The King is dead.

Knock it off, Elvis left the building a long time ago, Darryl said.

No, seriously, the Pizza King is dead.

The nursing supervisor leaned against the Emergency Room doorway.

They’re bringing in his wife now, she said.

The ambulance arrived with flashing blue and red lights that lit the concrete walls on either side of the hospital driveway. William the security guard stood wearing shades and a black mask by the sliding glass doors. Darryl tried to ignore him. Just the day before the nursing supervisor told Darryl his name and said she knew nothing else about him. She said he was a good guard upon whom she could count in a pinch.

He seems very capable, she said.

At first Darryl thought the incoming patient was a punk rocker with pink and blue hair, maybe injured in a drug episode or a mosh pit. Then he realized the woman was middle-aged, wearing a short wig askew that highlighted odd discoloration of singed dark roots on the woman’s skull.

Bethany, the well-off wife of the well-known Wynne the Pizza King, stretched out motionless on the gurney. Covered to her neck in a white sheet, she looked like the bride of Frankenstein in the old black-and-white movie.

Darryl stared at her and then at William.

With everything under control, William didn’t move. Cool and calm, he exuded a sense of command. William seemed at ease, disciplined. With every planned move deliberate and intentional, he left nothing to chance, emotion or reaction. Instinct and training served as his strongest tools.

A doctor quickly examined Bethany and soon moved her to the Intensive Care Unit.

COID-19, the doctor said.

Ventilator time, a nurse said.

Wynne and Bethany held out for weeks, refusing to acknowledge coronavirus symptoms or seek medical care when they did. When Wynne finally called 911, he hallucinated and gave the dispatcher a hard time instead of his address, asking if the operator wanted anchovies on his pizza.

The same paramedics who brought in Bethany located no heartbeat pulsing in the multi-millionaire sponsor of the huge rally planned for the near future to open up businesses and support Donald Trump in his bid to take back the streets of a protest-torn America.

As a final gesture of overzealous capitalistic law and order, Wynne’s last official act of business was to announce in a weak voice before his death on the JayJay Bone radio show that he was offering free pizza for life to any and all police officers who arrest a looter, free pizza and soda for life if you arrest two and an all-expense paid trip to Atlantic City for a week in Wynne’s condo if you arrest three or more.

Wynne eventually started coughing and took a heart attack after the novel coronavirus germs co-mingled with a lifetime of cheesy cholesterol germs to finally clog his arteries and evict the oxygen from his brain. Heart attack, stroke, sudden dementia and COVID-19-induced death all came together to spell the end of a doughy dynasty.

Bethany started hacking and wheezing as soon as Wynne dropped over. The cops kicked in the door and found her struggling weakly to pull on a multi-colored page boy wig as her last act of defiance in these troubled and diseased times.

I always hated her husband’s pizza, the nursing supervisor said.

Darryl stood by silently, taking in the newest assault on his senses.

The supervisor continued.

I went to that Blessed Mamma Mia’s Pizza the other night to see the Virgin I saw on the news and got a large pie with everything for half the price of a plain Pizza King pie.

William headed their way.

Darryl tensed.

William removed his mirror sunglasses.

I heard you say Mamma Mia, he said.

Sal the owner told me he only sells miraculous pizza, the nurse said.

My bird likes their crusts, William said.

Now William turned to face Darryl.

I’m sorry for everything and I mean everything, he said.

Then he walked away.

The nursing supervisor seemed intrigued.

What was that all about?

Long story that dates back to slavery, Darryl said.

When they went back inside, Bethany had already died.

They waited too long to call for help, the nursing supervisor said.

Just like the whole goddamn country, Darryl said.

Then he turned, tightened his mask and disappeared into a white-controlled America where leaders didn’t care about him or people who looked like him no matter how many cops, National Guard soldiers and politicians took a knee and said otherwise.