I Have a Friend in
the Rain
I
sat at the window in the graying dawn
steam rising from my mug of forgotten coffee. Still. At ease. Anticipatory.
Watching. A bead of rain trickled down my windowpane. Gray dawn.
“…
Again!” shouted Salter, my best friend and sometimes lover, just a week ago.
“Rain
again! Rain! Rain! Rain!”
Just
a week ago. Before Salter, my erstwhile
best friend and sometimes lover packed it
in.
“I
can’t stand this shit! When it’s not raining, it’s misting.”
And
caught the local bus to Portland.
Salter
stalked the room, his words tossed off toward my back as I watched through my
window. He stopped. I could envision him if I wished: booted feet planted wide,
hand dramatically raised, an accusing finger angled heavenward. “And when it’s
not misting, it’s overcast. Getting ready
to rain again!”
To
catch the Greyhound to Arizona and sunny skies.
The
sun rose, its presence so diffused by the rain that the sky barely lightened.
Such a subtle beginning for this cloistered day. A delicate change in the way
the raindrops glisten. Behind me, if I attended, Salter’s outstretched arm
would tense in anger, tense until it
shook, then drop loosely to his side, defeated.
“I
gotta get out of here,” he muttered. “Get out of this rain, this depression.”
To
sunny skies.
If
I wanted, I could see him turn, awkward after his anger, to the bed, our bed,
and pick up his duffle bag.
The
rain collected on the branches of the big cedar, collected and fell, one individual
drop at a time; alone, inevitable, a pure and tiny world falling toward the
earth, attracted by gravity, to explode upon impact into a myriad of tinier worlds.
“I
gotta go. I’m sorry. It’s nothing personal.”
Do
those tinier worlds explode again when they impact the earth? Creating even
smaller universes? And again? And again?
Salter,
my very best friend and often, so often my lover turned away and opened the
door, stepped through, closing it softly behind him.
A
bead of rain trickles down my windowpane.
Salter
missed the sunrise.
I
have a friend in the rain.
R. L. Adare took a degree in Linguistics at U.
C. Davis. Since first being published a few times “back in the days” of
S.A.S.E., he has taught school, owned a kite shop, and lived and sailed on a
boat for ten years—a few trips around the block. Currently working full time at
writing on a novel series, Two Blankets, about a Nez Perce girl kidnapped by
the Chinook and forced to live in slavery.
Tags:
Short Fiction