Walking in the Storm

My first clue should be watching people grabbing their belongings and running out the door from work early, and these are people with cars. Here I am at my desk wrapping up my work for the day, thinking that if I leave by five thirty then there’ll be plenty of time for an easy Ramen noodles goulash dinner, a swim, and maybe some reading before bedtime. I really need to learn to check the weather sometime in the afternoon to plan my departure.

I pack my laptop bag, which weighs about a hundred pounds, and today I have my Walgreen’s bags full of groceries and a few items that I needed: a screwdriver & tool set for less than four bucks, a silverware caddy, some chocolate peanut butter Balance bars to curb my craving for a Three Musketeers bar every afternoon, and various other things.

So I’m prepared with an umbrella and rain jacket, but it only goes down to here and doesn’t cover my pants, and I’d never heard of “over shoes” until I met Bob Wade for lunch at O’Sullivan’s Crossing one day and he removed his before sitting down to eat, and my point is that I need a set of those.

I say good night to the security guard and reluctantly enter the mess that’s outside, wondering if the T bus will be passing its stop here anytime soon, which it does, but I’m not standing at a bus stop sign, so the driver slows down to a tease, then guns it while I’m left squinting against the downpour. The library is busy and a young woman is running toward her car wearing gray workout shorts and a tee shirt, chuckling to herself as if to admit to herself and others that she, too, was unprepared.

My attempt to cross Throckmorton is a challenge as the streets are becoming paths for creek-like streams and the beginning of flood conditions everywhere in the city. Channel Five News is reporting that this is the most rain that Fort Worth has ever received, and the record was previously set in 1928.

So I wonder whether I’ll stop at Starbucks because I don’t want to spend money and I don’t need caffeine, but decide that it’s a dry place to get out of the storm and I use the trash bag that I’d taken from the apartment this morning and wrap it around my bag, lest I destroy my computer. I chug a tall decaf coffee and then resume the journey that lasts forever, each step adding more water to my shoes, both inside and out, and my pants are soaked all the way through. Stopping under a bridge I make adjustments and double-check my makeshift rain gear and the zippers underneath, then move on, navigating around rushing streams awaiting me at the end of every crosswalk. A half mile from Starbucks I reach the main building of my complex and one of the sales girls inside – a blonde one, but all of them are blonde except Tamina, and don’t ask me why I know that – watches me lumber past the main door dragging my bags, tilting my umbrella and attempting to hide my face so I’m not later ridiculed as the loser in apartment 4406 without a car and having an inability to check weather forecasts before leaving work. I pass no one as I drip toward the elevator, looking behind me to see whether I’ve left puddles or footprints that can be traced.

The elevator is a brief respite before 159 steps to my door, and then inside I take off everything, set my shoes in the bathtub, and toss my pants in the dryer because I’ll need them on Thursday. For a moment I experience the serendipitous thrill of finding a box of hot chocolate packets that I’d forgotten about in one of my empty cabinets. As I put soup on the stove and begin taking every item out of my bags, setting them one by one on every available surface area to allow them to dry, I continue asking myself the same lingering question that’s followed me home: Is this all worth it?