12/05/2006

After the flood

As it turns out it’s one of those nights, you know? When you manage to pull through from the office at 8 pm because it’s raining like the end of the world and still it takes you two hours to get home.
The cozy, warming book in your lap does you little good because of the downpour breaking in from the rusted window frames (this bus is soooo old) and therefore your left side is all wet with rain, and your right side with perspiration. You crack a joke to yourself about being the Antimatter-Man, who was this old Justice League villain from the 1960s whom had his the left part of his body made of well, anti-matter.
Your were supposed to be having dinner with this gorgeous woman tonight but there you are, calling her up for the third time in less than an hour saying there’s no way in hell you will make it. “Some other time, then,” she says. “Too bad.”
In plain woman-ese it means, “You’ve just bitten the dust, old sport,” and you know it.

It’s around nine when a text message chimes in and oddly enough it’s not from the aforementioned woman but actually this girl from one of our Southern branches that you befriended a few weeks ago. “So how’s the rain?,” she’s asking. It makes you smile.
Or better yet not smile per se but actually smirk, because it’s then & there it dawns on you that maybe your own cell phone can send text messages instead of just receiving. And you know what they say about your first time, it’s just gotta be with someone special.
Since we are talking about a smart, classy, decent girl (first one you’ve met in a zillion years, by the way) you think, “Awww what the hey,” and send her a text message too. Your very first text message.
Not that it changes anything, but it is the 21st century after all. Deal with it.

It’s 10pm when you get home and your mood is surprisingly good despite all the difficulties. See, even the rain appears to have subsided a little.
You make it to the supermarket and buy some fancy ice-cream; regardless of not having dinner with the gorgeous woman tonight the ice-cream should remain written in stone.
It’s 11pm when the power goes out, of course, and only returns near two in the morning: It means taking a cold shower in the dark at midnight, by the way, after punching the walls of your new apartment for the very first time. Your hand does not bleed, though.

Come next morning, after working out, you take another cold shower, just because, this time singing some old forgotten 1980s tune instead of just cursing.
You think about this new tattoo you’ve been planning for a month, and then the girl calls you through this instant-messaging thing from the company’s intranet, and asks if you’ve survived the flood.


(You did, by the way, and that's how this story ends.)