I Love Weather

I’m such a New Englander that way. Every slight change in the skies outside generate intense in-depth conversations between groups of people. Strangers talk about the weather in the elevator. And it’s not just chit-chat. Everyone is invested in the conversation. It’s hysterical.

My favorite is when it’s, say, 3 or 4 o’clock on what had been a blindingly sunny day … and suddenly you look out the window, and it’s almost dark, as though daylight savings hadn’t happened yet, and you’re back in wintertime. You know a storm is coming. I love that moment before a storm more than anything else.

Yesterday, the sun was snuffed out of the sky at around 4 o’clock, and a heavy low greenish-grey light lay over the city. I stood on the sidewalk just looking up at the turbulence. It’s exhilarating. No raindrops yet, but you could feel something big was coming.

I had my writing group last night. We meet at the pizza joint Two Boots in the dining concourse of Grand Central. We’ve been doing so for a couple of years. Two Boots has fat red-leather booths, and tables with red and white checked tablecloths. For the most part, when my group meets, the tables are empty, but the bar at the front of the restaurant is packed. Commuters waiting for their Metro North trains, sucking down liquor for the ride home. But the restaurant part is relatively quiet, and we can sit at a table, have a pitcher of water, maybe order a salad or a calzone, spread out our writing across the table, and talk and work. The waitresses don’t hurry us out, they know us by now. It’s our spot. To get there, I walk cross town. I usually take 38th street across town, to avoid the mania of 42nd Street, and then at 5th Avenue, I turn left and walk to 42nd. That way, I get to go by the New York Public Library, and I love that. I love that building.

As I started out on my walk last night, it started to rain. Up went the umbrella. Half a block later, the rain got a bit heavier. As I crossed Broadway, there was a sudden blinding flash of lightning (am I insane, or did I FEEL that lightning-flash in the handle of my umbrella – is it possible? I felt a vibration) – and after that, an enormous CRACK of thunder. Not a rumble, but a CRACK.

The rain got a bit heavier.

Half a block later, another sizzle of lightning, directly followed by another CRACK. The rain was now coming down pretty heavily, and you could see people on the street starting to react. People would wince at the thunder, and then start laughing … People without umbrellas were fucked, but I saw lots of people laughing about it, as they raced for a scaffolding to wait it out …

Once I hit 5th Avenue, all hell broke loose. The rain was now coming down in sheets – billowing hard-hitting sheets of water pounding on the pavement … The sidewalk drains were already flooded, and water raced through the gutters so that you had to leap over a mini-white-water river every time you crossed the street. The rain was so heavy most people stood under overhangs, or in doorways. It was the kind of downpour where an umbrella doesn’t do you much good. My jeans were soaked.

The lightning and thunder continued. It was absolute chaos. I love New York when it gets like that. When the weather shouts at us: PAY ATTENTION TO ME.

The NYPL was dark grey, somber-looking, being pounded by the rain. The stone lions wet and dripping.

I was a total MESS by the time I got to Grand Central. My jeans – even though I had stopped to roll them up – were completely soaked. My hair was wild. My shoes were ruined. Liz, one of the other women in the group, stood waiting for me by the restaurant, and I saw she was in the same position. Her pants were wet from the foot to the knee. We looked at each other and just started laughing. Deep in the belly of Grand Central, I couldn’t tell anymore what the weather was doing outside. If there was thunder we wouldn’t have been able to hear it.

We worked for a couple of hours. It was good.

When I emerged from Grand Central at 8:30, to make my way cross-town again to go home, the night was cool, black and dry. You couldn’t tell that a storm had happened. The gushing gutter-rivers were gone, maybe the sidewalks were damp – but that was the only evidence of the havoc wreaked a couple hours earlier.

Like I said – I love weather. I love the changeability of the whole thing.