I stop thinking about Claire. Instead, when the rain starts I close my windows and roll my car into the garage. As the thunder begins to crack, then sizzle, and the air turns green, I put my feet up on the ottoman and I open the shades to better enjoy the view. While the tree branches sway, bend, then splinter, and the skies begin to swirl and twist, I open the bottle of tequila. I pour a shot, and keep pouring, as the house begins to shake and threatens to become unmoored from the foundation I poured with my father so long ago. After things go black I shift to drinking straight from the bottle, the golden liquid splashing onto my beard, chest, and lap. I see the crunchy worm swimming towards me with every burning gulp and I decide that with so little to care about, it’s a gift to have anything to look forward to. The rain continues its rat-tat-tat assault on my windows and roof, and as the worm slides, then lands on my tongue, I pause, savoring the moment and embracing the possibility that this just may be the end of the world. After that I bite the worm. My father once told me that stealing another man’s woman was the most pussy thing a man could do. It was like murdering him. That never stopped my father though. Nor did it stop me. Of course I never did listen to him. Something I find myself thinking about the night Claire and I are drinking at Thirsty’s and we run into Mark. We didn’t expect to see Mark, but to expect something is to think about it, and we hadn’t thought about him in a long time. He was no more sober than I remembered him, but something seemed different. Age is funny like that, though. Things no longer make sense in the same way. It’s like with an Etcha-Sketch. One minute that which you so carefully created is right there in front of you, and then it gets shaken, and suddenly it’s gone, just like that. After another pitcher, though, I realize what’s different. It’s not him, he’s the same. It’s us. We’ve changed, we stopped caring, and in no longer caring we are no longer better than Mark, though maybe we never were. He had loved Claire and she had run to me, his former friend, and I welcomed her, with open arms, and no consideration of what was right. But now here we were together again, just like that, the years washed away, a collection of sadness and regret massed into a small insular ball of drink and pain. “I’ve missed you,” Mark suddenly says. He’s not talking to me.
38
I am lying on the floor in my house, the rain still pounding, the chair broken, and askew. My forehead is covered in dry blood. I could tell you this is unusual, but that would be a lie. All that’s unusual is the storm and how it will not stop its relentless march across our town. I walk into the bathroom and I wash my face, clean my wound, and bandage it. There are any number of thoughts a man might have at a time like this, but I am most struck by the fact that I am out of alcohol, and that I need to get some more if this storm refuses to abate. I walk outside, the rain unceasing, the world around me ravaged and furious, a tangled mess of downed power lines and fallen trees. I head to my car, turn it on, and pause to clear my head before heading down the hill to Robby’s Liquors. I work my way down the hill, weaving between the branches and abandoned cars, and I’m amazed by just how little my lights are cutting through a darkness that is so opaque as if to be solid, or whole. But then the darkness breaks, there is light, and with the light I see what the storm has wrought. The water has surged over the banks of the Susquehanna River and buried the South Side in its entirety. MacArthur School is underwater, swollen books floating out of the library windows like pulpy oyster crackers. The cross out front of St. Johns Church is still there too, but just barely, as it rocks to and fro, and threatens to wrench loose at any moment.