Amid the sounds of falling rain pittering and pattering off the hood of my raincoat, off the balcony railing, off the umbrella I hold over his head as he opens up the grill, I hear in Thomas’ voice that he blames me.
It’s in the way he asks blankly for me to bring the serving tray close, no smile. His eyes pretending to look out towards the grisly sky, somewhere beyond the confines of where we stand huddled. I think that I might blame him too, though I try not to show it.
There’s a lot I feel like saying: some combination of apologizing for making fun of him flinching at every flare-up, condolences for not getting that job he had been interviewing for, and passing of blame for forgetting to tell Elizabeth about the faulty sliding door that automatically locks from the outside.
But I don’t say any of that. I just hold the tray close in one hand, the umbrella in the other, as he completes the transfer of grilled meats to metal tray. Our first barbeque of the summer and without giving any thought to things like weather forecasts. We’ve held it during the heaviest rainstorm June has ever seen.
And here we are, locked out of our own apartment, slowly soaking ourselves to the bone. We estimate another half hour before Elizabeth and Autumn come back, a figure we’ve arrived at after a rundown of the facts.
The corner store right down the street is closed for repairs. The nearest grocery store doesn’t sell the flavor of iced tea we had asked for. The second nearest grocery store is notoriously overpriced, so much so that we had explicitly told them to never, ever, ever shop there, ever. With these detours in mind, the math amounts to about 30 to 45 minutes before they come back and discover us stranded. Potentially washed away in a rain that seems to be increasing in intensity with every passing minute.
We swap roles for the next batch of burgers and sausages. Me on the grill, Thomas on the umbrella. I tell him he’s not holding it close enough. He grunts but moves his arm accordingly.
I’m mad, I realize. I don’t know why we bought so many, or why we took them all out of the packaging without much thought. Twenty burgers and twenty hotdogs to feed the four of us. If I had my phone on me I would call Elizabeth to buy some containers for leftovers. But that too, is locked away, resting on the table right beside the balcony window.
More wind now, and with it a spurt of droplets in my eyes, the water seeping deep into my cheap raincoat and down into my shorts.
“Oh shit,” Thomas says. “It’s really coming down”.
And he’s right.
The wind picks up, tearing a hole in the umbrella and ripping it out of his hands. We watch it fly away, swept into the sky above before falling and piercing the windshield of a grey Subaru parked a block down.
Our mumbled silence is broken as we shriek in horror and laughter, the emotions arriving all at once. And then there is also an incredible fear as the wind and the rain converge like some mad spell brought on by a greater power who rules over the art of grilled meat and disapproves of our offering.
And I say this because a sudden gale takes with it the metal tray holding our Polish sausages, our AAA-certified beef patties, the lone shrimp skewer we found in the freezer buried under bags of frozen broth we hadn’t even thought about since our first year living together, back when our priorities were catching late night buses out of the city after concerts, drinking protein shakes but not really working out, and doing rough math to figure out what grocery items we could afford to buy and what items to shoplift. Seafood was often the latter category—salmon and cans of tuna and of course our beloved skewers.
How long ago was all of that now? It doesn’t matter, because for the first time in my life I wonder if we might seriously die from the next burst of wind. I don’t weigh much and neither does Thomas.
The rain, so strong and severe, crackling and sizzling loudly, and the gusts rocking the grill back and forth as though taunting us that it might tip it over. I squat down to twist the propane valve closed. Thomas pulls me against the balcony door. We hold each other in fear, and I find myself mourning in particular that lost shrimp skewer, some remnant of a past I seem to hold dearly in my heart.
But then there is calm.
Within a matter of seconds, the roaring wind eases itself into a whistle, and the rain is once again pittering and pattering harmlessly. I stand up slowly, stepping towards the railing to get a view of the city below. Sounds of downspouts working overtime. Pools of water crowding around overworked storm drains.
From the windshield of the grey Subaru sprouts a mysterious second umbrella.
I wonder if anyone else is stranded on a balcony with their roommate. Some of our lost burgers and hotdogs are littered around the base of our building, though the skewer is nowhere in sight.
Making its way down the road, weaving carefully between collected pools of water is Elizabeth’s sedan. We’re laughing now, Thomas and I. It feels good.
He turns to me, wiping water off his glasses, his eyes sheepish. “Listen Vince. I– “
“–yeah” I cut him off. “Me too”.
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