June in New York has a personality disorder. It was 84 and golden when I left work. By the time I got off the train in Astoria, the sky had turned the color of a bruise.
I did not have an umbrella. I never have an umbrella. I am 24 years old and I still leave the house like the weather owes me a favor.
The thunderstorm in Astoria came down like it had something to prove. Sheets of it. I ducked into the bodega on 30th Avenue, the one with the cat who sleeps on the lottery tickets and rules the entire establishment with quiet contempt.
I bought a chai-adjacent tea I didn't need just to have a reason to stand there. The owner waved me off. "Wait it out, beta," he said — he's not Indian, he just calls everyone beta, and honestly it worked on me, I almost teared up over a thunderstorm in Astoria, which is embarrassing.
Then an older woman with a grocery cart finished her shopping, looked at me dripping by the door, and just handed me a foldable umbrella from her bag. "I have three," she said. "Take it. Don't be silly."
I tried to pay her. She refused. She walked out into the rain with her own umbrella and her cart and her cardigan and her whole unbothered self.
That's the thing about a thunderstorm in Astoria, or anywhere in this city. It strips everyone down to their actual nature, and sometimes what's underneath is just plain kindness wearing a raincoat.
I walked the four blocks home under a stranger's umbrella, completely soaked from the knees down, grinning like an idiot.
In Bollywood the rain is always romantic — the heroine spinning in a wet saree, the soft-focus longing. Real rain is grosser and better. Real rain is a borrowed umbrella from someone who has three.
I'm keeping it by my door so I remember to pass it on.
Somebody's umbrella is always meant to become yours, then someone else's.
Love,