In the old days the windmills had been used for crucifixion. Transgressors against the common good were bound with wire by the ankles, wrists and neck to the blades of the turbine, left to bake in the sun, starve to death less slowly because the spinning made every one of them puke out what little sustenance they'd been allowed before the execution.

Only five of the original fifty windmills remained in the plains that had become Mastodon Park, named for an era earlier still, remembered only by the giant tusks sticking out of the ground from which had been fashioned the jungle gym on the playground. What amused the children on that Sunday afternoon had once gored sabertooth tigers. Extinction is not without its benefits.

Sprawling grassy paradise lost in the sprawlinger urban purgatory.

In the long shadows of the windmills families spread out checkered blankets and laid out picnic feasts worthy of European royalty. Still in their Sunday best clothes, those few parts of the sermon they'd understood between mental yawns gushed out to fill the shallows of their minds. The Ten Commandments and the near infinite suggestions derived there from would carry the weight of truth for the next few hours.

The hospital doors slid open automatically, more quickly than normal under the distinctive pressure of Rommel's sole, and the park swept away in either direction before him. An empty wheelchair rolled past, Euclid at the helm. He followed her into the park.

He tugged at his green scrubs, trying to get them to settle into a comfortable configuration over his t-shirt, the sleeve of which kept getting bunched up. Euclid seemed to be having no trouble with hers. She waltzed through the walkways of the park with the wheelchair for a partner. He noticed the stethoscope around her neck.

Tugging at it lightly, he said, “Do you really need that?”

“It completes the ensemble.”

“Wanna go back and get a surgical mask while you're at it? Maybe a couple tongue depressors for your pocket, a little hammer thing to test reflexes…”

“You're just jealous. Anyway, it's your fault I had to change clothes.”

They'd been at a bar drinking cheap vodka, celebrating the Great October Socialist Revolution, watching football on the bar TVs, and rooting for whichever team the majority of the bar wasn't. Whenever somebody got mad, they'd offer a drink. No hard feelings, comrade.

The early game was nearly over. The home team was hopelessly behind. Dejected fans finished the last of piss-warm light beer, and filed out of the dingy bar-osphere into the gleaming afternoon, shielding their eyes with the age old hand visor technique developed originally by Hammurabi himself in a moment of inspiration second only to his code of laws in historical significance.

Rommel leaned his forearms on the tarnished copper bartop, swirling the last of his most recent Stolichnaya into a whirlpool of potential inebriation with subtle twists of his wrist. The very sight of it was intoxicating.

A leg in a filthy plaster cast slid behind Rommel as the guy in the wheelchair sidled up to the bar. Wheelchair's eyes were level with the bar top, and he helplessly waved a wad of cash at the inattentive bartender.

“Whatcha need?” asked Rommel helpfully.

“I'm not a fucking gimp,” replied Wheelchair.

Euclid smelled blood, and poked her head around Rommel's shoulder to look down on Wheelchair.

She rapped her knuckles on the cast. “It seems you are, at least temporarily.”

Wheelchair grimaced, but finally garnering the attention of the barkeep quickly ordered a Natural Light draft (only $1 on Sundays). Rommel turned away, downed the last of his vodka, and watched the television like a rainbow. For the color not the content. Euclid stared down at the cast, longing for the sensation of pain associated with debilitating injury. She dug her thumbnail into her wrist, like the single puff of an ex-smoker on a cigarette borrowed from a friend. Just a reminder to make the act of quitting its own type of painful.

“How'd you break it?” she asked.

“None of your goddamn business.”

He took a sip of his beer, and tried to turn away, but the angle of his chair left him more or less facing straight at Euclid.

“Slip on dog shit?” she asked. “Drunk driving? Get your ass kicked by a girl?”

Euclid was a proponent of foreshadowing.

Wheelchair looked up at Rommel. “Will you get her to shut the hell up?”

Rommel glared at him.

Euclid whimpered. “Are you going to let that asshole talk to me like that, honey?”

Rommel spun his head and glared at her.

She winked at him just before a wave of cheap beer crashed down his arm and torso. Glaring again at Wheelchair, noting the suddenly empty glass in his hand, gauging this against previous offenses, taking into account the man's injury, Rommel deliberated on fitting retribution.

There was no time. Immediately, Euclid grabbed hold of the plaster cast, and yanked Wheelchair from the seat. His head fell back on the bare concrete floor with a crackling thud. He gargled an incoherent epithet, assumed as such only by its tone. Not satisfied with mere incoherence, Euclid straddled Wheelchair's chest and beat his head until he shut up completely. Blood from his broken nose spattered across her t-shirt and jeans.

She stood up, smoothed out her clothes (inadvertently smearing the blood as well), and tamed her frazzled hair.

“Looks like we's gots us a chair with wheels,” she said in her best approximation of hillbilly.

They'd snuck into the nearby hospital to filch some street clothes not covered in blood or beer, but when Euclid set her sights on scrubs, Rommel had simply acquiesced. Some things were not worth arguing.

In the park, they strolled into the shadow of a windmill. He tried not to think about where the stethoscope had come from. Some poor doctor deprived of status simply by the absence of a single object. A crown. A ring. A cape.

Euclid's knuckles were red and swollen from the punching.

“Is your hand OK?” asked Rommel.

Sucking in air through her teeth, she said, “Never been better.”

She hopped into the wheelchair and rode it down a small hill. Blissfully.

Rommel frowned. “You're shameless.”

“Said the hired killer to the PhD.”

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