A mile in the rain he walks to see you, umbrella's bamboo crook nosed into right or left-hand coat pocket and slapping stiff and tinny toward right or left-hand leg, tendons therein mincing over sentimentally unguttered city streets and clean evil branches whittled white by thunder. The weather is in his ears, his nostrils; his shoes smell like what clogs the ways water hopes to get back to the sea. A drowned horse by the time he knocks.
"So why didn't you open your umbrella?" Possibly, "Who'd have thought I'd have the foresight to bring one?"
But really, "A man to you would be no use. But a drowned horse? That you could live on for weeks."