Aguacero

I remember the sky had been dark since morning, as if protesting the start of another day. Rain held off till afternoon, then started heavy: long, gray water shards dropping like scissors on the pavement. I'd just left my therapist's office without an umbrella and stopped for a pack of cigarettes in one of those Midtown shops, the size of a closet and smelling of nuts and tobacco, because nothing makes me want to smoke more than a visit to the shrink.

I remember the only other customer was a boy of about fifteen paying for rolling papers and a lottery ticket he told the cashier was for his mom, and after, I stood outside the shop, my back pressed against the glass window under the cover of the black awning, trying to decide if I should make a run for the nearest subway all the way over on Eighth Avenue. I hated city rain. The kind that sticks to your face, stiffens your hair, makes you stink like a dog drenched in its own piss. Nothing like the gentle purifying showers you see out in the country or by the sea.

One of my cousins in Bogotá once taught me a trick: light a cigarette, hold it out with your hand, and an available taxi will appear, guaranteed.

I opened a flame and extended my cigarette arm to the curb.

For my cousin, the trick never failed. For me, nothing.

I retreated to the shelter of the awning, watching the rain slashes, the glossy street current rush toward the sewers.

"You're Colombian."

This came from a guy I hadn't noticed standing next to me. Something about urban living makes it so you don't even feel when your arm is pressed against a stranger's.

"How would you know?"

I didn't speak much in those days unless I had to, so my own voice sounded strange, defensive, even to me.

"You have an Andean face. Also, you just tried to call a taxi with a cigarette. Only Colombians do that."

He asked if I could spare one, so I pulled another cigarette from my pack and passed him my lighter.

I watched the guy sideways as we both smoked. Late forties, maybe. Clean-shaven and pale. Small eyes behind square glasses. Sweatered, with hemmed jeans and brown suede loafers. He smoked vigorously, like a guy who'd been deprived, talking about how this rainstorm was like those of the Amazon, blinding and impossible to navigate. But, he said, rain sounds the same no matter where you are, and he could close his eyes and almost forget this was New York if not for the Midtown smells, the song of car horns and screeching brakes.

For the first time in a while I wanted to talk but felt my tongue curl into the back of my throat like a sleeping mouse. That very day, my shrink, a guy I'd been seeing three times a week for the past two months and who barely ever said a word even when challenged by my silence, told me I should push myself to talk to a stranger, to make conversation, to connect.

When I was down to a nub, I flicked it to the street and lit up another. The guy had the nerve to ask for a second cigarette, too. I thought about telling him he could go in the shop behind us and buy his own pack, but just handed one over. He seemed to sense debt accumulating between us and stared at me as I held the lighter out for him.

"Can I invite you to wait out the rain with me over a coffee?"

I said OK because I didn't feel like going home and had no other place to go. On afternoons like that, during the lull between therapy and the night, I often rode the train to the end of the subway line and back just to eat away a few hours, and because it was a way to be with people without really being with people.

We ducked into a coffee shop...