Love Letter

Tonight is one of those nights that make living in the Pacific Northwest seem worth the other 364 nights of the year. It must be 50 degrees out there, and softly humid with kissing mist. Titan and I walked a long way, sniffing things, looking at things. Broadway is pretty quiet tonight so far, which either means we're in for a quiet night--possible--or this will turn out to be one of those nights in which sirens are still going at 3 in the morning. Could go either way.

On the way to the park we passed a group of hipsters making fun of the urban cowboy in front of them--oh, sweet irony. Right in front of us a drug deal happened, two guys touching hands for a brief moment. I counted five separate people walking home--or wherever they were headed--with full Dick's bags, sipping on milkshakes. And then, while eyeing Roy Street Coffee House as I walked by, thinking about taking my laptop there later, I heard the words "airshow" behind me.

I made Titan slow down, trying to catch the snippets of conversation the couple was having. "They just rolled it out because they'd promised the airlines," one guy said. "Just for the show!" And that was all I could get, even though I tried to follow them--the wind shifted and I couldn't walk closely enough to overhear without stepping on their heels.

It's a misty city, dark 16 hours a day in the winter, with coffee and internet and drug deals and classic hamburger drive-ins, and it's still a company town. And it's MINE.