by Ken O'Steen
When we took our first look out our windows the following morning, we were a bit surprised. Not only was our little cottage not engulfed by thunderbolts and swarms of cyclones, but in fact, you got the feeling the sun was not too far from sneaking out from under its cover. It was difficult to tell, just by looking out of the window, whether any rain was coming down, even though if you squinted you could observe drizzle. But once we had insinuated ourselves back into the loop with our various teams of meteorologists and weather-savvy anchors and intrepid storm reporters, we learned that indeed, the break in the weather was no more than an aberration, “caused by the current positioning of weather systems,” and not only would not last, but was only prelude to the march ashore of Giorgio, and the correctly predicted hellish convergence of storms above our heads.
In the meantime, the relatively placid conditions beckoned us outside for an interlude of sorely missed strolling, and to do reconnaissance on the current beach conditions. I had been planning to check in with Bob at some point in the day anyhow, come hell or high tides. Lila too thought it a good idea to check in on Bob, and discuss our plan, if you could call planning to wait out a storm a plan, for the hurricane.
I was dressed already, so I went on out ahead of Lila, who was lying on the floor when I left, looking underneath the bed for a missing sneaker. It was very windy outdoors, with palm fronds, tin cans, and seaweed hop scotching over the sand and across the road. But the drizzle had stopped, and I stayed dry.
The beach itself was blighted with exotic crud, and more than usual of the regular crud. It was tempting to regard the ocean as Santa Claus, and to ask the tides to wash me in a new set of radials for the car. Instead, I surveyed the landscape, and the oceanscape, until I was satisfied that, except for the deposits from the stronger than usual tides, all I would see were the things I normally did. I decided to start officially strolling, during the course of which I would investigate what was, or was not happening on other parts of the beach, taking advantage of the chance to exercise before being confined for another possibly longer stretch.
I had only walked a little ways before I was able to sight, if blurrily, human beings on the beach far in the distance. Then I nearly stumbled over one right in front of me…not literally…but I was surprised, after crossing the beach in front of Bob’s, to see a man resting in the sand against the sea wall behind what I presumed to be his own house. Above the seawall, stacks of sandbags raised the barrier another couple of yards. The man, middle aged, dressed in khaki shorts and a red tank top was drinking lustily from a bottle of water. He put the bottle down as I walked in his direction.
“Whaddya think?” he asked when I got close.
“About what…the sandbags? Looks like you’ve stacked them well.”
“It’s worth a try,” he said.
“According to the news, a lot of people feel the same way.”
“I’ve seen you out and around a few times. You’re a neighbor aren’t you?”
“I live in that cottage,” I said pointing, “next over from the house next to yours…Bob…my friend Bob is the owner of it.”
“Ahhh,” he said. “Bob’s an unusual guy.”
“You aren’t the first to say that, believe it or not.”
“I believe it,” he said, chuckling.
“You think the sandbagging will make a difference?”
“Most of the time they wash out. Still, it’s one of the few precautions you’re able to take, and it could be the difference between preserving your property, and not preserving it. Have you finished at your place?”
“You could say that. I prayed nothing will happen, and I’m leaving it at that.”
“Not worth the trouble?” he asked, skeptically, giving a look I had seen before.
“I just hate wasted effort so much, especially when the effort is manual.”
“I dunno,” he said, shaking his head and standing up.
Changing the direction of the conversation I inquired, “What do you think?” nodding toward the bank of brooding clouds glowering back from the sea.
“I think it’s pretty unavoidable now. Question is, whether what’s coming is only some extra wind and water, or something worse. It looks to be worse than your basic El Nino, and not as bad as a serious hurricane. It’s worthy of concern…there may be a little more fear than is justified for the time being.”
“Some of that may be vocabulary. The word hurricane puts a little extra fear of God into the huddled masses.”
“Possibly. Speaking of words, I recall the longhaired man…what’s the name of your friend who lives between us?”
“Bob.”
“Yes, Bob…Bob told me, if I remember correctly, that you’re a writer of some kind.”
“It’s true my last significant employment was a job entailing a certain amount of writing. Beyond that, I’m reluctant to lay claim to, ‘writer,’ and reluctant to be counted among, ‘writers’. That designation lost its cachet for me a long time ago…in other words, before so many of them were prominent citizens of their communities…the good old days, when they were mostly fuck-ups.”
“I see,” he said uncertainly. Then he pointed out, “Isn’t that your wife or girlfriend down there on the beach?”
“That’s Lila,” I said. “I guess I better find out what she’s up to,” anxious to separate myself from this soured, and souring chat.
“I guess we’ll see what we’re in for,” he said.
“Could be the right-wing plan for taking a swat at the Evil Empire…Hollywood,” I said.
“Or…really, really bad luck for us, if it comes to the worst,” he answered.
“In any case, good luck to you,” I said before I walked down the beach to join Lila, who had even less interest in neighborhood bonding than I, if such a thing were possible.
“Good luck to you.”
He didn’t mean anything really with this mention of luck, of course. But for some reason the subject of luck remained with me, not as something in the foreground, but buried, and set to manifest itself at a later time, like an explosive with its fuse attached to a timer.
When I caught up with Lila she asked what I had been talking about with our neighbor on the beach, and I told her.
“He may be right,” she said, referring to the sandbags.
“He may, but we don’t own the cottage, and we could get everything that’s in there out, and into the car in thirty minutes.”
“I think it would take longer than that.”
We debated this, and the potential consequences of our negligence in regards to sandbags and to other matters, as we set off walking in the opposite direction from which I’d started out. The tide was coming in, and it appeared dry sand soon was to be at a premium. The walkway, and the oil platform upon which human presence was perpetually undetectable were swaying dramatically among a prevalence of whitecaps, so close together they resembled a flotilla of water lilies bobbing in the sea.
“You think a storm like this could cause enough damage to put the oil at risk of spilling into the ocean? That would ruin our beach here, too.”
“Those pipes should be resistant to storms. But if I go for a walk after the storm is over, and I come back looking like I joined a minstrel show, that will prove I was completely wrong.”
She shook her head. “Well I hope you’re right.”
It started to drizzle again, and we decided to turn around, preferring to get to Bob’s before it started to rain harder. Bob had gradually transformed the interior of his beach house to resemble his other house on the Westside, and if there was the occasional visitor, which I doubted there was, the visitor, unlike regular guests such as Lila and I might regard the place as a model home for display of the Big Bang aesthetic of interior decoration. The familiar disorder associated with cigarettes, weed, music appreciation and food consumption was revealed in the scatter of miscellanea. B
ob answered the door with a can opener in his hand, though alas, no ready can was in plain sight when we all arrived in the kitchen. Bob declared his appetite had passed; and that remembering what he had almost eaten would be of historical value only.
He ambled into the living room, so we followed along. Bob’s living room had an ocean view, and that was where he normally sat, with headphones and his principal bong. He used the bedroom only for sleeping and watching television, and the kitchen as a combination office-workshop-food preparation center. He asked if we wanted to sit out on the porch-patio and talk, since unlike our little cottage, his house had a roofed patio, and an entrance on the ocean side.
“It’s a little inclement for that, don’t you think?” Lila answered for us.
“I don’t know about that. But maybe we should stay inside because of the wind and rain,” he said.
Venturing no reply, we simply sat down on the sofa. He sat down with us, removing the headphones from the seat of his favorite armchair, or the chair commonly referred to by insiders as, “the chair.”
“So, we’ve been wondering, Bob, what you think about this storm that’s coming?” Lila queried him, adding, “You think everything’s going to be okay here…and next door, I mean?”
“I’ve been seeing all this stuff on tv. It’s going to get here next Thursday, right?”
“No, tomorrow, Bob.” Lila informed him.
“Yeah…tomorrow’s Thursday.”
“Bob…right, tomorrow is when it gets here,” giving me a “help me, here” look I pretended not to see.
“Doesn’t another one get here next week…next Thursday?”
“Nothing gets here next week, nothing I’m aware of at the moment,” Lila said.
“So when does it get here?”
Nodding toward the sea, Lila said, “I think this is it…the beginning. Tomorrow is when it’s supposed to really hit.”
“There’s more than one.”
“Right. Three,” Lila, said, “one storm off the coast, and two more feeding it…the one that could become a hurricane…last time I heard it could, anyhow.”
“I know…I’ve followed it. We’ve never had an actual hurricane that got this close. I saw all about that. It’s unusual for us…on the west coast. They say dangerous, maybe…damage-wise…property-wise, if it gets that big…which I doubt it will.”
“But nothing catastrophic. It could cause trouble, especially right along the ocean…like we are.”
“That’s why I was thinking we should have a party.”
Lila and I looked at one another.
“Because…you know…because it’s not supposed to be, catastrophic.”
I decided I would be the one to take a swing at this pitch. “Who are we inviting, Bob?”
“Nobody. The three of us. You guys will come over here… we’ll party…get high, listen to music, and hang out. It’d be a hurricane party.”
“I gotcha.”
“I know about them,” he said, “…they have hurricane parties on the east coast during a hurricane.”
“I’ve never heard of them…not that it’s such a bad idea,” Lila concluded.
“No,” I said, speaking to Lila, “They do have those along the eastern seaboard. They’re a custom, you might say, in the Atlantic states, down in Florida, on the Gulf, in Louisiana and Texas.”
“Huh.”
“People hole up together with a stockpile of their favorite intoxicants, and stick out the brunt of the hurricane getting pissed and raising hell.”
“Yeah,” Bob said. “Right.”
“It’s fine with me then,” Lila said, “A hurricane party tomorrow at Bob’s. What time, Mr. Host?”
Bob failed to answer.
“How about we come over some time during the day tomorrow,” I told Bob, “about the time the Big H. is really revving up, but before so much hell breaks loose it’s impossible to make the walk.”
“If it does rev up,” Lila added.
“Good point. If it does.”
“Anytime,” Bob said, looking over at his headphones as if he was ready to turn his attention back to where it had been before we showed up.
Before we left, we let Bob know we were making one last run to the market to get supplies, and asked if there was anything that we could get him.
“Since there’s a party…I’d have to say…yes.”
Lila and I drove to the usual spot a little ways up the road, pulling into the lot that was now mud. There were a couple of people in line in front of me, which was slightly unusual, but no frantic mob was descending on the store right before the moment of truth. I asked Greg, the clerk that day, if he had seen my friend normally stationed at the front of the store asking for change. He answered that he hadn’t seen him, “since the day before yesterday,” and speculated, “he must have headed for the hills.”
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