Free Wednesday the Rabbi Got Wet by Harry Kemelman

looking at words, she closed the book and tossed it on the table.
    She walked around the room, straightening a picture, moving a chair, she noticed that the barometer on the mantelpiece was low, she tapped it, and the needle moved lower still, she went to the window to stare out at the road and the sea beyond, she was restless and wanting to be doing something and didn’t know what.
    If it were not for Jackie upstairs, she would not be bound to the house, she could get into her car and drive along the dark country roads until perhaps she came to a diner where she might stop for a cup of coffee, there would be a truck driver who was a college graduate, with a blue denim shirt open at the throat and a cap perched jauntily on the back of his head, who would bring his coffee cup to her booth…. Or she could take a walk along the shore in the darkness, barefooted, and the water would be warm and she would slip out of her clothes and go for a long swim, she turned over on her back to float and she heard the splash of another swimmer….
    Suddenly, the room became daylight bright as a jagged bolt of lightning struck the water, the lightning was followed immediately by a crash of thunder, and the house was plunged in darkness, and then the rain came pelting down. Leah ran to the window and saw that the street lights had also gone out, she went onto the porch and looked up and down the street, all the houses were dark, but here and there she saw a flicker of light from a window as people lit candles, she went back inside and felt her way to the kitchen, where she found a stump of a candle. By its light she tried to dial her parents’ home, but there was no dial tone, only a faint hum. Back in the living room, she dragged a hassock to the window and knelt on it with her arms resting on the sill, staring out at the raindrops bouncing off the road.
     
    Ross McLane took the call, since his station at the prescription counter was nearest the phone. Because he was hard of hearing, he normally tended to speak loudly, but when he got on the phone you could hear him all over the store. “Town-Line Drugs… Who?… Oh, hello, Doctor. What can I do for you?…. Just a minute, all right, shoot…. Yup…. Yup…. Kestler, yup. What’s the initial… J? Got it…. Minerva Road, forty-seven?… Uh-huh…. Okay…. Gee, I don’t think so, the boy who makes the deliveries is gone…. I don’t think so, but hold a minute and I’ll ask.” He cupped the receiver and called out, “Say, Marcus, it’s Dr. Cohen on the phone, he wants to know if we can make a delivery tonight? Forty-seven Minerva.”
    “Tell him, no.”
    Into the phone, McLane said, “Look, Doctor, I don’t see how we can, we’re awfully busy and we’ll be working late, we got a stack of prescriptions for the nursing home, there’s just no one here to…” He cupped the receiver again. “He says it’s very important, Marcus.”
    “Look, I’ll deliver it if you like,” Safferstein volunteered.
    “You know him?” Aptaker asked.
    “No, but if he needs it.., and I live on Minerva. Forty-seven is on my way home.”
     
    “It’s coming down in buckets.” Dr. Cohen said, staring out of the window. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the Kaplans called it off. I mean with a hurricane –”
    “I got the news broadcast while you were out,” his wife told him. “They said the storm was going out to sea and we’re just getting the edge of it, a kind of backlash, they expect it’ll be over in an hour or so.”
    “Whether it’s the real thing or just the backlash, it’s pretty bad. I think I’ll pass up Kaplan’s meeting and stay home.”
    His wife was doubtful. “I don’t know, Dan, Al Muntz seemed to think it was important, from what you said.”
    “Well, what if they called it off? I’d feel like an awful fool coming there in this kind of storm and there’s no party.”
    “Wouldn’t they have phoned?”
    “Sure, but they may have called earlier, and we’ve