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Brown Eyes in the Storm

By: MSTarot



Stalking through the thick jungle, hyperaware of my surroundings, with my twin Sith lightsabers in hand but not yet ignited--I did not wish those fiery red blades to give away my position--I moved in deadly silence towards the men I must kill. My companions were near me, but I ignored them. As an apprentice to the Dark Lord, I knew that the main focus of this battle would soon be upon myself. Exactly as I would wish it to be.

"So what's your plans for spring break?" asked Martin.

That distraction, as we all were moving in to try taking on the Madalorian bounty hunters outside of Dromund Kaas, was not welcome. But not unexpected either. When playing Star Wars: The Old Republic (hell any game really) with my oldest friend Martin Chandler him kibitzing crap that had nothing to do with the game was to be allowed for. Like Greg's eating chips with his mic on through half the game.

Or me drinking Mountain Dew with a noticeable slurp, or so I've been told....

"Heading down to the coast. Going to go get a jump on my summer tan, try to stop looking like I've been brushed with white out." With my two red lightsabers at the ready, I moved forwards when I saw the main boss reappear. 

"Well, don't forget to drop in on Mom. You know she sees you as the son, who went to college, which she never had." I could hear that he was both joking and not at the same time.

With a roll of my eyes at his crap, I was about to promise I would when all hell broke loose. Some newbie jack ass running from a fight trained a whole line of things into the side of us. The died. Most of them ran off but not all. With that addition, and the Boss we were trying to kill and the re-popping Madalorians it suddenly became an epic slug fest. For a frantic few minutes I was a blur of twin red blades, a living lightshow of Sith saber death. Then, when the last bad guy had dropped and I was picked up my loot, I had a chance to answer.

"When you talk to your mom, let Wendy know I'll drop by."

"Sure. She'll be happy to see you," he said then went off on a long tangent about the latest high rise building he was working on. So he kibitzed, while Greg ate chips and I slurped Mountain Dew and we fought our way through the endless digital jungles of Dromund Kaas to the capital of the Sith Empire.

Our average wild Saturday night.

** ** ** ** ** ** ** 

The lack of vibration after hours of sitting on the rumbling seat was an odd feeling. Swinging a leg over the back of my white Hayabusa, I stretched my back and unstrapped my helmet. Resting it between the tank and the handlebars, I stuffed my gloves in it, popped my stiff neck, and unzipped my jacket. I did a couple of quick squats to loosen up cramped muscles and pulled the heavy leather coat off before I started to sweat. Hanging it over my shoulder, I walked past carefully planted rows of yellow flowering Irises to the front porch covered in container gardens.

I was raised my hand to knock when I noticed a large black cat looking up at me from the bottom pane of the eight-panel glass door. Pressing the doorbell instead, I smiled to see the old shadow run off like a dog to fetch his human. When Martin's mom, Wendy, opened the door I held out my arms knowing a hug was coming. I was not disappointed. She all but crashed into my chest.

"Oh, John! It is so good to see you." Her arms around me were tight enough I could hardly breathe. And what air I did manage to pull into my lungs was so laced with her perfume I felt scent drunk.

"It's good to see you too, but I'm going to need those rib bones intact," I said after a moment, and then wished I hadn't when she turned me loose. She had felt very nice in my arms, something I noticed only after she was gone. She held the door open for me and took my jacket from me, without asking, as I passed her. 

"John, you're such a naughty boy, showing up out the blue like this. Could you not have called me to let me know that you were going to be coming by?" She gave her head a shake, her short hair hardly moving "The house is a complete wreck and I'm a mess. I've spent half the morning working in the backyard. You're lucky, I just did have time to take me a shower, before I started to make me some lunch, or you would have to put up with me stinking. As is my hair isn't fixed, and I have no makeup on. Naughty and inconsiderate." She shook her head again at my smile. "What are you grinning at?"

"You look beautiful and the house looks ready for a photo shoot in Home and Garden magazine. Besides, I thought Martin was going to tell you I was coming by? He said he was going to."

"Oh, him. He has all the memory of a rusted spaghetti colander." She was suddenly hugging me again. "It has been forever and a half-dozen years since I saw you." Wendy began to guide me towards the open door into her kitchen. "You simply have got to come tell me what you have been up to. I was about to fix my lunch, you still love grilled cheese I'm sure."

Over the next two hours I was pampered in a way that I had not been since I left for college. Hell, even before that, since the last time I was at her house. The one across the street, where I had grown up. Looking around this kitchen, I could spot things from her old house's kitchen. She saw me looking.

"Missing the old place?" she asked then nodded. "At first, I did some as well. But then winter gets here and I'm walking around in shorts in December and I just have to say, nah, not so much."

"I can understand that. I wondered if I was going to have to carry a shovel around with me this year just to go from class to class." I shook my head and sat back sipping the lemonade she had given me. "It felt as if it was never going to stop snowing."

"Nope. No saying the S-word around me." Wendy gave a shiver. "I'm done with that white stuff for good. No more frozen hair, slick icy roads, and temperatures in the single digits. Yuck to all of that mess. Nope, I'm a transplanted Floridian now and I'm not going back. Snow Bird, thy name is Wendy"

Laughing, I looked out the sliding glass door at the beautiful garden she had planted, with already blooms filling it. I gestured with my head and she nodded. Taking my glass we walked out back.

"It looks like you've been busy," I said.

"Oh, I have been. I love it here, even on the coldest days I can just put on a windbreaker and I can still get things done." She led me to a bench half-hidden in a massive rose covered arbor. "Really though, a lot of what I've been doing is simply pruning and cutting back. The last owner didn't care about the garden and let it overgrow. So I did my hands full, but now, well now it's just a matter of making the small changes I want and then tweaking things, the way I like them, as they grow in."

I hid my smile from Wendy. She may have moved but she was still the same. The world moved to her drummer, or it didn't move. Be it flower gardens, trained "butler" cats, or even stray young teen boys who's own parents didn't give a tinker's damn where he was or what he was doing so long as he wasn't under their feet. Martin was right in a way, she was more like a mom to me at times that to him. My friend was too much like his father. Jason Chandler and his son both were "Not willing to be managed by a woman." as they both have said in my presence more than once. But then they both had spent years with her doing everything for them, the exact opposite of where I had been when I first met Wendy,

I wondered, as I listened at her explaining to me she was needing to get her gutters replaced, how Mr. Chandler liked life without her "managing" him. It had been better than two years since their divorce. I bet by now some "managing" might be a comfort to him. But who knows, or cares, I had never much cared for Martin's dad. Not like I had for Wendy. Come to think of it, at times, I didn't care for Martin all that much either. Yeah, he was a friend. Yeah, he was one of those guys you could call at two in the morning to help hide a body--if for some reason the need should ever arise--but he still treated his mother as if she was a kitchen appliance. A fixture around the house to be ignored till it broke then simple replaced.

Like his dad had replaced Wendy, by now I'm sure.

"You alright, John? You look tired." She reached up and brushed my hair back from my eyes, and smiled. "And you need a haircut."

I chuckled at Wendy's mothering, appreciating it probably far more than her son ever had. "It's just been a long week. We had ever kind of test under the sun scheduled just before the break. Then I had to pack, stop by the house to see Mom. Then the ride down today."

"How is your mom?" The disapproving tone was hidden, but not by much. Wendy and my mom had not been on great terms since Wendy got chastised by her for me being invited on too many Chandler "family" vacations. Mom had felt a family vacation should only be family. Wendy told her I was under her roof enough to qualify as adopted. It had not been a good response. 

"Busy with her crafting stuff." I shrugged. "She's happy, and she says dad's not as stressed as he was when I was living at home, so her life is easier."

"It's sad that you and your father don't get along." She reached across to where my hand was lying on the table and placed hers on top of mine. "I almost wish you had the kind of relationship that Martin and his dad have."

"I'll pass on that, thank you." I rolled my eyes which made her smile then shrugged "Dad had his plans for my life. I found my own and they do not mesh with his ideas of what's a good life. Well, I've done well so far. I've already picked up enough in six months, working nights, to be worth five years training in a class room. Yeah, it's tough but hey, what isn't, right? Computers are not what they were ten years back; you can't learn to work with them now the way you did back then. Dad doesn't get that. The product is changing too fast. By the time you've learned something in class it's already yesterday's dust-collecting trash. To be in the frontlines of what's going on you have to be assembling it as the newest hardware comes out. What?"

With her smile, that had prompted my question, making her eyes sparkle she gave my hand a squeeze. "You're passionate about it. If I knew nothing else, I would know that you had made the right decision just by that. Take your own path in life, John. It maybe the road less traveled, and yes I'm afraid that your father is right that it will be harder the way you're going, but then you will see and do things that those taking the safe route will never see. I never could get Martin to understand that. But then he stopped listening to me years ago."

Remembering when my friend had begun to talk about Wendy the way he does now--the way his father always had--that she was manipulative, overbearing and a controlling "bitch" I nodded. "Yeah ..."

"So. What's brought you all the way down here?" she asked to change the subject. "I'm sure it's not lunch with me?"

"Spring break, the beach," I grinned. "Girl watching, cruising the coast on my bike and I want to spend some time lying in the sun."

"And drinking no doubt?" she said with a slight disapproval. "I know college boys on Spring break ... what? Your generating didn't invent partying, you know? I was in Fort Lauderdale every year when I was your age. Now, where are you staying? You know I have a room here you can use, but I'm figuring your wanting some hotel room, somewhere down near the beach, so you can drag bikini girls there for some long nights, am I right? A bit of hot nookie?"

Her grin was infectious. One of the things I had always liked about Wendy was that she was so different from my mom when it came to talking about sex. With Mom it was a nonexistent subject, to be discussed only if my girlfriends might be in danger of making her a grandmother too soon. Wendy would give me advice on how to talk a girl into bed, and then give me a box of condoms and say go have fun.

"That's the plan. I might take you up on that room by the end of the week though."

"Once you're done getting your ... freak ... on?" she said with a grin. She reached over and ruffled my hair with her fingers. "Well, go get to it. Don't let me keep you here till all the good ones are taken."

"But I was enjoying your company," I said with a flirty grin. 

"Get, you tease. I'll see you later in the week when you've had your fun. Hell, I might even put you to work." Standing up she held out her hand and pulled me up. I found her in my arms again, her body all warm and soft against me. When I held her then, I did not care if she broke a rib or two. I really didn't.

"I've missed you, Wendy," I said not letting go.

"I've missed you too. It's so good to have you here." She looked up at me. "But I'll be here when you've had your good time. Now go live it up. You will never be this young again."

She walked with me out to my bike. Made the customary head shake and gave me the standard "You're going to break your fool neck on that thing" speech I've been hearing from her since I started to ride at fourteen. Then she gave me a peck of a kiss on the cheek before I put my helmet on and cranked the Hayabusa.

Wendy waved as I drove off, heading toward the beaches.

** ** ** ** ** ** ** 

My visor up, to give me some air to help stay awake, I leaned the bike into a curve on Highway 10 then straighten out. I had to fight the inner urge to let the white Hayabusa have its head. The bike was only really happy at one-hundred and twenty, or above. But I was far too tried for that kind of fun at the moment. Five days of drinking, sun, riding, (and enough sexual fun to leave me cocksure) had taken its toll, even on a man my age. I wanted a cool shower to ease the sunburn. A soft bed with even softer sheets and some simple food. Homemade food. No more fast food, greasy nightmares.

Most certainly no more oysters.

Down the off-ramp, I let the red-signal-blinker lie for me and tell the world that I was sober. Not that I was even close to that. I still had a buzz from the drinks at Flora-Bama I recently left. And it was far too late at night (early morning) for me to be on the road--on this police attention-attracting bike--with a buzz. But then I had already checked out of my hotel yesterday. My saddle bag was as full of sand as clean clothes.

The bright lights of a Tom Thumb drew my eyes. Oh, yes. Coffee and a bathroom, sing to me your song of the morning. Pulling in, I saw two Harleys, cocked to their sides, by the door. As I was shutting off my bike a blonde girl in dark faded leathers came out, followed by another who could be her twin.

Nope. Was her twin.

They both eyed me as I swung my leg off the bike and took off my helmet. I gave them a nod and a smile. Honestly, that was all I could manage at the moment. This week of bikini chasing, (and several times catching,) had left me jaded. True not so much that a pair of Harley riding twins, in leather, was not an appreciated sight. I'm tired not dead after all.

When I came walking back out, with a barrel of coffee in one hand and a Krispy Kreme in the other, they were still there.

"My sister thinks she met you at Bike week, a month back," said one of them when I got closer. "I think she's wrong. So Busa-Boy, who's right? Her or me?"

I took a sip and cleared my mouth of donut. "Well, I was in Illinois last month so I would have to say you're right. But, I was at Bike Week last year, so there might be some crossing-over-memories from then." I looked over at her sister. "Not that I think I would forget meeting either of you."

The sister walked over to me and smiled up at me, eyeing my face closer. "No you wouldn't. See you next year there then, maybe. Busa-Boy?"

"Sure," I said, not at all sure these two ladies were not fuckin' with me in some way. Walking over to my white bike, I swung a leg across and gulped down the last of my coffee while they cranked their Harleys and pulled off. With no helmets on, I noted. As I went to put the key in I saw a braded black and white bracelet handing on the ignition. There was a charm hanging off it, a small brass cross with the word Love Forever imprinted on it.

Looking after them, I saw nothing but red taillights and heard only the rumble of their bikes. And that for only a moment.

"Weird," I mumbled.

Tossing my coffee cup into the nearby trashcan, I cranked the Hayabusa and sat on its rumbling seat as I fastened their strangely given gift around my wrist. As I pulled on my helmet it tapped the side with a small metal on fiberglass sound, but it caught my attention. I sat looking at it for a moment longer before I drove out the gas station.

I was still pondering that little cross, and the odd way I had gotten it, when I pulled up into Wendy's driveway a half-hour later. I was still taking off my riding jacket when she opened the door and gave me a smile.

"Breakfast is ready. I've been expecting you." She held open the door for me.

** ** ** ** ** ** ** 

"Hey, John!"

Holding the phone away from my ear I said a silent "fuck" then gingerly brought it back near my ear.

"Yeah, hey Martin. Deafen me why don't ya?" Sitting up, I scratched at my chest and looked at the pale white light coming in through my apartment window. Street-lamp light, from the parking lot, not sunlight. Then I had to fight back a yawn. "What's up?"

"Dude, have you been watching the news?"

I glanced at the digital clock by my bed. Oh, this fucker is so dead. "Martin, it is three-thirty in the fucking morning!"

"Oh ... Damn, I forgot about the time difference. Look, I'm sorry, but I've got a situation here. I can't get Mom on the phone."

My brain did the quick math; since Wendy and I live in the same time zone it was easy even for my half-awake brain cells. "No shit, it's like three-thirty there too. She's probably asleep, you know, like I was?"

"I said I was sorry. Look, I'm in Salt Lake City. I talked to mom last night. She's being unreasonable and now I can't get her to pick back up when I call."

"Okay, okay. Hold up. Start at the beginning. What the fuck are you talking about and why are, we, talking about it at three in the morning?"

"Hurricane Ivan! Mom is not going to evacuate." His voice had a frantic edge. "I tried to tell her to get her butt moving out of there, but she then gave me some story about her car needing something fixed on it and that she would ride out the storm there in her house. Dude, that fucking hurricane is a damn Category Five now! It's all over the news, that thing just plowed Jamaica into the ground and it's now going straight for the coast. She has got to get out of there. And I can't get her on the phone!"

With the phone to my ear, I walked down the hall to my small living room and flipped on the TV. CNN was light up with slideshow-scrolling disaster bulletin boards. I flipped it to The Weather Channel and got an interview, on a calm-looking beach in Destin, with Jim Cantore. He was reporting on the coming storm and the fact it would make landfall in two days.

"Martin, let me let you go. I'll try giving Wendy a call, see if she will pick up the phone from me."

"She's out her fuckin' mind is what she is. Dude, it's the same shit as always with her and her ...."

I hung up on Martin and his rant and dug my wallet out my pants by the bathroom door. Reading Wendy's number off the note, I had made and stuck in their back in April, I dialed the number.

~Ring ... Ring ... Ring ... Ring ... Hey, this is Wendy McClair. Sorry I didn't get to the phone in time, but if you ... ~ I muted the Weather Channel as I listened to Wendy's answering machine play out her apologetic request to leave a number. Then there was the Beep.

"Hey Wendy, this is John. Martin just called me having a conniption fit. Give me a call back, I know it's early as hell, but I'll be awake."


Brown Eyes in the Storm



I unmuted the TV and wet to the kitchen to get me a drink, When the phone rang I hurried to grab it but saw that it was Martin again. I managed to get him off the phone, more or less quickly, in the hopes that Wendy might call me back soon. But I was still waiting for that call when the Sun began to rise.

"Hey Wendy, this is John, again. Starting to get more than a bit worried here. Give me a call." Standing at my window looking out over the apartments parking lot at my nearby college, I felt my anxiety building by the second. I tapped the Motorola phone to my chin, listening absently to the weather news playing half-forgotten behind me. The dire forecasts had been growing more so as the night had turned into dawn, and the dawn into day. The morning sky was a clear hazy blue-white.

~"And now for your Local on the Eights."~

Tossing the old cordless phone on the chair next to the front door, I grabbed the remote and switched off the TV in mid report telling me how nice the day here was going to be. Walking into my bedroom, I stripped off my sweat pants and dug my riding leathers from out of a big pile by my closet. I pulled the second skin feeling pants on, then grabbed some clean socks, my boots, and went back to the living room. I was pulling those on when the phone rang. Martin again.

"Dude, it just tore through Cuba. Have you heard from her?"

"If I had I would have called you. I told you that the last two times. Look, I'm going to get on my bike and ride down there to check on her."

"John, that's like thirteen-fourteen hours away. The hurricane will be there long before you can get there."

I grabbed my riding jacket off the hook next to the door and picked up my new cell phone, my keys and wallet. "Not for me it's not. I'll call you." 

The cordless home phone went back into the chair as I walked past it. Grabbing my helmet, I stuffed the slim V3 Razr into my shirt pocket as I shrugged my jacket on. I could hardly feel the new phone there but that was why I had bought it after all. Six-hundred dollar price tag or not. As I pulled the door shut behind me and headed, rapidly, down the metal steps, I went back over Dad's reaction to hearing I had bought it a week back.

"One of them sissy looking ones? What is he some sort of fashion model now?"

As I swung my leg over the seat of the big motorcycle, and all but jammed the key into the ignition I shook my head. "Doesn't like my phone. Doesn't like my bike. Doesn't like my choices in life. I wonder what he would think of this?"

Cranking the big, heavy white Hayabusa, I pulled on my helmet. I leaned the bike, kicked the stand back up and let her balance under me as I tightened everything up, tucked in the jacket collar, pulled the gloves back till they all but pinched. The little bracelet, with its cross bangle, I tucked in by habit, not giving it a thought.

"Twelve hours? Nah, not for me. Not today."

I made it in under nine.

** ** ** ** ** ** 

The sunset looked beautiful from I-110 as I took the off ramp down into downtown Pensacola. I almost felt as if I was driving through molasses when I pulled away from the light and headed towards Wendy's house. I had not had the Hayabusa under a hundred for the last hour. This gentle fifty miles per hour was ridiculously slow. Hell, I sat back from the tank and popped open my visor to let some air in.

Only once during the whole trip had there been an issue. Luck was with me today, as it were. The state trooper in Tennessee had flipped on his blue lights to pursue, and I had been ten miles down the road before he could get his Crown Victoria merged into traffic. All I can guess is he gave it up as a lost cause, since I didn't see him again and no one else pursued. Hell, I didn't even stop to piss after that till I was well into in Alabama.

But then things like that happen when you're approaching a hundred and seventy miles an hour on a bike. Time flies by you like the mile markers, you're spending so much of it locked into drive mode you stop paying attention to it. Every thought becomes hyper-focused on the road ahead. The smallest bump.

Now, with my nine hour adrenaline high weakening I was shaking like a leaf. "My god did I just do that?" I had to ask myself when I stopped the bike, letting it balance under me. An Escambia county Sherriff pulled up next to me. Gave my bike a look, then exchanged a nod with me and pulled away as the light changed.

As I followed the streets through downtown I noticed only a few businesses working towards shoring up their windows. I had expected to see a lot of that going on, and the lack of it made me wonder if the Hurricane had changed course during the last nine hours. Taking the turn off of Pace onto Barrancas I crossed the bridge and slowed enough to look out towards the gulf.

There was a lot of white choppy water out there. A whole lot.

The last few miles to her house passed quickly. I swung the big bike into Wendy's drive way. Hopped off and took my helmet off as I walked, as fast as my shaking legs would let me, to her front door. I was almost surprised when she opened the door ... but not as surprised as she was. She blinked at me for several second then did a double take and was in my arms giving me a hug.

"John? What are you doing here?"

"Ah, I've been calling all last night trying to get in touch with you." I pulled back and looked down into her brown eyes. "Martin called me flipping out about you staying here with the hurricane coming in. What's going on?"

"I'm sorry he got you to drive all the way down here, John. Come on in." She held the door open for me. "I'm sorry you got worried about me," she smiled. "I turned my phone off, Jason and Martin were driving me bats! They are both worrying like a pair of old hens. Shoo, Tobias. I got the door, it's just, John."

The fat black cat looked up at me and gave an aggravated meow. Probably that I had no doubt not phoned ahead. He gave my leg one last pass to claim me as his then walked of tail held high.

"Windy, we have got to get you out of here." I jerked my thumb over my shoulder, in a generally northern gesture, and then pointed towards the TV in the living room playing weather coverage. "That's nothing to try to ride out."

She was shaking her head long before I stopped talking. "My car is not running right. I do not trust it to drive me and Tobias out of here. Ivan is bad, yes but this house has been here for decades. It's taken a half-dozen good hurricanes and it's still here. Besides I've seen the news footage showing the highways north, they are a mess. I'm going to be fine here. I will lose power for a few days, I'm sure. I spend this morning stuffing the deep freeze with bags of ice and gallon jugs of water. They will be frozen before the worst gets here and will keep my food from spoiling. As they melt I can drink them." She went walking towards the living room and muted the TV as if the weather was annoying to her. "I know I've never been through a hurricane, but I've lived through blizzards for most of my life. I know how to manage till the power comes back on."

"This isn't a blizzard. This is going to get bad. Real bad"

"John, they have been talking about Ivan all day. I've been listening. They say the most dangerous part is the storm surge; this house is miles off the beach. I will be fine." She looked me over from the kitchen doorway. "Can I get you a soda or something? You look like you're about dead on your feet."

"I've been on my bike for hours." I pointed my thumb to the wall behind the TV. "Can you open your garage? I want to put my bike inside."

"Ah, yeah sure. Oh ... I don't know what I'm thinking. You just drove all the way from your college, didn't you? John!" She came over to me and helped me take my jacket off. "Have a seat. I'll fix you a sandwich or something, then you can rest and watch that mess, or change the channel if you want." She tried to get me moved to the couch.

"Windy, I want to put my bike up in shelter first." I saw her rolled eyes. "I'm not leaving till you leave, so I want it to be safe. I would say, let me get some rest, and then you and I can leave on it, but I know there is no way you would do that, right?"

"Try no way in hell, John." She gave shudder. "That bike scares me just seeing you ride on it. You couldn't pay me enough to sit on it with it not even cranked."

"That's what I thought." I took a deep breath that became a sigh for arguments lost before they began. "Well, looks like I'm going to get to see what a hurricane looks like up close. The garage?"

"Oh. Yeah. Sure. This way." I followed her down the hall and she opened a door, off that hallway, into the garage. Her normal organize-till-it-hurts life ethic was in full force. The wall rack of shelves held a dozen rubber maids, all with their respective labels. Then there were her yard tools, all on the wall on its own individual hook and it was clear they would not fit any other hook. Her car, a dark-blue 87 BMW that was a familiar to me as my own reflection, sat in front of the roll-up door. "There you go, there should be room for your bike ... I think."

I walked past her, moved her lawn mower and opened the garage doors. My Hayabusa was sitting where I had left it, the muffler still heat-pinging. I took it off it stand and walked the big, heavy bike in beside her Beemer. 

"What's wrong with the car?"

"The mechanic wants a ridiculous amount for a simple part. He said there is a computer-sensor-packet (?) in it that needs to be replaced; it's sending bad signals to the motor. It will run, but it dies once the motor gets hot. Especially when you stop at a red light or a stop sign. Takes me forever to get it running again once it does that." She shook her head and made room for me to get back into the house past her. "I trust it to go get groceries in but not to drive it, what, a few hundred miles to a hotel somewhere?"

Wendy closed the door behind me and followed me back to the living room and then she disappeared into the kitchen. Giving the muted TV a look, I followed her. The kitchen door into her dining room was open and, when I passed it, I saw that it was filled with container garden planters. I opened my lips to ask why when there was a knock on the front door. Her black cat went rushing past me towards the door, meowing.

"Would you see who that is for me John? I've got my hands full with our dinner."

The short woman at the front door was startled to see me open it. She took a hasty step back. But then, I guess, the way I was dressed--white leather pants and a black tank top--was probably unusual for this neighborhood. I smiled to calm her. 

"Is Wendy here?" she asked, blinking at me.

"She's in the kitchen."

"Hey, Margret, come on in." Wendy called from the kitchen door. "Just working on dinner for John and me. This is a friend of my son's. John, this is my neighbor Margret." The little woman smiled, nodded at me when I held the door open for her and she walked past the mewling cat to the kitchen. "Wendy, we're headed out. Are you sure we can't talk you into going with us?"

"Oh, for heaven's sake. Everyone is worried sick about my old tail feathers." Wendy washed her hands in the sink, dried them then turned and gave her friend a hug. "I'm going to be fine. The storms not going to get here till tomorrow night some time. You said it yourself, that both your house and mine only took minor damage during Fredric, and that hurricane was just as bad as Ivan. Like I told John, I've got things ready if I lose power, and I've been through rough times before. And if the Good Lord wants to take my old bones, well I've had a long life, and I've done all I was meant to. Now! You just tell Jim I said to drive safe. That those roads are a mad house full of idiots and he has to keep you safe, and him included."

I watched Wendy talk to her neighbor. I had to wonder at what she had meant by that "done all I was meant to" remark. I waved to the short lady as her and Wendy walked back towards the living room. Looking at the kitchen counter I saw that Wendy had flattened out hamburger patties. Remembering my trip here back in the spring I stepped through the sliding glass doors to her patio and saw that she had lit the gas grill. I went back in, got the burgers and set them to cooking while she talked to her neighbor, and that woman's husband, Jim(?), out front. 

Wendy gave them both a hug and they drove away in a green Ford Explorer. It looked to be packet to the roof and beyond.

"John?"

"Out here."

"Oh good, you got dinner going. I'll put out all the toppings and get some fries to cooking."

"Wendy?"

"Yeah, John?" I could see from her posture she was expecting a lecture, or other plea from me to leave, she had already planted her foot as if she was bracing for it. And I wanted to give her one. A good long talking to over how silly she was being in the face of the huge storm that was sitting a day off shore, already coming at us with winds that would tears roofs off houses and a storm surge to topple walls. I wanted to toss her over my shoulder go get on the Hayabuse and ride out of here as fast as I had ridden in. And I could tell, by the look in Wendy's dark eyes, she knew I was thinking such a thing. "Yes?"

"No onions. Please."

** ** ** ** ** ** ** 

Even with all of the containers she had taken inside Wendy's garden still looked more than ready for a garden magazine photographer. I could see where she had done things since April. And a lot more than the trimming and pruning she had said she was doing.

Sitting there among the late summer flowers, enjoying the calm evening breeze, with my belly full, it was amazing how peaceful it felt here. As if nothing could disturb this home she had made for herself her. I watched her through the open French door pacing back and forth in her kitchen, on the phone with someone, probably Martin. I had convinced her to turn it back on. Really hoping without hope that her son or Ex-husband might talk some sense into her. Get her to leave, even if we had to go rent her a car to do it.

If there was still an open car rental place for her to get one at.

I had tried to watch the news. The local stations were not down playing this one bit. They were urging the voluntary evacuation of all of the panhandle area. The coastal islands were already being evacuated, whether people wanted to go or not. With the stars peeking through shredded clouds over head it was hard to imagine that by this time tomorrow night this whole area would be under a hurricane. And I think that was half the problem.

She left the phone on the kitchen counter and came out to join me carrying a glass of juice.

"I swear, you would have thought the wind had never blown before. The way my son is making out you and I are headed for OZ tomorrow." She plopped down next to me. "And his father is making it worse. He knows I won't talk to him anymore so Jason keeps calling Martin and scaring him more and more. He's got the boy so riled up he was talking about catching a plane from Salt Lake to come, bodily, drag me out of here." She shook her head. "The both of you! I was a grown woman--working two jobs and juggling a house full of bills--taking care of my own self and a husband, when the two of you boys were in diapers."

"Wendy ... Martin loves you. You're his mom and it is scaring him to death thinking that you're here in harm's way." I sat back, looking at her face, those eyes so dark in the shadows as to be black. "Of course he's worried."

She shook her head. And sat quiet for a few minutes looking at her house. Then she sighed. "I was just getting this place respectable again. You should have seen it when I first moved in. All the walls inside were a sunset yellow. Terrible color, looked like the house had smoker's tar stains on the walls. And this garden. Nothing but Johnson grass, prickly weeds and overgrown shrubs. That palmetto over there was half-dead, hadn't been seen to in years. It took me a month to get it to looking even like it was still alive."

"It beautiful, the whole place is, but Wendy ... it's just a building. It's just a house and some plants, all of it can be repaired and replaced. You can't be." I reached over had took her hand. She then popped the back of mine with her other, but held onto it. Her fingers a strong warmth.

"Oh, pooh. Jason showed me that's a lie. He replaced me in what two months, three? And besides that I'm not going anywhere any time soon. This will blow over. By Friday I will be cleaning the leaves off the lawn and trying to get the neighborhood plastic flamingos down off the roof. Honestly, John, it's just a storm."

"No Wendy, it's not. By this time tomorrow night the winds in this courtyard will be over a hundred miles an hour. I've felt winds like that ... on my bike. They are ungodly strong. If you let go for even a second the winds, by themselves, will push you off the seat and leave you skipping on your butt down the highway."

"John, that's not a way to convince me to leave with you on that bike, not that that is going to happen no matter what, but that certainly not going to do it." She gave my hand a squeeze. "Look. Get some sleep tonight. In the morning the rain will get here, but if you leave early you might be able to get ahead of it. Just go home, I mean back to school, I will be fine. I's a big girl," she said with a smile. "I can handle this little catastrophe without someone holding my hand." 

When she turned my hand loose and got up to go, but I caught her fingers again before she could walk away. "Wendy ... I'm not going anywhere."

She smiled, and then sighed and shook her head. "Stubborn men, pooh on all of you. Oh, well ... good enough. I needed help trying to get the storm shutters to work tomorrow, anyway. Some of them have forty coast of paint on their hinges and they don't want to close. I'm going to go check on my cat. Tobias has been fussy all day, and he tends to throw up in my shoes when he's like that. And I haven't seen him since Margaret left, and that is way too suspicious for words."

I watched her walk away and into the house. My eyes absently followed those familiar curves. Old memories of my first crushes on her came back with that. 

There had been a time, not too many years back, when Martin's mom had been the fantasy of my latest nights. A few high school girl friends, the ones willing to let me touch their boobs, and then my first year college fling--the one that had left me smiling wide and bright for months--had come and gone. But there was still a spark there in that old memory. I had moaned her name, into a pillow so mom didn't hear it, on more than a few nights.

I smiled as I remember that not all of those nights were so long ago. Glancing over at the small backyard pool it didn't take much memory to see her again sitting, in her one piece, in that reclined chair getting some sun. It had only been back in April after all. But, even as I was thinking of that nice afternoon six months back, memories of April did what they always do to me. They bring me back to those two biker girls that I had met that strange early morning. I fingered the little cross on my bracelet such an odd gift, but one that I had never taken off since. Not even knowing why not at times. As I read the slogan on the warm metal I gave those words even more thought.

"Love Forever."

Getting up, I looked south. The sky was thickest with the shredding clouds that way. She was right, by morning the rain would be getting here. Tomorrow was going to be an eternity long, that much I knew, but tomorrow night ... well, that might be the longest night in my life. I took a deep breath and let the charm fall from my fingers. 

"Or the last," I mumbled to myself.

I went inside to watch the weather. And to worry.




Brown Eyes in the Storm



** ** ** ** ** ** ** 

"Hey, John?"

The gentle hand on my shoulder woke me more than my name. Blinking, I looked up at Wendy. She was in her pajamas. Tobias was sitting on the back of the couch, between her and me, looked down at me as if he had never seen anyone fall asleep on the couch watching hurricane coverage on the Weather Channel. I sat up slowly, feeling those too many hours on the bike in my leg muscles and back.

"Come to bed, John. I change the sheet in the spare bedroom." She gave me a smile. "Come on, don't worry, the news won't change before tomorrow afternoon."

Getting up with several groans I saw her sympathetic smile and then she was taking my arm and leading me, despite the fact that I knew the way. She leaned her head into my shoulder all the way down the hall and then stopped us at the door to the spare bedroom. Wendy looked up at me and reached up to brush my hair back from my eyes. "You really need a haircut now. You never got one since April, did you? Yeah." She sighed. "I might have to move back north just to see to it you get a decent meal and taken to a barber every once in a blue moon. You need to find you a wife already; you're twenty what? Two or three?"

"Still twenty-two." I bit my bottom lip in the corner. "Same as you."

She chuckled, that deep chuckle that I had long liked to hear. "You must have fallen off you bike and hit your head. I promise no matter how young Jason may like his women, I was not two when Martin was born! My Ex maybe pushing pedophile status with this latest girl he's dating, but ... well he wasn't like that back then. Besides, I was pretty enough for him back then. He didn't mind a wrinkle or two."

At the sad look that passed over her face, and then her down-turned chin that took her dark eyes from me, I felt a wedge of compassion-pain lodge in my throat. Wendy had always been such a wonderful woman to her husband. I had watched her worship that man as if he walked on white roses, in golden gowns of silk, handing out miracles. And then she had treated their only son the same way and where was she? Deserted by them both. Alone down here on the coast to face a fucking hurricane! Alone!

Alone, but for ... me. Just me. Fuck it!

My hand was in the tight tangle of grey and blonde hair, at the base of her neck, turning her startled face up towards me even as my lips touched her. Those brown eyes were wide and so close they looked like one as I kissed her. But then my eyes were closed and I pulled her closer to me. Her hands were on my chest for a moment, palms-flat pushing, but then that push faded and she began to kiss me back. Hesitantly at first, but then with a warming desire to be kissed. A desire I met, matched, and then raised to higher levels. My hand caught her hip and I pulled her tight into me. Her breasts, free of a bra under a thin layer of flannel pajamas, were pressed into my chest. Twin soft points of warmth. She gave a low moan when my fingers spread across part of her ass. For a half--second she pulled me closer, mashing my growing hard on in against her belly, gripping me fiercely tight. But then she paused and took a quick step back, out my arms.

"John ... ah ... goodnight, John." Wendy fled down the hall to her room and closed the door. Gave me a quick look as it was closing, yes, but left me standing there looking at a closed door none the less. 

Licking my lips I tasted again her lips. I took a deep breath, let it out and took another one. As I walked into the spare bedroom and stripped off my leather pants I could not be sure if I had done a bad thing or not. While it had been rash, impulsive, and partially driven by the fear of what was coming, I can't say it had the feel of a mistake. Not to me.

Not yet anyway.

** ** ** ** ** ** ** 

The sound of light rain on my window woke me. Then a light knock on the door made sure of it.

"Yes?"

"Can I come in?" asked Wendy through the door.

"Sure."

Sitting up, I lifted myself till my back was against the bed's headboard and made sure the soft, white sheet was across my waist. The door opened and Wendy made her hesitant way into the bedroom.

"Good morning," I said with a soft smile. "Or as good as it can be given what is coming at us, huh?"

"Yeah ... I mean yes it is. A good morning that is. Ah, John I think...."

"Wendy, come have a seat." I smiled and patted the bed next to me. "Please."

With slow steps she crossed the room and sat down, with a posture that said she was seconds away from hopping up if she needed to. Reaching over, I tried to take her fingers but she pulled her hand back from mine before they touched. Her eyes went to mine when I sighed and then she looked even more uncomfortable. Taking a deep breath she moved her hand back and took my hand in hers. 

"John, I ... I'm not sure what I need to say here. Ah. Last night, in the hall, ah ... well."

"I kissed you."

"Yes, you did. Why?" 

The little squint that came to her brown eyes when she was puzzled was so beautiful I thought as I gave her hand a gentle squeeze. "Wendy, unlike your Ex, I happen to like women that don't have pig tails and pop bubble gum as a recreational sport. You are a very sexy woman, who I like, and who--in case you haven't noticed this yet--happens to be single."

"And twenty five years older than you!"

"Twenty four." I shrugged. "Remember, I'm about eight months older than Martin. But seventeen, eighteen? I can't say that matters to me in the least. Kissing you is something I've thought about doing for several years, and well, last night I decided to just do it. I figured, at worst, you might get mad and throw me out, but who knows." I grinned. "The other side of that coin, after all is a lot more pleasant. For a moment or so I could tell you were enjoying it."

"Yeah, till I came to my senses about whom I was kissing. John, I've watched you grow up." She took back her hand. "I've probably fed you more meals in the last ten years than your mother. I ... well, I in a way see you as almost my son. Yes, I'll admit that, for a second or two, I was enjoying the kiss but that's simply me being lonely down here." She turned and looked out the window at her garden. "I keep hoping I'll meet someone down her my own age, a person that shares my hobbies, some of my likes, my passions. That I can talk to."

For a second I thought she was crying then I realized she was softly chuckling. 

"For a man that wouldn't see my trying to take care of him, make his life easier, as trying to manage him." She absently picked at a stray bit of fuzz on the fitted sheet under her. "Call me old fashion, but I sort of like to take care of the men in my life."

"Wendy. I want you to take a moment and think of what you just said, and then see if every bit of it does not easily apply to me." Leaning forwards, I saw her eyes go to my bare chest. "I love it when you take care of me, makes me feel like someone gives a damn about me. I certainly enjoy sitting and talking to you. Hell, that's all we did for days back in April, yes?" I shrugged, "Can't say I know much about gardening, but if it was working with you I would find it a pleasant way to spend the day."

"John! You're Martin's best friend. Even if I was thinking of you in that way, there is no way in hell. You would wreck years of friendship."

"Wendy, I like Martin. I really do. Your son is one of my better friends on this earth." I leaned back against the headboard behind me. "And I would do a lot for him, if he asked. But with this? Well, if he can't handle the fact his mother is now single and going to attract a man ... that's his problem. Not mine." I held out my hands and smiled. "By this time tomorrow morning this house may be rubble and we may both be dead. The least of my worries right know is that Martin might find out I think his mom is hot."

She blushed at the look in my eyes and looked away. Leaning down, she picked up my leather pants. Gave a sniff and held them out from herself.

"These reek of exhaust. How do I clean them?" she asked, changing the subject.

"I can do it," I said, reaching out for them.

"No, no. You said you like me taking care of you. Well how do I clean these? Leather polish? Sorry I'm all out of saddle soap."

"Well, to really get them clean, yeah saddle soap and some leather conditioner are best. But just to get them to not smell, wipe them down with a baby wipe," I shrugged, "or ten. That's about how many it usually takes me."

"A baby wipe? Okay, that I can do. Now, while I do that, there is breakfast on the stove. Help yourself."

"I can't do that without my pants," I said.

"John. I had both a husband and a son. Trust me, I have seen a man in his underwear walking around the house before." She rolled her eyes.

"Yeah ... but I don't have any of those."

For a half second she looked confused, and then her eyes dropped to the sheet covering my waist alone. My bare legs and bare chest caught her eyes then.

"Are you telling me I have been sitting in here talking to you and you're naked under that sheet?" At my nod she turned ten shades of red and looked away from me. "John! I asked if you were decent."

"Actually, you only asked if you could come in?" Smiling at her discomfort, I leaned over on the bed resting my head on my hand. "Which I had no problem with you doing."

For a second more she looked away, then her lips pursed and she looked back at me shaking her head. "You know, I should call you on this joke. Pull that sheet away and make you own up to all this flirting with me crap, you've been doing. See how funny you think teasing me is, when you have to look at an old naked woman, and find your bluff called."

The smile slipped off my lips. "Wendy, I'm not teasing you. This is no joke ... I wouldn't do that to you, not to mention the timing of it would suck." I pointed to the rain on the window. "When I said you were sexy and hot, I meant it. I think you are certainly both. Always have really. Only now ... you're single, sexy, and hot." Swinging my legs around off the side of the bed, I stood up, the sheet falling away from me. "And I never bluff."

Leaving her there, with her mouth on the floor, I walked across the room and towards the hall to the bathroom. But, I stopped by the doorway though, and looked back at her still sitting there on the bed holding my leather pants. "You can take your time with those if you want. By the way, what's for breakfast? Besides the bacon I smell?"

"Ah ...oh, umm, cheese eggs and buttered toast." Wendy's eyes went from my face to my crotch and then hurriedly back to my face. "Everything is ready, but might be getting cold."

"I won't be long."

"Oh. Um, yeah ... I mean okay. Ah ... John?" she stammered.

"Yes?"

"We have to get the shutters unstuck." Again I saw her about to look down and she stopped herself. "After breakfast I mean."

"Then I will need my pants by then. Thanks again."

"No ... thank you." Her voice was little husky.

"You're very welcome." With a grin, I left the room.

** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** 

The step ladder I was standing on was meant to be used in the kitchen to reach high cabinets. Not to be outside, with a man my size standing on it, trying to get forty year old storm shutters unstuck from where their hinges had been painted over. 

Way too, many times painted over as I soon found out.

The rain was a light misty drizzle that had my hair plastered to my neck and a cold, wet drip going down my spine. My tank top shirt was tight as a second skin across my chest. From the waist down I was dry though. Leather sheds water like a duck when properly treated.

Throughout the morning Wendy and I worked on her house. Doing all the things that they were advising people to do. Well, except we didn't fill up rubber maids with water. I pointed out that there was a swimming pool not twenty feet out the back door that had a near endless supply of water for things like flushing toilets.

Wendy had wrapped her hair in a scarf and put on a light rain poncho, taken from out the trunk of her car, kept there to use if she needed to change a tire in the rain. She was handing me the tools I had to keep switched from to try and chip paint, free a saltwater rusted bolt, or oil a hinge and we went window by window. 

Around a house with fourteen windows.

Once I looked back and caught her eyes on my ass. When she looked up, I winked. She blushed and kept her eyes on the surrounding neighborhood after that. Not that there was a lot going on to see. Most of her closest neighbors had taken heed and headed away from the storm. Down the street we could see some people nailing plywood across their windows. And beyond that was a guy walking case after case of water into his house, from out the back of a blue pickup truck. 

Twice county sheriffs drove by, lights on driving slow. The second one nodded to me and Wendy and then stopped at the guys with the plywood, and then again at the next guy with the water, talking to them from out his car windows. 

"Wonder why he didn't speak to us?" Wendy asked.

"No idea. They're a little closer to the beach than your house, but not by that much." I pulled and the last shutter gave up its forty year death grip on the house's siding and moved. "There we go." Manhandling it around, I hooked the antique wrought iron latches. "All done."

"Good, let's get out this rain."

"Sounds like a plan I can get behind." Folding up the ladder, I carried it around and placed it back on the wall in the garage not far from my bike. Wendy closed the rollup door behind her, and I left my boots beside the door to inside of the house while she got out of her poncho. I stopped though before I walked in through behind her and stood looking at her car.

"Let me get you a towel. John? What is it?" 

"Had an idea. When the wind starts to get bad later, it might be a good idea to back your car till it's touching the garage doors, that way the wind doesn't blow them in."

"You really think it's going to get that bad?" she asked, fear quavering her voice for the first time. Even if only a little. "I mean I know it's ...."

"No, Wendy you don't know. Neither do I. The only people around here that know, have all run like crazy to get away from this thing. Thank you." I reached out and took the towel from her hand. Moving to where her laundry room door was open, with clothes going in both the washer and drying in the dryer, I pulled off my tank top and started to dry my chest. "Truth be told, that fact alone scares the hell out of me."

"John ... would you please do me a favor? Leave. I'm not scared for me, but I don't like your being here. I can't bear the idea of you getting hurt because of me."

Looking back at her, I saw her standing there holding her elbows, arms tight over her breasts. Dropping the damp towel beside my wet shirt I moved over and took her in my arms, pulling her in tight to my chest. I let my cheek rest on her hair, flattening the hairspray stiffened curls.

"Only if you will come with me." I felt her sigh against my bare chest. "I'm not leaving you, Wendy."

"I won't ride on a motorcycle. Never again. I did it once when I was a little younger than you. I had nightmares for five years after that once ride. Never again." She shivered and snuggled in to me. After a moment she moved her cheek, and then chuckled. "Now this is the way to flirt with me. I have always liked men with a hairy chest and a smooth back."

"Wendy, may I kiss you again?"

"No." She moved her head away from my lips, but then hugged me tighter. "But you can hold me till both our legs get tired of standing here."

Or until the buzzer on the dryer went off, five minutes later. But that was the sweetest five minutes I can recall in a long time. She was a comfortable warmth, soft and scented in the most delicious way. Wendy, despite the work we had been doing, smelled of vanilla chi spice. It was in her hair, in her perfume. All marshmallow and cinnamon. Then, when I turned my face into her hair I caught her own scent, a pheromone-laced cocktail of female odors that brought to mind the old rhyme. Sugar and spice and everything nice. Well, she was far more than nice. When that damn cicada-loud buzzer went off I wanted to cuss. 

"I need to get that. John?"

"My legs aren't tired yet," I said not moving a muscle.

She chuckled. "Well, mine are getting that way. How about this? If you will turn me loose then, yes, you can kiss me again."

Looking down into those deep brown eyes, I saw my fate reflected back at me. It didn't scare me. "If I kiss you again, I may never want to turn you loose."

Her hand moved on my back, following the ridge of muscle down my spine. "John ... please."

The soft sound of that single word. Breath delivered, almost a begging for my lips, showed me things then. The thoughts behind those dark pools were of us not of the approaching storm. Her shiver was not in fear. Or perhaps it was. Fear that she would also never want to be turned lose.

Leaning down, I turned my head at the last moment my lips passing like butterfly wings across her cheek. Right by her ear I whispered ... three soft words. I felt them impact her like waves on the coast; they made her lean back and look up into my eyes. 

Mine held no secrets, just promises. Promises that left her shocked to the core.

Leaving her there--unkissed but with the echo of those three words still singing to her--was the hardest thing I have ever done. I felt my heart thundering in my chest all the way down the hall and to the living room. Sitting down on the couch, I leaned back for a moment, felt the furry weight of Tobias come to settle on my lap, and then closed my eyes to rest them.

The strain of that long, hellish ride and then this morning's struggle was still taking its toll on me. And the warm purring weight certainly didn't help, I was asleep in moments.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

The emergency broadcast signal woke me. And that ear-splitting tone is one hell of an alarm clock to wake up to.

[The National Weather Service in Mobile has issued a tornado warning for South Baldwin County and South-West Alabama and South Escambia County and North-West Florida till2:30pm Central Daylight time. At 1:34pm Central Daylight time the National Weather Service Doppler radar indicated a severe thunderstorm capable of producing a tornado over the Gulf of Mexico about 17 miles South-East of Pensacola Pass moving at 55 miles per hour. The tornado producing storm is expected to be near Pensacola Pass by 1:50pm Central Daylight time. Johnson's Beach and Perdido Key by 1:55pm. Perdito Beach and Josephine by 2:00pm. Oberta and Midland by 2:05pm. Repeating: The National Weather Service in Mobile has issued a tornado warning for South Baldwin County and South-West Alabama and South Escambia County and North-West Florida till2:30pm Central Daylight time.] 

Sitting up rubbing my face, I looked around. There was still light rain on the windows. My feline lap warmer had left me at some point. And the house was eerily quiet.

"Wendy?"

Getting up, I walked barefoot through the house looking for her. There were still clothes tumbling in the dryer, I noticed in passing, and then I walked past one of the windows and saw her out in her garden. Stopping, I looked out there. Wendy was in her rain poncho again, digging up plants putting them in black plastic pots. Her garden wheel barrel was filled with them already. Moving to go see what was going on I stopped by the dining room. The Amazon rainforest might have more plants per square foot, but that room was running a real close second.

With a shake of my head I moved to the glass sliding back door. She had moved the wheel barrel by it and was gathering an arm load, as I slid it open. She looked up and smiled.




Brown Eyes in the Storm



"Oh hey, John. Enjoy your nap?" she held out the pots in her hands. "Can you give me a hand right quick, I would like to try and get a few more dug up before the storm gets bad and they get beat to dead the by the rain."

"Wendy, they are broadcasting tornados nearby and you're pulling flowers? Get your butt in here!"

"But I just planted these last week? They come up really easily. I might be able to save them. Please." 

Stepping out into the warm drizzle, my feet on the wet patio stones I moved past her took the handles of the wheel barrel and before she could protest rolled it through the open kitchen door and across into the dining room. Her following me the whole time. Ignoring her protest the dirt on the floor, I walked back to the glass doors and slid them shut.

"John!"

Turning, I took hold of her by the wrist and bodily dragged her to the living room. The banner on the bottom of the TV was showing local area names and the broadcaster was describing the safe areas of a house. Then the camera switched to show pictures of the white capped Gulf. I pointed at the screen.

"Wendy, take a good look and then look at me. Hell. Is. Coming. Towards. Us!" I looked into her face trying to see what was going on behind her eyes. "We are not in a safe place, not going to be in a safe place till maybe some time tomorrow. If then. They are calling for wind gusts in excess of a hundred miles an hour by midnight."

"That's why I wanted to try and save my Nasturtiums. Like I said I just planted them, no reason to let the heavy rains destroy them. They should be safe in the dining room, certainly if I'm still around to get them replanted by tomorrow afternoon, they will be fine."

I saw it then. Didn't understand it at first but I saw it. There was a new fatalistic feel to her, which she had never had before. Years of memories of her, and her never being this way, went into conflict. Then I remembered what she had told me earlier. That she wasn't scared for herself, but that she was afraid for "me" to stay. Wendy wasn't in denial of what was coming, as I had thought, but simply didn't seem to care if she lived through it. She was making plans based on living but at the same time was looking at it as if she wasn't going to. No. No, not as if she wasn't going to ... but as if it didn't matter to her if she did.

I turned her wrist loose, and placed a finger over her lips to still the continuing diatribe on her plants.

"Wendy ... I love you," I said, repeating what I had told her earlier in the day. The effect of those three words still seemed to hit her hard. But then she seemed to shrug them off as well.

"I love you too, John but ...." Her tone dismissed what I had said. As if my words had been simply noiseless air. "I have spent a lot of time in my garden and I won't see this little storm damage all that hard work. I need to be getting the rest of those ..."

It's the divorce, I realized even as I was wondering if she had gone mad. Jason leaving her, walking away from twenty plus years of marriage, coupled with her son treating her as if her help is never wanted, had given Wendy the idea that she was not needed. This bit of insight hit me harder than the coming storm surge. The memory of how hard she had hugged me back in April, how easily she had come into my arms this time. The desire to have me "Hold her" and the smiles that she got when I told her that what she did for me was a comfort. That I appreciated it.

"Come on. Let's go get them dug up," I told her with a smile. "But gardening is not on my list of hobbies, so it will cost you. Lunch and a kiss? Sounds fair to me."

She stopped in mid argument and looked at me blinking. Almost as if she hadn't heard me right or had expected a different response. The type of response that Jason might would have given her. I had been present for a few of those, or heard of then after the fact.

"Let me get my boots." I headed for the garage door.

"Thank you," she said it so softly I hardly heard the words. When I looked back I saw a single line of tears run down from her eyes. I turned around and smiled at her.

"You don't need to thank me; it's something important to you." My smile turned into a grin. "We'll just have to get it done quickly, so I can get my chance to kiss you again."

She smiled at me and shook her head. "What I have to do to get a man to help me in the garden. I swear!"

** ** ** ** ** ** ** **

Resting my hand on the big glass French doors, I could feel the vibration the constant wind was making. Worry that this door, not part of the original house but something put in later, would not stand up to what was coming and that the kitchen behind me would soon be facing hurricane force winds sent a chill through me. I looked out at that darkening sky. The sun was sinking quickly behind all those clouds and soon there would be a monster at the door. 

The monster, Ivan.

I had given some thoughts to trying to pull down part of the fence, between this house and the next, for wood to board this door up with, but the wind had been doubling in force every hour and the rain getting heavier by the minute. Basically, I gave that idea up figuring that the full force of the hurricane would snap those thin fence boards as easily as kindling. Besides, it was too late. The radio was warning all residents, who had not evacuated, to stay inside. I looked at the big "X" of duct tape I had put across it. Would have to do, I guess.

SLAM! Jumping, I turned in surprise, when I heard the front door close hard. "Wendy?"

"Yeah, it's just me." She came walking into the kitchen and tossed me a bundle of clothing. "Here, go get out of those wet leather pants. Before you get chaffed raw."

The buddle I caught was a pair of black--faded to gray--sweat pants and a Florida "Gators" T-shirt. "Where did you get these?"

"Margret, that you met earlier, I gave her a call. Let her know we were doing okay. Her son is off at college, but he's about your size and age. I told here you were down here in a single change of clothes. She told me where they hid a house key and to help myself to anything you needed."

Tossing the pants over my shoulder, I looked at the shirt. "Well, the colors are right, but there is this great big Izod lizard on it."

"Don't give me no Illini-Pride-crap, John. Just go get into some dry clothes."

Laughing, I started towards the hall then stopped and looked back. "Want to come watch?"

"Ah, no thank you. I've seen you naked once today already. I think that's my limit." She made shooing motions wit the back of her hands. But I didn't budge.

"You have limits? Huh, I don't. You're right though." I smiled at her. "You have seen me; It's my turn to see you."

"HA!" She shook her head, smirking. "In your dreams, fun boy."

"Those are called fantasies. And yeah, you are in more than a few of them. Especially after seeing you in that one piece by the pool back in April." I let my eyes roam and gave a soft wolf whistle.

"GET!"

I left her blushed red as a beet.

** ** ** ** ** ** ** 

The howl began not long after dark, and like a wolf it would come and go. Rising and falling in intensity. The trees around the yard bending and the tops of the palms acting like green wind vanes. Rain lashed the sides of the house pounding at the windows. For an odd reason a scene from Night of the Living Dead came to mind. All the dead pounding on the sides of the house; I knew that identical sound was not far off. Before the night was over, certainly, this house was going to take hits from flying debris. I had already seen stuff tumbling past in the streetlights outside on the road.

Some of it not small, simply light. But before long heavier things would be flying past as well.

"What time is it?" she asked me from the hallway door. I looked over at her and saw her hugging herself. "And what time did they say the eye wall will pass through here?"

"It's just about seven-thirty. And some time after midnight. Come here. Sit with me." I moved to make room on the couch. I lowered the volume on the TV. The news was grim, but then it had been that for days.

She picked up the cat carrier by her feet and moved over to set it next to the coffee table. Tobias, sitting on the nearby chair, gave a plaintive meow and then took off out the room. Wendy sat down and snuggled in next to my side. "He thinks we're going to the vet. That's the only time I get his carrier out." She looked up listening to the wind. "Wow, those are some big winds."

I refrained from telling her what I knew. That those were only mild gusts compared to what was going to be howling outside in a few hours. With a sigh, I placed my arm around her and leaned my head till it rested on hers. "We'll make it through it."

"Oh, I know. I just wish you hadn't gotten yourself stuck here in the middle of this. Me being here is on my fool head. I was simply being greedy and not paying the mechanic to fix my car. Hoping, I guess, that somehow the part would get cheaper by waiting. Silly."

"We all do silly thing. Me coming here, knowing that was coming." I pointed out the window. "Well, my father would certainly call it that silly, stupid more likely. But I don't."

"Have you called your mom? Let her know where you are?" she suddenly asked. At my head shake she popped my leg. "John!"

"I'm not sure she would care," I said softly. "And I don't feel like another lecture from my father."

"Of course she would care. John, she's you mother. Martin may make me mad as a hornet at him, but I still love him and would be worried sick if I knew he was in the middle of something like this."

"Maybe the best reason not to call her then." I looked at her face. "And she would want to know why I was down here. She wouldn't like knowing it was because of you."

"I don't like knowing you're here because of me!" She gave a sniffle. "If anything happens to you, because of this, I will never forgive myself."

My hand moved to lift her chin; she reluctantly looked me in the eyes. I gave her a small smile. "I'm here by my choice. I would be nowhere else. No matter what." My thumb caught her tear and brushed it away. My lips quirked upwards. "Hey. I'm owed a kiss. I think I want to collect it."

She gave me a tired smile. "You're incorrigible. Fine, kiss me if you want to." 

"I do. I really do." Leaning in, her hand on my chest stopped me as our lips were going to touch.

"John. This can't go any further than this. I ... can't let it." Her voice held a quavering. An emotion so on the surface it was trying to choke her. "No matter what this has to be the last kiss."

The back of my fingers stroked her cheek. "Then I will have to make it last all night."

"Incorrigible ...!"

My lips silenced her words but turned them into a moan. As I pulled her to me with a fierce hunger to taste those lips, to taste not only them but so much more of her. I wanted to devour all of her. The gasp for breath, which I breathed in from her mouth, when my hand cupped her breast, was sweet and hot. Then there was an answering passion rising from her. A hand appeared on my thigh, caressing the muscle but it stopped suddenly when her hand passed over the end of my hardening cock. I caught that hand, and placed it palm flat back on top of me, before she could move it away. When my hand returned to her breasts she moaned my name and gripped my cock through these borrowed sweat pants.

Then my hand was under her shirt, on her warm skin, on even warmer cotton, cupping her breast through her bra. Her mouth was all but attacking mine now as she kissed me back with a fury. I moved my fingers up to pull the bra cup out the way and her hand was going towards my waistband ... when there was a tremendous noise against the front door! As if a collapsing black smith shop had slammed into it.

Jumping apart, as if we were embarrassed teens whose dad had walked in, we looked at each other. Both of us panting, eyes hot, and noses flared. Then she got up and resettled her shirt. I followed her to the door. A metal trash can--street number spray-painted on the side of it-- was on the porch resting again the front door.

"That's from two blocks over. Wow." She said in a soft whisper. "John ..."

"Yeah?"

"Call your mother. Just let her know." I watched her flee the room, down the hallway to her bedroom and shut the door.

Taking out my Razr I flipped it open and hit the number.

"Yeah. Hey, Mom. I just wanted to tell you ..."

** ** ** ** ** ** ** 

The lights went out all at once, with not even a flicker of warning. Since eight thirty the winds had gotten ridiculous outside so I had been expecting it, but that sudden darkness enveloping you ... it's still a shock. Like a twig snapped behind you in the woods, your spine goes bolt straight. I flipped on my flashlight with a primitives need for light. On this night, darkness, was as spooky to me as to any of my cave dwelling ancestors. It hid a giant predator, whose frightening howl we could hear all around us. Wendy turned her small flashlight as well, probably for the same reasons. She started to get up from next to me.

"I'll get the ...." A huge crash sounded outside towards the garden making me jump and Wendy scream in surprised fright. She huddled into me, terrified.

"Easy," I whispered. "That was probably a big tree limb falling. We're going to have a lot of that. Now just relax and let me go check. And what were you going to go get?"

"The radio. From the kitchen counter. And my battery lantern from the hall closet." She picked up a pillow and hugged it to her chest as I stood up.

"I'll get them. Sit tight."

The silly cat in his carrier hissed at my feet as I walked past him and into the kitchen. Through the visibly vibrating sliding glass door I saw the backyard being lashed by rain and there was a large branch, where that hadn't been one before, that I thought was the cause of the noise but, as I got closer to the door, I saw that it was a part of it. There was an oak tree down across the side of her yard. Only the top of it seemed to be in the garden, most of it was in the neighbor's yard who owned the tree. Even fallen, the winds tore at the old tree's branches. Making mockery of its once great strength now that it was down. 

In my bright bar of light I saw other trees bending, leaning over "too far" in the gusts. Given that the worst of Ivan was still hours away they too would most likely be on the ground by morning. Grabbing the radio, I went and found the closet and the lantern and returned to her side.

"Did you see what time it was when the power went out?" she asked me as I sat down and switched on the lantern and off my flashlight. I took out my phone.

"About five minutes back so ... about nine-thirty." I moved my arm and let her snuggle back into place at my side. I felt her shiver as the howl increased and then died back down. The house gave a soft sound then, a moaning creak. The windows had been giving off small rattles for an hour but this was new. I looked around but decided there was nothing I could do but hold her tighter. The time to "do" had, for the moment, passed.

There was a whistle sound then, an eerie half moan. It built to a banshee like noise as the winds outside roared. We both looked back at the front door. 

"That was just the wind, right?" she asked.

"Yeah. We're going to get a lot of that before the night is out I'm afraid. The harder the winds get the more nooks and crannies it will find to whistle through." I sat back, taking her with me, she leaned her hand onto my shoulder again. We sat there in the darkness, a single bulb away from blackness too mind numbing to deal with, listening to the howl. When the door screamed at us again she shivered.

"Talk to me," she said.

"About what?"

"I don't care, anything. How is school? How's work? How much your foot inching, I don't' care, just something to make ... that sound ... go away." She looked up at me her eyes wide with fright. "I've made a mistake, John. I didn't think about it being like this."

"Wendy? It's just the wind. Like blowing on a penny whistle, or an open bottle." I brushed a lock of hair back from her eyes with the backs of my fingers. "College is fine, I will have to try and catch back up these few days, but I'm doing ... okay ... in most of my classes. I was planning on taking a long ride on my bike for Labor Day weekend away, just didn't know I was going to do it in one day. Ah, I really like my job. We spend most of the night tearing old computers down and tinkering with things. Getting them working again. I have this massive "Frankenstein" server we've been trying to get running right. Outdated junk, but the owner needs the data off of it."

"That's sounds like something right up your alley. I remember all the old TVs and radios you used to tear apart." She smiled. "And, amazingly, more often than not you would get them to work again. Jason told me you liked to go hunt old tech stuff at thrift stores. Still do that?" 

"I go on EBay mostly. But yeah, I still feel the pull of a good thrift store hunt now and then. The smell of old motherboards, that cat pee and cigarette smell so fused into the case you have to disassemble it outside. Really though. It's the new stuff. The top of the line, not even out on the market yet, that's what really fascinates me. There is some awesome stuff coming out here soon. Hell, this is a good example." I took out my phone and handed it to her. "There's nothing like that out anywhere else. Motorola has totally rethought the idea of what a cellular telephone should be like."

"It's tiny. Not sure I like the tiny part." She turned it over in her hands. "I do like that it metal. It feels like it could take a good solid whack. I drop mine at least once a week, it seems." She handed it back to me. "Remind me, when it's time to replace mine and I may try one of those. I wouldn't remember the name now if you told me though." She closed her eyes and took a deep breath when the wind screamed. "So ... any girlfriends?" 

"You."

A soft scoff, "Okay, how about any girlfriends that are under the age of fifty?"

"Still you." My smile was soft. "Sorry, my math skills are terrible. I keep taking my age and adding twenty-four and getting thirty-nine. That can't be right can it?"

"Flatterer."

Reaching over, I took her hand into mine. With a slow gentle pressure I mover her hand till it rested over my heart. "Not when it comes from here."

The look in her eyes then was worth nine hours on a motorcycle. It was worth any amount of fear this night brought to me. Then, when she smiled, I would take anything that came at me. Whatever Ivan brought to the table, even the loss of my own life was worth that one smile. Lifting her hand from my heart, I kissed the backs of her fingers.

Outside the winds howled, trees broke, twisted and leaned over. Falling scattered like a child's pickup sticks. Closer to the beach the storm surge was already tearing at the coastline. Changing it forever. Destroying buildings for miles and miles all up and down the Florida panhandle and into Alabama. Thousands of people were sitting in the dark as scared as we were. Houses were losing roofs.

Pulling Wendy to me I knew, I didn't even want to think it, but I knew. Out there in the storm someone was hurt. Someone was hurt badly. Before this night was over there would be people who lost their lives. Families that would be in tears for weeks to come, morning the people that this storm tore from their lives.

The storm screamed at us huddled there in its path! A shrill, mocking sound. Banshee screams, baby cries, the screaming ghostly spirits of a thousand souls from hell could not come close to the simple whistle of wind through a small crack beside a window.

And through all of that madness, I held the hand of a woman. Talked to her of simple things. Plans for new computers, stupid stuff really. I flirted, and she smiled it off. Possibly the most terrifying night of my life passed in so very slow seconds.




Brown Eyes in the Storm



And I loved every moment we spent sitting on that couch. Her under my arm. Us looking into each other's eyes. Listening to the radio. Each doing the best to keep fear at bay by showing the other we were not afraid. When we were of course both terrified.

** ** ** ** ** ** ** 

Near midnight we had to move to the hallway. 

Sitting on the floor next to the garage door, the small radio and the battery lantern beside us, ready to flee into the "questionable" safety of that part of the house. All the windows were screaming now. The chilling sound was deafening near any of them. Then the roof began to groan overhead and we came here to huddle together. Hoping this--the strong center of the house--would be safest. The garage was, possibly, better build but it had that huge door that was vibrating against the back bumper of her car as if it was seconds away from buckling. 

The radio was turned up to its max volume simply for us to be able to hear it. They were telling of the approach of Ivan's eye wall. Sustained winds of a hundred, with gusts that were pealing the roof off over our heads. There was water dripping from several corners.

My back was against the wall behind me, my shoulder touching the frame of the garage door. My eyes were heavy. This night had been years long already. I had talked a reluctant Wendy into laying her head in my lap and trying to get some sleep. She was there, but if she was sleeping it would have surprised me. Who could sleep with all the hounds of hell howling outside? I was absently caressing her hair, thinking back to when I first met her. Years and years ago. I smiled realizing that while to me it was half a lifetime, to her it was a decade or so back.

The difference in our ages really didn't matter to me. I mean I've always thought older women were sexier than girls my own age. My fingers teased a small cluster of gray hairs near her ear. I softly smoothed a wrinkle by her eye. And Wendy more so than most. I had always thought her beautiful. From the very first, her smile the way it seemed to start at her eyes and travel to her lips was pure beauty. Yeah, that smile was certainly part of what I loved about her. Her humor seemed to consume her whole face. As if the clouds had broken and the whole of lighted creation bathed the world because she smiled.

I smiled myself at the romantic images in my head. Face facts, John. You're in love with this woman. And no matter how much time there was between her birth and yours that one simple fact wasn't going to change. That her son was nearly your own age wasn't going to change either. Oh, Jason is so going to have a shit fit when this gets out.

With the back of my fingers I caressed her cheek. Then I turned my hand and softly brushed her hair with my palm. Feeling those silky curls, the warmth of them.

Looking up, I listened to the roof joists groaning in the attic above. I took a deep breathe. The whole top of this house could leave us at any moment, or at any time between now and the next hour when the eye wall passed through here. Or any time for the next four hours after that. That I realized was the true horror of a hurricane like Ivan. It wasn't here, devastating and then gone. It lasted forever! This one night alone had lengthened into centuries of worry and fear. At times I wanted to grab a hammer and go up in the attic and start breaking boards, that way the storm could take the damn roof and I would be able to stop worrying that it was going to happen any second now. Any second now ... for hours and hours.

My hand continued to smooth Wendy's hair for the next half hour, as I sat there my mind going in circles. Round and round, fear and worry. Worry and fear. That simple act, touching the woman I love, hopefully offering some comfort when I could do nothing more to keep her safe. Closing my eyes, I leaned my head back against the drywall, but even that was no escape. Not when I could feel the vibration of the storm driven winds against the house through the wall. Like a huge shiatsu back massager, the whole wall was shaking against my spine.

Oh damn, this can't go on much longer. The house has got to go. The roof will tear off; the walls will be pushed over. The ... the ... the... and on and on in an endless loop that lasted for eternity it seemed. That was my mind as I sat there in the hallway, with the woman I loved, wondering if I was going to die. And, as second became minute, and minute became hours I had to often ask myself do I care? I reached a point, moments before Ivan crossed through West Pensacola, when the eternal purgatory of this began to become too much. 

But then, at that lowest moment in my life, Wendy sat up. Looked at me and smiled. She leaned in and placed a soft kiss on my lips and then snuggled her head in against my chest. Listening no doubt, to the pounding of my fear driven heart. I put my arm around her ... and found my calm center at last. My anchor in this storm. Wendy, and my love for her, was the rock that I would cling tight to, and not even the winds of Ivan would tear her from my grasp. 

But, they could certainly tear a large glass sliding door out of its wooden frame!

With a huge nose, a howl that all the wolves of the earth combined would envy, Ivan huffed and puffed and found his way in at last.

** ** ** ** ** ** ** 

"John."

My eyes popped open and I looked around till I found Wendy there next to me in the howling dark. The mattresses from both the bedrooms, one under us, one on the wall next to us and both box springs above us--propped against a shelving unit as a makeshift lean-to--had damped the wind sounds enough that I had finally fallen to sleep.

No .... No, it was quiet. A quiet so still it was loud in its own odd way.

"I think the eye is over us," she said pulled me closer to her then. Shaking in fear. "I've wanted the winds to stop but this is almost worse. How long will it take to pass over?"

"Maybe twenty, thirty minutes. That's a guess though." I went to sit up but she pulled me back down.

"No, John. I know what you're thinking but don't go outside. We can see what everything looks like tomorrow. Stay. Stay here with me. Please?"

"Sure."

Curling back up with her, we looked into each other's eyes listening, in that terrible silence, to the water dripping in the corner of the garage where it attached to the house. It was a given by now that the house had suffered some pretty severe roof damage. But Wendy was right, tomorrow was soon enough to see how badly. Besides, there was nothing we could do to fix it before the storm would be back upon us anyway.

"So we're half way through it?" she asked. What time is it?"

"Pretty much. Ah, let's see." I pulled out my phone "It's just after two." I took a deep breath as the wind began to sound again outside. My ears had almost missed that growl till it started to double and then triple by the second. Then it was the silence I wanted back, for all the good my wanting was going to do anything. Then there was a terrible sound from above us and the full force of Ivan was back. The door to the hallway rattled in its frame as if to shake the wooden jams loose.

Wendy huddled into my chest shaking in fear. I went back to my calming habit of caressing her hair. Whether it was calming her or me I'm not sure. For that matter I'm not sure it was doing any good at all for both of us. She flinched in my arms as we heard something hit the roof above us, a heavy thump. Then the sound repeated against the side of the garage, away from the house side between her house and her neighbors.

Part of me wanted to get up from this ridiculous shelter of mattresses and go see what was making that sound. Then I heard glass breaking somewhere and there were even more powerful winds hammering at the door to the hallway. That little part of me decided ... here was good. I simply held onto the woman I loved and wished this would end, or that I could fall asleep, I was so tired by this point, and not have to be aware of that wind. That horrible screaming wind.

I noticed Wendy softly humming a Cindy Lauper song, Time after time that made me smile. Possibly the first smile had had felt move my face in hours. It didn't last long.

One hour. Then two, passing there together, huddled together, so tired only adrenaline driven fear was keeping us awake. And after what seemed an eternity the worst of it began to drift north of us. Not that the winds slacked off, no, but the worst now seemed to be in gusts not continuous hour-long screaming blasts. It was that lessoning, exhaustion and the draining hours of fear that caused the two of us to finally drop into an edgy half-sleep. Holding each other, not carrying that by now we both were soaked damp with humidity driven sweat. 

And at some point before the dawn I gave up the watch, let the barbarians in the gate, I was done. My eyes closed and I did not wake till after the sun was up.

** ** ** ** ** ** ** 

That there were palm fronds against the inside of the hallway door was not a good sign. Nor was the bright light or the sound of the wind.

Opening the door into the house took effort, pushing against piled up debris but I managed it by putting my shoulder into it. The garage door had stubbornly refused to budge despite my full effort. Stepping into the hall, the floor was littered with a mixture of trash blown in and Wendy's things that had been tossed around. She followed me.

"Well, it's going to need a new coat of paint and a shit load of screen doors," she said behind me.

Hearing one of Jason's favorite saying from his mom was startling. I turned to see her looking up through the ceiling rafters at the drizzly, gray-blue sky over head. She had a frown and was looking at everything with a resigned look that told of hopeless feeling of loss.

"So much destruction. I had no idea it would be like this." She hugged herself; one hand on her ribs the other cupping that arms elbow. She flinched when the wind roared up into a hard gust again. Then took a deep breath and looked at me. "Come on, John, let's see the rest of it. Get the shocks over with." I nodded and led the way, trying to pick my way through the tumbled furniture. Broken tree limbs, and a piece of sheet metal roofing, that was embedded into the wall by the kitchen door, were harder to avoid.

"That's from one of my neighbors sheds," she said, as I moved the corrugated metal out the way "He always parked his lawnmower under it. Not anymore, I guess." She moved past me into her kitchen, as I wrestled the crumpled, wet metal into the living room and out the hallway. When I finished with that and followed her into the kitchen she was standing in the middle of it. Her once immaculately organized kitchen was destroyed. Her hand covered her mouth and Wendy looked on the edge of tears or hysterical laughter. Maybe even a mixture of both.

In the distance I heard a chain saw crank up.

"I'm going to take a look outside." I told her stepping around her. "See how bad it is up and down the street."

She simply nodded. "Be careful."

The glass French doors were simply gone; nothing remained of them but the frame I stepped through. In the backyard her garden had been tossed as if it was salad in a bowl, with broken pieces of other people's houses tossed in for croutons. I absently wiped rain water out my hair, as I stepped around what had been her swing, the one she and I had liked to sit on and talk, back when I was here in April. Making my way carefully around towards the front of the house, I saw her power lines were torn out the side of the house by a large tree, fallen from her neighbor's house across her front lawn. I knew they were not live but treated them as if they were as I made my way to the street.

I saw that a limb, from that same tree that took the power lines, was against the garage door pinning it in place, hence why I had not been able to get the door to move. Looking down the street, I saw a few other people moving around. Some seemed to be trying to clear trees and stuff from their driveways, as if they wanted to get their car out and go for a Thursday morning trip down to Tom Thumbs for some bad coffee.

Wind gusts passed by then, making me lean as I walked down and across the street to where I saw a man with a chainsaw cutting. He nodded when I crossed his yard and then he finished the last limb while I watched, then shut off the saw.

"Morning," I said simply, offering my hand.

"Morning back, young fella. We're alive so I guess it's a good one." He shook my hand "What can I help you with? Ya'll came through it alright I hope?"

"Well, the house is a mess, but we're alright ..." He interrupted me.

"That's all you can thank the good Lord for, after something like that."

I nodded agreement. "Yeah, Look I was hoping that when you get done I could borrow that for a few minutes." I pointed at his saw. "I have a branch trapping the garage door shut."

"Sure. Heck, I'll walk over there and cut 'er loose." He picked up his saw. "No reason for more than one person to get covered in saw dust and gas fumes. Might be a few days between baths here till they get things back up and running. I've got my swimming pool I'm going to take my nightly soaks in, well once I get the trash out of it." 

We walked back across the street. I saw Wendy in her garden looking around. She saw us and came around to join us. 

"Morning, Miss Wendy. Your boy here done fetched you some help." He gave me a grin. "I'll get'er done in two shakes."

I moved over to Wendy.

"He thinks you're my son," She told me coming to lean against my chest. "I told him, back when I moved in, I had a son in his twenties." She hugged me. "Everything is a mess inside. The ceiling is opened up to the sky in half the house. The garage, living room and that spare bedroom are the only ones the roof isn't gone from above."

"I saw." I held her to me. I could tell that there were tears in her yet to be shed but the shock, at this moment, was too great. "Don't worry about it too much. That's what insurance is for right? We'll get that taken care of."

"We?"

"We!" behind me the chainsaw stopped cutting wood and shut off. Looking back, I saw he had the branch cut into four manageable pieces. "Thank you for that."

"Not a problem." He brushed wood chips and saw dust off his pants legs.

"Thank you, Calvin," Wendy said not turning my side loose. "Tell Martha I was worried about her last night."

The older man shook his head. "I sent her to her mother's in Birmingham. She's fine other than worrying herself sick about me. I talked to her before it hit and we lost power. They're probably getting it up there at the moment. Martha said last night it was flooding streets up there even then." He shook his head. "Ivan's knocking Alabama's dick in the dirt, pardon my French, now that it's done with us."

Wendy chuckled at the older man's language. "Calvin, this is John by the way. He's a friend of my sons."

"Hell, Miss Wendy I thought he was your son." He looked at her tucked snug under my arm, frowned for a half-second, and then shrugged it off. "Well, I've got two more tree down I need to get to cutting up. I ought to go into the firewood business, what I should do, would make a killing after this. I think half of Escambia County has trees down."

"Thanks again, Calvin." Wendy told him as he walked away. He waved a hand. She looked up at me. "I think he got uncomfortable with seeing me holding you like this."

"Well, he's going to have to learn to deal with seeing it." I smiled down at her. "I like seeing you there. Come on, let's get out the rain and see if we can start salvaging what can be saved."

She sighed. "Won't be much."

Unable to respond to the utter dejection in her words, I simply held her tighter to my side and gave what comfort that could give. Even though I secretly had to agree with her. What wasn't water damaged was simply the things that water couldn't damage. And some of that was broken.

Over the next two hours we did what we could, which really amounted to little or nothing. Wendy and I moved a lot of things from the damaged areas to the living room. I pushed the furniture to the sides and we piled things into the spaces between.

Then the rain began again. And the winds grew. Nothing even close to what they had been, but the memories of last night was still so raw, that we fled back into the garage. Stripping off my wet shirt I left it to dry on a metal storage rack and then stripped off my wet bike leathers. That I was standing naked in front of her, for the second time in two days, even for the time it took to put on the borrowed sweat pants, didn't really hit me till I was almost reclothed. 

When I looked back and saw her looking at me, I shrugged. "My modesty got blown out the window."

"You weren't modest before the storm got here," she answered, with a smirk. "Honestly, I can't say I mind. If I was twenty years younger, I might take advantage of what I just saw to distract me from my troubles." She picked up a copy of a magazine she had been reading through and began to fan her face. "And if it wasn't so blessed hot."

"Yeah." I tugged at the t-shirt. "I'm going to open the garage door a little, see if we can get a breeze in here."

That worked, but the sound of the wind became more prevalent and was jarring to the nerves to both of us. By the time it settled, and the sound of rain began to be the more dominant, we were both ready to close the door, heat or no heat.

"John, I ... thank you."

"For what?" I looked over at her. We had both lain back down in our mattress lean-to simply out of need for a place to sit.

"Staying." She reached a hand over to lay it on my arm. "I'm not sure I could have made it through last night, here by myself. I've always considered myself the one to handle things when the world throws you curveballs. But last night--if I had been here alone --and the roof started vanishing, I think I would have gone mad from fear."

Turning onto my side, I reached over and brushed a lock of hair from her eyes. Gone were the tight hair-sprayed-down curls. Her hair was humidity damped, and hanging lank. Her face looked tired. Her brown eyes showed the strain of last night still, a half wild look as of a creature that had been stalked and only just gotten away. She also had an air of continual worry. I knew that her life had been so badly shattered in the past few years, with the divorce and the move down here, that this was a blow she wouldn't just bounce back from. 

And it was way too soon to judge that anyway.

Even here, with the roof all but gone from her house, she was still a strong woman, but even the strongest things can break. Taking her hand in mine, I curled my fingers in hers and gave her a soft smile.

"You're very welcome. But, I would be nowhere else. If you decide to ever ride out another one of these things, I'll be right beside you for that one too."

She shook her head. "Oh, hell no! They even whisper hurricane and I will be in Canada." Her fingers tightened in mine. "Never in my life have I been as scared, and never in my life will I ever do anything this stupid again. If I had known what was coming at me I would have hitchhiked my way north. Hell, I would have gotten on that thing and rode out of here behind you if I had known. I just ... I just ..."

I slid over to her and pulled her to me as she began to cry. I ignored the combined body heat that was sweltering, I ignored the dregs of the storm that wanted to kick back up again outside, I ignored everything but the woman in my arms. I held Wendy to me for as long as she needed me to. Then lay next to her, my hand on her hip when she drifted into an uneasy nap. The trials of last night had taken a lot out of us both, but seeing her home destroyed had hit her harder than even the fear of death last night.




Brown Eyes in the Storm



Last night had been simply instinctive reactions to danger, a basic human emotion. This was grief. The loss of self that happens when things we give a piece of ourselves to are destroyed, and this house with all the hours work she had put into it since she got down here, had more of her in it that she liked to admit. Now seeing it damaged, broken like a child's toy, she was wrecked not just physically but emotionally. Mentally. And here she was, with only me for comfort. 

Where was her son, god-damn-it!

Pulling my phone from my pocket, I looked at it. No messages. None since before the storm last night. But I still had a signal, if a weak one. The cell towers were possibly damaged, some without power, but at least some of them at least had to still be up. Martin had this number and hadn't called. Then I thought it over and realized that neither had my mother. My father. Wendy's ex. Not one of them. How could they not be worried? Not be concerned over the two of us, given the national news broadcasts that had to be going out of this place, now that the storm had passed.

I tried a quick call out but got nothing. Not even a call signal tone. When I ended that try I noticed the connection bar had vanished.

Leaving her to sleep, I picked up the radio and walked back into the hallway to listen. Turning the wheel dial on the radio though I got nothing but static. Even Radio was dead? Standing here, with sunlight coming in through the dripping ceiling rafters, I began to feel lucky. Lucky to have kept part of a roof. Lucky to not be hunting for loved ones among the rubble, as some of the callers were. Lucky to be alive even.

Seeing movement, I looked up to see the black shadow of Tobias wandering around the house. Startled to see him out of his carrier, I went to go pick him up but he ran back out into dining room to hide in the plants.

"I let him out," said Wendy, from by the garage door. "He needs fed and I can't keep him in that box forever. He's use to wandering the garden freely, but he won't leave the yard." She smiled. "Not for anything. The big baby."

"You sure?" I asked. "There may be stray dogs out."

"Yeah, I'm sure. He won't go anywhere. Hungry?"

I thought it over for a second. "Yeah."

"Well, let's see if the grill made it through in one piece." She walked over and slid her arm into mine. "The least I can do for you is to make sure I keep you well fed. I mean, since you're supposed to be my boyfriend and all. Steaks sound good? If the grill made it I mean."

"My kind of girlfriend." I looked down into her beautiful eyes, smiling when she gave me a wink. My eyes went wide when she rose up on her toes and placed a soft kiss on my lips.

"As I said, least I can do."

** ** ** ** ** ** ** 

The savory smoke from the grill filled the whole of the garden, covering the damp wet smell of house insulation nicely. While Wendy worked on food, I remembered what Calvin across the street had said, and began to work on getting the trash out the pool. I was already getting to a point of fragrance that said a bath would be nice. The heat of September had not really lessened due to Ivan's passage, in fact the tons of rain had made everything swampy feeling. The humidity was cut-able. That breathing-through-a-towel-feeling appeared every time the breeze died down for any length of time.

A pool net was not really meant to remove eight foot palm fronds. But a garden rake worked perfectly. The small pieces of trash took most of my time to dredge off the top, and there was going to be trash on the bottom till I could swim down and pull it out. 

True to what she had said, Tobias simply followed Wendy around in the yard, then darted back inside to make sure the house was still there. He also acted as if the drifting, breeze blown, pieces of pink insulation were beneath his notice as a feline. Something most cats would have been mad to chase after. He ran off to do his house inspection tour again, when I was finished up. I nearly tripped over him, and fell into the now more or less cleaned pool, causing me to cuss. Wendy looked up, and smiled.

"Yeah, he's always been bad about doing that. Jason about broke his neck on those back steps of ours, at the old house, because of him doing that." She smiled at the memory, no doubt wishing her ex had broken something. "Tobias simply can't decide if he's an indoor or outdoor cat. And, he changes his mind rather quickly."

"So I saw." Walking over to her, I placed my hands on her hips and looked over her shoulder at the steaks on the grill. "Looks good."

She turned her head and smiled. Then nuzzled my head with her own. "Thanks. Go see if you can find us something resembling clean plates in my warzone of a kitchen. I'm glad I thought to stick so much water in the freezer, but even now, there is way too much meat in there going to go bad. And we simply won't be able to eat that much before it thaws. I was stupid. I didn't think it would be but maybe a day before they got power back. It might be a month."

I nodded at the truth of that. "Or more. Tomorrow when I go out and about I'll have a talk with some of your neighbors, see if they might need it. No reason to let it go to waste I'm sure there are going to be hungry people here in a few days." I left unsaid that we might be among them. I had decided to keep such thoughts to myself. She had enough to carry. 

Wendy nodded. "You know that's not a bad idea. Back when I was a girl, we used to have block parties. Invite everyone on the street, tell everybody to bring something and just get to know your neighbors. That might be a good way to keep food from going bad till the Red Cross and the Government get off their asses." She shook her head. "I hate to sound critical, but it has been half a day and not a single thing but one helicopter flyover to see if the people on this street are okay."

Having listened to the static filled radio, I knew that probably everybody had their hands full. "Lot of places are a lot worse off. All of the coast and hours inland got hit at least this bad."

She sighed. "I know. I do. I just feel cut off from the world here."

"It's only the first day. They are dealing with the critical places first." I let my hands rub her hips. "Beside we're doing okay for now."

She looked back at me like I had grown two heads. "How you figure? We have no power, no roof on the house, no water pressure, and if we had water we have from the faucets it would be probably dangerous to drink. It will be getting dark here in a few hours and there is, from what the neighbors said, frikin' zoo animals running around loose in this area. Lions and tigers and bears, oh frikin' my, John. How are we doing okay?"

"We have steak and a swimming pool." I said jokingly, and then got serious. "A dry place to sleep. With a way to easily block the doors. We have food supplies. Water in the jugs you froze. You've made friends with neighbors around her for the last year, so they will be looking out for you. That's going to be a big thing again for a while. Neighbors helping neighbors, guarding houses for each other. Keeping a watch for strangers lurking around, certainly before it gets dark. The idea of looting abandoned houses has got to be in the minds of some people now."

She nodded a very serious look on her face suddenly. "John, please do something for me. Go to my bedroom and get a metal lock box from the top of my closet. I have to use a stepladder to reach it, but you should be able to reach up and get it down. Bring it here to me, please." She looked me in the eyes, steady, took a deep breath and then said simply. "My father's gun is in it."

I nodded and went to get it.

** ** ** ** ** ** ** 

The night followed our dinner far too quickly, with a darkness that was oppressive. A silence broken by distant muted sounds. Dogs. Too distant sirens. The sound of music, someone playing a guitar. One by one the sound of chain saws had disappeared with the light.

If only the lack of light had taken the humidity and the mosquitoes with it. The air was thick and as if the passage of the storm had taken all the wind from this area the stillness of the air had a stillness to it that was choking. After dreading the sound of the wind for so long to now be wishing for even a light breeze seemed a crime.

As the shadows grew and the ability to see faded, I reached over and took Wendy's hand in mine. Working together we had cleared a few paths through the house, but it was still a dangerous trek with things to trip over besides a cat.

"Let's head in. It's been a long day." I gave her fingers a squeeze.

"Yeah."

I could hear her exhaustion in even so simple a word. Not turning her fingers loose, I used a few more minutes of our flashlight's battery life to guide us to the back bedroom. One of my tasks today had been to move a mattress and box springs back into that room. It was an element of fortune that Wendy was so fond of scented candles, or we might be spending a lot of time in the dark. 

But the smell, and added heat, of those candles could get to be too much at times. A fact, I discovered, that can make the stifling humidity all the worse.

It wasn't until Wendy pulled a thin sleep shirt from a laundry basket that the realization that she and I had not even thought about the fact we would be in bed together. We had simply set the bed up in here and both gone to it without a moment's contemplation. She turned her back to me and pulled her shirt off, then reached behind her and unhooks her bra. It was looking at that smooth expanse of white skin, the little skin-indents the bra straps had made drawing my eyes, that it really sunk in that I would be sleeping in the same bed next to her.

Last night had been such nervous wracking chaos that, who slept where, had not been a factor. Simple human closeness had been wanted, and needed then.

I watched her pull her sleep shirt on then felt myself harden when she dropped the shorts she was wearing out from under it. Of course given the heat even a shirt and panties was probably going to be uncomfortably warm for her. I hadn't in fact thought about what I was going to sleep in. The sweatpants I had borrowed were comfortable to move around the house in, more so than my leather pants but I was used to sleeping in maybe boxers at the most.

And I didn't have boxers at the moment.

"Blow out the candles please. It's hot enough in here." She told me as she crawled into the bed and moved to the far side. "Oh, and please ... sleep in whatever is comfortable to you. Don't mind me." She gave me a smile. "I think we're both too tired to worry about possible gossip." 

With a nod I made my way around the room and snuffed the three candles, making sure to cover them so the smoky smell of a dead candle didn't fill the room. Then, in the darkness, I slipped out the pants and slid into bed next to her, naked. I placed my back towards her, and then put my hand on the pistol on the nightstand, beside the bed to double check that I could reach it easily.

"John, I don't mind if you face towards me. Just to let you know. You don't have to sleep on the same side all night." She reached over and placed and hand on my side, moving it up hastily when she felt my naked hip. "Just no spooning, it's too damn hot."

I smiled at the sound of her laughter. I placed my hand on top of her. "I'm a little overextended  for that at the moment anyway."

"You're hard?"

"Yeah," I confessed.

"Why?"

I turned over then, looking through the shadows at the silhouetted form next to me. My eyes strained to catch some greater hint of her. Reaching through the darkness I found her shoulder then ran my hand up to where her face should be and brushed her hair back from her eyes. It was already damp and lank with sweat. "Because I am in bed next to a woman I want so badly I can't stand it, because I just saw you topless, even if from the back if was a wonderful sight. And because my body, tired as it is, doesn't listen when I tell it to just go to sleep."

After a second I heard a soft chuckle. "Well. I must say as life events go this one is one I never thought to find myself in. I'm in bed with a naked young man. I'm single and he's got a hard on ... and it's too hot to have sex. And even if it wasn't, I'm too tried for it to sound like fun. Well, I'm flattered that my back can get you hard. Lord, it's a good thing I turned away, if you had seen my boobs you might have had a stroke." 

I chuckled. Using my hand in her hair to guide me I moved to face and, with a giggling from her, found her lips. The kiss was a promise of far more than kisses to come. I gasped when I felt her hand curl around my cock. She chuckled.

"Don't tease a tired old lady when you're naked, John. You come with a handle, remember." She gave me a single slow pump up and down the length of my cock that had me moaning. "I can tease you back a lot worse."

My hand left her hair and I pulled her into me and my mouth all but attacked her lips. She gave a sharp intake of breath and her finger's tightened on me. A feeling that was too wonderful to ever want to feel end. In the darkness, for a moment, I felt her start to respond. Then her hand left me and moved to my chest.

"John, please ... no."

I stopped, my mouth inches from hers, breathing in her exhales. "Wendy, I want you so badly it hurts."

"I know. I know and I'm sorry, but I'm just not comfortable with this. The difference in our ages is just too much. I know I've been a bit flirty back with you but that's nerves as much as anything." Her hand moved to push my hair back out my eyes. "I was married longer than you've been alive. I was in college when you were born. You were still in diapers when I had Martin. Hell, I'm a little older than your mother, for lord's sake, John!"

"True. All true, but Wendy there is something else there that you haven't mentioned." I wanted to pull her tight but the heat, already building between us this close, was making me swelter. "Was it not you that encouraged me to go have as much fun as I could? That told me life was too short to be a prude and to grab pleasure where I could find it, as often as I could? Yes?"

"Yes ... yes, I did say that. John, let me think about this for a bit please. I just have the feeling I'm going to do a lot of harm if I give into what I'm feeling and have a fling with you. Oh, I'll admit that the idea of a long sexual relationship with a man as young and well, as put together as you, is tempting as hell. Yeah, I wouldn't mind that at all, but it's the fact of who you are that stops me. Being my son's friend...."

"Wendy, I have always considered you the better friend. Between you and your son ... if I had to choose one to stay friends with, it would be you. I like Martin, don't get me wrong. I would walk an extra mile to help him any day. But I didn't come down here and stay through a hurricane for him. That was you. Now, I will certainly give you all the time you need to get comfortable with how I feel, but how I feel is not going to change any time soon. I want you. I desire you. And in truth, if I have to be honest and own up to it ... I'm already more than a bit in love with you."

"John you told me that but... now lust is one thing, but that's taking it a bit far. Like I said I'm too old...."

Again my lips tasted hers in the dark, only this time it was me that broke our kiss off. With my fingers trailing a last soft, finger tipped-brushed path across her breast I turned over to face away from her. "Goodnight, Wendy. Try to get some sleep." 

"Good ... goodnight, John."

** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** 

Letting the big bike balance between my thighs I pulled on my gloves, then turned the key and thumbed the red switch. Setting the lower engine mode I wanted, I absently tucked my gifted bangle cross up into my sleeve. Sweltering already, in my unzipped jacket. When the Hayabusa rumbled awake I smiled at Wendy who was looking at it as if it was a snake. I took the white helmet from her and pulled it over my head. 

"I'll be back soon."

"Take care," she said. She reached forwards and closed my visor. "I'm going to see about getting everyone on the street together tonight for dinner."

I nodded and pulled out the garage and down the driveway, Calvin across the street waved a hand. Down the street I swerved more than I drove straight. People had been out and driving through here in cars already, so some stuff had been pulled out the road, but there was still an enormous amount of litter.

You could judge destruction, I soon saw, by how close to the coast the street was, and then there would be places where a tornado had obviously spun off the hurricane and touched down. A narrow path of total destruction, that I saw more and more of in this morning ride to get information. Two day in the "dark" as it were was starting to get on the nerves. The batteries in the radio were dead from hunting through static to try and catch a signal. My cell phone might have been a paperweight, or a six hundred dollar watch, for all I could use it. And if I didn't find some power to recharge it soon I was going to have to shut the Razr off anyway. 

It was better than two miles from Wendy's house before I saw a policeman, a motorcycle cop. I pulled over to where he was standing talking to a man with a truck full of children. None of the kids looked in great shape, if clean was to judge health. The officer nodded his head to me to show that he had seen I needed to speak to him. I shut off the bike and waited for him to get finished. He spent a few more minutes given the man with the big family directions. I heard the word hospital. As the truck pulled away the officer walked over to me.

"Are you needing help, son?"

"Information as much as anything. We've seen nothing of emergency services, since the storm. Everything is dead, info wise. Just need to know what's going on?"

The officer nodded, and I got from the look on his face he had been answering this question a lot today.

"Well, don't expect to see a lot of help for a week or so." He titled his blue baseball style cap, with a gold badge emblem, back on his head then wiped at his forehead. "Everything is down all across Escambia county. Cell towers are twisted erector sets. The TV station's got hammer, so they are going to be off the air for days. The only radio station left standing has no power; they're working on that, so there maybe radio broadcasts by tomorrow. Or possibly the day after. As far as emergency services go, they are rushing towards us from every state not hit my Ivan. The local units either got torn to pieces, same as everything else, or they are swamped."

"So we're on our own."

"For several days at least. The Red Cross has set up emergency centers at several local high schools. The schools that kept their roofs anyway. But unless you can't survive without their help try not to use them. There are people out there that really can't survive, that are in really bad shape."

"Water? Power? Phone service? Any idea as to when?" That the officer immediately started to shake his head told me more than I needed to know.

"I wouldn't expect, anything for a couple of weeks. I know you might not know but the whole coast is like this." He pointed to the power cables hanging like draped Mardi Gras beads. "There is no power for the water company's pumps, and half of their buildings are damaged as well."

"Food? We've got enough supplies for a week or so, but after that?" I shrugged. 

"Well, I've heard an unconfirmed rumor that a Walmart or two may have opened up, and a you might find a local grocery store that made it through all this, and that will take cash." He looked down at my Bike. "Got a full tank on that Busa? There's no power to run gas pumps either, you know. Yeah? Well, then take my advice. Don't look for anything close by, there is a quarter-million people trying to do the same thing. Supplies will get used up quickly till the relief trucks start rolling in."




Brown Eyes in the Storm



"That many didn't evacuate? The roads were packed when I came down."

"Well, those roads are all damaged or impassable in places, now. Interstate 10 is torn to hell. Highway 90 is a mess as well. Like everything." He shook his head, and then turned to look at a black car with two guys in it that pulled up and waved at him. "Anything else, youngster?"

"Nope, that about covers it. Thanks."

"Careful on that thing." He pointed to my bike. "There's all kinds of trash on the roads to get a wheel tangled up on. And the whole county is under martial law, by the way. There's a curfew. Sunset to sunrise."

I nodded and cranked the bike while he walked over to talk to the guys in the car. I could tell he was answering the exact same questions I had asked. As I pulled away, I idly wondered how many times he had already answered them today, and how many more times he would have to hear those same questions in the week, or weeks, to come.

Mindful of what he had said concerning the gas situation I turned the big bike back towards Wendy's. But then stopped and swerved to follow a line of cars picking their way down a road to only turn at the end. I pulled the bike over and stopped to stare at the sight before my eyes. At the end of this road, piled up carelessly like a sullen child's discarded toys, were possibly as many as ten sailboats.

This road was not, really, that close to the gulf. Flooding from the rain? Surely that can't be the storm surge line? 

Then I looked to the right of the sailboats and saw that the whole subdivision next to it was simply destroyed. Suddenly, feeling both very lucky to be alive and so very small in a very big dangerous world, I headed the bike back to Wendy.

I passed a few National Guard trucks on my way back that had not been there on my way in. These didn't have the look of the "digging in the ruble to help survivors" type guard men. Their rifles were very evident. I suddenly was very conscious of the fact I had left Wendy alone.

** ** ** ** ** ** ** 

I shouldn't have worried over her. She was getting back to some semblance of her normal self, giving her something that she knew how to deal with seemed to be what it took to do that. By the time I pulled the 'Busa back into her garage she had the whole neighborhood organized, well to some extent moving in the same direction anyway. I saw several women setting up what looked like an outdoor kitchen. There were men carrying picnic tables of every shape and type out to an area that had been cleaned off. Pulling off my helmet and gloves, I watched her with an inner pride as she directed people like a football coach. And they went where she pointed and did what she asked I noticed. 

Here was exactly what her Ex-husband had never been able to stand, and what her son grumbled about. Wendy could "manage" things with efficiency. Be it organizing a house, or getting together a dozen families to have a community dinner. She was a conductor tuning an orchestra to her liking and the two men in her life wanted to be Rock Gods breaking their Fender Stratocaster guitars across Marshal amplifiers. Well, the third man in her life didn't mind it at all. I left my jacket over the seat of the bike and headed towards her.

When I walked up, to ask her what she needed me to do, Calvin was there and gave me a look. 

"Just like a young fella' shows back up once most of the work is done." There was a grin on his face but I could hear the sincerity in his words as well. I noticed he had on a blue and gold Vietnam veteran's hat that he hadn't been wearing yesterday morning. But it was the old green web belt with the side holstered .45 that really caught my attention. "We could have used you an hour ago."

"Hush, Calvin, what he was doing was more important." she looked to me. "Well?"

With them listening, I went over what the officer--and a few others I had stopped to talk to before and after him--had told me. The part about martial law, the National Guard and the curfew caught the most attention. There was some grumbling that it was going to be at least a few weeks to get the power back on. But then they had not seen the miles of downed power poles and twisted phone, power and cable lines lying like abandoned strings after a cat was done playing with them.

When I finished both where somber. 

Calvin looked over to where the women were fixing a quick lunch. "Let me go tell the gossip service, we need this to spread as far as quickly as it can. Thanks and ... sorry, for what I said."

I waved off the apology and watched him walk over to the kitchen. When I looked back at Wendy she was looking at me. She mouthed the word "Bad?" I nodded. She gave a deep sigh then moved to lean into my chest. I gave her a quick hung then smiled when she pulled back quickly.

"You're all sweaty!"

"My jacket was hot. Sorry."

"What did you wear it for then ... never mind road rash on bare skin, I remember. Come on let's get you a drink."

"Speaking of drinks, I have two bottle of rum in the bag on my bike. Found them just floating in a flooded parking lot. There must be a liquor store nearby there that they got washed out of."

"Oh, I love rum, but that's looting." She linked her arm in mine and we walked over to where the food was soon going to be handed out.

"No, if I had gone into the store and taken it off the shelf that would be looting, this was just floating by. So see, I'm simply helping with the cleanup efforts."

She chuckled then looked around at the neighborhood. Hers was by far not the worst house on the block. There were some with no roof left at all. Several had trees through them. Wendy shook her head and sighed. "It's going to take a lot more than picking up a couple of bottles."

"Yeah...."

** ** ** ** ** ** ** 

With lunch a distant memory, and with the barbeque they had going for dinner making the whole neighborhood smell wonderful, I placed the last limb I intended to haul today on the curb. The house behind me was a mess with a tree through the back half of it, but between the efforts of five guys we had managed to get the branches hauled outside and a tarp the owner had been using to cover his boat over the largest area of damaged roof. 

Dripping sweat in this terrible humidity, I had pushed myself to a point I hadn't been in years. It felt good, similar to the warm muscle glow of a good workout, but I was far too dehydrated by this point. This climate was brutal compared to what I normally enjoyed. Wiping the sweat off my face, I walked over towards Wendy's house and collapsed into the swing set in the back garden.

I know I had only closed my eyes for a moment but then I blinked and the sun had dropped to the tree tops.

"There you are. I'd wondered where you went to." Wend knelt down in front of me, smiled and placed her hand on my leather encased leg. "Come on, have some dinner."

"Almost too tired to eat." With a groan I levered myself to me feet and looked down at her. It was a pleasant surprise when she reached up and brushed my hair back from my face. Even more so when she rose on her toes and placed a soft kiss on my lips. Then her hand caught the fabric of my shirt and pulled me into a much longer, harder kiss.

"Sit. Rest. I'll bring you a plate." She let her fingers trail down my cheek. "Go on, sit back down. I'll be right back."

Easing back down, I let my eyes linger on the curved thighs, and the shapely ass, she presented in the cut off shorts she had put on this morning. Again for a moment I pondered how any fool could leave this woman. But then I let that go. I really didn't care why he had, I was simple glad he had. I sat with my eyes half-closed till I heard her footsteps and opened then to her beauty. 

"Thank you."

"No, thank you, again." She eased into the seat next to me and handed me a can of semi-cold soda. "I don't know what I would have done down here without you."

"You would have managed. You're very good at that." 

She shook her head. "I good with things I can handle. But this ... all of this? No, I needed you here to help me find my way back to where I even know what to try and do." She looked at my plate watching me slowly eat. "Can I get you anything else?"

"One of the bottles from my saddle bag." I moved my can over and let it touch hers. "What's a sunset feast without a cocktail hour?"

She smiled and nodded. "Not too much though. It will dehydrate you more."

Again I watched her walk away and come back, enjoying the view both times. With her steady hands she poured a shot worth of rum into the can I was drinking from, and then did the same for herself. She sat back down next to me sipping her drink and looking at the label. 

"Barbancourt? Hum, can't say I've tried it before. It mixes well."

I simply nodded, enjoying a slight numbing of pain. Probably all mental, there wasn't enough in a shot to take away too much, but then I was simply happy to have a place to sit down, food and the company. All of those were probably helping as well. As I finished eating, the garden began to grow dark around us. I set my plate to the side and took her hand in mine. She had told me last night in a whisper, while we were lying next to each other, that since the storm she was now afraid of the dark.

I watched her silhouette lift the rum bottle to her lips and take a pull directly from it. Then a second.

"That is very good rum." She handed me the bottle "John, I'm going to go take a bath in the pool. Come join me ... please. I would like the company."

Setting the bottle next to my plate, I got to my feet and--with her leading me by my hand--followed her to where the steps descended into the pool. I can't think of a time in my life when I have wished for more light then when she began to pull off her clothes. As is, all I saw of her was a silky outline, with a few highlights that told me little-or-nothing, other than that she was not shaved and her nipples were dark.

"Come on, join me. The water will feel wonderful." Her hand was on mine then her fingers slipped slowly out as she moved forwards and stepped down into the water. She slid under the water without a splash and then I saw her shape in the pool dart towards the other side.

I laid my smelly leather riding pants on a fallen piece of rose trellis nearby and my sweat damp shirt next to it. When I stepped into the pool the water covering my ankles was bathtub hot. But, as I walked out deeper, it got marginally cooler around my feet.

Wendy surfaced right in front of me, rising from the pool like a shadow. I was not expecting to feel her body against mine, but I happily opened my arms and wrapped her into them, as her lips met mine. Her back was a soft warmth under my hands. But it was her mouth, those wonderfully sweet lips seeking mine in that darkness, that I paid my full attention to. I was breathless when she broke the kiss. Before I could say a word her wet fingers were on my lips.

"Just listen for a second." Her hand left my face and came to rest on my chest between my pecks. "I loved Jason, from the moment we met till the day he told me it was over between us. I loved him. I gave him my whole heart. I bore him a son, and watched him raised that son into a person that doesn't like Me." I went to interrupt her but again her hand silenced my lips and words. "Martin loves me yes, I know he does ... but like me, no. I did everything I know how to do to give my husband the easiest life that he could have. He came home to a cooked meal, every night. The house was always clean, his clothes always ironed. I ... I can't, in truth, say sex was his for the asking, but it was just about that."

Wendy pulled me into her then, leaned her head onto my chest and hugged me. "I enjoyed it and he was a lot nicer to me afterwards, not so surly when I  managed him ... so yeah, sure. Why not?"

"Because he never appreciated what he had. That's why." I cupped the back of her cool, wet head; my finger sinking into her hair. "He never looked at what you were doing and saw that it was out of love. He saw it as you doing it to make him live the way, you, wanted him to live. Both of them did, I know I've heard them bitch."

She nodded, which was nothing more than a rubbing of her face against the wet hair on my chest. I took a deep breath enjoying feeling her bare breasts, the nipples twin hard points.

"John ... I'm tired of being used. I've let men do that to me, use my own nature against me to give them what they wanted and then I got treated like shit for doing it." I could not make out her facial expression in the dark but I could see that she was looking up at me. "Now, I know I'm the one that told you to make your twenties about sex, that those were the fun years, to go live them up. If that's what you are wanting from me ... okay, a fling isn't out of the question. But will you please tell me that now? Tell me that sex is all you're wanting from me."

For a second I thought she had more to say but then realized she was waiting for my answer.

"Marry me."

Her gasp alone broke the silence that followed those two words. Again I wanted to curse the lack of light that kept from me her face.

"I ... I can't ... I mean...." 

Squatting down in the water, I caught her with both my arms under her ass and lifted her upper body clear of the water. She clung to my head and shoulders then moaned when my lips found one of her nipples; I sucked that tight point in between my lips. Her fingers tightened in my hair, holding me to her breast. Slowly I turned in the water, and then I let her sink back into the water till her feet were resting on the pools step. My cock, hardening quickly, was between her thighs and she was panting for breath when my mouth claimed hers, now level with mine, again. I let this kiss tell her all that I felt for her. Slowly, I titled my forehead till the kiss broke. We stood there in the water our bodies touching from that point of contact all the way down to our knees.

"I want you, Wendy. I want you tonight. I want you tomorrow night and for all the tomorrow nights after that. I want to ..."

"Shush. No, John. No. That can never happen." She caressed my face, leaving pool water to weep away like tears. "Think of Martin, what he would ...."

"I really don't care what he thinks for even a moment."

"Then think of this. I'm still in my fifties true, but what about ten years from now? You will still be so very young and I'll be a gray haired lady."

My lips brushed hers as my hand cupped her ass. "I'll help keep you young."

"Oh, lord ... JOHN! I'm not joking." She placed a hand on my chest to keep me from kissing her again and sighed. "I'm ... I ... look, I need some time to look at the idea of a man in my life again. With everything that has happened I might make a rushed judgment I would regret." Her hand slowly began to caress my chest. "Like this one. I ... I want you to take me to bed. Nothing beyond that, not yet. Just a simple night of pleasure, to drive away some of the fear from the last few days. Will that be acceptable to you?"

"It's a place to start from." I loved it when she moved to snuggle into my chest. "A very good place."

"You're just saying that because you're going to get laid." Her hand moved down and she wrapped her fingers around my cock. She slowly stroked it. "But I mean, since if I'm going to have you sleeping next to me tonight anyway, I might as well have some fun ... right? That's what I've been telling you; can't have you calling me a hypocrite, now can I?"

"I love you, Wendy. I would never call you a hypocrite."

"I know you do, John. Come on." She gave me a tug. "Let's go have some fun."

"Why leave? It's cooler here." I let my hand caress her back down till my fingertips rested on her ass cheek. 

"It's also very public."

I had to laugh. "Lovely, I can't even see the nose on your face. Who will see us?" "Not see us ... hear...Me." Even in the darkness I could tell she was embarrassed. "I tend to be a bit ... vocal."

"Oh, do tell me more." My hand moved to cup her ass again and I leaned my head into to kiss her again. She was, I found when our lips touched, smiling.

"Would rather show you." She teasingly bit my lip "Come on."

She took my hand and, with me following the dark figure before me, led me out the pool. We paused, on our trek through the house, only long enough to each grab a towel. I was suddenly very glad for the time I had spent with a broom yesterday. Walking barefoot would have been impossible before that, and putting back on my riding boots, onto wet feet, was not at all an attractive idea.

When we arrived at the spare bedroom, now the only bedroom without its ceiling open to the sky, Wendy turned my hand loose and moved to where the battery lamp was. The bulb was a very dim, the batteries were almost dead. She turned towards me to find me smiling at her. She looked down at her naked body and gave a shrug. Then her eyes roamed over me, not bothering to be subtle or shy about it, a simple frank examination. Her little appreciative sigh of pleaser was an ego stroke. She set the lamp to the side and moved over to the bed.

"Come here you. I'm tired of being teased," she said, as she laid herself down. I watched for a moment her hand caress the outside of her thigh.

I did not need an invitation. That was a party I was going to attend even if I had to crash the gate. Moving over to her, I followed her onto the mattress, looking down into her dark eyes as we moved in to kiss. Her hand stopped me against my chest.

"This is just for this once. Understand?"

I nodded unable to trust my voice to speak, fearing I would say something stupid and not even get this moment. This incredibly magical moment as I crossed that last inch to her lips. Now it was my hand on her hip, then crossing her thigh. Then running through that tight tangle of hairs to touch her puffy mound. Wendy moaned into our kiss, then her lips playfully smiled and I felt her hand move between us to again wrap around my cock. Her fingertips lightly tickling my balls.

Under my fingers I felt her move; she opened her legs and lifted herself to meet my touch. Her nether lips were soaked, possibly from pool water but my mind told me no likely. The woman under me was. As she said, tired of being teased. Tired of being aroused and not sated. And as my fingers ran between those plump lips and touched her labia again she moaned into out joined lips, filling my mouth with a breath of passion.

It was a sound I copied as she tightened her hand around me.

Then her lips were by my ear, a whisper that tickled the hairs on the nap of my neck. "A small part of me wants to play with you all night, tons of caressing, all the oral we both can stand and orgasms like crazy. But the better part of me, the part that might tell you what I feel for you, wants you to simply be inside me. To cover me with your body and make me part of you. To be made love to. Please, John, take the bad choice away."

"Beautiful, there is no bad choice between those two." I pushed myself up and slid between her legs. She wrapped her arms around my neck as I slowly lowered myself into position. "There's no reason to choose, either." I felt her open up for me and I gave a solid push that moved me into her completely. She moaned under me. "You can have both."

"Come here then."

The house was no less humid than it had been but now that heat was ignorable. She felt like a sexual furnace when I felt my chest touch the whole of her; those soft breasts pushing up against me. It was a heat I welcomed as I began a slow rocking pump into and out of her. Her gripping me tightly. And then, true to her word, she began to moan.

From delicate whimpers when I bottomed out in her, to full throated growls of lust when I pulled back and pushed home with force.