If It Rains Pennies From Heaven, Stay Inside.

Sep 17, 2010

If I were a dedicated newshound, I'd have photographs of yesterday's tornado, but I was too busy trying to keep the air conditioner from being torn from my window, so all I have is this unrelated image of some whimsical graffiti.

Yesterday, it was raining nickel-sized hail from a green sky that nearly broke the windows in my seventh-floor apartment. I'm not sure "raining" is the right term, considering the hail was flying horizontally, as if from a giant bead blaster. My building is the tallest one for several blocks, and you could see the hail coming straight at you, the way it looks when you turn your face toward the sky in a snowstorm. When the first hailstone pinged my air conditioner, I thought one of the cats had done something. But soon there were more pings, and then smacks and pops until it sounded like I hit the jackpot in a Las Vegas slot machine. You know, the old kind of slot machine that used to vomit coins, not the boring new ones that print out tickets. Water was pouring in around the air conditioner, and I rushed to find towels to soak it up. The windows were shaking from the wind and getting pelted by the hail, and I felt for sure one of them was going to break.

It was about 5 o'clock and Deborah was still at work.

Or so I thought.

She was actually on her bicycle, making her way home from Boerum Hill.

"I saw the gray clouds moving in," she said, "but I figured I could make it home. And even if I didn't, I figured I could survive a little rain."

The storm -- as of yet, the National Weather Service is still working to determine whether it was, in fact, a tornado -- didn't last long. Maybe twenty minutes, half an hour. If Deborah had waited a few minutes or had left a few minutes earlier, it would've been a relatively safe, dry home. (Let's face it, a bicycle ride in New York City is never "safe." Just recently, an intern at a gallery where Deborah works was killed along the same route she often rides.)

The storm had died down when someone rang my apartment doorbell. I thought it might've been a neighbor who needed something -- maybe a window had broken or, I didn't know -- but when I opened the door, it was Deborah, completely drenched, out of breath, and filled with adrenaline.

'Oh my god," she said, rolling her bicycle into the apartment. "I thought I was going to die. I couldn't breathe. I didn't know what was going on, but I felt like I was suffocating. I couldn't ride anymore, the wind was whipping me around, and I couldn't see a thing. I was getting pelted with hail, and trees were knocked down all over the place. I was completely drenched, but I had to pull over; I couldn't ride. The wind was blowing so hard it was sucking all my breath out or something. It felt like when you get the wind knocked out of you. I didn't know what was happening. The BQE was just a block away, I could see the traffic light, but I didn't know how I was ever going to get there."

She was trying to make her way to the BQE, and the shelter of the elevated highway, which she ultimately did, but it didn't do much to protect her from the sideways wind that continued to blow hail, rain, and debris.

She began peeling off her wet clothes, starting with her boots. She pulled the left one off, turned it over, and poured a cup of water out of it. Then she did the same with the right one. "My new boots," she said. "And my poor bag.."

She had been carrying a nice (read expensive) Alexander Wang leather handbag that I gave her for her birthday last year. "I hope it's not ruined."

"I'm just glad you're okay," I said. "That's the important thing. I had no idea you were out in that mess. I figured you were still at work."

"I got out early."