you have any pathogen loaded botulism whipped cream to go with it?”

“It’s only a cake, honey, dessert.”

Justin was still holding the plunger when police pulled up beside him at midnight parked outside the high school where he graduated in 1982 and taught biology for the past 30 years.

“I plead self-defense, officer,” Justin said.

The cop looked puzzled.

“For what?”

“Breaking into the chemistry lab.”

“What did you do that for?”

“I needed to cook up an antidote for the pestilence.”

“You mean the pandemic?”

“Sort of.”

“Yeah that’s getting to everybody,” the cop said.

“I mixed a batch of antitoxin to kill germs,” Justin said.

“Think it will work?”

“Somebody’s got to try,” Justin said.

“There you go, Mr. Good Citizen. More people need to get involved in their communities,” the cop said. “Make it like the America we grew up in.”

Justin sensed an ally and went for broke.

“Is there a chance you have an extra pair of them gloves you’re wearing?”

“Always” the cop said. “I wear the disposables because I don’t want to touch the criminals when I yank them out of the car. You never know what you might catch.”

“Exactly,” Justin said.

The cop peeled off the throwaway gloves.

“You can have these if you give me a jar of that bug neutralizer cure,” he said.

“You got yourself a deal, partner,” Justin said.

When the cop snapped a salute and pulled away, Justin drank from the magic potion that would protect him in a world full of germs. You can’t be too careful. Justin put on the gloves. Watching the cop disappear in the rearview mirror Justin felt safe from germs for the first time all day.

Say what you will about police brutality, in this case at least somebody understood.

Lisa would just have to get her own damn gloves.

“Here’s more bottles, mama,” Kateryna said.

Svitlana reached for three empties her daughter held out.

Marveling at his family over a flickering blue flame that lit his last cigarette, Andriy crumpled and stuffed the pack in his down jacket pocket. Exhaling white smoke through his nose he spoke to Kateryna in a voice as low as his mood.

“Don’t you have ballet practice?”

The child looked at the linoleum floor.

“I forget how to dance,” she said.

“You’re upset,” Svitlana said. “When this is over you’ll remember every step.”

Jerking her head toward her husband Svitlana snapped words like whiplash.

“Watch that cigarette.”

Andriy pointed to a dozen more bottles on the floor.

“Where’d you learn to make petrol bombs?”

“Natalka next door,” Svitlana said. “I cut up your oldest jeans for wicks and siphoned gasoline from the car. I took packing peanuts from boxes I keep in the closet.”

“Packing peanuts?”

“Natalka says the foam sticks to skin and burns into bone when you catch fire from Molotov cocktails.”

Excited, Kateryna spoke up.

“To kill Russians,” she said.

Andriy turned on his daughter.

“How old are you?”

“Almost eleven.”

Looking at Svitlana, Andriy struggled to hold his temper.

“You teach our daughter to make explosives to kill Russians?”

Svitlana flared with defiance.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I do.”

Folding his hands as if in prayer, Andriy said, “Go to your room, Kateryna. Decide what to take if we must leave.”

“Fine,” Kateryna said. “I’ll see if any of your empty beer bottles rolled under my bed.”

Svitlana filled another green bottle with gasoline. She used a sharp potato paring knife to cut the white foam peanuts into tiny pieces which she shoved into the neck. She capped the top with a twisted blue strip of faded denim.

Shocked, Andriy stood in awe.

“Do you really know what you’re doing?”

“Defending my country,” Svitlana said.

Andriy felt alone for the first time since he and Svitlana married in the Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv 12 years ago.

“I’m resisting war like you should be doing,” Svitlana said.

Andriy wanted only to surrender.

“You’re making deadly weapons with our baby girl,” he said.

“Show some courage,” Svitlana said.

Andriy’s voice broke.

“Do you know what you’re doing to Kateryna?”

“Preparing her to stand up for what she believes in.”

“Which is?”

“Freedom.”

“Is freedom won by making others suffer as much or more than we do?”

“You twist everything,” Svitlana said. “You sound like Putin.”

Squealing with excitement, Kateryna raced back into the room.

“The men outside my window blew me kisses. Oh, my God, they’re so cute. They have rifles.”

“They’re our heroes,” Svitlana said.

“They’d be better off at dance class,” Andriy said.

Svitlana burned with anger. Or was it patriotism? Or hatred? Or all three?

“You really don’t understand, do you, Andriy?”

Within three days the family separated. Andriy and Svitlana said a strained goodbye at the railroad station. Kateryna, never before having traveled by train, looked forward to the trip to Poland. Before they boarded Svitlana kissed her husband lightly on the cheek.

“Glory to Ukraine. Glory to the heroes,” she said.

“Call me when you arrive,” he said.

Fearful with foreboding doom, Andriy never expected to see his wife and daughter again. As he turned from the slow moving train packed with women and children, the automatic rifle hanging from his shoulder slipped. Grabbing the barrel, he worried the used Kalashnikov he picked up that morning at the library might accidentally go off. That’s all he needed, to finally agree to fight and get shot and killed by one of his neighbors who mistook him for an invader. In the eyes of many he was a saboteur hindering the struggle with a bad attitude.

Andriy hated guns, fighting, violence, even arguing. Chess, reading, writing poetry and cooking Chicken Kiev (even spelling the city the Russian way in his handwritten recipe book) appealed to the deepest reaches of his spirit. Bold gold patriotism sounded nice but the concept got complicated, even lost, when you asked people to explain what responsibilities came with wrapping yourself in the Ukrainian flag.

Did the Porsche owners, mostly bankers and financial brokers who fled the country under cover of darkness carrying suitcases loaded with cash, bear the same burden his wife and daughter hauled in their knapsacks packed with stale bread, hard cheese rinds and what was left of Svitlana’s blood pressure medication? Did Russian Mafia bosses encounter difficulty getting out of the country? Did mob enforcers wearing thick gold chains stick around to help save the nation or escape with their mistresses to stroll the boardwalk in Brighton Beach, New York, by next weekend?

Checking his watch, Andriy looked for the truck that would transport him to his post, a bridge where he would stand guard against the coming tanks. Out of cigarettes, he wondered where he could buy more. Or steal more. Looting crossed his mind for the first time in his life. If need be he’d steal cigarettes if other looters left any for him. A citizen soldier now, Andriy could do anything; take anything, loot, pillage, rape, kill, torture all in the name of upholding liberty. A disturbing sense of power stunned his brain.

So did a sudden urge to empty his bowels. Where could he go? What would he do if he failed to find a toilet? He imagined his bloated intestines pushing against his growling belly. How many others must feel the same as they smelled themselves ready to explode? What if he just weakened and let go? Would anybody notice or shame him if they did? Andriy’s nation had turned to shit. So embarrassed he wanted to cry, he wondered what Svitlana would say if she knew of his dilemma? Worse, what would Kateryna say?

A Russian armored car turning the corner jolted Andriy from his thoughtful misery. Before he could turn and run, the vehicle detonated. A lone Ukrainian soldier ran across the street holding a smoking shoulder-fired anti-tank weapon. One Russian survivor struggled to stand in what was left of his still sizzling uniform and stumbled forward, heading straight for Andriy who pointed his rifle at the man’s face. Old for a soldier on any side, with soft cheeks that once shined rosy in winter, the Russian Marine coughed blood and spoke in Ukrainian.

“Please,” he said.

Andriy thought of calling Svitlana on the cellphone in his pocket, asking to speak with his daughter and telling Kateryna he had captured an enemy prisoner but didn’t know what to do with him. He’d tell her that more than anything in the world he wanted to take ballet classes with her when she returned home and peace resumed. In his mind he heard Kateryna laugh knowing he must be kidding when she said, “You are so funny.”

All around Andriy people screamed, fired guns, fell in the street. A Molotov cocktail flew through the air from a doorway. Watching the green glass sail high beneath a burning wick, Andriy wondered if his daughter helped make that bomb.

How could she do such a terrible thing?

Kateryna wore a peace symbol T-shirt.

She loves books.

Katetyna brought joy to the world.

At that very moment she must be practicing ballet in Warsaw.

Today is what many Irish-American Scranton residents and their cabbage-headed supporters call “Parade Day,” as if dawn in the Electric City broke as a high holy day they celebrate by pulling the nails from their hands, ascending into heaven and sitting at the right hand of God.

One problem: snow postponed today’s St. Patrick’s Day parade.

So there’s no better time to ask when in the name of Jesus Scranton Irish Americans will stop wearing kilts and fawning over bagpipe bands?

The Scots wear kilts.

Members of the British army, including the Scots, play bagpipes.

The Irish play a very different traditional musical pipe, unique Irish uilleann war pipes the English outlawed as part of their savage and failed attempt to eradicate the Irish culture and people. In ancient times Irish warriors painted their skin with wild berries and ran into battle naked. You didn’t see them posing in plaid kilts at weddings and parades and groveling over bagpipes.

Streaking actually dates back to the Garden of Eden which of course was located in the village of Cornamona, County Galway, where my grandfather was born.

No kilts there, lads.

So stop with the kilts and cheering Brit bagpipes, shallow amadon behavior that trivializes Irish history by supporting another nation and the Brit war machine that tried and failed to occupy Ireland forever – a monarchy that still holds onto six counties in the northeastern part of the island that one day will rise as a nation once again.

Uniting Ireland is where attention should lie, not in importing cigar-smoking out-of-town pipe bands (often made up with New York cops and firefighters who really should know better) with beer on their breath as they march into local bars and American Legion halls.

In 50 years of visiting Ireland, other than parade pretenders, I’ve never seen any Irish man or woman wearing a kilt. Here at home I’ve never seen the style in the countless Irish bars across America I have visited where Irish immigrants drink.

I’m also confident saying no Scranton Irish immigrant ever wore a kilt to work in the coal mines or even drinking their tea among lace curtain swells in President Joe Biden’s dull Green Ridge neighborhood when he was a kid and his old man held down a full-time job.

Let me repeat: British troops play bagpipes.

Colonial oppressors apparently need a soundtrack when they try to conquer native people. I picketed a Black Watch bagpipe concert in Hershey once to draw attention to that cruel Scottish infantry battalion of the Royal Regiment of Scotland that completed 11 combat tours and fought against freedom in Northern Ireland.

So knock it off.

Give Ireland back to the Irish.

Let the Scots take pride in their ancient heritage as they continue to fight for nationhood and take back their country from the Crown.

Let English war pipers pipe their last refrain as they lose control over their lost empire and realize once and for all that self-determination and not their pompous blowhard behavior defines liberty.

If my ruffian Irish attitude gets your kilt in a twist, may the road rise up to meet you and kick you right in your stage Irish arse.

Put that in your bagpipe and smoke it.

Speaking into the crackling microphone on the small plane’s radio, the Russian heavyweight wrestler spoke guttural Russian as we flew low and over the stacks of Three Mile Island.

“That ought to get somebody’s attention,” I said.

The wrestler’s laugh sounded coarse as Cossacks dancing on broken vodka bottles.

Ivan and his comrades had rolled into town for an exhibition just a few years after the 1978 TMI nuclear accident. Those men in the small aircraft had recently returned from combat tours in Afghanistan where “mujahideen” freedom fighters eventually handed them and their country a huge loss. The wrestlers came to the U.S. looking for a win, at least on the mats.

I was working for a small weekly newspaper in Harrisburg, Pa., and wound up onboard as part of a makeshift local tour that somehow sent us flying over the damaged nukes. The pilot and his 16-year-old son, two more Russians, Ivan and I packed the six-seater and took off.

I wondered if we overloaded the craft but nobody seemed to care. A few years later the same pilot and his son crashed into electric wires and died flying from the same airport where we took off.

But that day the friendship force flew high, the sky beaming bright blue among scattered clouds. That night, though, even under bright banquet hall lights, the atmosphere grew dark and stormy.

“Daddy hates Russians,” said the woman sitting beside me at a long table.

Shippensburg University hosted the dinner where the wrestlers prepared for an exhibition the next day. None of the Russians except their chaperone spoke English so the well-trained bruisers smiled and dug into their bloody prime rib.

Daddy just grimaced, hating Russians to his core but disciplined enough to control his ire. Don’t ask me why Daddy even showed up at the event but he did, clutching his greasy fork like a sharpened battle ax.

Depending where you lived in those days you quickly got the impression everybody hated Russians. Pennsylvania Dutch rural Central Pennsylvania overwhelmingly hated the anti-God Commies long before the breakup of the Soviet Union. At almost 71, I’m old enough to remember Soviet First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev threatening the West with the loosely translated words, “We will bury you.”

I also remember hiding beneath my grade school desk to prepare for nuclear attack. The teacher assigned me the responsibility of lowering the shades. Armed with comic books and chocolate Tastykakes, I also built a personal bomb shelter under the forsythia bush in my backyard.

Nobody in my neighborhood had yet heard the word “détente.”

But Daddy didn’t pose the worst threat to the Russians that night. The rock band hired for the occasion did. Redneck country rockers who normally play biker bars with bourbon on their breath can do a lot of damage to the goal of uniting nations.

Neither American stars and stripes nor the Soviet hammer and sickle hung on the wall behind the musicians that night. A huge Confederate stars and bars battle flag rippled from ceiling to floor as the band kicked into a Credence Clearwater Revival tune, maybe “Born on the Bayou” or “Run Through the Jungle.”

But when our long-haired, scraggly bearded lead singer in a cut-off denim vest finished the song, he pointed the microphone like a cocked Colt pistol, put on a kiss my grits smirk and addressed the Russians.

“We might one day all be killing each other,” he said.

Daddy’s ears perked up.

Ivan and the other Russians smiled.

I pushed back my chair, ready to spring into action at the first sign of a thrown beer pitcher.

The crowd got quiet as a den full of sleeping Siberian tigers.

“Yeah, we might one day all be killing each other,” he repeated.

Increasing tension pounded in a long few seconds.

“But not tonight,” he said.

I drained my beer and headed to the bar for more, relieved that war might come another day, but not that night a long time ago.

Russians recently started a new war in Ukraine.

If Ivan and his comrades are still alive, I wonder what they think. Maybe their children and/or grandchildren are leading the Russian charge, firing missiles, dropping bombs on civilians. Maybe some of their descendants married Ukrainians and live beneath bombs that drop from the sky. Maybe Ukrainian grandchildren make Molotov cocktails to throw and incinerate Russian soldiers.

The madness continues.

Thankfully, TMI failed to melt down.

Ivan and his comrades rode out Afghanistan.

Let’s now hope the world makes it through the threat of nuclear Armageddon. Or maybe “we might one day all be killing each other.”

Stop the war.

Now.