Beans for Breakfast

There were two guys studying the skies a few steps away. I overheard one of them say, “See how it ends there? It’s definitely military.” He noticed that I was pointing the camera at an odd angle and struck up a conversation. “Do you know about the contrails?”

“Uh. No. I guess not.”

“They’re used to control the weather.”

“Are they?”

“Yeah.” He pointed at a contrail that was starting to dissipate. “See how that one has started to spread apart.”

“Sure.”

“It’s becoming a cloud. Now what happens to water on the ground after it rains?”

“Uh . . . It evaporates.”

“Right, and where does the water go?”

“. . . Into the air.”

“But which direction does it go?”

“Up?” I looked up again.

“Exactly, and what does it become?”

“Clouds.”

“Right, it sticks to the contrails that military jets have laid out for them.”

“Okay.”

“Do you listen to Art Bell?”

“No.”

“You really should. He’s on at 10:00, on 570 KVI.”

“Okay.”

“Where are you from?”

“I’m from here in Seattle.”

“You are? So are we. What area?”

“Capitol Hill.”

“Oh, we’re from the Kirkland area. We’re ticket agents. We were just down at the game. We’d just finished taking care of all our customers, and the score was something like 19-3. It was such a nice day that we decided to skip the game, and we came down here.”

“It is nice out. . . Uh, I’ll see you guys later.” I started to walk away.

“Okay. Nice talking to you. Hey, what’s your name?”

“I’m Jeff.”

“So is he.” He pointed at his friend. “My name’s Mark.”

His friend spoke for the first time, “My name is Jeff, too.”

Jeff took a couple of steps in my direction and reached out his hand, which I shook.

“Nice meeting you guys. Bye.”

Mark called out, “Bye. Enjoy your mission.”