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fuel and labor becoming visible in the commodity itself now that planes were grounded and the highways were starting to close.
    Everything will be as it is now, just a little different —nothing in me or the store had changed, except maybe my aorta, but, as the eye drew near, what normally felt like the only possible world became one among many, its meaning everywhere up for grabs, however briefly—in the passing commons of a train, in a container of tasteless coffee.
    Alex found her tea. We got one of the last cases of bottled water—Alex wanted to carry it because I’m not supposed to lift anything heavy enough to increase intrathoracic pressure, but I wouldn’t let her—and then, since we were hungry, we went to the steaming buffets of prepared foods, on this night the least crowded part of the store, and piled high our plates with an incoherent mix of overpriced perishables: samosas, vegetarian chicken, chicken, various dishes involving quinoa, Caprese salad. We paid for these and our tea and coffee, exchanging jokes about our ill-preparedness with the teenager who checked us out, pink highlights in her black hair, then took the train back to our neighborhood, deciding by the time we got to our stop to head for Alex’s apartment.
    We turned onto her street and it started to rain, but it felt as if it had already been raining on her street and we’d walked into it, parting it like a beaded curtain. I might have mistaken my intensified attention to the wind for intensifying wind. We passed the community garden and saw two girls huddled together in some furtive effort. I thought they were trying to light a cigarette, but they separated and we could see the sparklers they held, brilliant white magnesium slowly phasing into orange. A small dog yapped at the leaping sparks as they moved around the garden describing circles, laughing, maybe writing their names. I felt acutely aware that nothing slowly flashed across the sky, that no one looked down on the city from above, banking hard on the approach.
    In Alex’s apartment we reheated the prepared foods on the stove while listening to the latest radio reports of the storm’s progress—it was gaining strength—and we did most of the things we were told: filled every suitable container we could find with water, unplugged various appliances, located some batteries for the radio and flashlights. I was pleased to see Alex had a substantial cache of wine, most of it probably left behind by the lawyer, and I opened the bottle of red with the label displaying the most distant year, taking pleasure in the knowledge that its value would be lost on me. I poured myself a glass in a clean jam jar and, while Alex showered one last time before we had to fill the tub, I looked at the now no longer entirely familiar photographs on her fridge: here was Alex as a child—gingham and braids—with her mom and stepdad; here I was with Alex’s little second cousin, whom she called her niece, at a party thrown last summer: I was placing a construction-paper crown on her head with mock solemnity, trick candles sparking in the cake beside her. Everything in the photograph was as it had been, only different, as if the image were newly indeterminate, flickering between temporalities. Then it wasn’t. A schedule of unemployment benefits was affixed to the fridge with an NYU School of Public Service magnet.
    It was only when we sat down to eat by the light—even though we still had power—of some votive candles Alex had discovered that the danger and magnitude of the storm felt real to us, maybe because our meal had the feel of a last supper, maybe because eating together produced a sufficient sense of a household against which we could measure the threat. The radio said the storm would make landfall around 4:00 a.m.; it was about ten now and the surges were already alarmingly high. How prepared are you, the radio asked, for days without