Now That It's Raining More Than Ever

"The walruses are not on display today," said the sign. We sighed, paid $13 each, and accepted the loss. Not even the walruses wanted to go outside on a day like Saturday.

We had decided to make our way through the alphabet, A to Z, a date for each letter. J suggested the idea one late night over tacos on the Lower East Side.

A was for Aquarium.

The dark, magical, terrifying world of the aquarium seemed appropriate on that rainy day. Wet became relative. We watched the raindrops speckle the water overhead in the large tanks, a rhythmic and ever-changing ceiling art for fishes. Stingrays hugged the sandy bottoms, pregnant male seahorses spun through seafans. Little snaking things, giant moray eels the stuff of nightmares. I forgot how creeped out I get by underwater things. Despite their colors, despite the friendly descriptions, as the wind wailed outside and the rain dripped through the walls of the shark pavilion, I felt shivers run down my spine. I grabbed J's arm; he became my anchor as we ran from pavilion to pavilion through the wind and the rain, peering into glass boxes, watching things glide through the water.

As we left, a howl rose up over the boardwalk, the aching, grinding sound of metal being stretched and bent in the wind. The masts of Coney Island were crying like great beasts trapped in mud, like the ghosts of the freak show had clambered up the Parachute Jump, and, once there, finding they had no parachutes, leapt into the sand with a collective and mighty groan.

We took the subway back home to sit in the window of a local restaurant and watch the world slowly fill with water. Outside, discarded umbrellas came to life. One made its way into the road; J gasped audibly as the wheels of one car, then another, then another ran over the umbrella's helpless remains. Some were skittering along the sidewalk like crabs on a beach; one in leopard print nylon skittered downtown, stopped, then suddenly sped off as if it remembered it had somewhere to be.

Someone played Rihanna's "Umbrella" on the hi-fi.

An older couple next to us were finishing their meal, trying to decide if they should make a run for it. The woman turned to us, pointing out the window.

"You won't believe it, but back when we were courting, that March was a windy month. We were walking down the street, and I had to grab on to a lamppost. 'Help!' I said to him, and he turned around and I was hugging a lamppost."

I asked if her feet were flying in the air. She looked out the window and smiled, as if she might see her younger self out there hugging a lamppost.

"Hold on to her," we said to him as they pulled up their collars to leave.

The rain blew harder, umbrellas crawled past. It seemed as if it would never end, as if someone was trying to turn our world into an aquarium. Umbrellas became giant stingrays sweeping the bottom of our new seafloor.

The Korean War vet propping up the corner of the bar stepped outside for a cigarette. Three puffs and he was back inside, wide-eyed. "I thought it was gonna blow ME away!"

It was weather for holding on to something, weather for seeking anchors. Weather for holding on to someone tight so you wouldn't blow away.

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.