The first time I saw the angel, I’d been sitting on a fire escape for the past three hours, cursing the skies. It was late June, and there seemed to be no end in sight to the thunderstorms that had a choke hold on the city. As always, there was a purple-grey pall laying just above the tops of the skyscrapers, turning all light dim, weeping dulled tears that only glittered when they were streaking through the strange haze of the arc sodium lights, from just past dusk until just before dawn.
It seemed as though it was somewhere in the middle of the fabled forty days and forty nights. Had God rescinded His rainbow? Already, in surrounding, low-lying areas, there were places that had flood warnings, the unseasonable wetness plaguing people with worry about travel, about safety, about health.
Soaking wet as I was, I was starting to worry about mine, as well. It didn’t take much to get a cold, these days, and I really didn’t want to find myself with a case of walking pneumonia.
But I digress. That day, I saw him for the first time, but I had no wonder at his existence, only in his presence. What was he doing here?