The thunderstorms cleared the air last night and brought back the stars.  I found them when I was evaluating the soaked car upholstery.  In the clear 3 AM air, the stars hung low in in the early morning.  The early morning dark lets you know your place in the universe and it isn't very roomy.  The sky was active, however.  The summer ends in meteors.  They flashed across the Milky Way and then disappeared.  The summer constellations still play through the evening, but in the early hours, Orion, the principal, starts to rise and shuffle everyone back to school.

She had Pennsylvania plates on her new Volvo station wagon. She drove two car-lengths into the Downyflake parking lot and faced the grill of a Ford 350.  Behind that Ford was a beaten Isuzu Trooper, behind the Trooper was a green Defender 90.  And behind him, was me.  Faced with this array of American driving wealth, she did that most American of things; she laid on the horn.  This didn’t help.