Fifty Percent On

Although the weather forecast called for a 50-percent chance of rain, I bet on the sunny side and met my friend Andie after work to walk the trendy neighborhoods along the Metro stops on the Virginia side of Washington, D.C.

“I love walking with you,” she said of our regular two-mile uphill treks. “It offers the best in multi-tasking.” By that, she meant exercise, socialize, and merchandise.

The afternoon’s 95-degree heat dampened our bodies, but not our spirits. A dry wind sucked moisture that first oozed, then trickled, then spewed from our brows, necks, arms, legs, and all that skin beneath loose summer apparel. We ducked into one retail outlet after another, in search of arcane books, material goods, and good old air conditioning.

By the time we parted our wilted ways at the Clarendon Metro Station, black clouds browbeat the western sky. Crows murdered in the branches above the station plaza.

“I’d like to get home before the storm hits,” I said.

“Let’s do it again soon,” she called, running in the opposite direction.

A quick glance at radar confirmed that I had bet on the wrong side of 50 percent. A meteorological blob looked like a sinister goddess whose intense green gown cloaked a tight yellow undergarment embroidered with red and fringed with lightning. With a shiver, I boarded the train.

Ten minutes later, it crept into my station, where I met the goddess head on. She keened, spit, and gusted as I made my way from the platform to the commuter parking lot. Protected by concrete and a glass-enclosed steel bridge, I watched cars half swimming, half flying through viscous veils of rain along the highway beneath me.

I joined hundreds of commuters and tourists who balked at venturing beyond the open-air archway to the commuter lot. While the goddess bawled, we huddled like animals pent up before the stampede.

The storm convulsed like a sobbing mother who pauses only to feed her grief with air. A few daredevils bolted toward waiting cars and taxis that flashed and beeped their availability, but most clumped near the portal to stare in awe, make phone calls, or judge the wisdom of an umbrella. I strategized an escape.

As the torrents pulsed between simple downpours and pummeling assaults, I grabbed an ebb and broke through the horde. Quickly treading a canopied walkway, I headed for my port of refuge—an immense, open-air bus depot that sat beneath a thousand-car garage. Unburdening myself of wares, I settled onto a concrete bench, where I was surrounded by the cataclysm, yet not in it.

As the sky ripped itself open, simultaneous flashes of lightning and crashes of thunder reverberated throughout my concrete bunker. I found myself thinking about what the Jesuits call fascinātus, finding God—or in this case, the goddess—in everything. The Daily Examen is what Ignatius Loyola called it in 1540; enchantment is what I called it that evening.

After a spell of wonder, the surges subsided and the ebbs lengthened. As a thickly lustrous sky emerged, twirling skirts upon skirts with flashes of energy, a chill crept across my wet skin. The goddess had sucked 20 degrees of heat from the air.

Realizing the banshee had not come for me, I watched as she gathered her obsidian mantle and marched eastward. Flowing tresses combed themselves from snarls into opalescent copper strands. In their haste to chase their mistress, streaks upon streaks of gray upon gray clouds exposed an undulating orange sky that cast its shimmering light upon any mortal that dared to watch. Streaks became swirls, swirls deepened to darkness, and sparks of power pocked the puffy horizon. Puffy, puffy, puffy, poof. Then just like a kiss, she was suddenly gone.

As I inhaled the ozone and exhaled fear, I realized that while I had not beat the storm, I had won the bet. Fifty percent on. What a bargain!