A Deadly Cliche bbtbm-2

by Ellery Adams

  The hurricane specialist on The Weather Channel was in his element, gesticulating at the blue screen as he pointed at rain bands, the enlarged eye, and the overall width of the circulating mass. The other reporters shared his ecstasy, their faces gleaming like polished apples as they reviewed Ophelia’s wind gusts, path, and predicted landfall.

  Olivia and her Oyster Bay neighbors were hypnotized by the graphics and the commentary, but when the program switched gears and began to display footage from Floyd, Olivia told Gabe to lock up. Gathering Haviland from her office, she prepared to exit through the kitchen door.

  “Do you think there’s any point in coming in Tuesday?” Michel asked. Over steaming pots, cutting boards, and sinks of dirty dishes, the kitchen staff looked at Olivia expectantly.

  “No,” she answered without hesitation. “We won’t reopen until the power is restored. When the lights come on in town, The Boot Top needs to be ready to serve dinner the same night. Tomorrow we’ll offer brunch to the soggy church goers and then lock up until Ophelia’s gone.” Shouldering her purse, she gazed around the kitchen. “Be careful everyone. I don’t want the inconvenience of having to hire a new staff because you surfer types were lost to a riptide or those of you with jacked-up pickups trucks decided it would be fun to drive through flooded streets.”

  One of the sous-chefs sniggered, but Michel silenced him with a glare.

  “We will take care, Ms. Limoges,” he said, issuing a formal bow. “Remember, if the waves get too high, you should climb to the top of the lighthouse.”

  More sniggering. “The generator will keep the freezer and walk-in fridge running, but if there’s any perishable food beyond what’s needed for tomorrow’s brunch, feel free to take it home to your families.”

  The dishwasher thanked her in Spanish and then rushed forward to open the door for her. The floodlight above the door illuminated the persistent rainfall beyond the restaurant’s walls.

  Olivia and Haviland scurried to the Range Rover. The rain was deceptively gentle, like a steady and nourishing springtime drizzle. The only indication that the fury of nature was about to rend the town apart was the sickly yellow and puce tinge to the edge of the clouds.

  The drive to Flynn’s bungalow was eerie. The streets were nearly deserted and the wet pavement shimmered in the otherworldly light. Olivia passed only one car on Main Street and she could see that many of the shops had closed early. Even the streetlights lining the sidewalk seemed forlorn.

  Flynn’s Caribbean-style bungalow was a welcome sight. Every light was on and the house glowed with misty warmth, like a roaring fire viewed through an ice-crusted windowpane. Unfamiliar music drifted from the open front door. Olivia cocked her head. It sounded like Cuban jazz—a perfect mixture of vibrant rhythms blending with a seductive and smooth melody.

  “Here’s lookin’ at you, kid.” Flynn rose from his painted wooden rocking chair to greet her with a kiss.

  Olivia returned the kiss with unusual tenderness. “It was sweet of you to wait up for me. Your place looks like a beacon in the night.”

  “I could hardly watch mindless television knowing you were on the way, so I decided to make it clear that I was anxiously awaiting your arrival.” He dipped a widemouthed glass in salt and poured her a margarita from a nearby pitcher. Adding a lime wedge, he placed the glass on a rattan coaster and gestured at the other rocker.

  Settling into the cobalt-colored chair, Olivia signaled for Haviland to find a discreet place behind the house to take care of business. Delighted to finally be allowed a measure of freedom after being cooped up in Olivia’s office all evening, the poodle darted off the porch and disappeared into the rainy night.

  Olivia and Flynn made predictions about the storm and listened to the rainfall. Haviland returned, detaching himself from the shadows, and sat on the front mat, clearly asking to be let inside. He was ready for bed, but Olivia was reticent to break the spell being woven out of night rain, tequila, and Flynn’s jazz record.

  “So who’s this old friend you’re going to visit?” Olivia asked, wanting to linger on the porch a little longer.

  Flynn didn’t answer. Instead, he got up, walked to her, and gently pulled her out of her chair. Pressing her against him, thigh against thigh and hip against hip, he cupped her face in his hands and whispered, “Hmm, a personal question. Are we taking our relationship to the next level?”

  Olivia stiffened in his arms. “What does that mean?”

  There was a smile in Flynn’s voice as he murmured his reply in her ear. “It means that you’ll stay for breakfast. Try it just once and see how it feels.”

  Relaxing, Olivia sought his lips. They were warm and inviting. “All right,” she agreed, her voice low and deep with need. “But no stacks of pancakes or three-egg omelets. I prefer lighter fare.”

  “The best I could scrounge up would be bread and jelly,” he said with a low laugh as he led Olivia inside.

  The next morning, Olivia and Flynn ate toast with strawberry jam and drank coffee in front of the television. Ophelia had picked up speed overnight and was likely to make landfall just after dawn on Monday. As they watched, the program was interrupted by an emergency announcement. The screen turned cardinal red, and white letters appeared, alerting those throughout the county that the mayor was calling for voluntary evacuations.

  “Wow,” Flynn breathed, his coffee cup frozen midair. “This is serious.”

  Olivia carried her dishes to the kitchen. “You should get going. The roads will get crowded quickly.”

  Seeing that his mistress had no leftovers for him, Haviland moved to the door and waved his tail, obviously eager to leave.

  “I need to go home and feed the Captain anyway. He’s too much of a food snob to settle for toast.” Olivia gave Flynn a little smile.

  He put his mug down and walked her to the door. Taking her hand he said, “Are you sure it’s safe to stay out on the Point?”

  “Why? Do you want me to evacuate with you?” It had meant to be a jest, but Olivia saw a look of alarm dart across her lover’s gray eyes. Fiddling with Haviland’s collar, she turned away and gave Flynn time to decide whether he wanted to open up about his destination or keep the identity of his ‘old friend’ private.

  Several seconds passed and she could sense a gulf widening between them. In that stretch of silence, they’d each taken a step away from one another.

  Olivia was ready to go. She pasted on a carefree smile and said, “I’ll be fine. See you soon.” She watched Flynn relax and reach for an umbrella.

  “Let me accompany you to your car. It’s raining buckets. Geysers. Veritable tsunamis.”

  Waving off the umbrella, Olivia gave Flynn a peck on the cheek and left without looking back. Pulling the hood of her raincoat over her hair, she tried to avoid the deeper puddles polka-dotting the road, poignantly aware that whatever progress she and Flynn had made last night had been lost. The look on his face when she mentioned accompanying him to Raleigh told of secrets Flynn wanted to preserve. If he had truly wanted to let her in, he would have spoken up, but the moment had passed and he’d been returned to bearing the label of casual lover.

  “It’s better this way. Less complicated,” Olivia told her rain-speckled reflection in the rearview mirror.

  She vowed to never wake up in Flynn’s bed again.

  At home, Olivia fed Haviland and printed out Millay’s chapter, intending to save the critique work as a means of entertainment during the inevitable power outage.

  The rain had increased in tempo since Olivia’s return. No longer the gentle and steady precipitation of last night, it fell in a disharmonious staccato. By early afternoon, the wind gained a voice, fluttering like heavy curtains in accompaniment to the rain. By four o’clock, however, it dominated the noise of the ocean and begun to rush around the sides of the house and over the roof like a low-flying airplane, growling and hissing. Soon, Olivia knew, it would sound less like an angry witch outsmarted by a fairy book child and more li
ke the enraged howl of Jack’s giant.

  As the afternoon waned, Olivia’s lights flickered several times but did not go out. She kept near the television, watching in awestruck fascination as the storm hurtled toward the North Carolina coast. The recommendation to evacuate continued throughout the day and Olivia received several calls from her staff at The Boot Top as well as from members of the Bayside Book Writers asking after her welfare. The person she wanted to hear from most, however, did not call.

  For dinner, Olivia ate beef stew and fresh bread slathered with butter, then returned to the sofa with a glass of red wine. She had to turn the volume of the television higher in order to compete with the clamor of the rain-laden wind. A sodden journalist reported live from the Outer Banks where widespread power outages had occurred minutes before their broadcast. Hearing the news, Olivia checked the placement of her battery-powered lamps.

  “It won’t be long now,” she told an anxious Haviland.

  She also had her raincoat, hat, and waders waiting by the front door in preparation to start the small generator hidden behind a wooden screen on the side of the house. It could only power the refrigerator and the kitchen lights, but Olivia planned to run an extension cord from the outlet behind the fridge to the countertop, ensuring the continued use of her coffee machine.

  “Ophelia may huff and puff and try to blow the house down, but nothing will stop me from having coffee,” Olivia had declared to Haviland earlier that weekend.

  She also had a waterproof radio and TV unit to switch on once her main set went dark, but the little emergency television had a tiny screen and a flimsy antenna and Olivia doubted it would be of much good. Still, she turned it on and flipped between the three available stations until she was able to get a grainy picture of an anchorwoman’s face. Shortly afterward, a powerful burst of wind shook the walls from roof to foundation and the house fell into a state of semi-darkness.

  “I’ll be right back,” Olivia spoke soothingly to her agitated poodle. “I need to start the generator.”

  Outside, the sky had a surreal, white gray glow, as though Ophelia were exhaling wet smoke. Even dressed in her foul-weather gear, rain pelted Olivia’s face and crept under her collar. The wind was nearly strong enough to knock her flat, and when she had to use both hands to grab the wooden screen surrounding the generator to regain her balance, a strong gust snatched her hat away.

  “Damn!” Olivia tried to shout as she yanked on the generator’s pull start, but her words were stolen before they could even leave her mouth. The generator roared into life and Olivia felt an exaggerated sense of triumph.

  Her smugness was short-lived, however, for when she climbed into bed, she found it impossible to sleep. Ophelia pounded on every surface with fists of wind and water. It didn’t help that the last report Olivia had seen on her tiny television in the kitchen had been of a missing fishing boat and the plight of its five-man crew.

  Lying in the dark with Haviland burrowed under the covers at her feet, Olivia couldn’t push away the memories of her final night with her father. She was tired of remembering his wild eyes and raised fist, of imagining him falling overboard and his body sinking to the cold depths where no sunlight penetrated, of wondering if the fog and sea had ruined her or rescued her. But the memories wouldn’t leave her room.

  Shortly after midnight, she decided that the only way she’d sleep was by downing a few fingers of Chivas Regal. She’d just poured a glass when someone knocked hard on the front door.

  Olivia blinked but didn’t move, a shiver rippling up the skin of her back.

  “Who’s there?” she shouted a challenge and was stunned when Chief Rawlings bellowed in reply, “It’s Sawyer! Open the door, Olivia!”

  She immediately complied. “What are you—”

  “Pack a bag,” he ordered, stepping in out of the rain. Turning, he used both arms, locked at the elbows, to close the door behind him. “You can’t stay here. The worst is yet to come.”

  Water dripped from the chief’s regulation rain cape and boots. His face was pinched with anxiety and exhaustion and his presence filled up Olivia’s spacious kitchen as though he were ten men, not one.

  “But I’m fine,” Olivia managed to protest. “Aren’t there people who need you more than me? Those living near the shore or in trailers by the river? This house was built to withstand this type of storm. I’ve got—”

  Rawlings reached her in two strides. Grabbing her arm, he gave her a rough shake. “Don’t be a fool! I know you’re capable and tough and independent, but this”—he pointed out the kitchen window—“is more than even you can handle! Now go upstairs and pack a bag. I’m taking you with me if I have to cuff your hand to my own wrist!”

  Sawyer’s eyes were blazing with filaments of jade green. He smelled of mud and coffee and wet rubber. Olivia raised her arm and touched the end of a soaked lock of his salt-and-pepper hair, catching a fresh drip between her fingertips. The chief’s face softened instantly. Seizing her hand, she thought he might pin it behind her back and make good on his threat to place her in handcuffs. Instead, he lowered his chin and kissed her palm, like a knight receiving his lady’s favor. “Please come with me. I can’t do my job when half of my mind’s on you.”

  Inexplicably, Olivia now remembered that she was angry at the chief. “And where would I stay?” she asked. “With you?”

  “If you’d like. I have a guest room. It’s nothing fancy, but I’ve got a generator.”

  She shook her head. “I bet your place is still filled with your wife’s things. I . . . couldn’t stay there.”

  Pain flashed into Rawlings’ eyes. She’d hurt him by assuming that he surrounded himself with the relics of the past.

  “Then go back to Flynn’s,” the chief said through gritted teeth. “You should have stayed put at his place a little longer.”

  Olivia drew back. “Have you been following me?”

  Rawlings picked up his saturated cap from the counter. He wouldn’t look at her. “Last chance. Are you coming with me?”

  Even though every cell in her body crackled with desire and the soft flesh on the center of her palm where Rawlings had kissed her felt molten, Olivia knew she had ruined the opportunity to reach for the man she truly wanted.

  Sawyer Rawlings had driven all the way to the Point to carry her to safety. He’d interrupted the haunted musings of her past to stand drenched and weary in her kitchen and she had responded by irrevocably spoiling his noble gesture.

  Not knowing how to make amends, Olivia said nothing.

  By the time she realized that an apology would have been a good place to begin, Rawlings had walked out the door and into Ophelia’s aqueous embrace.

  Chapter 8

  The little reed, bending to the force of the wind, soon stood upright again when the storm had passed over.

  —AESOP

  By Monday night, Ophelia had spent her wrath. Her winds were no longer roars, but whispers. The raindrops no longer slammed sideways against windows and rooftops, but dropped reluctantly from the sky, as though exhausted from the effort of having to detach from clouds impatient to be on their way.

  It was dark by the time the world finally fell silent. Olivia stepped out onto the deck, feeling like she was in the middle of starless space. The only illumination within miles came from the lighthouse, whose beacon swept the ocean and provided an illusion of normalcy.

  She couldn’t see how far up the beach the water had come, but the hiss of incoming waves sounded closer than usual. The sea was still swollen, and though it no longer seemed boiling with violent surges, it was not yet at rest.

  Olivia’s house had weathered the storm, but she couldn’t stop wondering how others had fared. How were the rest of the Bayside Book Writers? And what of Dixie, who lived in a pair of doublewides haphazardly attached by a covered breezeway? She refused to think how Rawlings had spent the past twenty-four hours, pushing away the image of him standing in her kitchen like a big, wet bear.


  The night passed slowly. Olivia let Haviland out to stretch his legs, but she knew the terrain had become altered in the storm and it would be unwise for her to venture forth in the dark. She continued to work the mammoth jigsaw puzzle of the Sistine Chapel, the radio her only companion.

  Ophelia still held the media captive. Reports were given every fifteen minutes on the effects the weakening hurricane was having over central North Carolina and southern Virginia. Around ten P.M., a sound bite provided by a representative from the Coast Guard told of their failure to locate the fishing trawler missing since Sunday morning. “At this point, it is unlikely that any of the five men aboard were able to survive,” the man stated grimly.

  Olivia looked down at the puzzle section she’d just completed. It was Michelangelo’s rendition of God dividing the waters. She stared at it a long time, her thoughts fixed on the missing fishermen. She imagined the crew members being hurled into the water, fighting for air until their lungs burned and they surrendered their last breath to the ocean. She pictured their souls being pulled from their lifeless bodies by a pair of powerful yet tender hands, lifted up, up out of the cold and the wet, beyond the rain bands and the noise of the wind.

  Running her fingers over the surface of the puzzle, Olivia touched the fine cracks where the pieces met and then switched the radio to a smooth jazz station, hoping to turn her thoughts to other things. But she found the music too upbeat, almost mocking in its vivaciousness, so she turned the radio off. She completed the section showing a portrait of Daniel and decided to call for Haviland and go to bed.

  “Captain!” she shouted into the night air and waited for him on the deck. The poodle loped up the stairs, his fur slick with moisture and his tongue lolling in happiness. Envying him his freedom, Olivia took him into the kitchen, dried his coat with a towel, and kissed his damp nose.