I wish I could remember her name. She was Irish and a tree-hugger,
I recall. Forsaken by the bus, surrounded by the rain, I offered her my mobile
shelter, if she was going my way. We walked three, maybe four blocks huddle
together, making light conversation, shrouded in the brilliant shade of Old
Red.
Old Red was the umbrella I bought in a New Orleans tourist shop
with my brother Thomas back in 2012. We stomped the pavement, arm-in-arm down
to the French Quarter under her cover. We had spent six weeks roadtripping from
west coast to east coast to the deep south, sharing sleeping quarters, cramped
train cars, and backbreaking Greyhound buses, and yet this seemed the first
time we actually had come into contact.
I remember the day I lost Old Red. A Saturday, pouring down: I was
riding the 200 bus into town to meet some friends for breakfast and in my rush
off the bus, I had forgotten Old Red at the floor of my seat.
I left the bus station and tried to go on with my life.
Before I had walked too long, an elderly and acutely-accented man
spotted me with my wilted newspaper hat. He walked up alongside me offering the
shelter of his umbrella, a Black Beauty. “Thanks, my hair gets oily in the
rain” I said then hoped he hadn’t heard.
We shared the umbrella, and then another surprising moment.
We paused at a crossing, just as a silver Jag came speeding past
and rolled into a puddle, upsetting the water like a defibrillated shock that
soaked us from head-to-toe. We couldn’t help but laugh.
One more vague, charming memory for each of us. Or maybe he’s
forgotten our soggy encounter entirely. Maybe he never wondered my name.
* * *
I recently told a friend about my love of sharing umbrellas with
not just family and friends, but also strangers. Heroin addicts say that
they continue to using in the hopes of re-experiencing the ultimate
transcendent high that their first shoot-up provided – so said my cousin, when
I was 12 and she was 14, and we were playing ping pong and listening to
Californication one school holiday. Like heroin users, perhaps my penchant for
sharing umbrellas is about recapturing the fanciful friendly times of
rainclouds past. Perhaps, it's my heroin.
