She pinched the brown pine needles between her fingers and turned them upside down, tracing circles in the tablecloth like a compass. On an invisible map, she charted her course, and longed to be in some new world. Far away from blaring speakers, beer bottles and wild unruly children.

Yet, some small contentment came from sitting outside the bar; foamy coffee on tabletop, her pen etching stray thoughts into her notebook, her attention scattered about her surroundings, and work finally finished for another year.

From inside the bar blasted the beginnings of whatever generic pop song was considered a hit, sung rather disinterestedly by a twenty-something year old club dancer whose voice had been technologically bleached of all humanity in the recording studio, whose name would be long forgotten after time and the elements had their way with her youth and natural beauty. Then after the first chorus, the song would stop. The track was switched.

On to the next generic pop tune which sounded no more inspiring than the last. No resolve. No conclusion. Just a constant state of beginning then suspense. The world’s collective attention spans suddenly plummeted, like a broken elevator with its car free-falling through the shaft.

As for the children who must have been about five years old or younger, there were two of them. They happily ran around the greenspace of the park just outside the bar, chanting and laughing, and periodically screeching. At least they were until one of them for some reason burst into tears, crying and yelling like a growling cat and complaining to their mother in rapid unintelligible Italian.

Even the promise of a gelato could not appease her. Only sleep could soothe. At one o’clock the sun was only starting. By two, most of the locals would be home asleep. Then by three, the heat would be at its worst – threatening to crumble the tar in the roads, singeing the grass from stem to root, splitting old trees like an axe.

The locusts in the trees chirped as noisily as a barn full of chickens, the heat seeming to drive them to intense irritability, a madness most likely to break out into war.

Soon there would be thunder.

The sky slowly darkened with angry clouds.