Marble

She stopped short, and blinked the rain out of her eyes. She had been completely lost in thought.

It was a cold, dreary day. Overcast, drizzly, and gray, perfectly suited to the theme of the city. The sidewalk was nevertheless packed with people - heads down under umbrellas, or hunched, hoods pulled over their faces to keep the cold water out. The thickness of the air and the sound of the rain was muting the noise of the traffic, at least, and keeping the smog down. Minor upside.

What had it been that just caught her eye? She turned. A glint of …green?

She stepped towards the street. There, in the puddle in the gutter, she had seen green out of the corner of her eye. She stared. The water was dancing, the surface pockmarked by the raindrops sending small ripples to and fro. It shimmered with the pearlescent purple of oil from all of the street grime that was being washed away. A passing car dipped a wheel in, sending a wave across the surface, bouncing chaotically back in every direction from the edges. The dirty pearlescence shimmered purple, green, purple. Had that been what caught her eye? It was such a faint, subtle hint of color. Was that all it took to stand out in the drab monotony gray city?

No…there it was! As the surface settled after the wave, a deep green. And, more, some …blue?

She bent over to look closer.

Work had been hell, lately. And it seemed like no one slept well anymore. Maybe she was hallucinating. How long it had been since there had been any natural green among all this concrete, steel, and glass. And blue - a sky blue - the pollution here meant the sky was only ever, at best, yellow.

And yet, she squinted in to the water. Upside down trees - trees? - a blue sky, clouds, all reflected in the water, rough and shimmering with the impact of the raindrops.

She looked up, confused, eyebrows cocked. Across the street a monolith of business in pale concrete and black glass stood stoicly - totally without green. The rush of people on the opposite sidewalk in their dark suits and coats, with their black umbrellas, were likewise devoid of color. And there were certainly no trees in sight.

With a splash, someone pushed past her, stepping through the puddle in to a waiting car that had paused in the street. The disturbance muddied the water. The green was gone. Swirls of dirty silt and debris clouded out everything, hiding the contents of the puddle.

She stared hard, waiting for the water to settle. The mud slowly collected, stopped swirling, and settled out to the bottom, but all that was reflected when it did were the skyscrapers across the street. She kept watching, hoping, but no hint of color appea- there, right as she began to turn away, some blue emerged, and some green.

She was crouching over the puddle now, studying the forest view reflected in it. From where? The pedestrians on her sidewalk parted to avoid her and the puddle, but no one gave them more than the briefest glance in. They couldn’t see what she saw, she would have thought, if she hadn’t been so captivated.

Curious and working up some courage, she edged closer and put the toe of her boot in, slowly, to not disturb the water again. The water barely rippled, the reflection persisted, and she could feel, through the toe of her boot, warmth. The feeling of lying in the sun, spreading through her foot and up her leg. And in her hair, the sensation of a breeze? A warm breeze, not the chilly wet one she had just been in. She pulled her toe out abruptly, dragging some silt up with it and clouding the puddle again.

She straightened up and looked around, startled, but still no one was paying her any attention. Heads down, hoods up to the cold and rain. No one was even talking. There was only the noise of the traffic, and the rain.

She pulled her collar tight against her neck as the wind whipped and the rain started to fall harder, and looked back in to the puddle.

From under an overhang out of the the rain and across the street, someone watched with disinterest. As the woman across the street began scrutinizing the puddle, they checked their watch, pulled a leatherbound notebook out of an inner pocket of their coat, and made a brief note.

They waited. And finally, as they watched, she straightened up sharply as if she had made a decision. She shrugged and straightened her coat, glanced around one more time as if checking to make sure no one had noticed her, and stepped forward in to the puddle…and fell straight through, disappearing, with only the slightest ripple.

Fastest yet, they thought, making another brief note as the foot traffic by the puddle continue, everyone oblivious to what had just happenend.

“Another? ANOTHER!” the young man behind the deli counter slapped his father quickly on the shoulder and pointed with one hand while pulling his apron off with the other. He was already on his way out from behind the counter. He didn’t take his eyes off the woman across the street who had just thrown herself, facedown, in the deep puddle in the gutter.

His father was just steps behind him when he reached the womman . The crowds of people on this sidewalk were ignoring her, oblivious, as if they couldn’t even see, or didn’t care. Was everyone really so absorbed with getting where they were going?

It couldn’t have taken him more than a minute to get there, but as he dropped to a knee and lifted her, the woman was already limp and unresponsive. He heard his father yelling behind him - in to the phome, to emergency services - as he hauled her back, out of the gutter, on to the sidewalk.

Unresponsive, is what the paramedics agreed when they arrived. He had done everything he could, is what the police said, when they arrived to collect his statement. Bizzarre, and inexplicable, is what the papers printed: a string of drowning in such tiny amounts of dirty water. And “What had it been about this gutter, on this street?” is what everyone who read the headlines and heard the news gossipped about to their coworkers.

The city acted quickly. The street was resurfaced and additional drains were installed. Water no longer collected there, across the street from the skysctraper with the deli by the entrance. What else could they do? No one understood.

It was another dreary, cold, rainy day. They sat under an overhang, out of the way, facing the opposite sidewalk. One checked their watch, pulled a leather notebook out of an inner pocket of their coat, and made a note; the other muttered, “Another”.