It seems to have rained for the past few months. A few times, we were deluged with downpours, but most of the time, curtains of steady rain have cascaded from gray ceilings of clouds. However, tonight, thunder snarled and barked as lightning glowered and torrents of rain battered the streets.
And after the rain, the air turned into the strangest kind of light. It touched the street on which I live: While the skies grew darker than the ocean brimming with an oncoming storm, the brick buildings across the street from my place smoldered with the burnished light of a sun that could not be seen.
I walked alongside that trompe l'oeil inferno toward the avenue that intersects my street. I turned left, toward the bodega. Along the way I could see, to my right, our friendly neighborhood skyscraper--The Citicorp Tower (http://www.flickr.com/photos/wallyg/152451822/), like a square soda bottle full of flourescent light. The red and white neon Citibank sign near the top made the building's veridescence even eerier against the deepening opaque sky. I rarely have anything good to say about a company like Citicorp, but I don't think that's the reason why that vertically elongated glass cube looked like some kind of sickly omen: like something that could cause my head to detach itself from my body and sink into a primordial pool of radioactive light.
I'm tempted to call Dr. Bowers: I'm wondering if this has anything to do with my reduction in hormones. I've had one of those crying jags Robin warned me about, and was about to have another last night when I was riding my bike home and I saw two cars skid and narrowly avoid running over a little dog in the street.
The dog, who had obviously never been on the streets before, had no idea of how to get across an interesection. She wandered into a yard at the corner of that intersection. The kids who were playing there asked some male adult whether they could keep the dog. He shook his head; they shooed the dog and she wagged her tail as she waddled toward me.
She licked my left ankle and leg. I got off my bike and sqatted toward her. Without hesitating, she came to me, propped herself on my knee and licked it. I petted her; that made her even happier.
No one seemed or wanted to recognize her. She wore a collar but no tag; obviously, she escaped from her home or--egad!--someone dumped her. She continued to lick my knee, my leg and then my hand after I petted her.
I picked her up. She didn't weigh much more than Charlie or Max. I got back on my bike (At moments like that, I'm glad I bought a women's bike for my errand/commuter vehicle!) and, with her propped on my left arm and sprawled over my chest and shoulder, steeered with my right.
I'd hoped to find a veteranarian's office or an animal hospital. No such luck. So I took her to the police precinct station on 118th Street in Richmond Hill. Do you enjoy seeing cops go all mushy? Then you would've loved to have beeen there, when I brought in that dog. But I can only imagine what they were thinking when they saw me bringing her in: Me, a middle-aged woman carrying the kind of wriggling little mop of hair that Posh Spice would keep as an accessory.
I would have kept her, too. Except that she wouldn't have been just an accessory, as she was so friendly and sweet. But I don't live in a big place, and I don't know how Charlie and Max would have reacted.
I just hope she gets home safely, and that I get to sleep soon.
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