Carmen stands under an overhang with wet splotches all across her shirt, her ponytail now a wet rope, and she’s wiping away the drops clinging to the fine hairs of her arms like ants, which had been the advance guard to the army that is now marching just beyond her little rectangle of shelter. The street is a sheet of water. The rain has taken on its own patterns, a series of shifting frames spliced at just wide enough of an interval to bob up as discrete objects in her stream of consciousness. Cars come and go like ghost submersibles. Under the same overhang is a girl, maybe an NYU undergraduate, having taken shelter at the same time as Carmen when the sky broke with a crack and the white noise of rain boomed up the avenue and all the humans scrambled for cover. On the concrete wall behind them both are words writ large in red spray paint: DOUBLE TROUBLE LIVES. Carmen feels camaraderie with this girl—she looks as miserable as Carmen, and though they haven’t spoken since they both nodded to each other upon reaching the overhang, and although the girl has been texting on her phone this entire time, Carmen feels that they are sharing this little intimate experience. She had also been wearing mascara like Carmen so now it looks like they’ve been crying together, two sad raccoons huddled from the rain.

Then through the shadows of rain a young man under a giant umbrella comes jogging up. The girl hugs and kisses him, casts a quick look of apology at Carmen, and then the two of them vanish into the rain, leaving Carmen alone in front of the red lettering, shivering and hugging herself.

“Oh, give me a break,” she says, her teeth chattering.