Page 253 of The Carnage We Keep

“You see, kind sir, it’s cold enough to freeze the piss in a chamber pot, and unfortunately, some of us made the questionable decision to put surgical steel through our nipples.”

Dame snorts and shakes his head.

“I know, I know,” I grin. “But how boring would tonight be without me?”

He chuckles as he plucks the head from my outstretched hand. “Baby, my whole fucking life would be pretty boring without you.”

“Yeah. In other news, there’s salt in this water,” I giggle as Councilman Montoya’s head splashes into the waves and sinks under the inky black surface. A hacked off arm is next. Then a foot. Then, amusingly, a piece of ass.

“Okay, DJ,” I say brightly as I kneel by the cooler. “What’s spinning next?”

“Left leg.”

“Oooo, a golden oldie and a crowd fave. Great choice.”

A few more councilman bits hit the water before I glance up and grin at Dame.

“Soooo… We gonna talk about Vito?”

Dame’s grandfather might legit be my new favorite human on Earth, and that's saying something. We’d met a couple of times before, briefly, but last night at Thanksgiving was the first time he and I really got to chat, since Dame’s mom Lyra had arranged the seating so I was next to him.

He’s fun, delightful, loves old music, and might genuinely extract as much joy as I do from giving Dame a hard time.

Obviously, we’re best friends now.

Dame rolls his eyes. “You want to talk about Vito, or her?”

I snicker. “I mean, I think it’s the same conversation.”

Last night at dinner, just as we were sitting down, Vito announced that he had an important announcement to make. He stood, took a deep breath, and calmly informed the table that he’d found love again…in the form of a “much younger, hot little number”.

Then the doorbell rang, and Vito grinned and further announced that he’d invited her to Thanksgiving.

The whole table was still trying to wrap their heads around Grandpa pulling a DiCaprio and hooking up with some twenty-something gold digger when he walked back in with Lucinda.

She ran a jewelry store in Long Island for years. She met Vito when her dog ran up his driveway and around the house and she gave chase only to find Vito sunbathing au natural by his pool with his dog.

Oh, and Lucinda is sixty-four years old and owns three houses. Not twenty-two and digging for gold.

“I thought she was awesome,” I shrug.

Dame chuckles. “Yeah, Lucinda wasn’t the issue.”

“Unlike, say, Vito spending dessert explaining tantric sex to your mother?”

Dame groans. “Thanks, I was trying to chemically burn that one from my memory.”

“He used the phrase sexual breathwork.”

“Could we please not?”

I laugh as I turn back to the cooler and "give him a hand"…but literally.

God, I'm funny.

I'm even more hilarious when Dame turns back to ask me for another body part, and I’ve got Councilman Montoya’s severed dick held up to my forehead.

“I’m a unicock!”