By The River

I came out of the Film Forum on Houston Street in New York tonight after seeing "The Yes Men Fix the World," and saw that rain was pelting the city. It was raining so hard that I started imagining the plot of a script I would write, "The Day After Tomorrow, Part 2: The Deluge," in which it begins raining and never stops. I and a few other plucky survivors, including the 93-year-old Ernest Borgnine (Shelley Winters, alas, is gone) huddle on the observation deck of the Empire State Building, the only part of the city still above water. It was that kind of rainstorm.

Fortunately I had an umbrella and rain jacket, so about half of me stayed dry on the walk to the subway station at Prince & Broadway. My feet and my jeans up to my knees were soaked. Rivers of rainwater rushed down the streets and into storm sewers, and when you stepped off a curb you stepped into a couple of inches of water. The neon lights of SoHo reflected brightly off the wet pavement, and people inside the Apple Store looked at the shiny new laptops as if nothing was amiss. I saw a woman without an umbrella trying to hail a cab. She looked forlorn.

The subway station was a refuge, warm but not entirely dry. Dozens of wet umbrellas dripped onto the floor, and at the end of the platform water poured down from an opening to the street. People noticeably relaxed when they came inside, as if they were Londoners reaching the safety of the Underground during the Blitz. A train came and it wasn't as crowded as I feared. I rode up to 28th Street, dreading having to go outside again. The rain hit me when I was halfway up the steps, and I opened my umbrella and began walking toward the apartment.

I was hungry and decided to stop at Bar Breton on 5th Avenue. I hesitated at the door, wondering if I looked too much the drowned rat to go inside. But they welcomed me, and I sat down for a smoked salmon galette, thinking of Hemingway in Paris and "A Moveable Feast," and washed it down with a Stegmaier beer, thinking of Pennsylvania and home.

When I finished, it was still raining, but not as hard. Reaching the revolving doors of Skyhouse, I shook my umbrella and walked inside. The elevator door opened and I stared at my bedraggled self in the mirror. At the 27th floor, I exited and opened the door to the apartment, stripped off my wet clothes, put them in the washer, and began to write.