A man stood in the rain outside
his house. Pretty soon, the rain soaked
through his jacket and shirt. He might
have gone in, but he wanted to be
wet, to be really wet, so that it finally
got through his skin and began raining on
the rooftops of the small city that the man
always carried inside him, a city where it
hadn't rained for thirty years, only now the
sky darkened and tremendous drops fell in the
thick dust of the streets. The man's wife
knocked on the window, trying to call
him in. She twirled one finger around
her ear to sign that he was crazy, that
he'd get sick again, standing in
street clothes in a downpour. She put the
finger in her mouth like a thermometer. She formed
the word idiot with her lips, and, always, when
she said that he would give in. But now he
stood there. His whole life he'd wanted to
give something, to sacrifice. At times he'd felt
like coming up to people on the street,
offering his blood. Here, you look like you need
blood. Take mine. Now he could feel the people of
his city waking as if from a long
drought. He could feel them leaving their houses and
jobs, standing with their heads up and their
mouths open, and the little kids taking their
clothes off and lying on their bellies in
the streams and puddles formed by the new
rain that the man made himself, not by doing
anything, but standing there while the rain soaked
through his clothes. He could see his wife and his
own kids staring from the window, the
younger kid laughing at his crazy father,
the older one sad, almost in tears, and the
dog, Ossian-- but the man wanted to drown in
the city in rain. He wanted the small crowded
apartments and the sleazy taverns to empty
their people into the streets. He wanted a
single man with an umbrella to break out dancing
the same way Gene Kelly danced in Singing in
the Rain, then another man, and more,
until the whole city was doing turns and
pirouettes with their canes or umbrellas, first alone,
then taking each other by the arm and waist,
forming a larger and larger circle in the square,
and not to any music but to the
percussion of the rain on the roof of his own house.
And if there were a woman among the dancers, a
woman in a flowery print skirt, a woman wetter and
happier and more beautiful than the rest, may
this man be forgiven for falling in love on
a spring morning in the democracy of the
rain, may he be forgiven for letting his
family think that is just what to expect from
someone who is every day older and more
eccentric, may he be forgiven for evading his
responsibilities, for growing simple in the middle of his life, ruining his best pants and his
one decent tie.