I tell you, it can rain in this town.
It can rain in Atlanta, too, but it’s nothing like here. As I’ve mentioned before, Atlanta’s an overreacting drama queen when it comes to rain. Having, well, a largely inoperable sewer system, the city’s streets begin to flood after roughly five minutes or so.
“Precipitation?? Why, no one told me I’ve have to deal with that!” says Miss Atlanta, and promptly faints. I think this is the true reason every other person seems to drive a big old ugly SUV there. Whenever it rains, the main thoroughfares transform themselves into scenic, treelined canals and little Hondas become dinghies with flooded engines.

But Beachtown. It wins for, like, marathon raining, here. Last fall, I recall one day when it started raining hard in the early afternoon, and I thought, “Ah, the maritime climate,” and settled in with a nice cup of chamomile or something in front of my computer and felt all comfy. That night, it was still raining. Not "showers,” but nonstop freaking torrents. For hours. I’ll admit; it freaked me out, Henshaw.

And this morning, like our neighbors all up and down the east coast, we got some serious storms. Last night, there was talk of possible tornadoes on the news, and a couple friends and I started trying to come up with plans for this. And we realized that just about every single person we know lives on a 2nd floor apartment, here.
We of the cheaper rent are Beachtown’s tornado fodder.

I was all spooked by this, because tornadoes are an old childhood fear. A fear that caused me, later in the evening, to speak the first words I have ever uttered to the male half of the Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? couple next door. My office window looks right over their six foot wall, directly into their swimming-pooled patio, so I am always—guiltily, inadvertently—watching them if they’re down there, though I pretend not to. And they can look right up and see exactly what I’m doing in my little garret apt, but they, too, pretend not to.
And he knows this.
And I know this.
We never speak when we see each other on the street. A tacit Good Fences/Neighbors thing.

Till last night, when I noticed him out on his front porch. I was carrying my trash outside and something in the weird, gusty, pre-storm air sparked a bright chattiness in me. So I went with this brilliant opening gambit,
“You think we’ll have a tornado?”
He started, and looked over at me like one of his shrubs had spoken.
“Uh. Why?” he said.
“There’s that really bad storm coming through tonight. They say we might get a tornado.”
(Pause. Still looking like he’s not sure why he should be talking with me.)
“In my 25 years here, I’ve never seen a tornado.”
Then he went inside, and I called out some lame, “Have a good night!” type thing after him.
I’m telling you; Richard Burton ringer.

But so far, no tornado has touched down in my neighborhood. The hail and the wind woke up Dangercat and me a couple times, but I managed to fall back asleep, with that contented Tomorrow-is-Sunday feeling, hearing the nasty storm, all of it outside, all unable to come in.