the shadow of the body, but the body of the soul.
― Oscar Wilde
It all began one rainy September night when I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned, lying awake in a vast forest of sounds.
Rain running in the alleyway outside my window crackled like crumpled cellophane.
The rumors of distant thunder didn’t comfort me or make it easy to sleep. A blue, jagged arm of lightning lit the window.
The storm scattered raindrops like static on a radio band and my fine-tuned senses scanned the night.
I watched the luminous minutes and hours slip by. I lay awake and pictured in my mind’s eye, the trees around my house, iridescent with rain, gleaming like luminous patches on my radar screen.
I was tired and over-wrought. Christine had left me and I couldn’t get the thought of her out of my brain. I struggled and fought but there was nothing to do, but get out of bed and go for a walk—Rain always calmed me.
I dressed, put on my overcoat and boots, got out my umbrella and headed outside.
I started walking briskly and with determination—forcing myself to move my large muscles in the hopes of relaxing the tic in my eye and the butterflies in my stomach. I missed Christine and it was my first night without her.
The muffled noises of passing cars out in the rain calmed me. Occasionally, a flare of headlights would trace a pattern of shrubbery across a wall. I walked on, to where the houses were few and the streets deserted. I kept going.
I made it to the harbor and found an all-night diner where I stopped for coffee and toast, sitting in a widow booth, staring at the splashing streets.
“Kind of a lonely night, isn’t it?” Doris, the waitress, asked as she served me.
“It is,” I said, “but I like rainy nights—they have character.”
“Okay, Shakespeare,” she smiled, but I could tell she liked me.
I had no interest in pursuing a relationship. I felt bruised inside, as if I had been kicked down a flight of stairs. Just the thought of starting over again with someone else, made me wince.
There’s something cosy and warm about all-night diners in the rain. The smell of coffee and toast was comforting.
I remembered being marooned once on a crowded trolley bus in a thunderstorm—the power went off and the lightning flashed about us. I was with strangers, but the camaraderie of a shared moment bonded us.
I felt that way with Doris—but stayed aloof. I sat there sipping coffee and watching, while rain trails marred the dark window glass.
I daydreamed for about an hour, cocooned in my cozy corner, safe from the storm outside.
Then, I asked for the bill and left a tip larger than the cost of the meal. I might be back and I might never be.
Regardless, Doris would end up being another rainy day person in my book of memories and for that, I felt affection towards her.
I buttoned my overcoat, shook open my umbrella and headed for home.
I’ve always liked sheltering under an umbrella. I’ve always liked walking in rain.
Stormy weather—just the sound of the words fills me with nostalgia.
The mist rose off the lake and brooded in the streetlights. The air smelt like the sea and in the distance a foghorn was softly sounding two bass notes.
I passed a glass storefront and saw a reflection—the shadowy image of two people huddled beneath an umbrella crossing a cobble-stoned street. My heart stopped when I realized I was one of the shadowy figures.
Have you had the experience of seeing a dark figure or shape out of the corner of your eye? The image passes so fleetingly you doubt your senses.
I blinked and by the time I glanced back at the window, the shadowy girl accompanying me was gone—if she were ever really there at all.
Yep, stormy weather—strange things happen in the mist and the rain. Time is dilatory—it could be now—it could be the Thirties.
I walked out in rain and walked back in rain. The rain slanted like gold threads beneath streetlights; houses and buildings huddled and conspired in shadows; above me dark clouds were racing.
It was timeless—a blessed moment infinitely suspending laws of beginning and ends and here and now. Anything might happen and could. I was firmly convinced—happy and serene, as a child.
Then, she was beside me in the mist. She was talking softly—whispering like rain, sighing like a breeze. We were splashing and laughing—laughing and splashing.
It was wondrous and magical, sweetness and light. I never wanted it to end. I could have walked on to the end of night, to the end of all sidewalks, to the end of my life.
Several times I made an effort to turn and see her directly, distinctly—but she exerted a slight pressure and laughed gaily as if to say, it didn’t matter. And of course, it didn’t.
All that mattered was being there, in the rain with her.
All too soon we arrived at my house and I felt her leave, somewhere in that last block, somewhere between now and then.
I dropped my overcoat, dripping with rain on the floor, kicked off my shoes, trudged upstairs and fell into bed. I slept the sleep of raindrops, the endless passion of storms.
When I awoke to a gray dawn, my arms ached for her. I had forgotten Christine, but my heart wasn’t free. I was again a prisoner of love, captivated by a nameless, faceless girl whose soul invaded mine and who had won her victory.
From then on, whenever it rained, I walked and she walked with me. I’m hopelessly in love with her—devoted to her, enslaved to my lady of the mist.
It’s raining again tonight.
There’s a lady outside, waiting for me in the mist – I can see her shape and hear her voice, but I can’t see her face.
She walks with me and talks with me.
By any definition, she’s different from a ghost or apparition. We walk beneath circles of streetlights and navigate dark penumbras.
We laugh and talk and walk.
She’s different from everyone else.
As Neil Gaiman put it, somewhere in her mind it’s always raining a slow and endless drizzle.
Several years later, Probaly from a taxi,I tell myself, I'll see someone in a doorway who looks like her, but she will be gone by the time I persuade the driver to stop.
I will never see her again.
But, whenever it rains I will think of her.