When you get the mean reds.

Walking my boy late at night with whisky in my mug, and on the sidewalk I pass someone a few years younger than me singing an old punk song--actually, sneering it, a spat at the air between herself and her next steps--with her face painted, streaked black like a spiderweb or some KISS tryout. And she is carrying an umbrella and a stereo, with great and long, thin sheets of plastic tucked into her ball cap, whose beak is upturned. I nod as she interrupts those lyrics to say hello.

And curiously, on my way back homeward she is a block ahead. I can hear her shouting toward nothing, even her muttering is loud enough. I pause when she stops for a moment to trade the stereo's hand for the umbrella. When she starts again she swaggers, tapping that umbrella on the concrete to flare its grey up with attitude. Like seeing a sashay out of Breakfast at Tiffany's, though her song streaming back has changed to those do-do-do's from "Low Rider," and nodding my head at that, because everyone deserves that feeling up there.