Instead of sleeping, I turn on the Port of Los Angeles livestream. I twist the vertical blinds shut and sit on the couch. Tugboats and cargo ships float in and out of frame. I start this ritual every day at 5:30 a.m. until my next shift starts. My apartment–a studio–glows blue and white, daylight without daylight.

“12 watching now”

I’ve never seen that number higher than 20.

At 11:00 p.m., my boss texts me names, ages, and addresses–three in Grapevine and two in Las Colinas. I throw on gray sweats and a hoodie. I ditched the cape a long time ago.

The air is all Novembered and the moisture traps circles of light around the streetlamps.

Cristian swore he had seen St. Elmo’s fire. I never saw it in all my years at sea.

There are three other cars on President George W. Bush Turnpike. Two have pink Lyft stickers in their rear windows. Airport bound.

I tried Lyft for a while, Uber Eats too. There was too much temptation.

The radio makes me dizzy so I close it. When I signal to merge onto 114, the clicks, clipped and measured, fill the car like a conductor tapping their podium in an empty auditorium for an orchestra that never starts.

Is it close the radio? Turn off? Make off? Phrasal verbs are still difficult for me even after all my time here.

I unlock the storage shed behind the strip mall and tabulate the ages my boss sent me. 21 + 40 + 40 + 30 + 21

My boss tells me these are the “big ones,” the birthdays you’ll remember. So she tells me. At most, my truck can fit 50 flamingos. I will finish 21 year olds first. I grab 2 “WE’RE TICKLED PINK! IT’S             ’S BIRTHDAY” signs and the vinyl letters to spell out the clients’ names.

C H R I S T A

S T E V I E

I toss the hollow birds into the truck bed along with the double-pronged skewers I impale them on. Tarp-shrouded, the flamingos rattle while I drive to the first victim.

866 Pinehurst Dr Grapevine, TX

I have to count down the house numbers carefully because all the houses look the same. Red bricks, limp flags, two car garage entrances, withered crape myrtles and Bradford pears. The street is empty, and this is why the job is perfect for me. I’d gotten sloppy in recent years. The chase was no longer worth the meal.

Sometimes I see urban coyotes. Sometimes they taste alright. Sometimes they are too underfed to be food.

The vinyl letters are splayed over my passenger seat.

A woman in my court used to read my tea leaves. Tasseografia we called it. She once told me that my reign would be unending. I do not know how she would read the scattered letters.

Either way, I shiver and curse at the haloed streetlamps.

A drunk driver careens into the Whataburger drive-thru line. His face glows orange under the awning as if he were spitted and twirling over a fire.

I can digest solid foods; that’s a common misconception. In fact, a honey butter chicken biscuit sounds divine. I’d use the drive thru, but I’d rather not kill my streak. It is difficult to tell when inspiration will strike. I open my phone and order the food through Uber Eats.

I used to have more applications on here. Men will just give you their address these days. Applications are how I met the brawny ex-steelworker and his 80-year-old husband, the architect who liked to fuck at construction sites, and the flight attendant with a tattoo sleeve of all his dead pets. He was like a three-legged street coyote: too underfed to be food. Otherwise, Toronto was what my flamingo boss would call a bonanza.

“We’ve got 50 year old twins, and, get this, they’re neighbors! Bless their husbands, but we’ve hit the jackpot! It’s a bonanza!”

Leaving Toronto was inevitable.

Did I reform because I was too full or too bored? I often ask myself this question.

Back at the apartment, I take a legal pad from the bookshelf where my fridge used to be. I add a tally mark. On the linoleum, a square of brown grime frames the bookshelf, the bookshelf where I keep my journals, encyclopedias, and Rosetta Stones that are not actually stones. It is a more efficient use of space. I dumped the fridge in the river so it would be harder to keep trophies. The fridge is a victim of reform.

The livestream is still playing. “8 watching now”

Container cranes tower over a fireboat. Boats have not changed much since the Greeks. They’ve just gotten bigger. All boats need to do, really, is float. Some shoot. The boat on screen shoots water.

In the war, I captained a gunboat, what we called a canonă. Cristian was a gunner. Then, the war had seemed so special, so necessary. The Black Sea was crisper and more infinite than it was when I summered there as a child, crushing urchins with a shovel. We were winning. The court seer was right.

I now know that Wars of Independence are nothing special. Most countries have Independence Days. In Greece, they eat cod on March 25th. In Panama, the light fireworks over the canal on November 28th. Independence has been won on front after front. What happens after victory is what really matters. Chains can be sexy.

Wars of Independence or War of Independences? I believe it is the same rule for pluralizing cul-de-sac. I will look it up later.

The sky lightens to purple, so I close the blinds. My phone alerts me that the Uber Eats driver is 3 minutes away.

Black dots pace decks in the Port of Los Angeles. The camera is too far away to make out faces, but I see his face everywhere. Bulbous nose, thick brows to match the robust mustache that somehow made him look younger. I wade to the screen until I am inches away. The TV smells like coins, but soon a sweeter smell replaces it. It is not just the honey.

My studio bursts with his stench. After the three flights of stairs, a light sweat covers him. His neck, armpits, and crotch transmit notes of olive tapenade, pierogi, and dill. His meat–my nose tells me he was once bulky but is now a bit chubby, maybe an ex-baseball player–smells more confectionary than gamey, a gas station hot dog bagged with Pixie Sticks.

I glide from the screen to the door, close my eyes, and press my cheek, my nostril, my cock against the door.

The footsteps trace their way back down the hall. All I can smell now is honey. The application calls this contactless delivery.

I am at my last house of the morning.

Swiss Avenue is where I feel most at home in this foreign city. The homes are old by the standards of this country, mostly built at the turn of the nineteenth century. The live oaks in the median give Swiss Avenuers the false sense of country estate living. Empty factories and the decaying Cotton Bowl are just an underpass away.

N A N C Y ’ S house has so much lawn to work with. It sits on the crest of a knoll. The house is garnet brick with white marble snaking over its archways and windows. Dauntingly symmetrical, N A N C Y ’ S place has 2 glassed-in porticos, 2 chimneys, and 13 windows that all meet at a white-picketed widow’s walk above. I believe the style is called Italianate.

I am lucky to have so much space to work with. She is turning 75. I am planting the pink flamingos among the topiaries when I hear the hum of an engine.

“Leave! Run!” I want to shout, but my voice dies somewhere in my throat and I choke out a cough. He is halfway up the stairs and turns to me. We make eye contact, breaking the ideal aspect of this job: contactlessness.

“Whoa...sorry to bother,” he jumps. He is wrapped in a puffy brown coat and wears a brown beanie and brown pants. A man in uniform. He smells like oven-fresh biscuits. He laughs at the flamingos and says, “This must be a birthday gift then.” He taps the cardboard box and smiles.

I mirror a smile. His eyes linger and then he’s up the stairs again.

I want to throw up in the gardenia bush. Sometimes I forget my innards, but my heart beats so hard it feels like it is in my mouth. I decide to lock myself in my car until the temptation passes. I drop the flamingo that is in my hands–mid-impalement–and start down the steps to my truck, but I can tell he is gaining on me.

He is not just biscuits; he is an entire diner. The pressure cooker of his jacket holds syrup and sausage links and apple jelly and single-use butter packets.

“Graveyard shifts, man,” he says. He stops three steps above me. When I turn, I am mustache level with him. A grackle squawks. I realize he’s expecting a response.

“Yes,” I start. I wait for him to prompt me. “Pretty exhausting.”

“Yes, but at least traffic isn’t bad.”

At the mention of traffic, he looks past me at my truck. His face brightens.

I assume he’s talking about the red I on my bumper. He takes one step forward, and I want to step backward but my feet won’t move. I imagine a door between us.

“I bought it off a friend,” I lie.

“That’s crazy. Both my parents were Cyclones.” He grins and I am lost. The delivery man continues, “You don’t see too many of those stickers down here. This is what my nana would call kismet.”

“Is she a Turk?” I ask.

He freezes, searching my eyes for the punchline. I curse myself internally. Sometimes I forget where and when I am. He must decide this is a joke because he starts to laugh. I laugh too.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to say that,” he laughs.

“Forgive me. The flamingos are not too good at conversation. I am out of practice.” Woo is so easy to slip back into. “That word. Kismet. It comes from Turkey. Deplorable language.

Excellent baklava.”

“You’re a trip, man.” He takes another step forward. “Are you off the clock soon?” he pries.

Cristian told me I was beautiful. I always remember him saying that word, but I don’t always believe it is true.

“This is my last house of the morning.”

“This is my last street of the morning.” He brushes his mustache flat with the back of his thumb. “Kismet.”