When it rains

It's raining. I'd left the house to go to a doctors appointment and walked the six or seven blocks to the garage where my car is parked. I drove uptown to Richard's office on Napoleon avenue and was in and out in under fifteen minutes, which is so quickly that I didn't have to pay for parking because of the grace period. He gave me a clean bill of health aside from my sinus infection and for that he gave me a prescription for antibiotics.

I drove back to the garage and parked my car, opened my umbrella before exiting to walk to the pharmacy and it bent in the wind, ready to fall apart but it held together long enough for me to make it inside, where I was made to wait for the prescription to be filled. The man behind the counter told me they'd just called it in, but I knew he was making an excuse because they were on the phone with him when I left Richard's office. I waited patiently until the pharmacists assistant called my name, paid for all my things and left.

I walked home and it was raining even harder. My umbrella finally snapped when I tipped it to clear other umbrella's that were passing by. I could feel my shoes filling up with water, the dampness rising on my jeans to a point just below the knee. I waved to my neighbor with the hand that contained the broken pieces of my umbrella and he smiled, waved back.

When I got into the house I started removing layers. I left the umbrella by the door and as I moved up the stairs took my jacket off. When I got to the top, I removed my shoes and left footprints where my wet socks touched the wood floors (you could see the outlines of my toes because the wet fabric had clung to my feet). I removed my socks and jeans and put them directly in the washer before pulling my sweater over my head and hanging it on the hook that I'd taken my bathrobe from before slipping into it.

I walked into my bedroom, picked out dry jeans, a fresh shirt and warm socks all of which I slipped into while noting that my neighbor was looking up at my office window from his front porch.