“So, you’re, like, dead. Right?”

Sizzle and pop six rashers of bacon on the little electric griddle, pushed about by tongs. “Melissa,” says Gloria, there by the credenza. She’s pulled on an oversized blue and grey hoodie, St. Mary’s Football, it says, across the front. Undefeated Since 1859.

“What,” says Melissa. Sat on the floor beneath the dust-glazed window in her motorcycle jacket, and leaned beside her a greatsword in a bulky scabbard of iron and dark wood and grey felted wool, the faceted pommel at the end of its long hilt laid up against a murky pane. “It’s not like he’s a hundred and seventy, a hundred and sixty, and lying there, looking like that.”

Big Jim snorts, laid back against the pillows piled at one end of the high thick mattress, wrapped in a corduroy kilt, bare ankles crossed. “I’m as quick as you’d seem to see me,” he says.

“I mean, you’re the guy. You’re the reason we have the Shanghai tunnels.”

“Hardly,” he says, and the merest shake of that big head.

“No, I mean, that’s so cool!”

“They were never as extensive as the tales would have it.”

“I took the tour. I’ve been down there, you know?” Leaning forward, hands on her knees, “Jim Turk’s a legend,” she says. “Shanghaied a fucking wooden Indian. Found a basement full of guys dead from drinking ether, or formaldehyde, or whatever, and hired ’em all off to a captain before they were cold! You’re saying you did that?” but the shake of his head’s more vehement, “No,” he’s saying, “that were the doing of Bunko Kelly, and I’ll not have that bounder’s sins totted up in my ledger.”

“You’ve been alive a hundred and seventy years.”

“Melissa,” says Gloria a touch more sharply, flicking bacon onto a paper plate.

“I’ve read the obituary, printed on the occasion,” says Big Jim. “Died in Tacoma, in ninety-five. Of a broken heart, no doubt.” Looking down, away from them both. “Kate gone on the five years before, and it already being but certain my boys would never hold together what I’d built.” Gloria stumps away from the credenza, thrusting the plate at Melissa, who looks up, takes it with a nod. “I don’t recall a moment of Tacoma,” Big Jim looks up, to Melissa, then Gloria. “What I do remember, like the last shred of a dream, is a little bell, jingling, above my head.” Gloria’s stood there, tongs in her hand. Melissa lifting a slice of bacon to her lips. “I was in the front room of a dilapidated cobbler’s shop, and in my hand a tattered Persian slipper, half its spangles gone, embroidery threadbare, well worn by someone else’s foot, much smaller than my own,” and he waggles his hairy toes. “I’ve no notion where it came from, to be found there in my hand, but I held it up to the cobbler, who nodded and went to fetch something from the back of his shop. Porter, his name was. William Porter. I haven’t thought of that in, in quite some time.” Melissa, chewing slowly, listening intently. Gloria headed past the corner of the mattress to the credenza, her back to him. Wrapping the uncooked bacon in a plastic bag. “He returned,” says Jim, “and set on the counter between us a boot, and a slipper, for all the world as if they was a pair. The boot being one of those heeled and tooled absurdities they wear in Pendleton, to get up fancy, and do so pinch the toes. But the slipper? The Persian slipper, yellow and orange threadbare, and more of its spangles remaining, perhaps, but otherwise a match for the one I held. They’d been worn, of a morning, by the same two delicate feet, fetching tea, perhaps, or every night to a sweet soft bed, that might’ve been my own dear Kate’s.” A wistful shrug of a smile beneath that mustache. “But I did know, even as I reached to pick it up, I knew, sure as the shilling at the bottom of a glass. I was crimped, to a captain unknown, for a duration as yet unspecified.”

“Do you still have them?” says Melissa. “The slippers?” There’s a knock at the door. “Who the fuck is it?” snarls Gloria.

“In a manner of speaking,” says Jim to Melissa, as he’s getting to his feet. “Gloria?” says someone through the door.

“It’s Anna,” says Gloria, to Jim, who’s padding across the floor. “It’s Anna!” she says, again. He opens the door with an unctuous fillip, “Welcome, m’lady,” his jaunty intonation. Anna smartly dressed in herringbone steps into the room, mouth open with what she’s about to say shut tight as she takes in what’s about, shirtless and barefooted Jim, bare legged Gloria stooping to stuff the bacon away in a little refrigerator, Melissa sat by her sword. “I’m,” she says, “sorry. I can come back,” narrow lenses of her spectacles blanked by strengthening morning light.

“You’re here,” says Gloria, getting to her feet, “you’re here. What is it.”

Anna sighs, crisply. Holds up a sheet of official-looking letterhead, creased in thirds. “Apparently, this came yesterday. Did you see it?”

“I don’t know, maybe, probably not,” says Gloria, as if ticking off a list. Big Jim’s settling himself on the mattress. “It’s from Development Services,” Anna’s saying. “They’ve had a complaint regarding, as they put it, illegal occupancy. They’re going to send a Fire Inspector to, ah,” turning it about so she might read from it, “ensure the building is regulated according to its approved use, and the structure maintained in conformance with the Building Code in effect at the time of approval.”

“Okay,” says Gloria, blinking, after a moment. “They can talk to the lawyers. We own the building now. We own the whole damn block. They can,” an irritated wave, “whatever!”

“The same lawyers who do serve the sworn enemy of our lady?” says Anna.

“Well, that’s a,” says Gloria, “a conflict of interest.”

“And in what court would you plead that?” snaps Anna, but then almost immediately withdraws the edge, “you’re tense,” she says, folding away the letter. “You’ve had no coffee yet. I’ll have some brought.”

“I don’t need,” Gloria starts to say, but there’s a wrenching scrape of iron on glass, “Jesus,” blurts Gloria, wheeling, “do you have to bring that fucking thing everywhere you go?”

Melissa, still sat upon the floor, resettles the enormous scabbarded sword she’s just kept from toppling over. “Sorry,” she says. “It’s not like I can just, you know. Make the fucking thing disappear. Like you guys.”

“Melissa,” says Gloria, and there’s the edge now, in her voice, but a shuffle in the doorway interrupts. She turns, glaring, to see Anna stepped out of the way of a stoop-shouldered man in a red apron, and in his hands a gilt tray laden with tall and steaming paper cups. Anna takes one with a smile. Limping over toward the mattress, he extends the tray toward reclining Jim, who takes the proffered cup.

“Right,” says Gloria, with a sigh. “Coffee.”

“Coffee?” says Melissa, scrambling to her feet, and scrambling to catch the scabbard again, scraping it back into balance against the glass. “Can I have some?”

He’s already sweeping the tray toward her, turning it so that one of the two cups left is ready to her reach. Another bustle in the doorway as she takes it, “Majesty?” Anna’s saying, and Big Jim’s getting to his feet, and Gloria closes her eyes.

“Good morning,” says the Queen, stepping into the room, a loose white satiny robe unbelted over white pyjama pants, black curls artlessly loose, bare feet smeared with gold. “How nicely convenient to find you all together.”

“What’s up,” says Gloria, but the Queen’s stepped up to the red-aproned man, “Is that,” she says, suddenly delighted, “Cragflower! Could it be you?”

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

“My lady,” he says, looking down and down, tray trembling just in his hands.

“You served my mother,” she says, “you’ve served us, always, graciously, and well. It is a tremendous comfort to find you with us in this new circumstance.”

“My own name,” he says, wonderingly, as she takes the last cup from the tray, “never sounded so lovely, in my ears.”

“Anna,” says the Queen, turning away, “we would hold less of a court today, than a cabinet. Make some room ready for the purpose.”

“Majesty,” says Anna, with a nod.

“Don’t we need Marfisa? For a quorum?” says Gloria. “Before we start changing things up?”

“The upper gallery could be,” Jim starts to say, his words falling apart at looks from Gloria and Anna. “Dearest Suzette,” the Queen’s saying, as she turns to Gloria, who’s stuffed her hands in the pockets of her hoodie, mouth snarled in a pout, but she doesn’t look away from those green eyes limpid in this light, from the Queen’s unreadably pleasant mien, and she doesn’t flinch when the Queen lifts up that paper cup of coffee. After a moment, she takes it. Anna looks away.

“The upper gallery will do,” says the Queen, turning to Jim, who, startled, bows. “Make it ready for a light luncheon. Good morning to you all.”

Melissa says, “Ysabel?” But the Queen’s already stepped out of the room, into the hall, away.

•

Over the brightening trees, away across the river, before hills already lifted into oncoming day, shadows wash away in strengthening gusts of light, and the windows of the houses that line and climb them gleam white and silver, though the towers of downtown still steeped in dregs of dawn catch smoldering sullen brilliant red magenta glaring yellow and that wild mad light between them all too much itself to ever fit the rounding name of orange, sheets and flares that shrink to sparks but do not dim, shining more fiercely as they’re compressed into the corners of so much window-glass and framing steel and aluminum resolving as the shadows about them drain away to differentiate shapes and styles, red brick crowned by a ziggurat, high coolly white the narrow windows of it dark, untouched, or all of dim glass all aflame, and the roof of it a tilted solar panel, there a spindled crane by a naked elevator shaft, skeletal articulation of a new building scaffolded about it, red-topped sandstone already shouldered into warm daylight, and there, off to the side, pink granite and amber glass clutch the last colors of dawn as full day breaks.

“That,” says Abby Tinker, “was a good one.” A long crackling drag from what’s left of a hand-rolled cigarette. Curls of smoke leak from a corner of her mouth, a nostril, till she blows it out, a greyly olive cloud. “Not many of those left.”

She leans over to set the cigarette on a glass saucer there on the low table between them, of worn wood weathered and grey like their Adirondack chairs. Marfisa doesn’t unfold her hands from her lap to reach for it. Creased and empty, tucked beneath them, a rubbery, floppy mask in the shape of a horse’s head.

“It’ll start raining, soon,” says Abby Tinker. “Maybe today. Tomorrow for sure. You ever notice that?” Knob-knuckled fingers loosen the blue knit scarf about her neck. “We get a blast of summer, right at the beginning of May, enough to get a taste for it, and then,” shrugging her shoulders swaddled in a puffy blue coat, under that scarf, over a fleecy sweatshirt. “Rain settles back for another month or so. Rose Festival’s coming up,” she laughs, “I swear. The dozen years I’ve lived here, ain’t never been a Rose Festival wasn’t absolutely soaked in rain.”

Marfisa nods, or shrugs. Legs stretched out before her on the chair’s extended footstool, long grey socks with white stripes over her knees, black running shoes propped out over dew-spangled grass. The chairs and the low table between them have been set out in the middle of the lawn atop the roof, the sun rising behind them, all of downtown spread before them, away across the river. Abby Tinker leans over to pluck up the cigarette for one more savoring suck over the saucer, holding the smoke with a beatific bob, eyes closed behind Coke-bottle lenses. She crushes the spark of it against the glass and sits back, seeping smoke like steam until she opens her mouth to let the last of it escape. “Very,” she says. “Nice.”

Marfisa smooths the mask in her lap, rubber puckered about the molded shapes of its snout, its teeth, its goggled eyes. The stiff black mane of it pricking her knees. “But Eddie will be here soon.”

“That he will,” says Abby Tinker. “Eddie will be here soon.”

Leaving chairs and table, saucer and roach, they head back across the lawn, Abby Tinker, house slippers a-flap over thick wool socks, clinging to Marfisa’s proffered elbow with leather hands. One of the few windows in the back brick wall ahead has been left open, drawn curtains a gauzy scrim over the darker room within. Abby Tinker crouches before it, leaning against Marfisa in a complexly hesitant maneuver that results in her head ducked under the sash, a slippered foot over the sill, shifting her inconsiderable weight with a slip and a scuff from without to within.

“It’s a wonderful thing, having this outside my window,” says Abby Tinker, drawing the curtains back with her inside. “He worries too much, Eddie does.”

“He’s very good to you,” says Marfisa.

“Yes, he is. Eddie is,” says Abby Tinker. “But so is this. Thank you.” The light on her glasses makes it hard to say if there’s a mischievous twinkle there, to point her vaguely pleasant smile. “Maybe next time.”

Marfisa shrugs, and nods, gets to her feet. Helps Abby Tinker close the window between them.

•

Sitting tailor-fashion in a snug pair of boxer briefs, ink rippling her shoulders and her back, intricate etchings of leaves and branches, flowers and vines, and peeping from them here and there beady eyes, beaks and snouts, she’s leaned forward, intent on one more shuffle of the cards, tap tap into an even deck. The floor and the walls to either side angled up in an atticked ceiling all painted the same clean eggshell blue, seamless, depthless, gleaming. She turns over the first card, fnap, a single unmarked, unmarred color, a dull flat sheenless grey. A second card set beneath it, a featureless field of brownly olive green. A third to the right of them both, magenta lurid against the eggshell floor. She regards them a moment, finger pensive against her lip.

A fourth card to the left, a rich dark hunter’s green. The fifth, laid in the middle of them all, pearly silver, faintly iridescent. She closes her eyes. Sweeps up the cards and returns them to the deck.

Dressed now in a tank top and loosely flowing pants, Ellen Oh descends a grand dark staircase into a low-ceilinged room columned and beamed in dark wood, and none of the distant windows filled with leafy daylight as bright as the television in the corner, surrounded by beanbags, a low armchair, a ratty recliner, a couple of guys watching the wheeling blue that fills the screen, a camera chasing something over a lushly windswept field of grass. Past them into a long and narrow kitchen, where she takes a chocolate brown bowl from the dish rack by the sink, and a spoon, then opens one of the towering upper cabinets on a colorful clutter of clipped or twisted plastic bags, stuffed with all manner of chips, nuts, dried fruit. She pulls out a baggie of toasted peanuts, then opens a squatly yellow refrigerator on a profusion of bottles and cans, half-closed takeout boxes and plastic tubs of leftovers, to fish a single scallion from a drawer. Lays her armload on the counter before a blinking pressure cooker. Unlocking the lid of it, she scoops steaming white congee into the bowl. A rattling staccato with a great big knife renders the scallion to rounds and shreds of green and white that she sprinkles on top, followed by a scant handful of peanuts.

Bowl in hand, back to the low and dark-beamed room, the wash of wind from the speakers scattered about, and pleasantly hesitant notes plucked from an unseen guitar. “I don’t get the point,” says the one guy perched on the recliner, scratching gingery stubble on his chin.

“There’s your problem,” says the guy on the beanbag, tilting the controller in his hands left, then right, proxily steering something. The screens filled with flower petals, red and white and yellow and pink, tumbling in a gust along a line of immobile windmills.

“Tell me something,” says Ellen. “The first thing that pops in your head. Whatever it is. Go.”

The guy on the recliner frowns. The guy on the beanbag tips his head, intent on the screen, the petals, “Well,” he says, “Abby Tinker – ”

“A hatchet’s a tool in most of Oregon, but it’s a weapon in Portland, and you’ll get cited if you open carry,” says the other guy. He points at the screen, where the petals flutter to the ground in a burst of sunset light, and the turbines slowly start to spin in the background. “Either you just won,” he says, “or you lost.”

“Yeah,” says the guy on the beanbag. “That is definitely your problem.”

“What were you going to say, Dan?” says Ellen, taking a bite of congee.

“I, ah,” he’s setting the controller aside, “I don’t know.”

“Tell me,” says Ellen, swallowing. “It was your first thing.”

“Abby,” he says, “Tinker, a minor writer, a Black writer, of the, ah, feminist, New Wave, ess eff,” he shrugs, “she, she lives here. In Portland.” His bulky grey hoodie says RCTID.

“Where,” says Ellen.

“It was,” says Dan, holding up a hand, “this introduction, she wrote, to – ”

“Where, here,” she says, spooning up more congee. “Not where you saw it.”

“I know, I just,” says Dan, shaking his head, “it’s an apartment, over an old-skool Italian restaurant. She writes about how all the Reed kids go there, looking for Goodfellas, when meanwhile the real Mafia drinks at Hung Far Low’s.”

“Where,” says Ellen.

“I’m,” says Dan, closing his upheld hand in a fist. “Inner Eastside,” he says. “She talks about seeing the fireworks, over downtown. And there’s another Italian place next door, Costa, Spiaggia, something like that. She says how there’s two Italian restaurants, on this one block, and only one Ethiopian restaurant in the entire city.” Lowering his hand to his knee. “At the time. Anyway. That’s it. That’s all I’ve got.”

“That’s enough,” she says. “I’ve got somewhere to go, and something to keep in mind.” Dropping the spoon in the bowl, turning back toward the kitchen.

“Huh,” says Dan.

“Gimme,” says the guy on the recliner, reaching for the controller. “I want to try it.”