End of season

Here's how you'd like to remember that day: Saturday. Early spring. One last beer and you're on your way. Outside, you stand for a moment on the footpath. The late afternoon sky' s a deep blue and the air still has a wintry edge. You stretch, breathe deep. You're vaguely aware, as you always are at this time of year, of the smell of the new season. You can never identify any particular source, but it's as familiar to you as that of your own body. Traces of a thousand days - a lifetime spent in this one place - filter in with every breath. That's how you'd like to remember that day: as just one of many identical days, as a day that can be recalled only momentarily in a whiff of spring air. As one of those many days (most days, almost a lifetime of days) that seem to disappear, to evaporate as you exhale.