Not California.

The storm drains, hovering near the bottom of the list of civil priorities, hadn’t been cleaned for months. At the end of each block they remained ignorantly dry, their mouths clogged with trash that lodged there in the first few hours of rain. In front of our building the grass verge was flowing as quickly as the gutter, a swampy, swirling mess of muddy water, punctuated only by bedraggled palms and small archipelagos of dog shit.

By the third morning, the rain let up enough that the news choppers finally started flying again, broadcasting pictures of hillsides deposited on freeways, houses and all. One backyard had somehow remained perfectly intact as it slid downhill, and now leaned casually, almost vertically, against an onramp. The sky blue tiles on the bottom of the pool stood out against the destruction all around, cupping a small puddle of murky water in the lowest corner.

That afternoon, the rain stopped for about five minutes. When it started back up, it brought the first clap of thunder. The power went out. Sitting alone in the near dark nothing made any more sense that anything else, so I kicked off my shoes and lay back on the bed. When I woke up, it was still pitch black, but the alarm clock was steadily blinking 12:00. I flipped the TV back on, squinting as the bright blue screen lit up the dark room. Every channel carried the same state seal and scrolling message: evacuations, blackouts, flooding, closures, looting.

I turned the TV off and lay back again. Fuck it, I said out loud. I pulled up the blanket and closed my eyes.