Off Base?

"Great mountains of it still glitter in the pounding sunlight..." In the pounding sunlight. I don't know, but it feels like there's some kind of synethesia going on here. I can hear what you're describing. I can feel it, too. Admittedly, I may be completely off base, Barbara, and please tell me if I am, but it seems that you do some of your best writing when you're tired. Maybe that's when your inner Aunt Whatever-Her-Name-Is has gone to sleep. Anyway, here's something I came up with:

They drove though upended streets, under a thick, gray sky. Raitt drove because she knew the way. Lennie held his own arms for comfort.
"How much longer?" he asked.
"It's right up here," Raitt said. "This place, here."
She pulled off the street onto a parking lot of sand and gravel, a big open space all around this brown, brick thing. Huge buildings stood up out of the distance, smaller ones clustered at their feet. She parked a little way from the brick building, an open sign glowing orange in a window, switched off the engine. They got out into the warm, moving air. Raitt went around back, opened the trunk and took out a cardboard box that was sealed with tape.
"Take this," she said to Lennie. He took the box into his arms.
They started walking toward the small building with all the gravel and sand around it. Together, they walked under the rivering sky. Skirling winds rifled their clothes and hair, scoured their skin. The moment hummed in their hands and lips, all the gray buildings in the distance, like monuments in an overgrown cemetary.

Still smiling.

Bob