He cuts a glance to her beneath the brim of her hat with tobacco pinched between his fingers. Consider him Ribbed.

A sharp whistle calls his bird back from her circling over the shoreline; she’ll thump down into the tall grass nearby while they talk, the world’s bristliest pine cone, all coal-dark feathers and green eyes. Bits of dried seed fluff cling in her pantaloons, her crest.

“By definition,” is the answer to Fitcher’s question.

Thot bustles airborne again without a word said between them.

“I nearly made love on a rooftop once.”