Details

More rain last night - a little soft drizzling midwestern djinn that stole across town in the wee early hours of the morning. I wouldn't have been awake to notice, except that Janelle mysteriously bolted upright in bed, backlit by flashes of lightning outside our bedroom window. "You okay?" I asked her, but she was already back asleep, repossessed by the sandman. But I got up and looked in on Eleanor before darting outside to put away the weedeater and throw a tarp across the moped. I was in my underwear. Sharp rocks stung my feet. A twentysomething couple, man and woman, hidden in shadows across the street, was smoking cigarettes on their front porch. He was talking in storytime tones. She was laughing. You know the deal: courtship. It was after 4 a.m., hour of quietude in the human kingdom, and to them I was the scraggly guy across the street tending to the details of his existence.