Tuesday tried to ruin me and failed.
It started raining the exact second I came up from the 1 train at 137th Street, and not gentle rain. Biblical rain. The kind where the gutters become rivers and everyone's umbrella turns inside out simultaneously like a synchronized failure.
There was a 1 train delay anyway — signal problems, the universal NYC apology — so I wasn't even getting where I needed to go. I just stood there. Soaked. Holding a tote bag that was now structurally a sponge.
So I did what you do. I ducked under the awning of the bodega on the corner.
And that's where I met Biggie.
Biggie is the bodega cat. Enormous, orange, deeply unbothered by the weather or my existence. He was sitting on a stack of newspapers like a tiny mob boss surveying his territory.
The man behind the counter saw me dripping and said "take your time, mami, the rain don't charge rent." Which is honestly the most New York sentence I've heard all month.
I bought a coffee I didn't need just to be polite, and a packet of Maggi I absolutely did need, and I stood there petting Biggie while the rainy Tuesday performed its drama outside.
There's a particular peace in a forced pause. The 1 train delay was technically a disaster. But it parked me under an awning in Harlem with a coffee and a cat, watching the city get soft at the edges.
It reminded me of monsoon back home. The way everything just stops and you accept it. The way chai becomes mandatory. The way you find shelter with strangers and somehow it's fine.
The rain let up after twenty minutes. The 1 train delay sorted itself out. Biggie didn't even look up when I left.
New York doesn't always ruin your day. Sometimes it just reroutes it through a bodega.
Find your awning. Pet the cat if there is one.
Love,