Rarely did it snow anymore, , and so George was disappointed but not surprised when, after all the fuss and anticipation—the excessive salting of sidewalks, the fleets of sanitation trucks outfitted with plows, the Soviet-style lines at grocery stores as people panic-bought beer and bread and toilet paper, the overstimulated weathermen gesticulating at pixelated maps—what was supposed to have been a major blizzard turned out to be just rain. A fierce, slanted rain that brought down what remained of the leaves, which should’ve all been gone a month earlier, Jenny pointed out. “When I was a kid,” George said, standing beneath the sheltered part of the stoop as he smoked his first cigarette of the day, “I was pretty worried about global warming, but it seemed like acid rain, or the hole in the ozone layer, was kind of an abstract thing.
But here it is, I guess . . .
” “Don’t worry,” said Larry, who was also a smoker. “Nature will have a chance to recuperate once humans kill themselves off.” Larry was in his late sixties and the most cynical person George had ever encountered.
His cynicism did not mask a tender heart, and there was nothing performative about it. He was the real deal, a genuine misanthrope who could exist only in New York City, and George took a certain pride in living above him, though it also made him a little nervous—from various comments Larry had made to George in the year they’d lived in the fourth-floor walk-up on Henry Street, it.
