Volume: 3

Big

A 747, terabytes and a lunar eclipse.

The YAS manager, the victim of a mugging when I first met him, but who cleans up nicely, drove me back to LAX. Clearance delivery, taxi and departure, still routine, though all at night. I left behind taxiway lights, runway lights and crisp communication. I entered scattered low clouds and flew under thin and broken layers at six and twenty thousand feet. Steam off the stacks at the power plant never dissipated, turning instead into long strings of spilled milk in the southerly wind. The flight home took place under a full, eclipsing moon and into low clouds that threatened to force an instrument approach. They know me there. I was cleared to taxi by the tower well before landing. "You're in tower parking, right?"

I walked the greenbelt loop after dinner. Half way around, I came upon a blonde girl who was clearly afraid of me and kept her distance as we passed in opposite directions on opposite sides of the street.

At the end of the walk, right next to my house, a different lady rolled down her car window and introduced herself as Whitney. She parked in the lot across from the street and asked me if I had seen the eclipse. She said that it was a full moon in Cancer, that she was an astrologist and paid attention to these things. She was house-sitting for people who were vacationing in Australia.

I pointed to my second story balcony and asked if she would like a glass of wine. Well, we had a bottle between us, listening to music while the now fully brightened moon inched across the sky. She left for her house-sitting job just before midnight. She was not afraid of me. I never saw her again.