Sherazade in the Drowned City

[mallorys_camera]

In Albany, I dreamed that I was in a museum with a high domed skylight fretted in black metal – the kind you sometimes still see in antique elevators from the 1920s. Ben was showering gifts on me – a strange finger-guard ring for my marriage finger, a long chain of diamonds, other expensive and bizarre things.

Then it began to rain, and we were told we had to evacuate the museum.

Why? I wondered.

And then I heard it – the rain on the skylight made a horrible, unbearable noise. Like machine-gun fire.

What a bizarre architectural design for a museum, I thought. Because surely they would have been aware that the rain would do that.

Outside the museum, the waters were rising rapidly and many of the streets in the city had now become impassable. I was with JC, a writer pal with whom I have an interesting history – never close in this lifetime; almost certainly close in past lifetimes. In absolutely the darkest moment of my life, he looked at me and shook his head: Oh, Patrizia. That someone like you could do something like this. And tried to rescue me. Although in the end, I ended up rescuing myself.

JC figured out that the only way to get across the avenue – that was now as high as a river – was to go through the strange art deco apartment buildings and then out the other side on to the street where the water hadn’t risen yet. Except the residents of the art deco apartment buildings were getting tired of all the desperate strangers, and had begun locking their doors.

My mission was to knock on one of those doors and charm an escape route for me and my companions. So I pounded on the door, and a black man with wild eyes, maybe seven feet tall, answered and scowled at me –

“Hello!” I said in as sprightly a tone as I could muster. “Did I wake you up? I’m so sorry. Listen, it’s like this –“

You’ve got to come up with a story. You’ve got to come up with a story. You’ve got to come up with a story, I thought desperately –

And then, abracadabra! I had the best story ever, staggeringly good –

“There was a traveler –“ I said, staring deeply into the man’s eyes –

But then I woke up without ever learning what my story was.

I like Albany. But then I have a soft spot in my heart for shabby places with storied pasts. Albany reminds me so much of Brooklyn 60 years ago. Flowers struggling to survive on garbage heaps. There’s no such thing as garbage heaps, though. It's all kitchen midden that hasn't yet matured.