Tuesday rolls around and the marine layer with it, thick and damp and low, as if the Pacific were smothering the Los Angeles Basin in a warm, wet blanket. It's not the sort of fog you might find elsewhere -- not the icy knifing fogs that cartwheel down the streets of San Francisco, so animated and charismatic that you can't help seeing the faces of murderers in them, nor the static fogs of Massachusetts, monstrous banks hundreds of miles wide that silently materialize in place, not at all icy but just below the temperature of a human body, just enough to make you think that you can stay outside as the microscopic droplets of water on your skin silently suck the warmth out of you until you suddenly realize that you've lost core temp and it's too late, you've got a cold or something worse. No, the Los Angeles marine layer is more like an apology, more like the gentle Pacific's saying Sorry, you're about to get a sunburn, you'd better cover up. Or maybe You didn't forget what weather looked like, did you? But she just wants to protect you from the sun's harsh rays. She just wants you to be well-rounded. She doesn't want to ruin your day, so around mid-afternoon she gathers her gauze up from the city and takes it back out to sea to keep it cool and damp, returning you to your regular programming.
Excerpt from American Inferno, Circle 1: Limbo. Work in progress.
