Blame it on the Rain

Word count: 29,473
Minutes to 30,000: I'm guessing about 25.

This excerpt contains a little tribute to The Thin Man -- I actually wrote the "put two and two together" bit before I read the passage in Dashiel Hammet's book, but I just now added the bit about "twenty-two." (Just so you know how the genesis came about.)

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It starts raining on me as I walk home. It is another one of those sudden storms that descend upon this city without warning and often without remorse. Wind whips through the trees, blowing stray newspapers around and kicking up dust until the rain soaks down the ground and it turns to mud. Huge drops of rain batter me as I struggle to make any progress down the street. It's the kind of rain you're scared to get caught out in. At any minute, you might get washed away.
Lightning arcs across the sky, each time lighting up the night briefly but intensely. The white flashes are a cruel reminder of each blow to head I’ve taken lately. Thunder cracks after each flare, closer and closer. Car alarms, almost inaudible above the noise of the storm, go off in response to the rumbling aftershocks.
I never know whether to run or to just keep on walking. If you run, you just run into raindrops you wouldn’t have hit, but if you walk, you stay wetter longer. I figure I’m already as soaked as I can possible get and my main goal now is to get inside as soon as possible. Gripping Kimp’s jacket tightly in one hand and using the other to secure the gun in my pocket, I start jogging towards home. It feels good to be running to something. In the back of my head, there is a feeling that it’s the first time I haven’t been running away from something.
The good feeling doesn’t last long, however. It is replaced by the feeling of cold, wet, hard concrete rushing up to meet the back of my head at a pace roughly equal to that of the speed of gravity. I must have hit a slick patch of sidewalk and my feet went out from under me, sending me to the ground. My head’s taken so many blows over the last twenty-four hours, I’m surprised I can still put two and two together.
“It’s four,” I say to the sky, just to prove that I’m still able. I’m reasonably sure that’s the correct answer. It’s either four or twenty-two. I’ll check on a calculator as soon as I can.