· web viewfrancine wrote something on a note pad, something brief, maybe only a word or two,...

Bauer / America Is A Gun

Writers: An indulgence here. I needed to rewrite Chapter Eight p 77-84 because of a change in an aspect of the plot later on; it’s here. You might recognize much of the front end of the chapter but the back end is majorly different, having to do with my newest discovery of homemade firepower. Then we pick up where we left off from last submission, new material coming with Chapters Thirteen and Fourteen, p 139-150. If anyone wants to see the future re DIY 3D plastic revolvers, check out this YouTube video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cn9931C3tXIWatch until the end, to prove that the gun works. Thanks. -- Chris

EIGHTOctober 1 Linus Pappas’ townhouse condo, Scranton, Pennsylvania

Days before final U.S. Presidential debate: 15

“First, let’s get this out of the way. What you’re about to do is not rocket science.”

From a blog post by a survivalist. Aaron had learned a thing or two about a thing or two

in the past few weeks. Simple things he’d only heard pieces about before, like how to get onto

the Internet, how to “google,” and what a blog was. How to buy things and have them shipped to

a residence. How to ask questions and receive feedback online on any topic, with no

repercussions, no judgment.

And how to build do-it-yourself semi-automatic rifles and handguns.

“No engineering degree? Don’t need one. No tools? No problem. All you need is $500.

Follow the instructions, and when you’re finished you’ll have a functional semi-automatic

weapon.”

And five hundred dollars was what he’d put up to get the secured credit card his son

Linus had helped him acquire. He had cash in a bank account from leftover Pappas family

money. Not much, but enough to channel some of it into secured credit cards that, Linus

suggested, he could use to build up his credit. Credit agencies didn’t know Aaron existed, and

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cn9931C3tXI


good credit was as essential to a person’s long-term financial wellbeing as taking care of one’s

physical health, according to Linus.

Aaron humored his son, but the direction Aaron was going, credit ratings and long-term

physical and financial wellbeing were things he’d no longer need to worry about.

The doorbell rang for another delivery. He accepted two packages, carried the boxes

downstairs to his digs, locked the door behind him even though no one else was home. Like a

dog in his crate, after nearly three decades in prison and too much solitary, Aaron drew comfort

from confinement. He opened the boxes.

In one was a polymer Glock frame, or more specifically, eighty percent of a Glock

handgun’s lower receiver. In the second was a chunk of aluminum, ninety bucks worth,

representing eighty percent of a lower receiver for an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. If fully

machined, these raw materials would be deemed firearms by federal standards. At eighty percent

milled or less, the Feds considered them paperweights.

In prison he’d heard about “ghost guns.” Un-serialized, unregistered weapons built at

home for personal use from gun parts not recognized individually as firearms by the U.S.

government. ‘Overheard’ about them was more accurate—few jailers spoke with him for most of

his time in prison. Two women guards, bullshitting with each other near his cell, spoke about a

new parolee they both thought was hot. Once on the outside, the paroled felon bought a ghost

gunner milling machine, learned how to build a handgun with it, shot her ex-lover, and was now

back in the system. Revenge, for that parolee at least, was worth re-incarcerating herself.

Aaron felt that parolee’s pain.

Ghost gunners. Commercially produced tabletop machinery with a one-cubic-foot

footprint capable of milling gun parts from a myriad of materials into AR-15s, Glocks, and other

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weapons. Slide in a block of steel, aluminum, or a polymer composite, run the robotic software

for a few hours, and out came a gun’s lower receiver. Affixing the rest of a gun’s parts to the

receiver would make it a fully functioning un-serialized firearm available to people not allowed

by law, i.e., convicted felons, to purchase a gun on their own. The hardware was pricey,

available on Amazon at sixteen hundred bucks. Too rich for Aaron’s blood. Add to that not

having enough lead time for him to learn how to use it, it wasn’t a good solution. He’d instead

find someone willing to mill the parts for him.

Easier than he’d thought in the lawless Internet swath known as the “darknet.” This crazy

Internet playland had come up during a discussion with Linus about Nigerian princes and

Russian brides, not guns.

“Do not go there,” his son had warned him. “Not good for you as a parolee, or as a

transgender person, or for me as your son, considering my involvement with the campaign.

Please, please, Dad, do not frequent the deep web when looking to buy things. Whatever you

need, as long as it’s legal, I’ll get it for you.”

Finding someone local with the equipment was just as easy. Poconos’ and other upstate

Pennsylvania hunters reveled in their backwoods, folksy existences on the fringes of civilization,

much like other mountainous areas of this great, big, free country: the Daniel Boones, the Davy

Crocketts, the Grizzly Adamses, the Euell Gibbenses. Add to this, there was no way to trace a

ghost gun’s millwork back to a ghost gunner machine. An inviting autonomy for folks who

owned them, looking either to make back their investment or to glom onto a cause.

“Sure I can do it for you,” was a darknet blogger’s return message. “Power to the

people brother and fuck that fucking chimp-cunt of a president and her bleeding gun-control

heart. Hell yes, come on over and we’ll get ’er done.”

3


But Aaron had then sent the darknet chat in a different direction. “Is a polymer gun

detectible?”

Two minutes passed, three, four, with no response, not even a “detectible how?” or

“explain yourself” clarification request, with Aaron thinking he’d queered the deal.

He keyed a follow up. “Detectible by metal detection equipment, to be specific. I am

doing research…”

His message was interrupted.

“I knew what you meant, brother. Research. Sure. But know this: to be a legal DIY, it

needs to be detectible. A minimum of 3.7 oz. of steel gets added to the build for the receiver for

this purpose. The Feds forced the ghost gunner folks to add that spec before they’d let the plans

back online. No steel, no deal.”

Not the answer Aaron was looking for. “Gets added by who?”

“By me, your friendly neighborhood ghost gunner.”

A showstopper. Shit.

Aaron’s turn to slow the chat down.

He needed time to think. His mouth moistened, his eyes suddenly hurt, were strained, like

they’d get while driving through a snowstorm at night. The keyboard, was it white or gray?

White before, gray now? What to do—

His chat room partner blinked first.

“It can be machined so the metal can be temporarily removed, btw.”

An opening. Aaron stayed silent, would let him talk. One minute, two, then…

4


“I won’t ask what you’re trying to do or why. You got your reasons, I got mine. But

there’s another solution. The MP599 WonderSix revolver. Brand fucking new all-plastic build.

Guy who designed it is a genius. Look it up online and get back to me in 30 min.”

It wasn’t even a darknet search. Aaron found it with a simple query in the Google search

bar.

“The World’s first 3D printed revolver. All plastic, including the revolving cylinder.

Double-action. Six trigger pulls, six .22LR-caliber shots. 100 percent 3D printed except for the

firing pin, which is a common roofing nail, and elastic bands in place of springs.” Further info,

again by way of new federal regs, “Each build needs to include steel in the grip or there can be

no deal. That makes the Ghost Gunner specs downloadable.”

The knock about 3D plastic guns was, hello, the gunpowder explosion. It could destroy

the layered, formed plastic and possibly kill the shooter while delivering or attempting to deliver

its single bullet. The WonderSix solution was to build the revolving resin cylinder in an upright

position while the frame was built in a flat position, to distribute the pressure of the bullet’s

explosion more evenly across the cylinder bore.

The steel rods went inside in the gun grip. But one thing was obvious: the unit could be

used without them. In its finished status, the firearm looked no more frightening than a Nerf gun.

This was the answer, far as Aaron was concerned. No eighty percent receiver bullshit, no

other gun parts. He’d need none of what he’d ordered online. All he needed was this plastic gun

and a box of .22 cartridges.

Back online with his darknet chat buddy, who’d identified himself as

Doodlemy9erdandy, and who answered Aaron’s most pressing question before he could ask it.

“Yes, I can build it. I already have.”

5


Aaron had only one additional chat request. “Build one for me.”

“Long as you promise to keep the steel rods in it so we both stay out of jail. And you give

me $500 cash.”

He was on a Lackawanna Transit System bus, on his way to nearby Justus, Pennsylvania, north

of Scranton, a one-hour, forty-five minute trip. There was some bounce to the ride and a severe

lean going through each of the curves, the bus needing new shocks, the buckled patches of road

needing new blacktop. In his backpack on the seat next to him were all his purchased gun parts

and their accessory kits plus four hundred bucks in cash. He’d give all of it to

Doodlemy9erdandy, two hundred bucks plus the gun parts in barter as a deposit, another two

hundred bucks on delivery.

The bus dropped him off at the Justus Corners stop, the last stop on the route, across from

a bank with a breathtaking view behind it: steep drop, a valley a few miles wide, and a mountain

ridge on the other side of the valley. He found a park bench, sat, and admired the landscape, his

cheap, cluttered backpack next to him.

A white male approached, short with chubby cheeks and sunglasses, and a snapback

Yankees ball cap on backward above a frayed University of Scranton Varsity baseball jacket.

The guy dropped heavily into the middle of the bench, close enough for a conversation.

“Hey. Friend. When’s the next bus to Scranton?”

“Three-forty p.m.,” Aaron answered.

“Thanks.” The Yankees fan stood, slung Aaron’s heavy backpack with the deposit in it

onto his back. Not a sophisticated exchange, but it was the one each of them was looking for.

Until the unscripted part:

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“You white?” Doodlemy9erdandy said, serious as all hell.

“My ethnicity? Uh, yeah, sure.”

“You look dark for a white guy.”

“Blame it on my Greek parents. Second generation Greek-American.”

“That’ll work. See you back here in a bit.”

Aaron left the bench after Doodle did and headed for a bookshop on foot to wait out the

bus schedule, keen to the departure time as he’d mentioned it, which was three hours from now.

He’d transcended having trust issues. He’d trust anyone once, and communicating with

this guy online anonymously, and now in person semi-anonymously, had produced only one red

flag, the ethnicity question. Most importantly, there were no gray flashes. But if this darknet

contact stiffed him—if he took his money and didn’t deliver—someway, somehow, Aaron would

find him, and he would use that indiscretion as a teaching moment that Doodlemy9erdandy

wouldn’t soon forget.

Coffee, books, anything to occupy his time at the bookshop. Aaron sipped and browsed

the store’s stacks, his mind hyperactive, unable to concentrate, a continuous loop of metaphors—

…the ghost gunner machine, birthing Aaron’s baby, a plastic revolver, casting and

assembling it from mated parts both male and female…

… creating a real boy…

…firearms made from polymers and plastics and resins, all sexless raw materials of

uncommitted purpose transformed into a new resolve, into oozing, newfound sex appeal…

…giving him time left over afterward in late October, after the deed, if he were still in

one piece, to finish the process, to finish the transition, to finish transforming himself…

… into a real boy…

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…and not because his father had wanted a son, no, for sure never that…

… it was because this was who Aaron was.

Aaron returned to the park bench halfway through the third hour. Doodlemy9erdandy arrived

with Aaron’s backpack.

“You’ll need to assemble it,” he said while Aaron peered inside the bag. “Directions

included. Tested it myself already. Enjoy.”

They shook hands, and Doodlemy9erdandy headed off with the other half of the fee,

hands in his pockets, returning the way he came. The Route 84 Lackawanna Transit bus

appeared near the bottom of the hill. Aaron slung his backpack, now nearly weightless, over his

shoulder. The bus arrived at the curb.

His contact turned, and walking backward he had some parting words while Aaron

waited for the bus doors to open. “Don’t end up in the news, my friend.”

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(New Material for this submission per above note.)

THIRTEENOctober 4 The Office of Dr. Francine Gamorra, MD, PsyD, Scranton, Pennsylvania

Number of days before the final U.S. Presidential debate: 12

Aaron’s days as an enigma were numbered. He was doing the work, living the life, taking the

medication. He was here, with his new psychiatrist, to get his head straight, to realign himself

with his goal.

The brick on opposite sides of the office was painted white. The exterior wall with its

long window had an unobstructed view of a Pocono low-rise mountain in the distance. A

Wandering Jew planter hung from the window’s curtain rod, no curtains. The room’s oval

oriental rug covered a section of the hardwood floor. Askew of the exterior wall behind it sat the

doctor’s desk, and askew of the desk, a leather desk chair. Askew of the chair, a sofa, these three

furniture pieces like offsetting baffles in a game of pinball. Aaron, sitting upright on the sofa,

faced psychiatrist Francine Gamorra, MD, specialist in gender studies, her thick black Buddy

Holly glasses on the bridge of her nose. Harpo, a full-sized white poodle, sat next to Aaron, his

head in Aaron’s lap. The doctor’s pet, but also a therapy dog. Can’t not pet a dog when its head

was on your lap, Aaron told himself. Aaron could feel the calm of it.

In prison, never a scene like this. Any dog—a mutt with three legs, or deaf, or blind, or

with a bad temper—any dog with him in prison would have helped, would have given some

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comfort versus the insanity of prison life. But no. No dogs. No human friends there either,

demented or healthy, for those multiple years in and out of solitary. Only rats.

No comfort in rats. And they were gray.

Such calm, Aaron felt, with Harpo next to him, helping him deal with all that was

anxious about his situation.

“This is why we explore all the angles, Aaron,” Dr. Francine said. “To make sure.”

“I’ve had more than thirty years of sure,” Aaron said.

Dr. Francine was a gatekeeper. Aaron was aware of this. One of the professionals a

person with Aaron’s intentions needed to visit, to double-check his priorities, to keep from

making a grievous mistake, one from which there was no recovery. Aaron was an in-between. In-

betweens were in limbo. A few more procedures forward, he’d become a bona fide male,

physically, forever and ever. But his positioning at the moment, with all this grayness swirling

around him—he knew there was something wrong. Something that wasn’t normal. Yes, it was

the gray. The motherfucking crazy-talking gray, a color that had become alive to him. Its taste,

like soot in his mouth, its smell as uncomfortably breathtaking as a self-cleaning oven—this kind

of mental assault was not supposed to be there. And its message to Aaron was, as a color, “Go

ahead, try to kill me.”

Colors did not live. And if they didn’t live, they couldn’t die. Common sense. But the

vessels that contained a color—they could be killed, except this wouldn’t kill the gray itself

because, well, you can’t kill what wasn’t alive to begin with.

Aaron was having trouble seeing this. Trouble separating the crazy from the sane.

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Separating the reality of a birthright, to be the gender he knew he was, not the one he’d

been packaged in. Except this visit to Dr. Francine could just as easily become a retreat as it

could become a step forward.

Prison solitary. It did things.

The crazy needed addressing first, before the gender misalignment. The why behind his

visit here, seeing a psychiatrist suggested by his son Linus. He’d arranged two full hours with

this shrink for him, before Linus’ trip out of town with the campaign, him not returning until

tomorrow. Fix the crazy whenever it reared itself, at whatever stage, with an in-between that was

about to end after thirty years. An important pause before hitting the reset button. Get it right, or

at least closer to right. That was what Dr. Francine was telling him, in preparation for Aaron’s

visit with a surgeon, also arranged by Linus, scheduled for tomorrow morning.

“There’s nothing wrong with a woman loving a woman carnally,” Dr. Francine said, “but

you already know that of course. And I’ll reiterate that there is nothing wrong with a transgender

man loving a woman either, or vice-versa. But it could become a disaster if the transgender man

finds he regrets the decision he made to change. That’s why it’s imperative that your decision not

be made under duress, or under the undue influence of any… unnatural mental gymnastics.”

Aaron wondered, daydreamed, whether yesterday’s mosque shooter had been influenced

by any “unnatural mental gymnastics.” Were colors alive to him, too?

Of course they were. The shooter saw dark-skinned people, or at least people not white

like him, as threats, and he slaughtered them.

“But dark isn’t a color, it’s a shade,” the doctor said. “The shooter is a racist. Quite

different than the problem you’re having, Aaron.

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“So let’s talk about colors and other amorphous, inanimate things. Let’s establish one

thing we can both agree on, that a color cannot, technically, be alive. Are you with me so far?”

“Yes, but…”

In solitary the gray had seeped in from the floor, rose like flooding water. It dropped

down from the ceiling like a spidery ninja. It surrounded him, had overpowered him, bled into

his pores, invaded his breathing, crawled into his ears, was sometimes thick as peanut butter,

other times as thin as plastic wrap, a film that stifled his breathing, clouded his eyes and his

mind. And now, outside prison, away from his gray confinement, he had become its vessel, had

brought the damned disease with him, and it pulsed from him in gray waves, could envelop his

oppressors, grip and hold them in place while he best decided their fate. “… And that’s the way

it is for me, Doctor.”

“So you want to hurt the gray because of what it’s done to you.”

“Sometimes. Yes. More than hurt it.”

Silence. Dr. Francine wrote something on a note pad, something brief, maybe only a

word or two, returned her gaze to her client. “I think—”

She blinked, more like an eyelid flutter, a tell that this discussion had made her nervous,

but the flutter corrected itself quickly, turned into a stare.

“I think now is not the time to make this life-changing, no-turning-back decision, Aaron,

in my professional opinion. Now is the time to… evaluate your mental condition. I implore you

to wait. No gender reassignment surgery yet, please, either up top or on bottom. No surgical

consults yet either. Get yourself mentally healthy first. Then, once you’ve leveled off and

wrestled these demons into a semblance of submission, I’ll help you in any way you want. I do

feel that your psychological makeup, your need to complete your transition, is real and is

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merited, and I will support it. But please wait while you—we—address your blending of reality

and fantasy. You should address the feelings that cause this manifestation of these vengeful

impulses. Recognize that once you finish the transition you will have joined a courageous, but

marginalized, population. One that doesn’t need the negative sensationalism these inclinations

could cause. I’d like to meet with you three times a week over the next month, to dig deeper, to

try to resolve these… unhealthy perceptions. Can we do that?”

This time, the fluttering eyelids and eventual stare were Aaron’s. After a moment, “Yes.”

Dr. Francine scribbled more notes.

Aaron made mental notes of his own. He had a competing solution. His original solution.

One he wouldn’t mention to the doctor. Should all else fail, the other way of handling this

debilitating deference to the gray was an easy default: destroy its host, its personification, no

matter its celebrity. Destroy what couldn’t be killed by murdering the vessels that carried it.

Senator Quimby Carlson was one such vessel. Aaron’s accuser. His enemy. The

embodiment of the gray. Gray, on gray, in gray.

Based on Aaron’s personal timetable he and Dr. Francine had twelve days, by way of

four or maybe five more visits, for the two of them to figure this thing out in a non-malevolent

manner. Otherwise, Aaron decided now—or rather reconfirmed—that the way he’d originally

imagined fixing it would remain the default.

“I know I’ve asked this before,” the doctor said, “but I’ll ask it again. Are you any danger

to yourself?”

Aaron, again with an eyelid flutter, until he willed himself into a stare: “No.”

An honest answer, far as Aaron was concerned.

Not to himself at least.

13


Inside a Scranton coffee shop Aaron sipped from a take-out cup, watching the local news

overhead, needing one more stop in town today, to a music store, the reason being, on paper at

least, he might want to take trumpet lessons.

From his conversation on the phone earlier with the music store’s proprietor: “Dizzie

Gillespie, Wynton Marsalis, Herb Alpert, Chuck Mangione… my high school jazz band, all a

long time ago. I’ve been away a while but now I’m back, and the jazz groove, it’s, ah, calling

me. My son’s telling me to go for it. Never too late, right?”

But the music store stop would need to wait while he absorbed what was on the coffee

shop’s TV. The male reporter’s voiceover had every customer at the counter looking up at the

screen in the corner of the shop. “Yesterday’s alleged mosque shooter’s name is Wilson Link,

age thirty-six. Here we see him being led from the jailhouse to a waiting cop car for transport to

the courthouse.”

Location and timing per the screen’s news banner was Downtown Scranton, PA, live.

Then the screen split. The other half showed the FBI at another location, an apartment building,

leaving it with evidence bags and boxes in tow.

“Here’s footage from Clarks Summit, PA,” per the voiceover from the same reporter,

“the FBI at the alleged shooter’s apartment. What’s known is they confiscated what appear to be

multiple three-D printers, some computers, and parts for rifles and handguns. Tune into our

special report tonight titled ‘D-I-Y Semi-Automatics: Is your neighbor building his own

firearm?’”

Words from a few days earlier, an admonition, rose up, slamming Aaron like a brick to

the head: “Don’t end up in the news, my friend.” Aaron’s Internet gun enthusiast hook-up in

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Justus at the bus stop. Snapback Yankees cap, Scranton baseball jacket. Three-D printed ghost

gun revolver named WonderSix. Facebook user Doodlemy9erdandy hadn’t followed his own

advice, was now in handcuffs and getting stuffed into a Crown Vic.

Aaron’s takeaway, still gawking at the TV: they took the shooter’s computers. Darknet or

not, how long before they identified his contacts? His customers? Aaron himself?

Back to the scene at the mosque, and a hot mike comment to the reporter from the state

trooper who handled the shooter’s gun: “These fucking killing machines…”

Aaron sipped, watched the interview, this law enforcement type decrying the use of semi-

automatic rifles in the hands of civilians. Indiscriminate killing power; a devastating military

solution in search of a non-existent civilian menace.

He left the coffee shop and walked. If he hustled he could get to the music store before it

closed.

15


FOURTEENOctober 4 South Philadelphia, outside Lincoln Financial Field

Number of days before the final U.S. Presidential debate: 12

“I already checked,” Owen said, “she’s bringing the Mustang, and we’re eating barbecue. All’s

well with tonight’s rodeo, Judge.”

Late Tuesday afternoon, nearly three hours into their ride, and Judge and deputies were

chauffeuring Owen to his dinner rendezvous with Harriet Mules. They left I-95, were two blocks

from the stadium.

It was one day past the Allentown mosque massacre. The counting-forward from each of

these slaughters—sixteen years since Columbine, six since Aurora, eighteen months since

Raging Creek Elementary, the others in between—their frequency wore heavily. On Judge,

personally on Geenie, and now also personally on Judge’s BFF LeVander, who’d lost close

friends and fellow worshippers to the mosque tragedy.

J.D., Judge’s crated German Shepherd, shook and jittered and growled while he dozed in

the rear of the van. Judge glanced in the rear view. Dog dreams. Jerking legs, snorts, more

growls. J.D. was mauling the bad guys, chomping on wrists, shoulders, legs, sinking his teeth

into crotches. Or maybe it was the call of the wild, a canine with his ancestral pack in the middle

of the hunt. A resting Maeby snorted a few sympathetic growls in wild animal support from

behind the driver’s seat. These rugged images were ruined when doggy passed-gas wafted

16


forward to the front seats, the impact of a three o’clock feeding of dry doggie nuggets from a

bag. Someone needed to be walked asap. Judge and Owen powered their windows down in self-

defense.

Judge choked out a response to Owen’s comment about the dinner choice. “More

barbeque? Didn’t get enough at Sunday’s game?”

“Dude. I’m from Texas. Can’t never get enough barbecue if you’re from Texas. She says

she’s got a place she likes.” Nothing but the best, Owen proclaimed for Harriet, his newest

“objet de mon affection.”

“Didn’t know I sprechened ze French, did you, Judge?”

Owen, so expressive and maybe over the top about his prospects, humming even, was

something Judge had no grudge against. Might be a date, might not. Regardless, Owen

considered it one.

“No, I didn’t,” Judge said, “and I’m guessing you don’t really sprechen much of anything

except Texan, so ix-nay with the French-nay around her. You’ll embarrass yourself.”

“Au contraire, Monsieur Drury, mon ami. Bet you didn’t know that ‘barbecue’ is actually

a French word.”

“And with good reason, because it’s Spanish. How do you say ‘crash and burn in your

own bullshit’ in French, Owen? Just be yourself and lose the second language. Go with what

brung you. Hell, who knows why she likes you, drunk as you got during the game, but she does.”

Owen spotted his other objet de affection and pointed. The navy-blue-and-silver-striped

Boss 302 Mustang, his automobile mistress of many years, sat idling on the street just outside the

Linc. “Man, I am loving this. Beautiful woman, beautiful car, together with me on a beautiful

night. Here we go. Don’t wait up.”

17


Judge pulled up behind the Mustang, turned off the ignition. “I need to talk with her first,

before I walk the dogs—”

“What? No. C’mon, Judge, you’re not my chaperone. Don’t be a dick…”

“Relax. It’s about our little… ‘gun project.’ Only take a minute.”

‘Gun project.’ Owen’s drunk-speak mention of the art heist, the vagaries of which had

been conveyed to Harriet the last time they met. The planning was getting its final touches.

Owen’s interest was now piqued. “Really? No shit. Really? What about it?”

“I talked it over with Geenie and Dody. They both think they’ll like Harriet, so she’s in if

she wants to be.”

Owen’s smile turned white-strips bright. “Hot-damn! You just made this cowboy as

happy as all giddy-up, Judge. You know what this means?”

Owen removed his black Stetson, settled it on his lap. A palm chop to the top of the hat

reestablished a soft dent, adding to it a silly, erect trouser-trout image. Beaming, he added a hip

thrust. He answered his own question before Judge could.

“Means I’m getting laid tonight, brother. Hoo-eee! Let’s go tell ’er so she can commence

with the being thankful part.”

“I swear to God, I don’t know you,” Judge said.

Harriet’s response to the invite was a hell yes. Judge stepped back from the car window, watched

as she caught rubber with the Mustang and sped off, Owen belted in tight as an astronaut, on

their way to the South Philly Smökhaus barbecue restaurant inside the Bok Building on Dudley

Street.

18


With the dogs walked, Judge was back on the road on another leg of this visit, a half-hour

drive out of Philly, west to Chadds Ford, his destination a return visit to the Brandywine River

Museum of Art. The museum closed at five. It was now close to six, the front entrance hall still

bright with its interior lighting, but with the museum locked up tight. His text to curator Christine

Adamsky got him buzzed through a rear loading dock entrance. Once inside—

“There,” Ms. Adamsky said, pointing.

Five three-by-four-foot flat packages wrapped in brown cardboard and securely taped sat

leaning against a workbench in the dock area. Judge lifted the edge of one package to gauge its

weight, some of which came from firm, pointed-edge wooden framing, some from the packing

materials, and heavy enough that it could use another set of hands. Ms. Adamsky grabbed the

other end, said, “Let’s go.”

They walked each bundle outside one after the other, down a set of stone steps, and over

to the van. A side-door deposit left the packages flat on the van’s floor, no danger of damage due

to a professional-grade packing job, long as Maeby his canine stayed away from them, and she

would. J.D, still crated, lifted his head with each deposit and dropped it back down to rest it

against his paws, unimpressed. With the packages loaded, the visit was over.

“Much appreciate this, Ms. Adamsky,” Judge said, shaking her hand. “But five seems

like overkill, doesn’t it?”

“Christine,” she said, correcting him. “Maybe. No idea how good this guy is. He might

need a few trial runs. Say hi to Geenie, Mister Drury.”

“And I’m Judge. ‘Christine’ it is. Will do. See you when I see you.”

Which would be in ten days or less, according to the project timetable, when they

expected he’d need to make this same trip to make a delivery.

19


“Yes you will. Safe trip.”

Eleven p.m. Judge was finished eating his pub dinner at Jon’s Bar and Grille, corner of South

Street and S. Third Street in South Philly, the birthplace of Larry Fine of the Three Stooges.

Judge ate outside, under a painted mural of brillo-headed Larry with bug eyes and open-mouthed

grin, in a checkerboard jacket leaning into a violin under his chin. Judge retrieved his phone.

Owen didn’t answer on the first ring, or the second, or the sixth, was maybe the eighth.

His hello was a bit off, more like a grunt.

“I’m ready to pick you up, Owen. You and Harriet finished?”

“Wrong thing… to ask… a guy right about now, Judge. Answer’s no.”

In Judge’s head was the standard you’re-shitting-me incredulity that materialized when

dealing with Owen and his proclivity for moon-doggery. “Look, this is last call for a ride back

north tonight, Owen. Otherwise you’re on your own. I’ll be at the Smökhaus parking lot in five

minutes. Be ready or I’m leaving without you.”

“Don’t you… fucking… dare… come over here looking for me. We’re busy. I’ll figure it

out on my own. Bye… unhhh…”

The walk of shame for Owen late at night on a Philly city street could be beautiful thing

to behold. Judge smiled at the thought. Should he head over to the restaurant and search for them

in the parking lot, against Owen’s wishes?

To embarrass him, yes, but to keep him from himself, fuck no.

“Suit yourself. I’m outta here.”

20

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