The Fragile

Inspired by a snow day, I fooled around with a fiction snippet today.  You can see I have the California fires weighing me down a bit.  But other than that all is swell.  I never look a snow day in the mouth.

I woke up so early to get there on time.  Put the leash on Finn and the mask on my face and walked along 19th Avenue for a mile or so.  Poor Finn. He seemed to be lagging and confused. Was it the smoke or the earliness? By the time we got to the bridge, the sun had come up.  The smoky sky was orange and we could see the bridge towers through the haze ahead. When we reached the middle, we stood waiting.   A man nearby talked to a woman.  "The moon is in the 9th house.  Only certain Libras have the sun in the twelfth house which could be related to everything. Does that make sense?  It's the house of self determination. Saturn in the sixth house..."  She kept saying, "Uh Huh, Uh Huh" and "That makes sense," in a whispery voice.  I wanted to lean over the side and vomit right into the bay.  Would he ever shut up?  It was mid December, but it felt like summer with the smoky air blowing over the bridge from Marin, which had been on fire for weeks.  She was late.  Finn would not relax.  The buzzing of the bridge unnerved him and he circled and stepped.  She appeared out of the smoke like someone had turned on a hologram.  She pushed the bundle into my chest and held it in place because my arms weren't reaching up to take it.  I was fumbling for the envelope in my purse.  She reached down and grabbed it and walked past.  Finn stood still, staring up at me.  I wondered where I could get a mask for this baby.  A tiny mask.  I hadn't noticed any tiny masks in the Walgreens when I bought mine a week ago.