Again this morning, the fiercely-driven fog outside his window reminded Ranny of Mr. Ryan. He flashed first on that brief glimpse of the Castro Street cowboy, and then on the other image of the earnest young man, just out of college, standing at the front of the room in his dark brown tweed jacket. As always, his tan slacks were perfectly creased, his light green shirt and tie matched the slacks and jacket, and his brown loafers had just the right degree of polish. In sharp contrast to most of their male teachers who affected the same clothing style as their students - T-shirts or sweatshirts, depending on the season, blue jeans, and the latest Nike or Adidas running shoes - Mr. Ryan could have stepped out of an ad in GQ. Or at least, out of an ad in Playboy, as that magazine was much more familiar to his students. His manner of dress, however, was not enough to command respect from those tough teens. He wore clothes with so much class and style, but without any of the affected mannerisms of many of those of his sexual orientation, that the boys did not openly make fun of him. In fact, most of them secretly admired the way he dressed: but in that school, at their age, it was unthinkable for anyone to voice a favorable opinion. And so they had merely behaved as uncouth louts, and Mr. Ryan had decided that he'd really rather be an editor at a textbook publishing firm in downtown San Francisco after the Christmas break.
The lines which he had read to the class one afternoon had stuck in Ranny's mind though, and it was doubtful that he would ever get them out, at least not as long as he lived in San Francisco. Unbidden, they popped into his head again today, and as always, Ranny dismissed them derisively. ""The fog creeps in on little cat feet," my ass!", he sneered. Obviously that Carl Sandburg was some kind of wimp who lived in some kind of pussy city that never had real fog. If he'd ever stepped out of a San Francisco doorway onto a street where the wind from the ocean was driving those gray streamers with a cold force which could cut through anything less than a down-filled jacket, he would have had to come up with some more realistic metaphor: "Races in like a cheetah," would be a more accurate description of its speed, but to really get the feel of the cold, Ranny thought maybe it should be compared to an Arctic wolf.