Creatures of the Storm (5 page)

He power-walked to the Range Rover with Rose
close behind. A moment later they were inside and on their way.

The rain, gray and violent
as ever, slapped at the windshield the instant they emerged from
the parking garage. A moment later when he turned north, Ken’s
phone sang
at his waist. He glanced at the
screen: it was Maggie. He used the no-hands connection in the car,
pointedly ignoring Rose's roll of the eyes.

“Hey there,” he said. “We’re just leaving the
Clinic.”

“We?” came the mellow, amused voice.

“Rose and me,” he said, and glanced over at
his daughter. She was staring at him with a mixture of disgust and
dismay. He chose to ignore it. “Lisa’s staying overnight for
observation.”

“Is that necessary?” Rose asked.

“Understood,” Maggie said. “Alberto’s Towing
and Repo Center left with the remains of the BMW ten minutes ago.
They managed to salvage Rose’ purse from the front seat, but that’s
about all.”

Ken passed the information along to Rose,
half-shouting to be heard above the rattle of the rainfall on the
Range Rover’s roof.

“Oh,
bitchin
’,” Rose said with false
shallowness. “As long as I have my ATM card and my lip gloss, I am
good to go!”

Ken ignored her. “We’re going to do some
shopping.” he said into the phone. “Then we’ll get something to
eat. We’ll be home later on.”

“
Home,
” Rose echoed, sounding vaguely
revolted by the concept. “My
god.
”

Ken shut the phone and put it away.

“You’re sick,” Rose said.

“What are you talking about?”

“You. You and
that…it’s
sick,
Daddy.”

He set his jaw. “Okay,” he said. “Fine.” He
was not going to get into it.

“And I don’t want to go to
the
mall
,” Rose
said.

“So you don’t plan on changing your clothes
for the next couple of days? Why the hell not?”

“You have a washing machine, don’t you? Shit,
you’ve probably got a live-in maid. So get Consuelo or whomever to
do my dainties and I’ll be fine.”

“Her name is Lupe, she’s a housekeeper who
comes once a week and she doesn’t do laundry.” His jaw ached from
being clenched so tightly.

“Fine! Fucking fine!
But don’t make it such a fucking
big deal,
will
you?
I only need
one other pair of fucking blue jeans and a fucking T-shirt
that I can wear when I’m washing
this
pair of fucking blue jeans.
It’s not like we’re
going
anywhere or anything.”

“Well, shit,
Rosie
, I thought this
was the fucking
perfect
time to buy you a fucking
prom
dress.”

“Oh, that’s funny, Daddy.
That is
so
fucking–
LOOK OUT!”

Ken
jerked
to stop at the intersection.
He had already seen the man in the black pea coat crossing the
street against the light, but her screech made him slam on the
brakes anyway.

The man didn’t even look up. He clamped a
hand onto his shapeless black hat, hunched deeper into the rising
wind, and made for the far curb.

Ken stayed motionless in the intersection
long after he was gone.

“You know,” he said,
“Driving in this shit would be a whole lot easier if you weren’t
alternating between insulting me and
screaming in my fucking ear.”

“You were going to hit him!”

“I was
not
!”

“How was
I
supposed to know
that?
I’m
not the
one who’s driving!”

“Right! You aren’t! So
leave it to me and
stop screaming in my
fucking ear!!”

Rose stared out the window. Ken didn’t
continue the conversation, either. He let it go, distantly
surprised at how shrill and unsteady his own voice sounded, and how
white his knuckles were against the black webbing of the steering
wheel.

This is going to be a very
long weekend,
he told himself.
Very fucking long.

The trip to the Dos Hermanos Emporium, the
one and only shopping mall in town, was short and unpleasant, and
the storm grew steadily worse. They parked near the entrance and
dashed inside. Rose wouldn’t even let Ken go into the department
store to shop; he was forced to wander on the outskirts, staring
into the windows of the random, gaudy shops until she reappeared
with a flat plastic bag filled with a very few items of clothing.
She looked red-faced and upset.

“Are you okay?” he said.

“Don’t ask,” she snapped. “Let’s just
go.”

They went. Less than half an hour after they
emerged from the hospital’s underground parking, they were crawling
across town towards the business district and a decent meal.

Ken tapped on the Range Rover’s brakes at an
intersection that should have been buzzing with activity, as buzzy
as any intersection in DH ever got. But it was strangely deserted,
even though the car’s clock read 4:28.

Rose didn’t speak. She hadn’t said ten words
since they’d left the Emporium.

Ken took a deep breath and watched a trash
can roll across the intersection, pushed by the wind-driven rain. A
moment later a wave of economy-sized plastic bags, each a foot
square, swarmed past them like a flock of transparent bats,
whipping and twisting through the storm.

Somebody lost a year’s
supply of ZipLocs,
he told himself,
while I’m sitting here losing my
mind
.

He cleared his throat. “Sorry about yelling
before,” he said quietly, barely audible above the chatter of the
rain on the metal roof. “Guess I’m still a little stressed
out.”

She didn’t say anything at first. Then: “Me,
too.”

“Okay. So. Let’s—”

“Let’s eat, okay? Nothing else. I … I can’t
…” Her voice started to crumble.

“I got it. Off we go.” Ken pointed the Rover
towards the downtown district and did battle with the storm.

On any normal day in Dos Hermanos, it would
have been an easy five-minute walk from the Clinic to the only
decent restaurant in town. Today it required a fifteen-minute drive
through blinding rain. The only good part for Ken was finding a
parking space directly in front of the entrance to O’Meara’s.

Ken and Rose lurched to a halt inside the
doors, shedding rain and almost giggling. It took a moment for Rose
to take the place in.

Ken barely recognized the slate-gray
landscape. To one side, the Conference Center rose up like an
outcropping of waterlogged granite; he could barely read the
illuminated letters in its ten-foot sign, reminding passersby of
tonight’s town meeting about the missing girls. Behind it, the
water tower rose on three massive metal legs, looking more ominous
than ever with rain clouds hanging inches above its domed roof.
Across from the brick staircase of the Center, the long sheet-glass
storefront of O’Meara’s looked incongruously warm and inviting. And
right in front of it was the rarest phenomenon of all: an open
parking space.

This time they made it from car to doorway
without getting thoroughly soaked, and Ken was glad to see that the
storm had not yet penetrated his favorite place to eat.

O’Meara’s was a long, narrow room filled with
round tables along the floor-to-ceiling windows and leatherette
booths along the back wall. It sported fresh flowers at each
station, real cloth tablecloths, and pretty young waitresses all in
their twenties. It was a favorite of local businessmen and
politicians; it even had a back room used for the weekly meetings
of the Chamber of Commerce. Ken used it for the face-to-face
meetings he had to have with VeriSil, whenever he could pry them
out of their corporate headquarters at the south end of the
Valle.

Tony O’Meara was the owner. He was a
square-jawed, square-shouldered man in his forties with tightly
curled hair and a superficial resemblance to Cajun cook Emeril
Lagasse – a resemblance he liked to cultivate, as if it gave the
establishment some subliminal sense of style. He came over to greet
Ken as he swept raindrops from his shoulders, and Rose shook
herself like a poodle one more time.

“You’re lookin’ good!” he said, pumping Ken’s
hand. “This your secretary who’s always makin’ the reservations?
Finally givin’ her an afternoon off?” Even after twenty years in
the desert, Tony clung to a mild but noticeable Brooklyn
accent.

Ken grinned. “My daughter, actually.
Rose.”

He wasn’t the least bit fazed. “Ah! Should’a
known! Look at you two!” He put out a cordial hand, and Rose
surprised him by taking it, and even allowing Tony to bow over it
and put it to his lips. “Those eyes!” he said, looking up at her.
“Please tell me you’re not wearing contacts.”

“Not a chance,” she said, smiling.

“Ah! You made my day!”

He escorted them to a table
against the front window. Two tables down and across the way, Ken
recognized the only other patron in the place, that scientist woman
from the Ag Station, the one shaped like a sack of bowling balls.
She looked up as they approached and scratched her head – a busy
little gesture, like an otter scrubbing its pelt – and sketched a
smile. Ken smiles and nodded back to her. No reason to have an
actual conversation; the nod was enough for both of them.
Hi, I see you, you see me, have a good meal,
don’t bother me
.

Tony held the chair for Rose. She looked
amused by the whole process.

O’Meara’s was built right at street level. On
a good day you could sit for hours in its industrial-strength
air-conditioning and admire the pretty young professionals on their
lunch. Today there were no pedestrians, and the perennially
crystal-clear windows were marred with droplets and streaks. The
Convention Center – a serious gray brick hulk that covered most of
the opposite block – was scarcely visible across the four lanes of
Central Avenue, a blurry slate-colored ghost of itself that seemed
to be hunkering down, bracing against the rain.

The street itself had
become a river, a single southbound torrent that filled the entire
four lanes from curb to curb at least six inches deep. It was even
beginning to develop its own chop and eddies underneath the
constant pelting of new rain, more rain,
endless
rain.

“You know the menu already, so I won’t bore
you,” Tony said. “Genelle is your waitress. Don’t eat the salmon.”
Rose looked surprised. He put up a hand. “No, really,” he said.
“Don’t.” He nodded briskly and moved away. A moment later a
dark-eyed blonde with slightly too much hair replaced him and took
drink orders.

For a long minute, they
were both fascinated with the view. From where they sat, the rain
was not only heavy and dark, it was
right
there
, a scant few inches from their faces
but still impossibly remote, falling in dull silver sheets that
simply would not stop. Ken put his fingertips against the glass; he
could actually
feel
the rhythm of the rain as it pounded against the
ground.

“Freaky,” he said.

Rose didn’t say anything.

Genelle came back again and they placed their
orders: Caesar Salad for Rose, the World-Famous French Dip for
Ken.

The silence grew longer and more
uncomfortable. They both watched avidly as a middle-aged woman
frog-walked down the sidewalk and almost threw herself in her car,
covering her head with a flapping fragment of newsprint that
offered no protection at all.

The food came. Ken selected a single French
fry and steeled himself. Time for more conversation. “Pretty
strange introduction to our quaint little town,” he said with an
entirely forced lightness.

Rose looked at him –
regarded
him with those
wonderfully odd violet eyes. She wasn’t simply ignoring him; it was
more as if he hadn’t spoken at all.

“I pretty much hate you right now, you know,”
she said.

The bottom dropped out of his stomach.

“I mean, you’ve been okay
during this whole car wreck-rainstorm-hospital thing – better than
okay, really, but…” She looked down and shook her head. “You were a
complete shit two years ago, Dad. You were a great guy for my whole
life, right up until then, and then Uncle Patrick died and you
…
broke
.”

He didn’t say a word. He just kept looking at
her, stone silent.

“You
left
us. Don’t you –”

“I know what I did,” Ken said. The food
tasted like paste in his mouth.

Rose stopped talking and looked out the
window again. The street-river had grown even deeper, rising past
the level of the curb. Now it was an uninterrupted, roiling expanse
that began outside the restaurant’s glass wall and stretched to the
Convention Center’s brick staircase fifty feet away. Another step
disappeared under the water while they sat in silence.

“Do you know how hard this
has been on Mom?” she asked, trying to keep her voice low, but not
entirely succeeding. “She's trying to get this real estate thing
off the ground at the worst possible time in human history. She
cleans fucking
apartments
to make the bills, do you know that?”