Year of the Firefly: Chapter 1

Miranda had never seen a Gucci eye patch before. Funny how that was the focal point of her attention. The patch. Not the ginormous pile of cash on the table. Not the musclebound tattooed man who was counting it. Not the naked woman snuggling with the pitbull on the leather sofa. Not the oblivious little boy tapping furiously on the Xbox controller. All these storylines were riveting, but it was the designer patch that the monocle of her consciousness was fixed upon. She wondered if it was a fashion accessory or a medical device or both. The aspiring author and English Lit major in her needed to know.

Still tingly and warm from the blunt on the ride across the bridge, she followed with hooded eyes as its wearer rummaged through kitchen cabinets in search of a scale. He caught her staring and paused. The sculptured mustache and goatee that framed his mouth pulled back into a diamond- and platinum-encrusted scowl. “Yo Nick, you sure this bitch ain’t troll?”

Uncertain which was more offensive, being called a bitch or a troll, she felt her face redden with indignation as she sputtered to assemble a lethal riposte . . . something Katherine from Taming of the Shrew might serve up in her icy Shakespearean tone. Nice eyepatch . . . are you wearing matching Gucci panties?

Two things stopped her: the small arsenal of urban warfare weapons stacked on the coffee table and Nick’s firm hand on the small of her back.

“I’m positive,” he said, in that deep, confident voice that made her forget her outrage, forget she was standing in a trap house, forget the world, forget herself.

“Well she looks like troll.” Eyepatch found his scale and set it on the counter. “Like one of them redheaded CSI bitches. I don’t trust no redheads . . .”

Nick removed his hand from her back and ran his fingers through his dark unruly hair. His palm left an impression, hot against her skin. A thermonuclear handprint. “Come on, Gucci,” he said. “You know I don’t fuck with twelve.”

Miranda stifled a giggle. His name was Gucci? Was Gucci, the company, like, secretly sponsoring drug dealers or something? She thought of her sociology professor, Dr. Bonilla, and his fiery disquisitions on consumer culture and materialism. He would choke on his own mustache if he ever crossed paths with this walking designer brand billboard.

“She ain’t gotta be twelve,” said Gucci. “She could be an informant. How do you know she ain’t wearing a wire?”

Nick glanced down at her. His eyes were dark chocolate caged in black lashes. A secret smile played at the corners of his mouth. “Because I watched her get dressed.”

His words seemed to hang in the air. She blushed, suddenly as exposed as the naked woman snoring on the couch. Gucci appraised her from over his scale. Fitting, because she felt like she was being weighed. His one eye moved up and down her body. Apparently the MeToo movement had not yet reached the criminal underworld. She wished Nick would put his arm around her.

“Don’t bring nobody else over here,” Gucci muttered as he pulled apart the Ziploc and began heaping Boi onto the didgies with a silver spoon.

Boi and didgies.

The arrival of Nick Archiletta on the timeline of her life had brought a strange new lexicon of colloquialisms and street slang. Words that did not appear in the pages of her beloved Random House College Dictionary or even the online Urban Dictionary. Sometimes it was as if he was speaking an entirely different language.

Miranda loved words. She grew up doing New York Times crossword puzzles with her dad and was a self-proclaimed etymologist by the time she reached middle school. Her plan was to write a novel after the fall semester and midterms, maybe a gritty romance she could self-pub and market herself. The bad boy patois of Nick’s urban ecosystem would make for snappy, realistic dialogue. This was perhaps the sexiest thing about him. True, he was lean and handsome with just the right number of tattoos. True, the danger was thrilling, the passion was electric, the money was fast, and the drugs were convenient. But take all that away and his vernacular alone was worth the price of admission. Especially to a word-nerd like herself.

The dope was the color of Gulf of Mexico sand, a growing anthill atop the matte black digital scale. Gucci added a little, then more, then grunted, shook his head, and sliced off the tip of the mountain, transforming it into a mesa. Satisfied, he spun the scale.

Miranda read the display. 28.7.

“Can I put some cut on it?” said Nick.

“You better.” Gucci shook a Newport from his pack and fired it up. His teeth dazzled beyond the flame. “You know how we rock, bruh. This is that good Frank white shit. Pure as your bitch.”

She winced. He pronounced pure like purr. Calling her rude names was one thing. But lazy mispronunciations she could not tolerate. They circumvented her filter, triggering a response that was almost reflexive.

“I believe the word you’re looking for is pure. P-U-R-E. All you do is take the possessive your and stick a P in front of it. Pyour . . . Pure.” She enunciated with the exaggerated patience of a kindergarten teacher. “You try it.”

He stared at her for a solid ten seconds. He even pursed his lips. Then he looked at Nick. “What is this crazy-ass bitch jaw-jackin’ about?”

Nick shrugged. “She takes off like that sometimes. I think it’s a college thing . . . here.” He reached in his jeans pocket, grabbed a roll of bills and tossed them across the kitchen.

Gucci caught the money, removed the rubber band and began to count.

“Everything good?” said Nick, when he reached the last hundred.

“Better than good.” The one-eyed dope dealer looked up and smiled for the first time that day. “Everything’s Gucci.”

Anything is possible

Dateline: Washington, D.C., Inauguration Day, 2021

As President Joe Biden looks out over the empty windswept National Mall and into the living rooms of 325 million Americans, pumping a message of healing and unity, the odds of his success — of America’s success — could not be longer.

Rahm Emanuel recently framed it like this: “Lincoln had the Civil War, Wilson had the pandemic, Roosevelt had the Depression, and LBJ had the civic unrest of the 1960s… Biden has all four.”

Sobering thought. And this is not even factoring in the bridge-mending that will have to be done with our allies, addressing our crumbling infrastructure, reigniting faith in our cratering institutions, negating the inroads that Putin and the Russians have made into our election system, improving health care, solving immigration, passing criminal justice reform, managing the opioid crisis…

And he must do it while navigating the smoke and noise of a sensationalist, hyperventilating media, as well as the conspiracy theorists, the Trump loyalists, the extreme wing of his own Democratic party, and the binary reality of modern American politics where one side needs the other to fail.

This will no doubt be an extremely tough task.

But he wanted it. He earned it. Fought through the field in a packed primary, survived one particularly brutal debate, an election night that dragged on for days, an iconoclastic incumbent who refused to accept defeat, and an attempted insurrection, all to arrive at this moment in history. Now here he is. Here we are. The question is: where are we going?

One of the many frustrating themes of the outgoing Trump regime was its disdain for the truth. They coined the phrase “alternate facts” from the jump and it would become a cornerstone of the administration for the duration. In order for us to find our way out of the wilderness, the truth needs to be magnetic north on our national compass.

Here are some hard truths that President Biden and congressional members of both parties must come to terms with over these next pivotal years:

— Racism is a massive problem in this country but no ethnicity has a monopoly on it. Double standards have become increasingly glaring in recent years and hate groups are using these as tools to recruit and indoctrinate America’s alienated youth. If we continue down this road of highlighting the skin color of bad cops and unarmed victims only when it suits a certain narrative, we’ll never disentangle ourselves from the baggage of our ancestors. We are Americans first. Black, white, brown, red, yellow, blue, whatever. Our histories and destinies are all entwined. And whenever any American kills another American, it’s a sad day for us as a people.

— Compromise needs to make a comeback. Special interest groups like Planned Parenthood and the NRA view any concession (the banning of third trimester abortions, the banning of automatic assault rifles) as a slippery slope toward their own extinction. They use their money and influence to strong-arm senators into never giving an inch. This is no way to govern. The ability to work with those across the aisle is an asset, not a liability. We should demand it from our representatives.

— American isolationism is bad for us and bad for the world. Biden’s former boss said it best: “If moral claims are insufficient for us to act as a continent implodes, there are certainly instrumental reasons why the U.S. and its allies should care about failed states that don’t control their territories, can’t combat epidemics, and are numbed by civil war and atrocity. It was in such a state of lawlessness that the Taliban took hold of Afghanistan. It was in genocidal Sudan that bin Laden set up camp for several years. It’s in the misery of some unnamed slum that the next killer virus will emerge…” We are all connected. There’s a reason why we helped establish organizations like the U.N., the IAEA, and the WHO. Our failure to lead over the last four years has created a vacuum where China has made significant gains. Do we really want an authoritarian government setting the international tone?

Our nation is often referred to as a “democratic experiment.” And lately we’ve come dangerously close to having that experiment blow up in our faces. Free and fair elections, the peaceful transition of power, the right to assemble, free speech, due process… the very document that guarantees our liberty has come under attack. But we’re still here. Still kicking. Still the gold standard for freedom. “We hold these truths to be self-evident…” There’s a reason people brave shark-infested waters and coyotes and narcos and ICE cages and miles of desert to get here. Hope. Anything is possible in America.

So now the nation, and much of the world, looks to Mr. Biden to orchestrate our comeback. It starts today. And his success is our success. Can we pull it off? Again, the odds are long. But I wouldn’t bet against us.

Final act of cowardice

Leaders lead from the front. History is loaded with examples of this. From Alexander the Great to Julius Caesar to Genghis Khan to Napoleon Bonaparte to George Washington. They gallop alongside their troops, swords singing, cutting down the enemy, trampling them as they ride headlong into battle and inevitable victory.

As footage of the events of January 6, 2021, continues to emerge — the beatings, the hurled fire extinguishers, the zip ties and pipe bombs, the chants of “Hang Mike Pence” — I keep going back to the president’s speech. How he urged the throng of proud boys, militia men, and QAnon (“the internet come to life,” as one reporter described it), as well as a sea of devout supporters to march on the Capitol. He assured them he would be right there with them.

Of course, he wasn’t. He was kicked back in the safety of the Oval Office watching it all go down.

This final act of cowardice underscores who Donald Trump really is. A spoiled rich kid with a giant megaphone. A sore loser deficient in every quality associated with great leaders. Honor, courage, discipline, restraint, spine… Our 45th president is more Nero than Julius Caesar. (Although his embattled Veep appears capable of a passable Brutus impression.)

One of the more sickening images from this dark day in American history was Donald Jr’s fiancée, Kimberly Guilfoyle, dancing. Dancing as glass was shattered, shots were fired and blood was spilled. I guess it’s easy to dance in the safety of the West Wing, when you’re not getting crushed in a doorway or beaten with a baton or praying under your desk. But it’s always like this with the 1%. They sip champagne while the poor and middle class die in the service of their interests.

So now the talk turns to whether the president can pardon himself. All the pundits are weighing in. But is there any talk of him pardoning the citizens who believed his lies about the election being stolen and stormed the Capitol at his insistence? I wouldn’t bet on it.