What a Darkened New York Revealed to Me

NEW YORK - Even now, after the American presidential election took center stage and a new storm sweeps the Northeastern United States it's still nearly impossible to put aside, least of all play down, the devastation and loss inflicted by Hurricane Sandy.

Stories of compassion and immense human loss - who can forget the two young boys who were swept away by the monster waves from the arms of their mother? - fill newspapers and airwaves. We've also seen ruined communities - beachside Breezy Point and Rockaway and the often-forgotten Staten Island, the orphan borough.

That's the large picture, images that at their most bleak evoke Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic “The Road.” Images show human stamina and human frailty and the wearying disruption of daily lives: miles-long lines of people waiting for gasoline, carrying those plastic red buckets; rows and rows of empty grocery store shelves; blocks of burned down or flooded or damaged homes; whole beachside n eighborhoods wiped out; families warming themselves up by makeshift fires on charred yards; women wailing for their lost possessions.

And there are the small pictures. There's the personal experience, the moments when nerves strained, when we felt a sense of disorientation and loneness we can't shake off even days after the storm.

It was a heavily advertised hurricane, its slow trudge followed hour by hour, then minute by minute, as it churned big as life up our shores.

I was watching the news, listening to Sandy's gale-force winds whistle and rattle my windows and the rain tap on the glass panes. It was Monday evening, October 29, and the hurricane was arriving on time, as advertised, preceded by much weather forecasters' warning about the surge. This was going to be not a storm of wind and rain but of surge.

Earlier in the day I had handymen in my building duct-tape pieces of cardboard to my windows, which have a clear view from my Chelsea neighborh ood to Midtown Manhattan, a spectacular vista in normal times, but scary when the wind picks up and the windows wheeze and shake. The handymen laughed at me, nervous Nelly.

But I wanted to take no chances.

Now, around 9 p.m. that Monday, I was watching the latest weather report when suddenly something blew out. The apartment went dark, the power gone, and from my partly covered windows I saw a black hole, and farther north, maybe ten blocks away, in what would become a line between the haves and the have-nots, there were buildings blazing with lights.

We were cut off from the rest of Manhattan. I was cut off. I had no phone lines, no internet, no TV, no access to any news. I had thought I had prepped well for the storm, had plenty of cat food and bottled water. But I had no means to call my family in Texas or friends in the have-power areas of town.

Alarmed and disoriented, as happens when our daily levers stop functioning, I found my tiny flashlight and went out my pitch-black hallway and knocked on the door of the guys across the way. No one answered but I could hear muffled voices inside their apartment. Hours earlier, they'd told me to come over if my windows blew out. They had said it joking, making light of the hurricane, a pose typical of many New Yorkers.

Next I knocked on the door of a couple down the hall. They answered and immediately invited me in, their flashlight beaming into my eyes. They had a cluster of burning candles and a bottle of red wine. They seemed pretty relaxed, occasionally listening to NPR on their transistor radio. They planned to stay put and enjoy the blackout.

No one expected it to last more than a day or two.

Twelve hours later, on Tuesday morning, the storm had mostly passed, leaving deep gray skies and drizzle. I climbed down fourteen flights of stairs to the sidewalk. There was a bone-chilling damp in the air and the streets and sidewalks were strewn with crushed lea ves, broken tree limbs and people wandering listlessly by shuttered shops and restaurants.

The place looked haunted, deserted. A truck was pumping water out of my building's basement.

Clusters of tenants gathered around the entrances to the building.

There seemed to be a common theme: No one knew anything.

Finally, after asking several times, a doorman told me they expected power to be restored not the next day but in two to three days. At the same time, we had lost running water and heat, and temperatures were dropping to near-freezing levels.

As the word spread, neighbors started clearing out, taking refuge with friends or relatives in the Upper West Side or Upper East Side, and Brooklyn. Transportation out of our Dead Zone was a major production. Manhattan was virtually paralyzed with few trains and few taxis, few open bridges and tunnels, and no subways. Those without private cars hitched rides, doubled up on the few taxis available, or wal ked for blocks.

We all had the look of passengers leaving a sinking ship.

Despite decades in the city and all the friends I have here, I was alone, without a partner, without children, without a family. Being alone and independent works when things are good, and even when things are tough, but this time was different, it cut closer to the bone. I had to struggle to hold off a heavy sense of desolation and loneliness.

At last a young neighbor offered his phone. I called my sister in Dallas and gave her a short list of New York City hotels to call. I wanted her to find a room for me and my cat. It was a tall order. Hotels here were fully booked and few are pet friendly.

“This would be easier if I weren't alone,” I blurted out to my sister.

But I lucked out. She found me a room at The Algonquin, in Midtown Manhattan. I checked in the next day, on Halloween, and immediately felt a weight lifted. Signing in, I conjured the illusion of having a fa mily, of having someone look after me, of not being alone.

While they readied my room, I found a soft sofa in the lobby as my small Persian, Betty, peeked out of her bag to the oohs and ahhs of cat lovers nearby. I set a glass of wine on the table and had to smile, reading on the cocktail napkin words from the great Robert Benchley: “Why don't you get out of your wet coat and into a dry martini?” Oh, yes.