"Last night I was watching the TV," said Allison. "The subways were flooded by rains."
"Torrential rains. I slept right through it. I had been thinking that New York had been so lucky to have escape floods, but two inches of rain for four hours was Biblical."
"It must have been scary to sit in the trains watching the water rising. Strange the lights and AC were still on."
"The old Lenape called that island Manhattah or the island of hills. Up until the 19th Century streams ran down the hills. East 77th Street had the Sawhill stream with beeer gardens providing an escape from the city behind the tenements. Every stream had been buried under concrete, but the toprograhy of Manhattan is all downhill and the torrents overflowed the sewers. Cars were stranded on the FDR as the storm hit at high tide. The next day was sunny and no trace of the storm. New York is built to resist nature, although Sandy blew away people's sense of safety with a high tide thirteen feet over normal."
"I remember reading about families trapped in basement apartments. Drowning in terror."
"It might have happened in Sandy."
The air was thick with moisture before the storm. Heavy. Living in Florida all those years, you how a storm feels before it strikes. Downtown at Battery Park two years ago a king tide inundated the park. Three feet of the harbor. Since then the city has been building a dike, so the water will be shunted away from the downtown to other neighborhoods."
"At least there are no sharks in New York Harbor. I stopped swimming in the inlet. Bull sharks hang out there on the tides. A feeding ground. I used to swim off Lisa's place on Chilean. It was safe. Maybe still is. But I don't leave the house too much."
Strangely I've never seen a shark in the water."
"They are there."
"Once in LA, I think in 1986 I swam north of Malibu at Point Magu. Early spring. Water freezing. I stripped naked and swam out past the breaker. Floating on the current, thena surge of something came from below. I looked around me searching the surface for a fin. Nothing, but I swam back to shore. When I got to the car, a female CHiPs officer was at my car. I asked, if everything was all right and she replied, "Just making sure you got back to shore. That was a big tiger shark. We don't see them this time of year, but they are always there lurking for easy prey. If you had been wearing a wet suit, it might have mistaken you for a seal."
"A common error, but mostly sharks avoid biting humans. We must taste bad."
"Not enough fat for their taste. Not that sharks have a tongue. Plenty of sharks out off Montauk. No attacks."
"Like you said. We taste bad and smell worse."
I begged off the phone and wished Allison a good day. I got dressed in classic New England attire for the sultry weather. A rumpled seersucker suit and worn jeans. Not a cloud in the sky.
ps I have never seen a shark in the water.
foto stream on 77th street way back when___
