Hot Sunday afternoon. Temperature in the mid-80s, clouds dancing over and away from the sun, and humidity that rests on you like a tap on the shoulder.
Up the street walks a slender, fair-skinned woman in long pants, long-sleeved shirt, sun-glasses, and a green parasol. She strolls toward the corner market, making sure the parasol is always between her and the sun — her own little cloud. Her entire style of dress saying she is protecting herself from sunburn. Maybe even skin cancer.
She steps into the market and in a few minutes returns to the sidewalk, again her sunglasses in place and adjusting her parasol to block the sun. Yet in her other hand, she is holding a pack of cigarettes and between her fingers on that hand is a lit member. She brings it up to her lips, slowly draws on it, and them blows it out.
She will make a lovely corpse one day. Not an erratic mole anywhere on her fair skin. Yet her lungs will be an infestation of filth, her hair and clothes will stink, her skin will be the hide of a rhinoceros, and all that is erratic will be on the inside.
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