I remember in the early 2000s when the cops were ripping out pay phones to prevent drug dealing.

That worked well.

Imagine if we still had drug dealers in Baltimore?

One of them would eventually get killed by the cops and...

This morning, after watching a Harford County Deputy buying doughnuts while I stocked the dairy case, I was tempted to make a joke in my mind, and then recalled that two of his fellow officers were gunned down in suburbia, a half mile form my mother’s house, earlier this week.

Dead.

This put me in a reflective mood, as I left the building after my shift, standing on the sidewalk at parcel pickup, watching a flock of fat seagulls huddling up on the asphalt of the windswept parking lot. Seagulls seem pretty squirrely, so I wondered if they practiced a rotation system, changing up who got stuck on the outside freezing in the wind, and letting the cold outliers savor the relative warmth of the huddle every now and then. Or are they like humans, keeping the same people in exile perpetually, as certain others enjoy the warmth of society with equal regularity.

I looked to the liquor store to the right, not wondering if it was open—as it was early—but when it would be open, so I could stop back and get a 30-pack of Genessee Cream Ale for $12.99 after lunch. Looking for the hours sign, I saw it there, its aluminum housing bolted to the brick face of the canopy pillar, something I have rarely bothered to notice, one of the very rare operational pay phones in Harm City.

I was in luck, for there were two signs.

I love Baltimore, even though she’s a whore.