it’s raining

It’s raining.  It’s raining uptown.  Julia comes to her window, and sighs.  She’s been waiting for something to happen, anything really.  This week has sucked.  Monday, wake up, work, early dinner, and the straight to bed.  Tuesday, same.  Wednesday…you get the idea.  It’s Friday and she’s really hoping, or rather hoped, something would surprise her, and break up this pattern.

But it’s raining.

No one is going out.  No one is calling her.  There is just the giant silverfish in her bathtub under a pot.  That’s the excitement for the night.  She goes to her phone, and starts to flip through the numbers in vain.  Who do you call when you don’t want to talk?  Who should you dial when you want a surprise?  She gets up from her couch, which is ratty and worn from where her former roommates cat scratched it apart.  Living alone had some perks but this nagging sense of loneliness was not one of them.

“Maybe I’ll get drunk” she thought.

Julia walks down to the overpriced Korean Deli and buys a pack of Corona, one lime and some of those weird fig bars wrapped in celophane.  She starts to go back to her apartment and then, stops midway, sits on a bench and cracks open a beer.  A cop pulls up, sees her, a 32 year old woman wet, under an umbrella, drinking, and he stops.

“Rough night, huh?” he blurts out.

“You said it.”

“You know I’m going to have to give you a ticket.”

And without thinking about it, Julia smiles and says, “what if I give you my number instead.”

The cop smiles.

It’s a thing they both know is wrong, but somehow it’s already happening.