It was really coming down.
Mary stood in the porch�s shadow, watching the rain fill the landscape. It filled the air with dense, tiny drops of water; it sluiced down the side of the pillars; it fed the puddles creeping along the slightly uneven tiles of the porch. The wind flapped at her sodden floral print dress and she clutched at it.
The sky had been clear and grey five minutes ago when she crossed the road to drop a letter off at the post office. Now ten solid meters of falling water stood between her and the warmth of her house.
She could always run across. It was a short distance, and besides the edges of her dress were already soaked through from the relentless wind. She took a step closer to the edge of the porch and hesitated. Already the air here felt much colder and damper. The wind whistled like the suggestion of a banshee. The last thing she felt like doing was running out into that cold hard downpour. The thought made her skin crawl.
She looked out at the featureless, water-stained sky. If she waited long enough, perhaps the rain would let up. You�d never know with these things. Sometimes the heaviest downpours lasted only a few minutes. And she must have had stood there for five minutes at least.
A small grey car drove in front of the porch, sending up arcs of collected rainwater. Mary jumped back, barely avoiding the cascade. As it came to a halt Mary caught a glimpse of its driver: a young man, maybe in his late twenties, with slicked-back hair and irrationally, a pair of shades.
Neither car nor driver did anything for an awkwardly long period of time. Slowly, Mary realized that the driver of the car was glancing at her.
Even more slowly, Mary realized that he was waiting for her to do something.
After a long while, she realized that rain wasn�t going to let up anytime soon. She considered the immobile car driver carefully. She didn�t know who he was, or what he was doing. He was waiting for her, certainly, and that could be dangerous.
But there was no harm in asking.
Heart pounding, she walked as close to the edge of the porch as possible and knocked one and a half times on the front window. In the two seconds that her arm reached out it got completely splattered by the rain.
The driver wound down the window. She could hardly hear him over the noise of the rain. �Where would you like to go?�
�Um. Across the road? I, sort of, well�I need to get there.�
He smiled, and his teeth were brilliantly white in the dim light. �I can do much better than that.�
Mary�s dry hand found the nape of her neck. Water was running down her wet arm in rivulets, and it felt extremely uncomfortable. The driver�s smile never faded. It was like looking at a portrait of the Cheshire cat.
Without warning she flung herself into the path of the raindrops. Her feet splashed into the inches of water corralling down the road. She ran as quickly and as thoughtlessly as she could over the road and into the shelter of the building.
Momentarily there was silence as she considered her ruined state. She was cold, her dress clung to skin in dark patches and water was dripping off the end of her nose. Her heart was beating faster and harder than before.
Then she laughed, loudly and boldly. She had made it across and she was soaked through. Mary didn�t turn to see where the grey car had gone. She simply went upstairs and into the shower.
The Speaker For The Dead
2004-02-09
5:27 p.m.
