“Hey,” Jaden said, emerging from his bedroom. He already had a drink in his hand, and as he got close and hugged me hello, I could smell that it was a whisky drink. Likely there would be no slag tomorrow for either of us, so before we started worrying about the smash we’d lose because of that fact, we might as well enjoy our night off.

I pulled the beer out of my backpack and took it over to the refrigerator. It was full of the typical stuff you’d imagine for three single guys living together—frozen foods, loads of cans of slurree, an outdated carton of milk that I didn’t want to go near. I looked around and looked at Jaden.

“What were you planning on eating if the power goes out?” I asked.

“Don’t worry, I got us supplies,” he said. He opened up one of the cabinets above the sink and showed me boxes of things. More slurree, granola and breakfast bars, macaroni and cheese, noodles. It wasn’t exactly gourmet fare, but it would be enough to keep us going if we needed it.

“And check this out,” he said. He motioned over to the living room where he had a small generator plugged in and juicing up. Near it was a camping stove with little propane tanks attached to it. Jaden was ready.

“Great,” I said. “Better than I would have done. Who knows how long we’ll be without power after this bitch hits.”

I popped open a can of beer and started sipping it. Jaden and I sat down in the living room, on the couch, and started jawing about the neighborhood, about people we knew, about people who had moved or checked. By the bottom of my first can of beer, I began to feel a warmth in my stomach and a lightness in my head. It was such a pleasant feeling, a real escape from the heaviness and the pressure that I always feel like I’ve got inside me. The sun started slipping down over the Manhattan side of the city, and the winds picked up. The door of Jaden’s bedroom was open, and we could hear the branches of the tree outside it slapping against the panes. I was supposed to sleep in there, and I kept picturing the tree smashing through the window, through the wall. Jaden slept on a mattress on the floor, and I asked him if we couldn’t pull it out into the living room, where there were no windows. It took us some effort, and I kicked over my half-full second can of beer in the process, but we managed it.

“Hey, let’s go to the corner store and get a sandwich before we have to eat noodles and drink slurree for days,” Jaden said.

“Okay,” I said. I was starting to feel hungry, and a sandwich sounded great.