From the stairwell on the seventeenth floor, I watch the quiet monotones of a thunderstormy Friday saturate midtown Manhattan. Down below, taxicabs roll along unhurried, their yellows dulled by the nebulous mass of grey high overhead, their wheels splish-splashing in the pools of water collected beneath. Umbrella tops glide by, indecisive circles on the pavement below.
Someone flirted with me on Tuesday. I was struggling with the door to Chris's building on the Upper East Side when I saw out of the corner of my eye a man stick his foot in the elevator door, holding it open and waiting for me to get in. "Which floor?" he asked. I gave the number and thanked him, suddenly aware that he was looking me over in the cramped space of the elevator. "You know," he said, "the only reason I held the door was because you're cute."
I don't know why that memory came to me this morning, but it did. Rainy days do that to me sometimes. They make me pensive, they put me in a somber mood, they temper the crazies in my mind and slur the voices in my head. Rainy days are good that way.
