“I don’t care about the weather, Alfred. I refuse to sit here and listen to you lecture me on the principles of a cumulonimbus when — as I’ve mentioned — I couldn’t care less about the weather. I won’t discuss it again.”

“You’re being outrageous,” Alfred snapped. “It will not stand.”

“BOO-FUCKING-HOO ALFRED.”

His face turned a delightful shade of plumcake.  “My recommendation to the council will be for your removal.”

“Remove this!” Annalisa flipped the bird, and subsequently her chair. The chair was an accident, the result of her springing upwards and forwards to flip the bird at Alfred. “You snooty bastard!” She tucked her middle finger back into her fist and stormed out of the room, slammed the oak door behind her. It was too heavy to properly slam, but Annalisa was already halfway down the door and moving too quickly to notice.

“Three tequilas,” she told the waitress at the nearest diner.

“We don’t serve hard alcohol,” the woman said, pen to paper.

“I don’t like that look on your face,” Annalisa said, wagging her finger like the needle of a metronome.

“There’s no look on my face,” said the waitress, hand to waist.

“There is absolutely a look on your face,” huffed Annalisa. “Are you insane? I see what I see and you can’t tell me otherwise!”

“Three tequilas, stat,” Annalisa told the bartender across the street.

“You need a table?” the bartender asked.

“Me and what army?” she yelled, gesturing to the empty space in the bar around her. “I need three tequilas.”

Tequila always made Annalisa vomit. Her mother had always told her it wasn’t the tequila, it was the rate in which it was drunk and the quality of the liquor Annalisa requested.

“Don’t be such a stingy bitch,” her mother had always told her, holding Annalisa’s hair, stroking her back.

“Next time, I’ll spring for the good stuff,” her daughter gurgled into the toilet.

Her mother was dead. Stomach cancer, poor thing.

It was a cumulonimbus that woke Annalisa, too early. She moaned into her pillow, a good five minutes or so. Thunder rattled her windows and brain. Nausea raced up her throat. She rushed to the toilet.

“Fare thee well tequila,” she whispered, flushing. “Sweet journey.”

Storm-clouds covered the dawn’s light, shafts of intracloud lightning illuminating the sky. Annalisa wondered if she still had a job. “Fucking news anchors.”

She caught up on the news in make-up. Another riot in Arkansas, that shit state, drought in Montana, big surprise. She asked the runner for coffee, strong. “No, wait,” Annalisa hollered after him. “A cortado, double.”

“Why can’t you just order a cappuccino,” Alfred grumbled. “They’re the same exact thing.”

“You stupid boy,” Annalisa replied. “They are not the same thing.”

“You look like trash,” he said, nodding at her outfit. “You look like a farmhand.”

“If only I was a farmhand,” she yelled. “I’d never have to see your face again!”

“If you were a farmhand, you’d be starving right now!” Alfred tied to storm out, but he got caught in a curtain, tripped over his own feet.

Lights, hairspray, a smartly tailored wool-blend two-piece, on the mark, and action.

“Good evening, San Francisco!” Alfred said. He leaned over his desk, elbows covering his notes. “We woke up to some terrible storms again, didn’t we? A good morning to curl up in bed and stay there all day. Haha. Annalisa over here has some good news for us, don’t you?”

The camera panned to Annalisa gritting her teeth in front of her greenscreen. Of course she didn’t have good news for the citizens of San Francisco.

“Haha, if only! Thanks Alfred,” she turned to the camera, speaking to the camera. “Welcome to the fifty-third consecutive day of Stormwatch. I’d love to tell you that we have sunny days ahead,” she frowned, pointed her finger to the camera, “but I won’t lie to you.”

“Three tequilas please,” Annalisa told the bartender, tying her hair back.

“Welcome back,” the bartender said.

“Oh, shut up.”

Kristy Lee Hanson is a writer, rider, and reader living in Amsterdam. When she is not writing or riding her bike, she is either daydreaming or attempting to train her cats how to sit and roll over. You can find her on the internet at www.kristyleehanson.com.