The pigeon he had had sent up earlier. It stood in its cage, cooed, and pecked at the pile of seed set on the newspaper before it. Out of the three-hundred and four species, the Senator certainly had picked out the most drab, the columba livia, the rock dove, better known as the common street pigeon – Transposed from the beautiful cliffs of North African and Eurasia, to nest amongst our dingy western buildings, and stain our parks.

      She lay back on the overly soft mattress, a coil of smoke pluming from the nearby ashtray, where the stalk rested . . . the bitter dew; or venom of snake . . . Yes, she had experienced much in her half life . . . The initiations . . . The predilections . . . Was it for coin of the realm? . . .. Altruism? . . . (Always vulgar, always horror, thirst and huger.)

    "Come in," she called at the knock, her expression changing, again, without grudge, ready for that fifth and final act, the disruption.

     Senator Bellamy entered, impressive, composed, his presence filling out the room. He twisted the culebras, flat and braided, between his index finger and thumb, advanced it to his lips, and puffed. Yes, he was adept at that, holding it firm and straight, his mouth dry.

    "Good, it arrived," he said, nodding toward the birdcage.

     With face slightly flushed he stepped to the bed, and set his half finished cigar next to the smoldering cigarette. The perfume, a veritable incense, collided with that odor, of whose head was smeared with the red of her lips. He removed his blazer; she tucked in her legs; and he set it down where they had been.

      "Do you think you’ll need to?" she asked.

       "Quiet."

       The Senator, undoing his tie, advanced to the cage. The bird within pecked at the seed, cooed, and turned its head, throat glossy, shimmering purple and turquoise. What he, Bellamy, had done in his youth (a somewhat too delicate specimen, of narrow chest, underdeveloped cranium, chubby cheeks) – the cat in his path kicked, baseball, bat in hand, watching dogs fight (as blister burst), and them, the others, in the square, the chase, the laugh, the touch. Pseudo-hemothymia; the strip of silk drops; the cage door opens.

     The wings bat against that copper epidermis, with snow of gray down; vehement, uttered in weeping lamentation; and the root is grasped; drawn out; sampled; diameter calculated . . . immersed in it.

     Tendons strained, knuckles white – his burden drops to the ground; the square is littered . . . A quick, convulsive effort to breathe.

     And thus it was that Senator Bellamy was able to reduce the monument to shambles.

     She trembled.