Forty signs of rain - Kim Stanley Robinson [127]
“Oh come on quit it!”
“Bye.”
“Bye.”
The light under the thunderheads had gone dim. Rain was soon to arrive. The cloud bottoms were black. Splotches like dropped water balloons starred the sidewalk pavement. Charlie started hurrying, and got to Phil’s office just ahead of a downpour.
He looked back out through the glass doors and watched the rain grow in strength, hammering down the length of the Mall. The skies had really opened. The raindrops remained large in the air; it looked like hail the size of baseballs had coalesced in the thunderheads, and then somehow been melted back to rain again before reaching the ground.
Charlie watched the spectacle for a while, then went upstairs. There he found out from Evelyn that Phil’s flight in had been delayed, and that he might be driving back from Richmond instead.
Charlie sighed. No conferring with Phil today.
He read reports instead, and made notes for when Phil did arrive. Went down to get his mailbox cleared. Evelyn’s office window had a southerly view, with the Capitol looming to the left, and across the Mall the Air and Space Museum. In the rainy light the big buildings took on an eerie cast. They looked like the cottages of giants.
Then it was past noon, and Charlie was hungry. The rain seemed to have eased a bit since its first impact, so he went out to get a sandwich at the Iranian deli on C Street, grabbing an umbrella at the door.
Outside it was raining steadily but lightly. The streets were deserted. Many intersections had flooded to the curbs, and in a few places well over the curbs, onto the sidewalks.
Inside the deli the grill was sizzling, but the place was almost as empty as the streets. Two cooks and the cashier were standing under a TV that hung from a ceiling corner, watching the news. When they recognized Charlie they went back to looking at the TV. The characteristic smell of basmati rice and hummus enfolded him.
“Big storm coming,” the cashier said. “Ready to order?”
“Yeah, thanks. I’ll have the usual, pastrami sandwich on rye and potato chips.”
“Flood too,” one of the cooks said.
“Oh yeah?” Charlie replied. “What, more than usual?”
The cashier nodded, still looking at the TV. “Two storms and high tide. Upstream, downstream and middle.”
“Oh my.”
Charlie wondered what it would mean. Then he stood watching the TV with the rest of them. Satellite weather photos showed a huge sheet of white pouring across New York and Pennsylvania. Meanwhile that tropical storm was spinning past Bermuda. It looked like another perfect storm might be brewing, like the eponymous one of 1991. Not that it took a perfect storm these days to make the Mid-Atlantic states seem like a literal designation. A far less than perfect storm could do it. The TV spoke of eleven-year tide cycles, of the longest and strongest El Niño ever recorded. “It’s a fourteen-thousand-square-mile watershed,” the TV said.
“It’s gonna get wet,” Charlie observed.
The Iranians nodded silently. Five years earlier they would probably have been closing the deli, but this was the fourth “perfect storm” synergistic combination in the last three years, and they, like everyone else, were getting jaded. It was Peter crying wolf at this point, even though the previous three storms had all been major disasters at the time, at least in some places. But never in D.C. Now people just made sure their supplies and equipment were okay and then went about their business, umbrella and phone in hand. Charlie was no different, he realized, even though he had been performing the role of Peter for all he was worth when it came to the global situation. But here he was, getting a pastrami sandwich with the intention of going back to work. It seemed like the best way to deal with it.
The Iranians finally finished his order, all the while watching the TV images: flooding fields, apparently in the upper Potomac watershed, near Harpers Ferry.
“Three meters,” the cashier said as she gave him his change, but Charlie wasn’t sure what she meant. The cook chopped Charlie’s wrapped sandwich in half, put it in a bag.