I sat in my car outside of the Mercury offices. It was the beginning of March and I was afraid to open my door. It was raining—the kind of rain that’s hard to be romantic about even when you’re perpetually homesick. The drops hit your windshield in a way that’s meditative when you’re in park and horrifying when you’re in drive. It’s that sort of sustained, battering, ever-present rain that Portland gets every so often...