Still Life with Woodpecker

It is Coronation Day, and the entire country is ready to crown the new queen. When she appears, shouts ring out, “‘God save Queen Gulietta!’” (200).

Gulietta is the daughter of a kitchen maid who was impregnated by Max’s father. When she was a child, her father gave her a document that officially stated his parentage, a copy of which was discovered by the revolutionaries.

Gulietta has known all these years that she is Max’s half-sister, but she never revealed it out of loyalty to her mother. When the revolutionaries asked her to be queen, however, she gladly accepted. During the coronation, no one notices the living frog she clutches in her hand. Her first act as queen is to open relations with Peru and Columbia in order to replenish her cocaine supply. The second is to ask the US president to pardon Bernard Mickey Wrangle.

Leigh-Cheri asks A’ben Fizel about the status of her pyramid before they have sex.