strangers talk only about the weather

She hates us. That evil bitch of a whore wants us all to die. That's the only explanation. If we don't all jump out of windows soon, she'll turn up the heat and drive us mad until we slaughter each other. It sounds absurd, I know, but I've been there. I've seen the madness first-hand. I was there ten years ago during the heat wave when I snapped and beat attacked a taxi driver in the middle of Market Street for running a red light. I was in Seattle when we had 100 days of non-stop rain. That poor bastard who came into the Cha Cha Lounge just wanted to start a conversation, but the minute he mentioned the rain, the doorman, bartender and I beat him to a bloody pulp. We couldn't take it anymore. It was kill or be killed at that point. The rain just did us in...

100 days. Let me tell you, you suffer through 100 days of non-stop rain, suddenly the Apocolypse becomes more than just a myth. It becomes desireable. It becomes a relatively sane way out of the madness. It becomes a window of opportunity.

I can hear it now. Across the street someone is about to break down a door out of sheer insanity. I can hear it in his voice. He can't take the rain anymore.   

The official numbers of May are pretty daunting. 24 days of rain, six days partly cloudy, and one day of sun. Death and destruction suddenly become feasible options.   

There are ways out, of course. Survival is certainly possible. All it takes is the heart and determination of a Lunatic. It takes the ability to latch onto that one beautiful thing and hold on for dear life, knowing all the while that if anything goes wrong, it will break you, and there won't be any of the King's soldiers and men to put you back together again.   

I wrote a story about the rain once. In fact, it's the last thing I ever got published. It went something like this...


INDIA DANCING

The rain continued for three more weeks. Everything blurred in Tommy's head. He began to think he was going insane, and pacing back and forth helped him lift his feet. They had become a genuine problem the last few days, turning clunky and abstract, and preventing him from dancing. But he didn't want to dance. It was she who did the dancing. It was India. Thinking of her brought a chill to his spine, and made him stop pacing. He wished the rain would stop.

India was bored. She paced back and forth across the stage with the tired indifference of a rag doll. Occasionally she would spin around the pole, then stick her butt out and shake it a bit. That, however, took effort, and nobody really even noticed. She stopped for a moment, and glanced at herself in the mirror behind the stage. She wasn't unattractive, just a bit chunky in parts that she sometimes wished were svelte. But that was only sometimes. She had large breasts, and she knew that was why she could get jobs in so many clubs, but they were starting to sag too soon and she feared that nobody cared about them anymore. Every now and then she would caress them or press them upwards to draw attention to them, but then she would feel embarrassed and she would turn away. The only problem was that every time she turned away from the audience (if there was one), she was forced to look at herself in the mirror, and the questions would begin again.

She realized that she had stopped dancing. She was merely standing in the middle of the stage, waiting for the song to end. She turned around and looked at the crowd, and nobody seemed to care. For a lark she shook her upper torso violently, her breasts swinging back and forth. She did this until it was uncomfortable, and then she stopped. Somebody whistled, apparently unaware that it was inappropriate for the slow song she was dancing to. Oh well, she thought, people are like that.

The song ended and she climbed off the stage, anxious to put her top back on while Ebony leaped up to fill the space she vacated. She covered herself, then went around to collect her tips.

"What's your name, honey?" she would always start, unless she actually knew them from before. Then she would tell them her name, and they would say "Pleased to meet you" as they stuck a dollar or two in her g-string. Occasionally she would have to press her breasts together to get a tip, and it always made her shiver to feel some strange man's clammy hand wedged within her bosom. But hell, it was her job. This was her life. Now she was no longer the struggling artist who got a job in a go-go bar to help pay for rent and supplies. That girl was long gone, lost in a flurry of dollar bills and sweaty, clammy hands and eleven dollars under the table. Now she was India, and she danced.

He couldn't stand it anymore. The rain was falling and his feet were clunking and his cat was meowing like a steam grate in winter. He grabbed his shrunken overcoat, his hat and his umbrella, and he journeyed out into the street. Home to him was an unnecessary waste of sanity.

The streetlights glowed with a hazy moan through the rain, and his boots soon soaked through. Yet he walked with a rapid shuffle and clack as his shoulders sunk down with the weight of the moon. He wasn't sure where he was heading, but he hoped he'd find himself welcome. And within twenty minutes and thousands of raindrops he found the Lucky Saloon.

She was lurching in the corner, puffing on a whiskey and sipping a smoke when she saw him walk through the door. She didn't know whether to be happy or scared, so she turned her head down to the bar. He bothered her somehow, with the sincerity with which he spoke, but after every dumb conversation he gave her a twenty dollar bill.

Yet there was always an odd grace to his movements, and a loneliness trapped in his face. And despite the numb chills that he sent down her spine, at least he wouldn't cop a cheap feel. She decided that she would say hello, but she had her whiskey to consider. Besides, he would still be there when she finished, and he'd probably buy her a drink.

He spotted her almost immediately as he entered the bar. He dropped his shrunken overcoat and folded his umbrella and sat himself at an empty barstool. He kept his hat on, hoping that it would lend him some sort of grace, and knowing that it trapped the loneliness in his face. He ordered a beer and he lit up a smoke, and he tried to pretend that he wasn't staring at her.

If anyone had asked him, Tommy would have been hard pressed to explain what it was about India that moved him so deeply. He supposed there was just something alive and alone trapped between the blue of her eyes and the grey of her skin. Her body also touched him somehow, with her patches of gentle cellulite, and the heavenly sag of her breasts. When she danced, her shape was angelic, and Tommy's heart leapt every time she spun around the pole.

He seemed to be dreaming when India sat down beside him, and he even seemed surprised when she said, "Hello."

Tommy pretended to be thinking when she sat down beside him, and he even acted surprised when she said, "hello."

"How have you been?" he asked, regaining his composure. She swayed her body beside him, working for the twenty she knew she would get.

"Aside from the rain," she said, "fine."

"They say it may stop next week," he said.

"By next week I'll be dead" she said.

Tommy's heart fell.  "You mustn't say that," he said, "You shouldn't even joke about that."

"I was only kidding," she said, "It's just that this rain..."

"I know, the rain." There was an odd moment of silence between them as Tommy hid from her eyes. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the twenty that he had set aside just for her. He handed it to her without even looking at her.

"No, honey," she said as she took the bill, "you haven't even seen me dance yet."

"That's okay," he said, "I'm only in here for a quick beer. Besides, you'll be up soon, I'm sure."

"Next, actually."

He glanced up at her finally, and gave her his best imitation of a smile.

"Thanks honey," she said, and then she kissed him just next to his mouth. Tommy just sat there, stunned. She had never done that before. Every cell in his body told him not to, but he said it anyway.

"I love you."

Chills of fear ran down her spine.

"You're crazy." she said, more as an accusation than a joke.

"No, I'm not," he said, "I love you."

"But you couldn't love me," she said, "You don't even know me."

"You don't know me either," he said, "What difference does that make?"

"You scare me." she said.

"I don't mean to."

"You don't even know my real name," she said.

Tommy was getting angry and flustered, knowing how he had humiliated himself.

"You don't know my name, either," he said.  "It really doesn't matter. You're India, you're a dancer here. You're beautiful and you break my heart every time you get on that stage and I'll never see you outside of this bar, but for some certain frozen moments, I love you."

Tommy's face flushed with embarrassment. India sat with her mouth slightly opened. She licked ever so slightly at the corner of her mouth as all of his words sunk in. At that moment, she was no longer afraid of this graceful, lonely man. For just a moment, she understood. She was no longer Kathy, the struggling artist who walked into a go-go bar hoping for some extra money for rent and supplies. For certain frozen moments she was India, and she danced, and this man she didn't know loved her. She was no longer afraid, she was just a little bit confused. She struggled for something to say.

"I have to go now," she said.

Tommy bowed his head in understanding.

She was next, after all.  She had to dance.

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