Chapter 3

John’s turn:

The morning reports from the area showed reporters from The Weather Channel in MY home town, standing outside, still being buffeted by high winds. The eye passed directly over the area. While the guy was talking in the foreground, in the background I recognized landmark structures I’d passed every day. The damage was evident.

I switched my observations to YouTube. Video clips were starting to pile up. I suppose that on one hand, they’re titillating, but on the other hand, they’re tragic. One man’s storm porn is another man’s life history strewn across the landscape. Beautiful shaded neighborhoods, some of the most desirable environs, were now graveyards of fallen trees and shattered homes.

As I looked, I felt Laura snug against me, her hand on my shoulder.

“It’s horrible...”

“I know, baby,” I said, not even thinking of the term of endearment I’d just used on her.

“What’re people gonna do?”

“Just like before. Go back home, start repairing, rebuilding, getting on with their lives as best they can.”

Pictures rolled in on a fresh FaceBook page. None of them were uplifting at all. Destruction. Devastation. Chaos. I let my iPad fall, lying back onto the pillows.

That’s when I had the tiny realization that first, she was in MY bed, and second, she’d had her arm around me.

I thought that when I laid back, she’d retire to her own bed.

Wrong. She did a great job of laying on her side, scooting up against me, hugging. “John, it’ll be okay. We’ll get through this.”

“Might not have a house to go back to...”

“All those trees. Had ‘em in front of my apartment.”

“Everybody had trees. You lived to have trees.”

“Our house...”

I knew that her family’s home was almost an hour drive from town and it lay in the path that the storm’s eye took.

Her eyes were moist. “We need to go look...”

“Lemme call John.”

“Who’s John?”

“Friend of mine. The guy who built my new house.”

“Yeah, you mentioned. Didn’t say his name, though.”

“John,” I said. “Known ‘im since high school. One of those guys who skipped college and went out to make a living. Does pretty good, too.”

I dialed John’s number. Nothing. Straight to voicemail. “Not surprised. Cell system, electrical power, probably ain’t a bit of infrastructure intact.”

“Try texting. Sometimes that gets through.”

Okay. Smart thing.

I texted. “Evacuated okay. Looking at reports. Looks bad. Are you in a position to check on my place?”

“And mine?” Laura added.

“What’s the address?”

She gave it to me.

“And an apartment building at xxxxxxxxxx.”

Didn’t take long to get an answer.

“I’m driving back from Texas with a Bobcat on my lowboy. Just got into the storm area. Got some guys with me who want to work. My place is fine. I get these guys set up, I’ll check on yours and that apartment.”

“There you go. All we can do is wait. Breakfast?”

“Wonderful idea.”

“We need to get dressed, then. You want the bathroom?”

“Gimme this. You take the bathroom.”

I grabbed shorts and a clean T-shirt, headed in, got done, stepped out of the door just in time to see her T-shirt sliding down over a flat belly.

“Oops!”

She smiled. “You’ve seen more. And I got this bikini...”

“This place’s got a pool. Did you bring it?”

“No...”

“Dammit.”

“You DOG, you!”

I smiled sheepishly. “Dog? A man likes seeing a pretty female.”

“Oh, so you DO have natural urges, then.”

“I’m doing the best I can to suppress them.”

“Admirable. Keep it up.” The smile that went with that expression was enigmatic.

We headed out, she on her phone looking for a destination, then starting directions. “I assume that by ‘breakfast’ you meant eggs ‘n’ stuff...”

“Exactly. And coffee...”

Breakfast was as delightful as dinner the night before, my companion a laughing conversationalist, pleasant to look at as her eyes laughed with her conversation.

After breakfast we argued, discussed, pounded out an itinerary for the day.

“Nothing else we can do except go back to the hotel and fret,” she said. “Poking around and exploring’ll take our minds off things.”

I’m thinking she’s right, from HER vantage. Her belongings are limited to what’s at her parents’ house and what she might’ve had at her apartment. Mine, well, new house, freshly furnished, at least the bedroom, living room and dining room, the kitchen appliances way up the scale as such things are rated. In the preceding week I’d been moving things, a lot of my clothes, hobby stuff, a good bit of non-perishable food. I could have lost it all.

Right now, though, that house is Schrodinger’s Cat, neither intact nor destroyed, nor anything in between, so a museum, an arboretum, a drive through the countryside. Late afternoon we pointed the truck back towards the hotel, talking about dinner.

“And don’t you DARE suggest that damned steakhouse,” she stated.

“Little Baptist girls ain’t supposed to say ‘damned’,” I chided.

“I’m sure that if you look up the sin of gluttony, Brazilian steakhouses are on top of the list.”

“It WAS good, wasn’t it?”

She smiled. “You’ve wrecked me for steakhouses, Mister John Hebert.”

“Glad to be a part of your educational experience. Now, let’s see how eclectic...”

“You gonna be weird?”

“Not too weird. Vietnamese.”

“Uh, there’s a couple of places in town. Back home, I mean.”

“You’ve tried it?”

“Y’know, if you feed me pho...”

Give the girl points for pronouncing it ‘fuh’.

“What do I get for feeding you pho?”

“Hmmm. Okay, a good night kiss.”

“Inverse scale,” I harrumphed. “Brazilian steakhouse. Nothing. Bowl of pho. A kiss.”

“Don’t start your engineer head a-plotting. It’s not a linear progression...”

“Then a stale package of saltines doesn’t get me a strip tease?”

“No. Not at all.”

We changed our route to show up at a little strip mall restaurant, had the pho and spring rolls, talked about explorations in exotic cuisines.

“I dunno how exotic this is,” she said. “Didn’t, like, a hundred thousand of them immigrate after the war?”

“Something like that,” I said. “And hit the ground running. Shrimpers, grocers, restaurants...”

“And we’re richer for it. Although I do find comfort in good home-cooked Cajun food.”

“Me too. Kinda sad, though, cooking for one. None of my folks know how to cook for one. It’s always for a family.”

“Yeah, I know. And college students...”

“You had what, a week...”

“Almost. But I could see ramen noodles in my future.”

“Don’t knock that. I know some ramen joints...”

“I’m talking about the ‘three for a dollar’ ramen...”

“It’s been a fall-back for me for many a meal,” I said. “Of course, chop some onion, add an egg...”

“You sound like Gramma. I think her recipe for sugar cookies starts with ‘chop an onion’.”

“Everybody’s gramma sounds like that.”

“And everybody’s grampa died early from heart disease...”

“But he was well-fed.”

We’d just gotten back in the truck when my phone sounded an incoming text message. Lots of words. I passed my phone to Laura. “Read.”

“He says ‘I checked your house. You’re intact. No damage to your house. Your carport’s gone and that big oak in the back of your house lost some limbs. That apartment you asked about lost every tree on the street in front of it and they’re all laying on the building. I’m thinking almost a total loss. Went by your old apartment. It lost half the side of the building and the roof fell on your company car.’”

“Ouch. I liked that car.”

“I liked that apartment. You want me to text him back?”

“Yeah, tell ‘im ‘thanks’. I think we’re going back tomorrow...”

“My apartment’s wrecked.”

“My house ain’t.”

She looked at me, saying nothing.

“Oh, just like the hotel, except you get your own room and the hall bathroom’ll be yours because I have one off the master bedroom ... Seriously, though, let’s talk about your choices...”

My previously happy companion sagged as she started the list. “Try to get another apartment and go back to college. Drop college this semester and move myself back home. I dunno, after that...”

“Laura, dear,” I said, “you’re in a bind and I’m offering a third path. If paying rent makes you feel better, pay me something. People used to rent rooms out to college kids all the time...”

“You said it was kinda rural. How would I...”

“Well, right now this truck’s my only wheels. I have a company car, but it’s crunched. Dunno how long before they replace it, but then I’ll have that during the day and you can use my truck. Hell, run a few errands during the day for me, and I won’t bitch about the gas.”

“Your house...”

“Try it.”

Again. “Your house...”

“Treat it like a room rent. Friends over, within reason. Treat it like it’s YOUR house as far as taking responsibility for cleaning your own mess...”

“I’d help clean the whole house. Laundry, that kind of stuff...”

“Sounds like we have a deal. I mean, try it. If you don’t like it, just stay there until something you do like comes along.”

She sighed. “You’ve been kind of a surprise, John. I was so worried. I knew exactly what Jacob had on his mind. I hoped against hope that you’d be different. You really have been. If you were my age...”

There it is. That tiny little flame inside me died in the breath of her words.

“ ... you’d have me taggin’ along like a happy puppy.”

Okay, John, salvage what you can of your pride. “Yeah, Different time, different place, I think you and I would be pretty good together.”

“I’m just sayin’, I think I trust you enough to take you up on your offer, for the time being, at least.”

“Done deal, then.” As we pulled into the hotel parking lot she had a less stressed look.