The sky opened up over the Lower East Side on Wednesday like it had a personal problem with me specifically.
One second it was sticky and fine, the next it was that thick August rain that turns Delancey Street into a river and every umbrella inside out. I ducked into my corner bodega on Clinton to wait it out, because the alternative was arriving to dinner looking like I'd been baptized.
My bodega cat, whose name I've decided is Amitabh because he is large, dignified, and completely uninterested in me, was asleep on the register counter. He did not acknowledge the storm. He did not acknowledge me. Icon behavior.
The guy behind the counter, Sameer, saw me dripping and just said, samosa? like it was a full sentence. Which it was. He'd fried a fresh batch and handed me one, no charge, and I nearly cried into it.
There's something about being in a bodega during a rain delay that fixes your whole nervous system. Time stops. You're not late, you're just weather-adjacent. The fluorescent light, the hum of the drinks fridge, Amitabh breathing slowly, the rain going sideways outside.
Sameer told me about his daughter starting at Baruch. I told him about my client deadline. We agreed the MTA would definitely be flooded. Small talk that felt like the opposite of small.
By the time the rain thinned to a drizzle, twenty minutes had passed and I felt weirdly restored. This is the thing about a corner bodega. It's not a store, it's a room in the city that belongs to everyone a little bit.
I paid for the samosa anyway. He pretended to argue. Amitabh slept through the entire negotiation.
Sometimes the storm does you a favor by making you stand still.
Love,