There is no shade to speak of and not a cloud in the sky. I carefully angle my body so as to deflect what little breeze is in the air. In these situations it's easy to forget the point of what you're doing because you find yourself struggling to keep it together, stay hydrated, and not look at the time too often. Before long the day soon feels more like an personal endurance test than a crusade in the name of honesty.
Running up the hill are these three shirtless Japanese boys. They talk in rapid breathless voices about where to sit and decide on a bench about 20 feet from me. I keep reading, or at least maintaining the image that that's what I'm doing, ignoring them completely. My attention quickly turns back to the direct sun beating down on me.
I'm not sure how much time passes. I've fake read about 10 pages so far, stopping to carefully look at the occupants of each car that drives past. I look over to the bench of Japanese boys and they have vanished completely.
Sirens, telephones, babies crying. You hear it all in the still of a suburban heat wave and I think about how sound has its own way of time traveling to the future. That sound takes its tiny time machine as far as it has the energy to reach where an action that's already happened turns up in the present.
STOP IT! Pay attention. God it's so fucking hot.
The three shirtless Japanese boys run past me again. In the same direction as the first time and they head towards the bench 20 feet away from me.
