by Hunt, Angela
“Don’t you dare disconnect us!” The redhead snaps out of whatever fugue she’s been in and steps toward the panel, her eyes blazing. “You will stay on the line until you get us some help.”
Michelle shrinks back, stunned by the determination on the older woman’s face. Where has Ms. Trench Coat been hiding this attitude?
“Ma’am,” the operator says, an edge to her voice, “might I suggest that you ladies call 911?”
The redhead, who is not carrying a purse, slants a brow at Michelle; the unspoken query sends Michelle scrambling through her purse. “My cell phone has never worked in this elevator,” she says, shifting until the emergency light shines into her nearly bottomless shoulder bag. “I’ll try it, though.”
She finds her phone, snaps it open and holds it up. Though the battery is fully charged, the signal bars flicker and then vanish as an error message appears: No Service.
She exhales, then looks at her companions. “I don’t suppose either of you has a cell phone?”
The housekeeper shakes her head while the redhead slumps to the opposite wall.
So—their single cell phone is useless. And since the redhead’s outburst did little to motivate the woman in Atlanta, maybe it’s time to try another approach.
Time to turn on the charm.
“Miss—” trying to imagine the woman behind the phone, Michelle focuses on the speaker in the panel “—would you mind telling me your name?”
The woman hesitates. “I’m only doing my job.”
“I know, and you just might save our lives today. So, may I have your name? Operator sounds awfully impersonal.”
“Ginger,” the woman says, her tone heavy with suspicion. “Ginger McCloud.”
“Good.” Michelle forces a smile into her voice. “I’m Michelle. You see, Ginger, we have only one cell phone and it won’t work in this elevator. So you’re going to have to call someone for us.”
“Sugar, that’s not my job. I’m supposed to call the elevator-company dispatcher so they can send someone out. That’s the policy.”
“Then you’ll have to make an exception to the policy. Please.” Dismayed to hear a thread of hysteria in her voice, Michelle takes a deep, calming breath. “We’re stuck and the hurricane is coming. This elevator doesn’t have a phone, only a button, so you’re the only person we can reach. Don’t hand us off, please. We don’t even know if anyone’s still in the local office.”
Somewhere in the distance, another phone rings. The operator’s gum snaps over the line. “Just a minute, hon.”
Michelle looks at the redhead, who rolls her eyes and mumbles something about incompetence. Michelle gives her a bland half smile and realizes that if the situation weren’t so dire, this conversation might actually be funny.
Tomorrow she and Lauren will have to stop for a bite after their shopping expedition. Over cheese fries and soft drinks, she’ll tell her best friend about Ms. Trench Coat and the sniffling maid and Ginger the kiss-my-grits operator. Lauren will be bug-eyed with disbelief; Michelle will swear every word is true, and they’ll laugh until their sides ache….
Unless tomorrow finds her still waiting in this elevator. Then she’s not likely to be in a humorous mood.
She stands rooted to the spot, both hands flat against the wall, until Ginger returns. “Sorry. All right, I’ll help if I can, but I’m not sure what you expect me to do.”
“We need you,” Michelle begins, “to call the elevator company in Tampa. I’m sure you can get the number from information. If they don’t answer, call the Majestic office in Orlando or Sarasota. Call every elevator company in a three-hundred-mile radius if you have to, just get us some help.”
The keyboard clatters again, then the woman sighs. “I’ll do my best, hon. Y’all sit down and try to relax while I see what I can do. How many of you are in that cab?”
Michelle glances back at the cleaning woman, who promptly looks away. “There are three of us. Three women.”
“Everybody all right? Any medical emergencies?”
Would it make a difference? Michelle is tempted to say that the redhead is about to blow an aneurysm, then decides against it. “We’re fine, but we won’t be if you take too long. We have no food, no water and no bathrooms, if you know what I mean.”
“I’ll call the company in Tampa, then I’ll call you back.”
“No, no—hang on. I don’t know if we can trust this phone. Don’t disconnect us, okay? We’ll wait.”
Michelle hears the rustling of paper—a phone book?—then Ginger sighs. “This is going to take a while.”
“That’s fine.” Michelle turns and nods at the others. “We’ve got nothing else to do.”
“I’m going to put you on hold, then.”
After an instant of silence, a thin stream of Muzak again flows into the car.
Isabel lowers her gaze to conceal the admiration that must be shining from her eyes. Rodrigo always said she was far too obvious about her feelings, but she has never been good at disguising her emotions. Today, however, she must hide all that is in her heart and mind.
If only she could be more like the brown-haired gringa at the front of the elevator. The way she spoke to the operator—so confident! Isabel would give a week’s wages to be able to speak so.
She pulls a tissue from her left sweater pocket and swipes at her nose. Perhaps she can’t help it. She has always been more like her soft-spoken mother than her boisterous father. Pedro Alvarado, who appeared taller than anyone else in the room even when seated, ruled as the undisputed king of their home and held the respect of his neighbors. Mamá honored him; Rodrigo obeyed him; his friends asked for his advice. When they went to the market, Isabel followed him, walking in the wake of admiring looks directed at Pedro Alvarado.
Though her father presided over their home with dignity, he had to set aside his authority when he went to work at the cotton mill. He did everything the boss asked him to do without argument. Even when he was told to repair the big drum used for smoothing the newly woven griege goods, he did not point out that he had never worked with that machine.
After the drum caught his hand and mangled his arm, Pedro Alvarado died without complaint. Fortunately for his family, the machine took only his arm, so Isabel’s father was able to say goodbye before he died. As the foreman ran for a priest and weeping women crossed themselves, Pedro placed his head in his wife’s lap and murmured his last words: “Lo siento.”
Why was he sorry? Isabel could not imagine why her father needed to apologize. He had never done anything but work hard to raise his family. When other men in Monterrey began to bargain with the drug dealers, Pedro Alvarado refused. When a neighbor wanted to sew bags of liquid heroin into the bellies of six puppies and send them to the United States, Pedro quietly called the authorities.
Despite great temptation, he kept his focus on the cotton mill. “It is a poor man’s job,” he once told Isabel, “but it is honorable work.”
Yet the only time Isabel saw her father’s employers treat him with the respect due an honorable man was during Navidad, when tradition and the law demanded that company owners present each employee with the annual aguinaldo, or Christmas bonus. That stipend, equal to three months’ regular salary, bought clothes for Rodrigo and Isabel and paid for repairs on the house. The aguinaldo allowed her parents to preserve their dignity each time they accepted paychecks that barely covered the family’s living expenses.
Isabel had been fourteen when her father died, and in subsequent years she, her mother and brother continued to work in the Monterrey cotton factory. They remained silent when the bosses took advantage of the older people, shortchanging them for hours worked, or forbidding them breaks when the sun grew too hot for anyone to stand. Isabel learned to quietly step away from the machines and help pick up women who had fainted in the heat.
Just once, Isabel mused while she watched one of the foremen strike an old woman who’d brought a stool so she could sit at the spinning machine, she would like to marc
h up to one of the bosses and tell him what she thought of his cruelty. Yes, the work was legal, but the supervisors could be just as uncaring and wicked as the men who ran drugs.
But she needed her job, so she said nothing. She, Mamá and Rodrigo depended upon their weekly paychecks and the annual aguinaldo. And so Isabel learned to hold her tongue.
But this other woman, this tall gringa, has never learned to keep silent. Either she has never been frightened or she has overcome her fear. How does a woman develop such daring?
The answer comes to Isabel on a wave of memory. If one desires a thing badly, longing can concoct enough courage to override fear.
She knew such boldness…once.
“Go on.” Maria’s elbow scraped Isabel’s rib. “You’ve been talking about him for weeks, so go ask him to dance.”
“I might.”
“What’s keeping you?”
“I’m waiting. For the right moment.”
To prove her point, Isabel turned away from the bar and propped both elbows on the counter, then looked out across the gathering of young people. No one seeing her in this indifferent pose would possibly know that the mere sight of Ernesto Carillo Fuentes sent blood coursing through all the canals of her body in a whooshing wave.
One of the best-looking young men in Monterrey, Ernesto stood across the plaza in snakeskin boots, a silk shirt and tight American jeans. A silver medallion featuring the face of Jesus Malverde, México’s own Robin Hood, dangled from his neck while a diamond stud winked from his ear.
He was gorgeous…as were the girls he usually approached at this dance. But Ernesto was not dancing now. Laughter floated up from his throat as he dropped a fistful of pesos onto a waitress’s serving tray and lifted a beer with his compadres. He looked relaxed and generous, like a man who might be persuaded to accept an invitation from a girl heavier and less beautiful than most.
“Go on,” Maria insisted in Isabel’s ear. “What have you got to lose?”
Isabel bit her lip. If she went over and Ernesto laughed at her, so what? She’d be no worse off than before. At least she would be able to say she had once spoken to Ernesto Carillo Fuentes.
Knowing that, she could die happy no matter what her family believed.
“Ernesto Fuentes is a drug dealer,” her brother had shouted after learning of Isabel’s secret love. “Where do you think he gets his money? From Colombians who pay Mexican men to run their drugs over the American border.”
“He is not a drug dealer!” Isabel slammed her fork to the table. “He is a devout man—why, just this morning I saw him coming out of the Chapel de Jesus Malverde. They say Ernesto prays there every day.”
“Jesus Malverde?” Her mother’s hand flew to her throat. “He was not a good man. He was a maldito, a murderer and a thief.”
Isabel flashed her mother a look of disdain. “He only took from rich people so he could give to the poor.”
“No, Isabel. That chapel is an embarrassment to our city. It ought to shame anyone who truly loves God.”
“What do you think Ernesto Fuentes does in that chapel?” Rodrigo glared at her from across the table. “He gives thanks for a successful run, that’s what. When his drug mules get through, he goes to the chapel to celebrate with his men…and give thanks to Jesus Malverde.”
“You’re wrong! He’s a decent man—you can see goodness in his face.”
“Listen to your brother,” her mother answered. “He knows about these things. He knows about trouble, and he stays away. And you should not trust a handsome face, Isabel. The devil lives behind a tempting smile.”
Not always, Isabel wanted to shout. Papá had a good face!
Rodrigo reached for the ladle. “Do not worry about Isabel, Mamá,” he said, spooning gazpacho into his bowl. “Ernesto Fuentes would not look at a girl like her.”
Isabel had wanted to clap her hands over her ears. Neither her mother nor her brother knew what they were talking about. If Ernesto were evil, he would not be so handsome or free with a smile. Evil did things to a man, marked him with scars and sneers, but in Ernesto’s dark eyes and broad grin she saw only humor, wit and gallantry.
Tonight, for the first time in her life, she would summon a courage worthy of his. She would do what no one thought her capable of doing.
Girding herself with resolve, she popped a piece of chewing gum into her mouth, then pulled away from the bar. Her brother always said she took on a different personality when she chewed gum, and tonight she would need to be confident and coy, as different as she could possibly be.
She threaded her way through the dancing couples, then approached Ernesto and his friends. Cloaked in composure as fragile as spider silk, she hooked her thumbs through the belt loops of her low-cut jeans, tilted her head and asked the king of her heart if he wanted to dance.
His gaze skimmed over her, taking in the high-heeled sandals, the tight jeans, the sheer blouse and the medallion hanging above the shadows of her cleavage. Without warning, his eyes rose and locked on hers, focusing with predatory intensity. For an instant she feared her brother might be right.
Then Ernesto hit her with a smile that almost made her swallow her gum.
“Sí, chica. Let’s dance.”
10:00 a.m.
CHAPTER 9
Eddie Vaughn tosses another handful of popcorn into his mouth, then pitches a few kernels in Sadie’s direction. The retriever snaps in midair, catching one of the puffy bites, then swivels to sniff for the snacks that got away.
A new crossword-puzzle book waits on the arm of the sofa, only inches from the bowl of popcorn in his lap. He had planned to let a crossword distract him from the tedious business of hurricane-watching, but he can’t seem to tear himself from the Weather Channel. The newscasters keep alternating between scenes of devastation in the Yucatán and a hurricane map, over which Felix hovers like an unblinking white eye. A dotted line indicates the storm’s predicted path, bisecting the state of Florida at Pinellas County and slanting toward Daytona before extending into the Atlantic.
During a commercial break, in which a smoky-voiced woman extols the virtues of a Jaguar, Eddie glances at his front window, where a sheet of plywood blocks the available light. No wonder the house feels like a bunker. Like burrowing animals, most of his neighbors have turned their homes into caves and disappeared. He won’t see them again until Felix has moved on to harass the interior of the state.
If not for Sadie and the television, he’d feel like the last man on earth. The sensation is not unfamiliar; the last two years of his marriage were among the loneliest of his life.
The dog comes over and drops her chin on his upper arm. He scratches her ears. “We’re doing okay, aren’t we, Sades?”
Of course, he’d thought he and Heather were doing okay, too. His wife had become deeply involved in community theater, and no one was more surprised than Eddie when she came home and announced that she’d fallen in love with her director and wanted a life on the stage. Eddie tried to tell her that Thomas Bye, her director, was and would always be Tom Bystrowski, a meat-market manager at the Piggly Wiggly, but the girl was too starstruck to listen.
She left him; she divorced him; she married the meat-market man. As Eddie was packing the U-Haul for his move to Florida, he heard Heather was pregnant and Tom had been pushed out of community theater because a real director, one from the state of New York, had moved to Birmingham.
“Florida’s good,” he says, tossing another handful of popcorn to Sadie, “because there aren’t any Piggly Wigglys around here.”
When the hurricane coverage resumes, the camera has cut to a scene at Madeira Beach, not more than a ten-minute drive from Eddie’s house. A reporter in a yellow rain slicker is staring into the camera and holding on to a hat with his free hand. “The wind has picked up here in the last hour,” the reporter says, his image blurred by spatters on the camera lens. “We’re seeing gusts of sixty miles an hour with sustained winds of about thirty. But look behind me—Jim,
can you get a shot of that? Some people simply refuse to take this storm seriously.”
The camera operator obediently turns his lens toward the sea, where three wet-suited thrill-seekers are paddling in the usually placid surf. The Gulf is not calm today, and these young men are determined to get a good ride…perhaps at the cost of their lives.
Eddie shakes his head. The fools. He spent a summer lifeguarding at Panama City Beach, where twice foolhardy swimmers went out too far and nearly drowned him when he tried to bring them ashore. He never minded risking his life for people who cramped up or got caught in a rip current, but he’s not sure he’d be willing to risk his neck for one of these hurricane cowboys.
Eddie scoops up a generous handful of popcorn as the camera cuts to the yellow-slickered reporter. “Felix is expected to make landfall at about seven o’clock tonight, so mandatory evacuation orders for beachfront residents have emptied the homes and motels along this shore. As for these surfers…well, I doubt they’ll be out here much longer. The wind’s getting wicked, and it’s only going to get worse.”
Sadie’s whimper catches Eddie’s attention—she is sitting in her prettiest pose, one paw uplifted, her eyes dark and beseeching. “You beggar.” He grins and tosses another handful of popcorn in her direction. “Be sure to get it all, will you? Not sure we’re going to have power for the vacuum.”
From behind their desk, the grim-faced anchors at the Weather Channel announce that experts consider Florida’s Tampa Bay to be the nation’s second most dangerous location for a major hurricane. The most perilous spot, of course, is New Orleans, but no one needs to be reminded of that city’s vulnerability.
“A hurricane’s storm surge,” the male anchor explains, “can wreck buildings far from the beach and wash supporting sand from beneath structures and sea walls. It can engulf bridges, coastal roads and causeways, hampering rescue workers and those who evacuate at the last minute. That’s why we’re now telling Florida residents in the Tampa Bay region to stay put if they do not live in a flood zone.” The camera zooms in on the reporter’s eyes. “If you live along the beach and you haven’t left the area, find a shelter inland and hunker down until the hurricane has passed. You’d better find that shelter now.”