Damn Rain.

It was a cold, windy, and wet day in January and I was walking down Sutter Street, looking for the restaurant where I was scheduled to have an interview with the owner for yet another job waiting tables. The owner's name was Wallace Cruddy, a rather discouraging epithet. When I had originally sent him my resumé, he wrote only this short note back:

I HAVE TWO QUESTIONS:
1. TRUE OR FALSE, IS AYN RAND A GOOD WRITER??
LOOKING FORWARD TO HEARING YOUR ANSWER IN PERSON! TOMMOROW 1PM 2566 SUTTER ST.

There was no second question.

I deduced that Wallace Cruddy was the sort of person who, upon discovering that I held a Bachelor's in English, felt a need to quiz me on works he assumed were taught in the undergraduate curriculum, perhaps to demonstrate that my subject of choice was completely useless in the "real" world. Or, possibly, he admired my literary background and wished to demonstrate that he, too, was interesting. Of these two possibilities, the latter was the most likely; Ayn Rand not held as being a particularly good or significant writer by my English Department, I feared that this man was not as well-read as he believed he was. Also, he had written in all caps, a double-whammy violation of the most sacred of writerly taboos-- for if I disliked being questioned on Ayn Rand, I especially disliked having the question and time of my interview to be shouted at me. I had never read Ayn Rand. I dreaded meeting Wallace Cruddy.

But I really, really needed a job.

So I continued down Sutter, stopping every few steps to flip my umbrella back to right-side-out. Huge gusts of wind were hurtling down the block, so that any area of my clothing not covered by my raincoat was soaked through with water. I gave up on the umbrella and trudged solo, with only my hood for head cover. Every coffeehouse and building with an overhang that I passed were jammed with people waiting out the rain. Apparently, I was the only person brave (or desperate) enough to walk in this storm. Then, as I stood on the corner of Sutter and Grant, trying to decide the best way to navigate through a puddle the depth of a koi fish pond, the sky burst.

Rain gushed out of the clouds like water from a faucet of gargantuan proportions. It beat so hard on my shoulders that I thought it must be hailstones, and I gave up on crossing the Grant Street puddle and ran for cover. I had to run the length of the block before I spotted an overhang outside the front doors of a posh apartment building. Under this overhang only the squares of sidewalk closest to the front door were dry. I joined the small group who were huddled in the space. No one attempted to speak over the sound of the pounding rain, though the doorman gave me a nod.

Minutes ticked by and still the rain showed no signs of ceasing. I looked at my watch and saw it was ten minutes past one o'clock. According to the address above the doors of the apartment building, I was only a few buildings away from Wallace Cruddy's restaurant. As I leaned forward to peer around the building to see if I could glimpse the restaurant, though by this point I had decided I would never meet Wallace Cruddy if I could help it, through the sheets of rain I saw a form of a small person in red struggling down the street. As this person came closer, I saw it was a petite girl in a red coat, and she was not so much walking towards where I was standing under the overhang as being dragged by the wind. She was clearly holding her umbrella with both hands to keep it from being ripped out of her grasp. She stumbled back and forth, gradually coming closer to where I stood, and I marvelled that her umbrella was able to withstand the beating it was taking.

And then she was under the overhang, standing right next to me, lowering her umberella, and though her back was to me, I realized that she was not the petite young girl I had thought. Rather, she was a very tiny, very old lady with jewels the size of walnuts glittering in her withered ears. A shopping bag dangled from her wrist and swung back and forth against her legs as she struggled to close her umbrella. She was breathing hard, and so ugly and tiny and old that I felt a sudden wave of pity for her, having witnessed her ordeal down the street through the storm. She finally got her umbrella closed, and whipped around to face me with surprising energy. She looked up at me and I saw her lip was trembling and her eyes were squinted in rage. She opened her mouth but could not seem to speak. "Damn--rain!" she finally spat out, her mouth a slash of red in her wrinkled face. "Goddamn rain," she repeated in a harsh, quavering voice and I understood that the rain and wind had not just dragged and lashed her body but had rendered her a fool and stripped her of the dignity she, having spent so many years on this earth, had earned. She stamped her little booted foot and her bright blue eyes burned and burned at the injustice not of that storm but of God in His infinite merciless irony.