Postcard

There are band-aids and hair in the garbage can in the washroom at the pub.Fly catching ribbon, polka-dotted with dead insects, hangs from the ceiling like police tape. It’s almost unbreathably humid, and everyone is feeling sticky and confined, as if trapped in a stranger’s dream. And then, dramatically, the weather breaks—a flash of lightning and the crack of thunder, rain suddenly pouring. On the sidewalk, a dishwasher in combat fatigues throws away his cigarette and looks up. His hands outstretched, he slowly rotates, becoming a character in a music video or movie he once saw, as the rain washes him clean.

Under the awning girls in tube tops giggle while their boyfriends watch them, imagining lifting their twisting and smiling and screaming bodies up, and carrying them out into the cooling streams of rain– the moment and everybody in it, becoming slick, beautiful and imperishable.