“Hi, it’s me, Kelly.”
“Did you reach Dan?” April asked.
“Yeah, but it didn’t do any good. He told me to stay on the mainland.”
Nodding, April said, “Might’s well. I’m in the motel. Everything’s tolerable here.”
“Guess I’ll drive back home, then.”
“Okay. I’ll get there when the ferry starts running again.”
“Stay warm and dry,” said Eamons.
“Sure.”
Kinsky came back, an evil-looking concoction full of fruit in one hand and a tall frosted glass in the other. He placed both drinks on the windowsill, ceremoniously removed the paper parasol from his glass and perched it on the lip of April’s.
“Thank you,” she said. She picked up the lemonade carefully, but the parasol tumbled to the floor anyway. “Oh, too bad.”
Shrugging, Kinsky said, “The story of my life. I try to do beautiful things but it never turns out the way I hoped.”
“We all go through that.”
“Not like me,” Kinsky said fervently. “I go and get Dan a meeting with the governor of Texas and an important U.S. senator and he screws it up. Gets on his high horse and tells ’em they can’t help him.”
April felt shocked. “Mr. Randolph did that?”
“Not in so many words, but that’s what he did, baby. That’s what he did.”
“I can’t believe it.”
“Believe it.” Kinsky took a long swig of his drink, then stared out at the storm. Trees were bending and lightning flashing in the dark, roiling sky. “We never get crap like this in New York,” he muttered.
April tried to lighten his mood. “Are you going to set your hair on fire?”
He almost smiled. “Naw. Not today. Nobody would notice.”
“Or you might set off the sprinklers.”
He grunted. “Burn the place down. That’d be doing Dan a favor. At least he could collect the insurance.”
“I don’t think that would help much,” April admitted.
“Yeah. The company’s going to go belly-up and we’re all going to be thrown out on our asses.”
“Dan’s trying to avoid that.”
“Maybe. But it’s not going to do him any good. We’re going to be out on our rear ends, honey. You and me and all of us. Might as well go outside and let the damned storm drown us.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Dan’s working to keep the company going.”
“He’s rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, babe. In a few weeks we’ll all be on the unemployment line.”
“No.”
Kinsky took another sip of his drink. “Yes. The ship’s sinking. It’s every man for himself.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Feather your own canoe, babe. Take care of numero uno because nobody else is going to. Not Dan, not anybody. Nobody gives a damn about the little guys.”
April thought that whatever he was drinking, it was making him more morose by the sip.
Abruptly, Kinsky blurted, “April, how’d you like to come to New York with me?”
“New York?”
“Yeah! We could fly up on a Friday and come back Monday. Take a long weekend. We deserve a break from all this.”
She blinked at him. Suddenly he was enthusiastic. She said, “I don’t think I could afford it on my budget. New York’s awfully expensive, isn’t it?”
“I’ll spring for it. You won’t have to put out a penny.” Seeing the doubtful expression on her face, Kinsky added, “Or anything else. Separate rooms. Different floors. Different hotels, if you don’t trust me.”
She had to smile at that. “I’ve never been to New York.”
“Never been… ? You’ve gotta go. You’ve got to! It’s the most fabulous place in the world. The town so big they named it twice!”
“Named it twice?”
“New York, New York!”
“Oh!” She laughed.
“My intentions are completely honorable,” Kinsky said, then immediately amended, “Well, maybe not completely, but I won’t make a pain of myself, I promise you. It’s just… well…” His voice trailed off.
“What?” April asked gently, looking straight into his pale blue eyes.
“I’ve just got to get out of this dump for a few days. Get back to civilization. Find a good deli, have some real fun. And it’d be great to have you with me, April. I’d get a real kick out of showing you the town. We could go to Broadway shows, see the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, all kinds of things.”
“It sounds awfully expensive,” she repeated.
“So what?”
“Do you have that kind of money to throw around?”
“Hey, I don’t have to pay for it. I’ll just put it on my credit cards:”
April frowned disapprovingly.
“No, seriously,” Kinsky said, “I can afford it. I’ve got more going for me than the salary Dan pays me. A lot more.”
“I don’t think I can, Len.”
“Sure you can. First class all the way. I mean it. I—”
A tree limb torn off by the wind banged against the window. April jumped back, spilling her lemonade over Kinsky’s slacks.
“Oh! I’m so sorry, Len.”
He grinned sardonically at her. “Hey, if you don’t want to go with me just say so. You don’t have to douse me.”
Hangar B
Muhamed made a rumbling sound deep in his throat as he pointed to the display screen. It showed an animated weather map. Peering over Muhamed’s shoulder, Dan saw the huge circular storm with its well-defined eye slightly off from its center. The sound was down to a whisper; Dan could hardly hear the meteorologist’s commentary over the howling of the wind outside and the drumming of the rain.
“Least we ain’t gonna get the worst of it,” Muhamed murmured.
“This is bad enough for me,” Dan said.
Passeau, standing behind Muhamed’s other shoulder, smiled wanly. “If you think this is bad you should have been in New Orleans for Hurricane Barbara. The streets were flooded up and over first-story windows. We had no electrical power for six days. Roofs blown off, power poles snapped like soda straws. My own car was totaled: flooded up to its roof and then a tree fell on it.”
“You’re not making me feel any better,” Dan said.
“We’ll be okay here,” Muhamed said flatly. “Walls are holdin’ up and the doors are faced away from the wind.”
Dan silently thanked the architects for that. Then he thought that perhaps Niles had decided which direction the doors should face, not the architects.
“There’s some water seeping in.” Passeau pointed toward the doors.
Muhamed headed there. Over his shoulder he said, “If you two want to make yourselves helpful, you can start totin’ sandbags.”
Dan had to laugh at the shocked look on Passeau’s face. “Come on, Claude,” he said. “Lift dat bale, tote dat sandbag.”
The storm was dying down, Kelly Eamons saw.
She had spent the long day in April’s apartment, worried about her but glad to be on the mainland and high enough to avoid any flooding from a storm surge. Except for the shrieking wind outside and her gnawing fear of the storm, it had been a boring time, with nothing much to do except watch television. Shortly before noon the electrical power went out, and Eamons lost even the doubtful solace of TV.
She tried reading. April had some surprisingly erudite books in the apartment’s one bookcase: histories of the Civil War and Reconstruction; biographies of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X; a few historical novels and several romances. Eamons sat in the doubtful light of the window and tried to lose herself in one of the novels. All she got out of it was a headache from eyestrain.
But it was getting brighter outside and the rain was definitely slackening. Then the lights came on and the TV blared to life. The digital clock on the DVD player blinked annoyingly. Eamons got out of her chair to fix it when her cell phone rang.