When constructing my fantasy life I often get hung up on location. The suburbs are out, and a pied-a-terre is a given (after all, I still have to earn a living); the confusion comes with the country retreat. A cabin in the mountains? A cottage on the shore?

After Sandy, the answer is clearer. After Sandy, the mountains are starting to look pretty good. After Sandy, I wonder: What happens when the places I love are under water?

There’s Venice. But of course with Venice it has always been part of that city’s doomed charm.

And there’s Chincoteague. As the wind and rain pounded us Monday I thought of my time there this summer, the stillness of the refuge, the beach that goes on forever. Does it still? 

And now there’s New York City, too. Sea water coursing through subway tunnels, lapping at the steps of the Stock Exchange. Apocalyptic visions.

People perish; place endures. Or at least it used to. I’m not so sure anymore.

(Lower Manhattan from the Brooklyn Bridge.)