By Jeff Eckenrode

The fog rolled in around eight and never left. By ten to close it had swallowed the far end of the block. The street lamps did what they could, which wasn’t much: quietly casting pale cones of light on an empty street. Too empty for a Friday.

Berny had taped cotton cobwebs to the display cases. A paper skeleton hung over the register, arms raised, like it had just been asked for ID. Above the rooftops the moon was nearly full.

I had my keys out. Tonight I was leaving on time.

The bell over the door rang at 9:52. It sounded farther away than it should have.

She came in with the fog still clinging to her. Fringe vest, a crochet skirt the color of weak tea, and a crown of dried flowers set slightly crooked on her head. I couldn’t tell if it was a costume. Her ID photo had the same crown, at the same angle.

Not a costume.

“Indigo,” she said, as if I’d asked, in a voice so light it seemed to arrive a moment after she did. “Indy. Anything harvested under the Harvest Moon?” She glanced at the window. “That would be tonight, wouldn’t it?”

“Sunday,” I said. “And that one’s the Hunter’s Moon.”

Her eyes widened. “Even better.”

It was, in fact, not better. It was just a different moon.

Berny came around the counter the way she does when she can tell I’m about to say something definitely true and probably disappointing. She asked about Indy’s moon garden. Indy only plants on a waxing moon, because plants remember what the sky was doing when they were picked. Berny listened to all of it. I listened to the clock.

“Which jar was picked last month?” Indy asked. “Under the real Harvest Moon?”

Berny turned a jar toward her. “No harvest date anymore. The state stopped requiring it a few years back.”

Indy considered this. “So it could have been the moon.”

“It could have been a Tuesday,” I said.

Berny gave me a chiding look and set the jar down between them, gently, like she was introducing two people.

“Whatever’s in here was harvested, dried, cured, and tested long before tonight,” she said. “How strong it is comes down mostly to genetics and growing. Growers pick by watching the trichomes, not the sky.”

Indy listened intently, or appeared to, head tilted at the same angle as her crown.

“People have planted by the moon for ages,” Berny went on, “and there’s a little research on lunar cycles, but nothing solid I know of about cannabis. Outdoor farms do bring their plants in around now, though. The name isn’t wrong about the season.”

Indy nodded slowly, like it had reached her from a long way off. Then she turned her head to look at me.

“You keep checking the clock,” she said, lifting her voice at the end like the observation was masquerading as a question. “It’ll still be there tomorrow. So will the moon.”

She chose by nose, with Berny holding out each jar. It took eleven minutes. At the door she said she was going to go look at it under the moonlight. The fog closed behind her.

I was locking up when I saw the crown on the counter.

I stepped outside. Nothing moved in the pale cones. The air was still, the street empty both ways to where the fog ate it. The nearest alley was a few stores over. She’d have had to run. She did not seem like someone who had ever run.

“Roz,” Berny said from the doorway. “Was she a ghost?”

“Ghosts don’t have ID, Berny.”

I moved the crown to the register for whenever she came back. It was 10:14.