This Must Be The Place and Other Stories

Rain in the Underground 🏆

New York City, 5 pm today

Diana tilted her head back and waited for the last few drops of water in the bottle to trickle down the plastic sides like raindrops down a window pane and into her mouth. There was only that much left and there wouldn't be anymore until Kevin came back with more bottles.

Even though her tongue was wet, she was still thirsty. Shaking the bottle, she closed her eyes, and placed it to her lips again. She imagined herself standing in a green and spacious park in the same position she was standing at that moment: with her eyes closed and tongue out, waiting for rain drops to fall. Wonderful, cool, delicious rain. 

Nothing. The bottle was empty.

In irritation, she threw it across the dark, underground room. It bounced on the earthen floor with a dull, hollow thud before rolling to a stop at the bottom of a huge pile of empty plastic bottles that was stacked up so high, it pressed against the rough concrete ceiling. The bottles' different labels, green with stripes, white, red, yellow with dots, added bright daubs of color to the transparent bluish landslide. Sometimes, Diana thought the pile looked like one of those works of modern art that cost millions but nobody understood. Other times, she thought it just looked like garbage.

The standing lamp -- the one with the rough orange textile shade she'd found in a dumpster -- stood in the corner, creating an oasis of light in the otherwise pitch-black room she called home. With a grunt, Diana fell heavily into the old wooden armchair chair next to it.

The chair was one of the few possessions she'd been able to save from her apartment after she'd been forcibly evicted. After she'd lost her job. After her mom died and she'd been left alone with everything. And nothing. She'd shlepped the chair all over the city as she'd roamed from shelter to shelter, the scrapes and gashes inflicted on it mirroring the insults and suffering that had been inflicted on herself. The chair was her most prized possession and she'd fight anybody who tried to take it from her.

Diana ran her fingers over the damaged wood and looked around at the double sleeping bags; the tangle of dirty blankets; the round BBQ grill with its three stubby tripod legs, the one dirty cooking pot resting on top; the open suitcase that looked as if it had exploded, spewing clothes everywhere; a couple of 2nd-hand paperbacks and a stack of old grotty newspapers to fill cracks in the walls with. 

Her entire life sat huddled together in a ten-foot radius of lamp light as if it were afraid of the dark.

You couldn't keep anything clean down here. Not your stuff, not your clothes, not you.

Diana pinched a fold of the sweatshirt she was wearing between her thumb and pointer finger, then held it up to her nose and sniffed. Ugh. How could Kevin stand to smell her? She could hardly stand to smell herself. 

Kevin said he'd be back by six. What time was it?

An unusual sound echoed from the irregular, crumbling gap in the concrete that served as a front door to her and Kevin's room. Diana leapt up, grabbing for the rust-spotted meat clever that always stood ready by the sleeping bags in case they were attacked while sleeping. You never knew down here, under the streets, under the city. 

"Fuck off!" she screamed into the darkness on the other side of the break in the wall, lacing her voice with glass shards to sound like she was high -- or psychotic. "Occupied! Wanna die? Come one step closer, asshole, I'll cut you to shreds!"

When the echo of her scream had faded, Diana listened hard into the empty air of the passageway that was a part of a network of long-forgotten tunnels.

Her throat was dry. Oh man, was she thirsty. What time was it? She didn't have a watch. Or rather, she did, but couldn't afford a new battery for it when it died. Would Kevin be back soon with more bottles?