The Love Sucks Club (25 page)

The wind is really picking up now. I can hear the branches
slamming against the house. There is a little bit of water coming in under the
kitchen door. Kneeling to mop some of it up, I hear someone rummaging in the
beer cooler. Looking around, expecting to see Sam, I see Mandy instead.

“That’s Sam’s beer, buddy. You might consider asking before you
dive into it.”

“What? You’re going to let us stay at your party without letting
us drink or eat anything?”

“You can eat or drink anything you want. I’m just letting you know
that it might be polite to ask before you take, especially considering you
didn’t bring anything to contribute.”

“I didn’t ask to be here. I was dragged here by Jackie.”

Turning my back on her, I continue mopping up the water. She’s
still standing behind me and it’s irritating. “If you’re just going to stand
there, get a towel and help me replace the wet ones!”

Sighing, she bends down and hands me several dry towels, relieving
me of the wet ones that I have taken from the crack under the door.

She asks
Esmé
about putting the towels
in the dryer. Putting them out of my mind, I concentrate on rolling up the new
towels and shoving them in under the door. Roxanne leans over beside me. “Want
some more plastic bags?”

“Maybe.”’

While she grabs the bags from the counter, I remove the towels
that I’ve already placed. She kneels next to me to squeeze the bags under the
door. “If we pack them in as tightly as possible, less water will get through,”
she says.

“Really?
I hadn’t thought of that.”

She elbows me in the ribs. Laughing, I lean in to kiss her on the
cheek. We work quietly together packing every square inch of space with plastic
bags.

“Where else could we have gone, Karen?” I hear Rick say loudly,
over the wind.

“I don’t know. We should have stayed at our house.”

“Our house is going to be flooded,” he responds.
       

“I’d rather be there dealing with the flood than here with you.”

Pretending I can’t hear them, I continue poking towels in along
the door. Roxanne catches my eye and I smile at her. “I’m glad you’re here,” I
whisper.

Whispering back, she says, “Are you?”

“Yes. You’re the one beacon of normalcy in this group.”

Laughing, she stands up before offering me a hand. Dragging me to
my feet, she smiles. “If I’m your beacon of normalcy, you’ve set your bar
pretty low.”

Sam, Jackie, and Thomas come back from the living room singing,
“Row, Row, Row Your Boat” at the top of their lungs. Looking back at Roxanne, I
grin. “I’ve set my bar pretty low.”

Something slams against the side of the house, making me jump.
Roxanne takes my hand. “Oh, don’t worry, Dana. I’ll protect you.”

“Funny.”

“Oh, you must need a femme around to keep you safe,” she grins.

Shaking my head at her, I walk away, laughing. She follows me,
stopping in the kitchen to grab a tray of cookies. Sam heads for her beer
cooler. Turning to Thomas and Jackie, she offers them a beer. Thomas takes one,
but Jackie refuses.

Back to my chair, I pick up Frank and deposit him on my lap. He
lets out an indignant meow before settling in. Rick and Karen are about as far
away on the couch as two people can get. Obvious as usual, Sam comes in and
plops down between them. “Hey, Karen,” she says in an overly jovial voice.
“What’s shaking?”

Karen glares at her. “Grow up, Sam.”

Unperturbed, Sam shakes her head.
“Never.
I’m perfect the way I am.”

“Hardly,” Olivia scoffs, coming into the dining area with a plate
of food.

That reminds me. “If anyone gets hungry, there is all sort of food
in the fridge and all over the counters. Once the power goes out, we want to
make sure to open the fridge as little as possible. It will probably keep the food
good for about twenty-four hours. After that, we’ll put stuff on ice in the
coolers. And hopefully after that, we’ll be able to get down the hill.”

“God, let us hope,”
Esmé
says.

“You didn’t have to be here,” Sam reminds her. “In fact, if I
remember correctly, you weren’t invited.”

“There’s a lot of that going around,” I say, laughing.

“Fine,” Karen says, standing. “Sorry for busting in on you. We can
go.”

The whole house shakes as something crashes into one of the walls.
Rick takes Karen by the hand and pulls her down next to him. “We aren’t going
anywhere in this.”

“No one is going anywhere in this,” I state. “I’m pretty sure no
one is going to be going anywhere for at least twenty-four hours, so we might
all try to pretend that we like each other.”

Jackie grins. “One year we had a hurricane party for fifteen.
Everyone except Dana got trashed. There was a leak in one of the windows and it
was shooting water in right where I was sleeping. When she woke me up, I was
soaking wet from head to toe. Good times.”

Smiling at her, I shrug my shoulders. “They weren’t all bad
times.”

Something else crashes hard against the house, causing everyone to
jump.

“That was a big one,” my sister says, walking past on her way to
the kitchen.

Sam gets off the couch and sits on the ground in front of Olivia.
Running her fingers over Sam’s short hair, Olivia bends down and kisses Sam on
the ear. Leaning over to press my face against Roxanne’s shoulder, I fake
shudder. “I can’t believe I couldn’t avert my eyes in time to miss that.”

Mandy moves her chair closer to Jackie so she can put her arm
around her. She’s on her third or fourth beer and I can tell Jackie is getting
upset. I don’t think that relationship will last long. It’s hard to recover
while still dealing with someone who drinks like that. Jackie stretches her
long legs out onto a side table, leaning away from Mandy as she does. Roxanne
squeezes my hand. “Want a cookie?”

“Yeah, I do.” Taking a couple of chocolate chip cookies, I lean
back in my chair, surveying the room. I should probably get up and walk the
house again. Shoving both cookies into my mouth, I stand and motion to Sam.
“Everyone else stay put. We’re going to check the house.”

Back in the spare bedroom, everything looks good. There is a
little water seepage under one of the windows, but other than that, things are
holding up well. The house is shaking like crazy by now and it sounds like a
freight train outside. Glancing at her phone, Sam says, “We aren’t in the worst
of it yet. According to the satellite, we’re still in the outer bands.”

Leaning over to look at it, I point out the movement of the storm.
“Look at the update. We’re getting close to the hardest part.”

She pulls some duct tape out of the pocket of her cargo shorts.
Pulling off a piece, she hands the end to me so she can reach in her pocket for
a knife. After she cuts the piece off, I tape it across the bottom of the
window.

She puts the tape back in her pocket. Reaching for her phone
again, she looks at the satellite image one more time. “The biggest convection
is one the other side of the eye and that’s what will be over us in a couple of
hours.”

“It’s moving fast.
Won’t stick around.”

“That’s a good thing,” she says.

There’s a crash from the other room and someone screams. Looking
down the hall, I call, “Do we need to come back there?”

“Everything’s fine,” Roxanne
calls back.

“Good.”

Sam and I check the bathroom, but it’s sealed up tight. In my
bedroom, everything looks good. Everything that can fit into a plastic
container is in one. My books are all in waterproof bags and containers, just
to be safe. As we’re standing there, something slams outside of the house, and
water starts spraying into my room. Sam gets hit with it, but she doesn’t
flinch. Running to the window, she slams her hand against the new crack. I go
back to the bathroom for a towel. Bringing it back to the bedroom, I see what’s
happened. The hurricane shutter has come off the fastening on the wall side and
is slamming against the window. Something obviously hit the window hard enough
to crack it. Standing here, watching Sam hold the towel against the crack, I’m
stunned by the way the window itself is moving in and out. The glass is bowing
with each huge gust. With the roar of the wind over our heads, I’m torn about
whether to brave the storm to fix the shutter, or risk more damage by letting
it go.

Putting my mouth next to Sam’s ear, I yell over the roar of the
storm. “Do we need to go fix this?”

“We need to do something,” she yells back. “I don’t want this
glass breaking all over the room.”

“Tape the glass.” Running back to the kitchen for a cardboard box
from the storage closet, I stop for a second to see what had made the crash.

“It’s nothing,” Roxanne assures me. “Mandy tripped over the cooler
and fell.”

Mandy is sitting in a chair with her leg elevated on a stool.
Jackie is holding an ice pack over the woman’s ankle. Rolling my eyes toward
the ceiling, I turn away without comment. Rummaging in the closet until I find
a box, I smile at Roxanne. “Hold down the fort, gorgeous. Sam and I are taking
care of business.”

“My heroes,” she says.

“Was that sarcasm?” I call back over my shoulder as I walk back
down the hall.

The towel in Sam’s hands is soaked through. She takes it off and
water immediately starts pouring into the room again. It looks as if someone is
standing directly outside the crack with a fire hose.

“Horizontal rain,” Sam says. “Cool.”

“Cool if it isn’t your bedroom,” I reply.

I slam a plastic bag over the crack, holding it against the
window. The window shudders under my hand. It feels like it will break at any
moment. “Damn, weren’t you scared you were going to get a face full of glass?”

We both jump as the storm shutter slams back into the window. I
have both hands on the window now and it’s shaking so hard, I can feel it
jarring my shoulders. Sam whips her duct tape out again and tapes the plastic
against the window. Once that’s done, we both back away. It’s visibly
shimmying, but I think it will hold. Another slam of the shutter and we hear
another cracking noise.

“Help me get this box torn up,” I tell Sam.

We tear off a big piece of cardboard and put it against the
window. While I hold it, Sam carefully surrounds the entire thing with duct
tape. Once that’s in place, I feel a little better. The whole assembly is still
blowing in and out, but at least the cardboard should contain the glass.

“We’re probably going to have to secure that shutter,” Sam says as
it bangs up against the window again.

“Secure it or take it down, whichever is faster.”

There’s a click, and a kind of whooshing noise. “Here it comes,”
Sam says.

All of the lights go off. “There it goes,” Sam says, laughing. “I
don’t suppose you brought any of those flashlights in here with you.”

“There’s a whole shitload of them in the crate in the kitchen.”

“Perfect, oh Master of Preparedness.”

“That’s not even a word.”

“It is.” I can hear her shuffling around in the dark. “And lucky
for you, I am uber-prepared.”

A light shines in my face. Sam has a tiny flashlight in her hand.
Directing the beam at the window, she says, “I think that’s the best we can do
for now.”

“Me too.
Let’s go into the kitchen and
get a real flashlight.”

“Don’t mock it,” she replies. “It’s saving your bacon right now.”

“Bacon sounds good right about now,” I say.

“
Mmmm
.
Bacon.”

We walk back down the hallway toward the glow from the kitchen and
dining room area. Roxanne and Susannah already have all of the battery powered
lights scattered around.
Esmé
is handing out
flashlights to everyone.

“Don’t use them now,” I caution. “We have plenty of light in here.
Just take one if you need to go in the other room.”

“And don’t flush the toilet without making sure there’s water in
the back of the tank,” Sam says.

“Yeah, in fact, whenever you flush, pour more water in the tank
afterward,” I counter.

“Thank you,” Susannah says. “Because none of the rest of us
have
been in a hurricane before.”

“Or lost power on a sunny day,” Rick says, smiling.

“For utterly no reason,” Thomas agrees.

“Okay, okay. I was reminding everyone,” I reply.
“
Jeeze
.
Sue me.”

Susannah stands. “On that note, let me be the first to pee.”

Everyone laughs.

“Do you want me to come with you?” Thomas asks.

“No, I have my trusty mag light. If there’s something scary in the
bathroom, I’ll handle it.”