The asphalt sizzles, the bees are fat. A conspiracy of the senses has robbed me of sleep. The heat, the early morning jackhammer, an appalling boglike odor that must have wafted in a poisonous cloud from the scene of a comically overturned honey bucket, hissing emergency flares and a motorcycle cop waving on the giggling rubberneckers. They say you smell microwave popcorn just before you die, it seems to come from every direction and no direction. The skylight is open because of the heat, making me vulnerable to the sounds of squabbling vagrants in the alley. The discussion is intensifying, it sounds like Yosemite Sam arguing with Willie Nelson, both of them struggling out of a sodium pentathol stupor. Am I making one lick of sense? Hand me that pitcher of iced tea would you.