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A City Full of Wet Cats

Today, Washington, D.C. is populated by limp umbrellas, turned inside out but still perching stubbornly over owners' heads like black crows that won't leave until chased away.
The umbrellas bob toward bus stops, lean into cold blasts of wind and shiver water droplets off once safely inside.
Back in Texas, Mama never said there'd be days like this.

Today's astonishing weather conditions include a temperature of no higher than 65 degrees, wind gusts of 28 mph and nearly constant rain, according to the National Weather Service and to firsthand eperience.
Raindrops fall straight down through the sky, like either a cold invading army of millions or a stealth force of 50 wet ninjas, striking the back of a neck and slipping unseen past the victim's collar.
The people walking in the rain wear expressions like wet cats. Disdain, discomfort and even dishappiness (No, that's not a word, but I'm making it one) cause eyes to squench up, mouths to purse, heads to recede, turtlelike into shirts and shoulders to hunch.
On a Circulator bus going from Georgetown to downtown, there's a party going on.
A man steps onto the bus and shuts his umbrella, pelting the woman driver with raindrops.
He apologizes.
"No problem. You weren't the first one, and you probably won't be the last one today," the driver says with a grin.
At the next stop, a woman climbs onto the bus with a pie covered in plastic wrap in her hands. The crust is a lattice-like masterwork.
"Did you bake that yourself?" someone asks her.
She says yes.
"Is it rhubarb or apple?" a man asks.
"It's rhubarb," she says.
"I love rhubarb," the man says.
Requests to share follow, but the baker points out eating isn't allowed on the bus.
"I could make an exception for the pie," the driver says.
I get the bad news when I step off at 14th and K Street NW.
"Everybody getting off the bus now doesn't get pie," the driver tells me with a wicked smile.
I laugh while opening my wind-ravaged umbrella, and, for a while, I'm not one of the people in D.C. wearing an expression like a wet cat.

Posted by Trish Choate at 12:25 PM | Permalink