a fish in my pocket

I'm watching a squirrel as I walk across the street, my jacket's hood tapping with the odd pattern of rain as each drop slowly works its way into the fibers. The squirrel is in the middle of the intersection, looking like a poorly placed garden ornament, and it turns to watch me as I shuffle past. It runs suddenly, as squirrels often do, out of the street and into a tree, which wearily hangs over the sidewalk I'm crossing onto. Squirrel pauses at eye level in the crook of this gnarled tree and continues to watch me, until I meet its gaze. Then something unspoken disturbs it and it disappears from view. My gaze goes back to the sidewalk, framed by the grey edges of my hood, and I see the woman again.
I noticed her about a block back, a figure on the same sidewalk being noteworthy in and of itself in my neighborhood of automobiles. She's close, walking towards me and now only a few paces away, and I think perhaps I recognize her. A shock of dyed hair, fading from brilliance to that artifical glow of indeterminate pinkishness, pokes out from under her white hood. She's wearing a sweatshirt, I think, a white one, but it's obscured by a denim jacket, lumpy and unelegant. In her right hand is a pale cigarette, dotted with specks of rain as mine had been a few minutes before, before I tossed it into the ashtray outside the gas station and it became just another butt. She holds her cigarette carefully, poised over the spikes of the white picket fence to my left. She seems to pause, catching in her stride, as we begin to pass each other. I look at her face, holding a smile in reserve to match hers should it appear, and wondering if I recognize her or just these things about her, projected by my memory onto her figure.
She speaks, suddenly, clearly, almost loudly, "I have a fish in my pocket, if you were wondering."
This challenge catches my stride, and I wonder whether to pause or not and inspect this so-called fish in a so-called pocket, giving it the attention that it apparently deserves. But there was a defensive edge to her voice which said that she didn't really want me to know what was in her pocket, just to accept her and cargo without the silent criticism of a stranger. So I let my smile emerge and I laugh, not with scorn or aggression, but simply surprise. Now we are past each other, and I re-vision her figure, whose lumpy layers of protective fabric I had been unimpressed by, in light of the fish. Almost immediately I wonder at the conversation that could have been - one fish? two fish? red fish? blue fish? - but I keep walking. Her cargo and her mission, however mysterious they remain to me, are safe. The rain continues to dapple the pitted sidewalk. My jeans shuffle rhythmically with each step. This moment of delerium now past, I wonder if the squirrel knew all along.