Fallen Angel (18 page)

"Don't you listen to the news?" the man asked, incredulous. "We're supposed to get a storm. A big one!" He seemed more excited than fearful, looking forward to his first tropical storm.

"Ah," she answered. "No, I don't listen to the news, usually."

"Well, you'd better start," he said, walking out waving his book over his head. "Genevieve!"

"Genevieve?"

"The storm! Tropical Storm Genevieve!"

The door banged shut behind him. It
did
seem to be turning a little stormy outside. It wasn't raining yet, but the sky was getting dark and they could see the palm trees outside the windows blowing in the wind.

* * *

"Sarah?" Sarah was at her desk working, and she looked up to see Cate in the doorway.

"Hm?"

"Have you looked out the window?"

"Why?"

Cate moved out of the doorway and pointed toward the front windows. Now it
was
raining, and the palm trees were whipping in the wind. The only person they could see on the street was someone of indeterminate sex, covered entirely in a yellow slicker and bent almost double under the force of the wind.

"Wow, that started quick!" Sarah got up from her desk and walked to the front window, where she and Cate stood with arms folded and watched the rain.

"I guess you haven't been listening to the news either, huh? Should we do something?" Cate asked.

"Well, I don't know what we
can
do. We might as well close, I guess. What time is it, anyway?"

"Seven thirty."

"Well, why don't you go on home, and I'll stay a little while longer and then close early, maybe at eight or so."

"Okay, thanks. Storms really make me nervous. I'd rather not drive in it, but I'd really like to get home and be sure everything's nailed down, so to speak. I don't even remember if I closed all the windows this morning after my mad rush through the house . . ."

She collected her bag from behind the counter and started toward the door, then "Damn."

"What?"

"I drove your car today. You were going to take me home. I can't go home until you do."

"Oh, that's right. Well--okay, make a sign and put it in the window in case anyone comes by. Let me finish a couple of things and then I'll take you home."

"What should the sign say?"

"I don't know. Closed due to weather, or something like that."

She started straightening up the papers on her desk, putting books back on the shelf and capping her pen. She spoke to the cat curled up on the chair in the corner: "Want to go home with me, Miss Sophie?" She wasn't thrilled about taking Sophie home with her, mostly since she had no idea whether she and Dinah would get along, but she hated to leave her in the store by herself. If the storm got really bad, one of those palm trees could come through the front plate glass window, and Sophie could get hurt or, worse maybe, get out.

"Let's go, kiddo."

She got Sophie's carrier from the back room, but as soon as Sophie saw it, she was off the chair like a flash, pressing herself as far back in the corner
under
the chair as she could get. Sarah had experienced this before, though--every time Sophie had to go to the vet she did this--so she steeled herself, knelt in front of the chair, and reached in and grabbed Sophie by the scruff of the neck and hauled her out, then pushed her unceremoniously into the carrier. "I don't like this any more than you do," she said. "Well, that’s probably not true, but you know what I mean." She snapped the carrier shut.

Cate was working on the sign, sitting on the stool in back of the sales counter bent over a piece of cardboard. She held it up when Sarah came in carrying Sophie's carrier. The sign, elaborately decorated with flying palm trees and saying, "Closed due to weather--come back tomorrow if we're still here!" looked more like an illustration for "The Wizard of Oz" than the simple sign Sarah had envisioned, but all she said was, "Nice sign."

"Thanks!" Cate taped it to the inside of the glass pane in the door as Sarah turned off lights. They opened the door and stood looking out in dismay at the lashing wind and rain. Then they looked at each other. "No umbrella, huh?" Cate asked.

"Nope."

They each took a deep breath and ran, Sophie's carrier bumping against Sarah's leg. They were breathless when they reached Sarah's car, and Sarah fumbled in her pocket for the keys until she remembered Cate still had them. "Cate! Keys!" she shouted over the top of the car. She was trying to keep Sophie's carrier sheltered under her arm, but she knew the cat was probably as wet as she was. Sophie let out a plaintive meow to let them know that yes, she
was
wet, thank you very much, and could someone
please
hurry up and unlock the car?

"Oh! Sorry. Crap!" Cate had her head down and was rummaging through her bag. "Got 'em!" she said triumphantly, and unlocked the passenger side door, then reached across and unlocked Sarah's door. They both just sat for a moment, panting, totally soaked.

"Well. That was fun," Sarah said, and they burst out laughing. She peered into the carrier at the equally wet Sophie, who looked as bedraggled as Sarah had ever seen her. "Oh, Sophie, I am so sorry," she said, and she and Cate started laughing again. "Poor Sophie!" Cate gasped. I've never seen her so unhappy. Has she ever been outside the store?"

Sarah started the car and carefully backed out of the parking space. "Sure. I've taken her to the vet a couple times. That's it, though. She's not exactly a world traveler, that's for sure. Right, Soph?" Cate was holding the carrier on her lap, and Sarah wiggled her fingers inside the holes in the side of the carrier. "Careful!" Cate admonished. "She might bite you!"

"Oh, Sophie wouldn't bite me." But she pulled her fingers back out, just in case. As they pulled onto the highway, the windows steaming up from their breath, they heard the emergency sirens start--the sirens that meant they should take cover. Well, that was the plan.

The shopping area had been nearly deserted, but as they drove toward the mainland, they began to see more and more traffic, and by the time they could see the bridge, that traffic had come to a complete halt. The Key wasn't an island, but it was so long and narrow that it often
felt
like one; it was connected to the main part of the city only by a drawbridge, which was up. Normally that wasn't a big deal--the bridge went up many times a day to let ships pass through the Intracoastal Waterway--but through the driving rain Sarah could just make out the flashing lights of the sawhorse barricades that were blocking cars from driving onto the bridge.

It wasn't to keep them from getting
off
the Key, she knew, but to keep people from the mainland from driving out onto the Key in order to watch the storm on the Gulf, and possibly getting hurt or killed.

"Looks like the bridge is closed," she said to Cate. “I guess you're staying with me again."

Cate slumped in her seat, water dripping down her face. She swiped at the water with the back of her hand, and clutched the cat carrier to her. "I just know I left the windows open," she muttered. "Damn it."

Sarah was occupied with trying to get the car turned around and pointed back toward the Key. Since the bridge was closed, there wasn't any traffic coming the other direction--well, except for the people trying to do the same thing she was--so getting turned around wasn't as difficult as it might have been in normal circumstances. Fortunately for everyone concerned, no one seemed to be panicking, everyone was cooperating and letting other people get out of line and headed back the way they'd come.

After a few deft maneuvers, or as deft as a maneuver could be in a Volkswagen, they were back on the highway headed the other direction. "Sure didn't give us very much warning, did they?" Cate was still disgruntled, which was understandable given her soggy state.

"Well, to give them the benefit of the doubt, we probably should have been listening to the radio or watching television or something as soon as we heard there was the possibility of a storm. They've probably been broadcasting it on the news all day. Look at the people who came in to the store this morning and already knew, before it even started raining! I'm sure they heard it on the radio. We were just too distracted with everything that's been going on to pay attention."

"I guess. I still think they should have let us know sooner." Just as she said that, they passed a police car driving slowly down the street with lights flashing, presumably looking for people to warn about the coming storm. "Fine," Cate said. "Lock the barn door
now
." She was whining, but Sarah felt like whining, too, so she let it go.

"So what to we do now?"

"We go to my house and find some dry clothes and close the shutters--well, I guess we close the shutters first,
then
get into some dry clothes, and make something hot to drink before the power goes out, because it probably will, and get something to eat, and then try to get some sleep. Sound good?"

"Yeah. I'm sorry I'm whining. I just wanted to go home."

"I know. It's okay. It's totally understandable. I feel that way, too." And Sophie meowed again to let them know that
she
felt that way, too. And that the
first
thing that they'd better do was dry her off, because there aren't too many things unhappier than a wet cat.

They were just a few houses away from Sarah's front yard when they heard a heavy THUMP on the top of the car. Sarah hit the brakes; her first thought was that a palm tree had uprooted and fallen on the car. The road was so slick with rain and vegetation that the tires wouldn't take hold, and the car slid gently toward the sand on the shoulder. They hadn't been going very fast, but it was still unnerving not to be able to control the car. Her first, panicked thought was that she hoped they wouldn't slide all the way into the ocean, and then she realized that a concrete picnic table or the lifeguard station would probably stop them before then.

And she was right. It was a tree that stopped them, though. The car bumped softly into a palm tree--the tree bent, but held, and the car stopped. Cate and Sarah looked at each other and laughed shakily, and then they both screamed as a face peered in at them through the windshield, upside down.

The rain continued to come down in buckets as they stared in horror at the grinning face of Yurkemi, leering at them through the windshield. "Lock the doors!" Sarah commanded, as she slapped down the lock on her side. Cate reached around and locked her own door, never taking her eyes off the specter on the other side of the windshield. His face, streaming with rain, looked strained and slightly mad--before he had only seemed vaguely menacing, like a comic book villain, now he looked like her worst nightmare, and Sarah was terrified.

Yurkemi slowly slid down the windshield and over the hood like a lizard, face first, then did a flip that would have been impossible for a human being, and wound up standing directly in front of the car. He made a little bow with his arms outstretched. They couldn't hear him over the noise of the storm, but they could read his lips as he straightened up and called, "Ta da!"

The car had stalled when they went off the road, and now Sarah, eyes still on Yurkemi, took a deep breath and turned the key. The engine started up immediately.
Thank goodness for German engineering
, she thought. She put the car in reverse and started to back up slowly, but the wheels just spun on the sodden sand, and she knew she wouldn't be able to make any progress, she would just dig herself in deeper. "Shit!" She hit the steering wheel with her palm.
Now what?
She said, half to herself. Yurkemi was still standing in front of the car, arms now crossed on his chest, water falling all around him.

He sloshed through the wet sand to stand outside Sarah's window. She kept her face firmly toward the front of the car; when she refused to turn and look at him, he tapped on the window. "How do you like my storm, ladies?" he asked. Sarah's head whipped around and she hissed, "You did this?" She couldn't imagine how he could hear her, with the sound of the wind and the rain, but he must have, because he answered her:

"I'm the angel of hail, aren't I? That's what they say! It's just a short ride from hail to a tropical storm. Maybe I'll make it a hurricane! I'm just sorry they didn't name it after me. 'Genevieve.' What a wimpy name for a storm. 'Tropical Storm Yurkemi!' Now
there's
a name for a storm!" He spun around in the rain, his head back and his arms outstretched again, and he laughed, and then he swept his arms up above his head and his wings opened up. He shook them and water flew, and he laughed again.

He bent to the window. "And by the way, do you really imagine that your flimsy car locks are any match for me?" On the last word, the locks flew up on both sides of the car with a sharp snap.