QUACK

The Ending Storm

ETHAN

The water cycle has no one true designated starting point, but I personally like to start with the large bodies of water. I’m no expert, and my understanding is rudimentary at best, but let me try to tell you what happens.

So what happens is, the heat from the sun causes water molecules to split up and turn into gas. This is a process called evaporation.

The hot air then rises into the atmosphere, where, by a process called condensation, the water droplets come together and form clouds. These are the fluffy white stuff floating around in the sky that sometimes take the shape of rabbits and dogs and other things I can’t really see but pretend to so I can fit in.

After some time, the clouds become too heavy with water droplets and sort of release them through the process called precipitation. When I was younger, Sal insisted it’s just the clouds crying because the sun isn’t out, but I know better now, of course.

Precipitation can come in the form of rain, or hail, or snow. It largely depends on the temperature. Precipitation can be intercepted by buildings and gutters and sometimes it is absorbed by trees or gets leeched into the ground. But it always makes its way back to the oceans, and the cycle starts again from there.

This cold December night, precipitation comes in the form of snow. It is not like the light dusting I experienced with Sasha during Winter Formal. This kind is coming down heavily and is accumulating in thick and slushy mounds and covers everything in white. I find it hard to imagine how these white, sloshy heaps make their way to the oceans again later on, but I feel hopeful that they will. As we pass by them in the car, I wish all the white heaps good luck and see you soon.

I’ve never been on a rental car before. We’ve taken a rental because Sal refuses to be seen off to the airport. We haven’t even said our goodbyes. I don’t know what will happen to this car but it doesn’t matter. I assume it will sit in the parking lot, waiting for us. Just as I assume our apartment in Florida is just as we have left it. This spur-of-the-moment decision to leave New York is just as sudden as the decision to leave Florida. I am positive we are coming back: I don’t even bother flipping out.

I’ve never been to this airport either, but this is the one we can afford at the moment. It is not the same airport that we had arrived at, in JFK. This airport is in Newark, across the river. I am excited to be passing over a bridge to get there. I’ve always liked bridges. And telephones. And Jesus Christ. And Sasha, though I took my time admitting it.

I have never seen black ice before, but I read somewhere that they cause really bad accidents in the winter. I read somewhere, too, that black ice forms on bridges first, and car tires don’t get a good grip on the slick roads and usually end up rammed to a tree or wrapped around poles or in hollow ditches or into the cold waters rushing under the bridge.

I can’t remember the last thing I told Sasha, if I hugged her like I always want to, or kissed her when nobody was looking. But as the tires hit the black ice just before Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, I hope I’ve said enough. I hope I’ve said it all.

I can’t remember the last time I hugged my mom, but now is as good a time as any, just as the rental has a head-on collision with a wall of the bridge, and I see the blue-black night sky, the dark water of the Hudson River, and then nothing else when I finally let myself close my eyes.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ALLEN

I’ve presided over a few funeral services already, but never one where I not only personally knew the deceased, but I’ve had him over for breakfast, lunch and dinner, sometimes all within the same day, with meals that are comprised of food colored similarly, never touching each other on the plate.