The Night of the Rainy Afternoon

The rain was falling cool and crisp and the people were running and fleeing it's baptismal embrace. I was loving the solitary communion with the City of my birth. I was standing in a doorway taking a drag on one of Johnny's older clove cigarettes letting the rain paste my balding scalp with cool drops like little kisses from the sky. I watched the urban socialites with the pulled back plastic faces twisted into permanent smile grimaces running for cabs all flustered and upset. I watched the suits darting between cars and cabs trying to shove their expanding bellies between the raindrops and I watched the delivery guys and construction workers just shrug it all off as another day in the trench. I loved this day and sent a thank you heaven-ward for such a blessing.

It was then that the entertainment got much better.

People shuffled by with their umbrellas like they were in their own personal cones of silence. They looked down trying to avoid contact with each other, trying not to get wet and looking like wet rodents, miserable and cold and lonely. It is the rare sight of a smiling face peering from under the silk and nylon and plastic to the street ahead or to the sky above. Rarer still is the happy soul found splishing though the puddles in a carefree fashion. Usually, they just drone on in miserable silence counting the seconds until they get to their destination so they can complain about the rain. Silly stuff is man made of.

As random luck would have it, I was present on this day when one person passed another person and the tops of the umbrellas collided. The water cascaded down onto the people underneath breaking the zombie drone and snapping them back to life with a snarl instead of being grateful for contact with another living being . It was a, "Hey you got your chocolate in my peanut butter" moment but without the joy that comes with discovering a new and tasty confection. They saw it as an infringement on their personal space. Action was demanded, retribution was at hand. Suddenly the two squared off, umbrellas were drawn tight like rapiers and they engaged, attacked, dodged, feinted, parried and all that other swashbuckler sword fighting stuff.. They chased each other around the street, swiping at one another and shouting things like, "Take that, you fool," and "So you theenk you can defeat me? Well taste my steel!"

As if by chaotic osmosis, others got caught up in the fray and soon the sound of umbrellas snapping shut was all around me. Wet pedestrians spilled out onto the street dueling like pirates in an Errol Flynn movie. In the stores, people were fighting with their umbrellas in the shortened position like little black nylon daggers. I saw the traditional table jump/swipe/cut the candles Hollywood-style in the little diner who's doorway I was occupying. Only the candles were rows of cakes and pies on the counter plus the occasional coffee cup that didn't slice neatly at the touch of an umbrella but rather, clattered across the counter into the lap of a priest who jumped up and shouted, "DAMN YOU!!! DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!!!" and joined in with not one but two umbrella daggers. Back in the street people were jumping onto the hoods of taxis, kicking over those metal pretzel carts, using old ladies as shields and hurling grapes and apples from the fruit stands. It was a pirate paradise, a swashbuckler's symphony, an umbrella maker's wet dream. Right in front of me two combatants were pounding their rather expensive looking designer umbrellas until they were nothing but tattered fabric and ugly bent metal. People were shouting, umbrellas were clanging together and people were rolling in the wet street. All the while I stood in my doorway puffing the clove and praying that the rain would never stop.