That night the rain came in droves. You stood at the window and watched as droplets stacked behind one another, pouring in the light. Only briefly they resembled the movement of a crowd seen at a distance, a throng of mourners. You could not picture then the man who was about to die, twenty miles away, how he hesitated, clutching the railing at the top of the basement stairs and watched for any sign of his grandmother in the water below that seemed to creep up, step over step, as if it possessed legs. You could not imagine him like you did the next afternoon, up to his knees, then his neck, swallowing one gulp of air and going under as you sat stopped at a red light, listening to the clear tonelessness of the broadcaster’s voice and watched the formal and unnecessarily elegant waving of the trees, dirty rags tangled in their lower branches from where the waters had risen and touched.