2023thing

	He sat on the top of the picnic table and breathed in as he lit his cigarette.  The sun was long gone, but some smears of red and orange still hung above the western horizon.  Beads of sweat slowly accumulated on his forehead, brown hair already almost black with wet.  A haze was forming above the cornfields that surrounded the building, the corn itself adding more moisture to the already wet heat.  He puffed lazily on the cigarette, 20-30 seconds between drags, slowly exhaling upward, eyes staring off.  The crickets and cicadas were jamming away on their improvised tunes, playing as masterly as some of the jazz greats, the crickets keeping in time with the heat and the cicadas wailing and modulating.  The rooftop air conditioners clicked on, and its metallic one-note-drone barged onto the jam, much louder than everything else in the mix.  He closed his eyes, feeling the heat in his lungs, on his skin, becoming damp and clammy beneath the half plastic 'breathable' uniform. The jam changed now, the whirls of fans adding a haze to the soundscape, adding half imagined textures and creaks (tinnitus probably), the odd unknown rumbling, something that almost sounded like a creak, a squeak? Left eye squinted open, giving the side eye, seeing he now had company.