There’s a girl out walking her dog. I’m out walking myself. I live in the suburbs at the foot of the San Gabriels. I don’t recognize her. She’s not one of the usuals. I don’t see many people when I walk. She’s on one side of the street, I’m on the other; we’re taking the street at the same pace. It’s early. I look at the mountains, at the way they look different from yesterday. Today there’s a haze; yesterday it was clear; today there’s less green than yesterday, and I think of how the mountains are drying out in the dry air. There’s some dessicated peeling skin on my fingers, around the cuticles. The air is still cool, prickly. I look at the girl. I try to be discrete; I’m a well-built man, older. She’s wearing headphones, the over the ear kind. She’s wearing a checkered shirt. It’s a man’s shirt, maybe a boyfriend shirt, made of good material. It makes her seem small. It’s plaid. I like the colors, dark blue and green, orange and yellow, and a few dark red stripes, more sharply defined, set into the pattern to bring out the colors more strongly. It’s probably a Pendleton shirt. I have one and this shirt reminds me of that one. We’re getting to the end of the street. Her breath comes out in puffs. Her dog is ahead of her. It’s small, white, and clean. The dog looks like a puff of breath. We’re walking along this street in the suburbs at the foot of the San Gabriel mountains in Los Angeles. We don’t have anything to do with one another other than a parallel line. We might never see one another again, though people who walk here often know one another in the way of people who are often in passing. We might recognize one another in the clumps of people smoking and talking and holding beers around the big glowing kidney shaped pool at a birthday party, or in line at a Starbucks, or on a crowded bus when we both glance at a man being abnormal, and not know where the recognition came from, not remembering we once were on the same street, walking. We might exchange opinions about where a button ought to be on a man’s jacket coat in a comment section on the internet, totally genderless and anonymous except for what we’ve chosen to be. Say you’re out getting some exercise. You look across the street and see a girl who’s also walking in a way you might describe as alongside you. You try to look at her but not to stare. You notice her shirt, which is plaid. It’s not a checkerboard plaid, or a plaid that makes you think of a man doing an accent, quoting “Braveheart” or “The Highlander” : “Tasteful,” or something like it, is what you might say. Say you feel the cold. Say you look at the mountains, which are nice. Say you notice her breath is visible in the air. Say you look at her dog, which seems like a puff of breath in the air. There was a girl out walking her dog. I was out walking. I wanted to be healthier and calmer. I lived at the foot of the San Gabriels. While I walked, I listened to music, and looked at the mountains. I looked at the way they looked that day. I didn’t recognize the girl. She wasn’t one of the usual couples, or retired people, or dog walkers. She was on one side of the street, and I was on the other, and we walked in parallel. I tried to be discreet in my looking at her. I was a well-built man, into my thirties. She was younger. Her twenties, maybe. She had that look that made me feel like she was a kid compared to me, but not really a kid. She wore a plaid shirt. It was thick and boxy, I thought that’s a man’s shirt. It made her seem small. The pattern of the shirt was woven so that the overlap was soft, more musical or painterly, not geometrical, yellows and oranges and darker blues and greens. We were coming to the end of the street. She was blonde and her hair was up enormously in a black scrunchie. She had headphones on, over the ear headphones, also black. I think of these as “fuck off” headphones. Her breath came out in puffs. The dog was small and white. It trotted ahead of her. It was like a puff of breath visible for an instant in the cold. I saw the coyote.
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Joshua Hebburn is an assistant fiction editor at X‑R-A‑Y. His fiction has appeared recently in HAD and Back Patio and is forthcoming in Vlad Mag. He recommends Glen Porciau’s story “Mr. One” from the New World Writing archive.