Pigeons stuffed her gutters like plump bowels, cooing, drowning in the avian slop. Gladys sat on a rocker by the window, a Pollock of phlegm and crust and anxious waste.

Richard was eating at her heels. “Oh mother,” stripping away her papery flesh, “oh Gladys, feed me, feed me your installment plan.”

Urine dripped now between the cracks, and he too was speckled.

“Ohh Richard no,” she gurgled, but he heard only a faint clicking, dentures lodged in a typewriter.

“Feed me.”

It was not her choice. Pigeon slop rolled down the old window, and Gladys withered.