Haze
Greg woke up with a headache, and he didn’t know why. He hadn’t been out drinking with his friends the night before. Oh, he’d had a drink with his supper, but one drink didn’t bring a hangover. He opened the shades and noticed that the world was grayer than it had been. What’s up with that? he thought. He went about making coffee and finding some cereal for breakfast. Time to hit the grocery store again; he was almost out of milk and Cheerios.
Driving in to work, he noticed the haze was thicker and turned on the radio. The announcer said that the smoke was from wildfires in Canada, but Greg thought it smelled less like a campfire and more skunky, like weed.
His day at work went smoother than any day had lately. His boss was laid back and bought lunch for the entire office. Tacos. Everybody dug in, even the office secretary, who was on a perpetual diet. She always refused a cookie or brownie when someone brought in snacks, but today, she was right in there with the rest of them, chowing down on the tacos piled with toppings. Not much work got done that day, but no one seemed to mind.
The grocery store was just as laid back as the office. Smiling people lazily steered their carts up and down the aisles, happily letting someone go in front of them. No cart rage or snarling interactions in front of the meat counter over the last package of chicken nuggets. Greg snagged the last bag of nacho cheese flavored Doritos. He added a bag of Fritos to his cart just in case he ran out of Doritos before bedtime.
In the frozen foods aisle of the grocery store, an impromptu pizza party was going on around the sampler station. The demonstrator kept slotting pizzas into the toaster oven on his counter and handing out slices as fast as they were cooked. Pretty soon the beer sampler from the entrance to the liquor department started opening beers and handing out full bottles to everyone walking by. Not to be outdone, the wine sampler started filling glasses and handing them out.
Greg found himself in a crowd of happy people that went from the liquor samples to the deli samples to the pizza samples and back around more than once. It was the best time he’d had at the grocery store in his adult life.
The car radio announcer said that there had been illegal marijuana fields in the burning forest, which explained the skunky aroma of the smoke. Officials advised people not to be out in the smoke, that people with lung conditions should stay indoors, but the news that there was pot smoke mixed in with the wildfire smoke seemed to send more people outside than normal for a summer evening. Impromptu picnics sprang up behind apartment buildings, the tenants pooling their suppers, sharing drinks, and playing frisbee on the lawns.
Everybody Greg knew was disappointed when the wind shifted in a few days and the smoke cleared.
My titles are available online in eBook, paperback, and audiobook formats and in select independent bookstores.
