August in New York does not do subtle weather. Tuesday it was blue sky and swampy heat, and then at 6PM the sky over the Lower East Side turned the color of a bruise and just opened up.
I was on Ludlow Street with no umbrella, obviously, because I am a fashion person who checks the runway but never the forecast. I ducked under a bodega awning next to a guy already sheltering there, holding a single sad umbrella and a cat that clearly ran the store.
The thunderstorm was biblical. Rain coming sideways. That specific smell of hot pavement getting slapped with water, which I love more than I can explain. We stood there, two strangers, watching the street turn into a river.
He offered me half his umbrella when the rain started blowing into the awning. "Where you headed? Delancey?" I was. He was too. So this stranger and I walked four blocks under one umbrella through a Lower East Side thunderstorm, both of us getting soaked on the outer shoulders anyway, laughing about how pointless the umbrella actually was.
We didn't exchange numbers. We didn't fall in love. This isn't that kind of story, thank god, I have deadlines. He just walked me to the J and M entrance at Delancey, said "stay dry, which, good luck," and disappeared into the storm.
People love to say New York is cold. That New Yorkers won't look at you. I've lived here long enough to know it's a lie we tell to keep the city from getting too crowded. The truth is a thunderstorm turns everyone soft. Suddenly we're all just wet people trying to get home, sharing umbrellas, cheering when a taxi splashes some poor suit on the corner.
I rode the J home to Astoria squelching in my shoes, mascara probably down to my chin, grinning like an idiot. The bodega cat, the shared umbrella, the stranger — the whole thing lasted twenty minutes and I'll remember it for years.
Get caught in the rain sometime. The city is nicer when it's soaked.
Love,