La Tempête Commence

I rest my hand on the cold cash drawer, some touchstone to keep me alive. No matter how I try, I cannot see the lure of tennis. If anything, I'm fascinated by the design of the red clay court. The illustration on the wall of a cross-section of the courts looks to me like a hunk of cake dusted with red sweetness, so I pull out a buck and slip it in the drawer. I breathe in realizing that all of the parts of the moment can't be caught and that before things are seen they are gone. Oh, and I'm now eating a candy bar. See I didn't even realize.

Over the everglades a sprawling nimbus rolls forth, yard by yard pummeling through the sky. The ground is so flat I can see it from here, an hour or two before it arrives. I know when it's here the world will flip dark, the wonderland creatures will crawl from the earth. They take on the rain like they drink with their skin: sandpaper scales, exoskeletons, slimy worm hides.

I whip a grain of sugar from the corner of my mouth and lick it down. The storm is here; la tempête commence. I'll be risking my life with every fence I lock while I close down the grounds of this tennis club. The lightning here cracks every ten seconds or so.