“Of course, just make sure you use hot water.”
Emily went up the stairs and knocked at the guest room door. There were muffled voices. She came back down with her arms full of clothes, her nose crinkled at the smell. She went into the laundry room connected to the garage by an access door. The garage door screeched up.
“How bad is the weather report?” Barbara asked Gerald.
“Bad. They say this may be a five-hundred-year-flood.”
According to the animated weather girl, Austin was known as Flash Flood Alley, one of the most flood-prone areas in the nation.
“That bit of media attention is going to be bad for tourism, not to mention downtown development,” Barbara said.
“Doubt it,” he said. “You can't keep Austin down. This city will grow no matter what.”
The garage door scraped back down and Emily banged into the laundry. Barbara fought the urge to ask if she needed help. The washing machine dial made its scratchy metal grind and then there was water running.
Gerald pushed up the volume on the television. News reports from the coast were better than expected. Offshore oil refineries that were slammed during previous hurricanes were spared this time. Residential damage was bad but not insurmountable. People were already trickling back to their homes and businesses. There were shots of residents taking plywood down and stripping the giant X marks of tape from windows.
“It seems Gordon decided to hold most of its water until South Central Texas and then unload on us,” Gerald said.
“We always get that. We needed rain, but this is ridiculous.”
Emily plopped on the sofa next to her mother.
“She's asleep,” Emily said, looking back up the stairs as if to make sure of this.
“I don't like the tattoos,” Barbara said.
“I know. It takes some getting used to.”
“It's sick. Nobody should have their face tattooed.”
“Maybe the tattoos were to make her look tough, less approachable, if you know what I mean.”
“Nobody is ever going to hire her with a face like that. She's going to have to get those removed before she'll get anywhere in life.”
Barbara recognized the defiant flash in her daughter's eyes and braced for impact.
“So,” Emily snapped, “let me get this straight. It's fine for you and your friends to get Botox injections and facelifts and have eyebrows and lips permanently tattooed on. It's okay to get the fat sucked out of your hips and injected into your cheeks and have your eyelids sliced off and bags of silicon stuffed under your chest muscles, but a pretty design on somebody's face makes them a horrible person?”
“Tattoos aren't pretty. They're a distasteful sign of lower class.”
“Other cultures find them beautiful.”
“But honey, this isn't other cultures.”
“She's right, you know,” Gerald said. “It's not just bikers and criminals and military anymore. Lots of people get them now.”
“I can't believe you're taking Emily's side. Thank you very much, Gerald. How about I just run right out and get one? How'd you like it if I had a big old dragon tattooed up my arm?”
“I don't know, hon. Seems kind of kinky to me.”
Emily laughed.
“Very funny,” Barbara said.
“You don't have any tattoos, do you?” he asked Emily.
“No.”
“Okay,” he said.
“But I was thinking about getting one. A great big bird on my lower back.”
“What the kids call a tramp stamp?” Gerald laughed and turned back to the weather.
“Gerald, this isn't funny. Do you want your beautiful daughter to have a tramp stamp?”
“Leave me out of this.”
“Would you think of me any differently if I had artwork on my back?” Emily asked.
“I don't know,” Barbara said, but her thoughts were more truthful. She knew that she wouldn't be as eager to claim Emily if she marked herself that way. Piercings could close; crazy-colored hair grew out. But tattoos were a commitment.
Still, she dared not protest too much.
Emily
THE WHINE of the treadmill carried up the stairs and through Emily's old bedroom door. Her mother's steps a soft punctuating rhythm, Emily listened as her mother ran and ran and ran.
“That woman needs a bike,” Emily said out loud to the room.
Emily switched on the tiny television on the bureau. She twisted her hair up. The polished local newscaster said Austin was in shambles and Emily stopped, toothbrush in mouth, to watch brown churning ribbons of water pushed high against the banks of an unidentified river. A house was wedged under a bridge. Parking lots were lakes of mud. People cried. A man waded into a flooded area to rescue a dog on a floating pile of wreckage.
Downstairs, her father was watching the same thing on the plasma while he flipped pancakes. He had bacon and eggs already arranged on a platter and orange juice on the table.
“Smells good, I'm so hungry,” she said, filching a piece of bacon. She wandered over to the coffeepot.
“Emily,” Dad said. “I want to talk to you about something.”
“Sure, Dad. What's up?”
“Not now. I thought maybe we could go to lunch. You know, just you and me.”
Emily's phone beeped. It was a text from Travis.
Need photographer 4 BHN flood story. Interested? Will pay.
“Hold that thought, Dad.”
She texted back.
Yes. In burbs. When? Where?
Another beep.
ASAP. Come to the office w camera.
K. Meet you at noon?
Beep.
K.
Emily went to the laundry room to fold the rest of Lorelei's clothes. The sleeping bag came out clean with the scent of fresh linen fabric softener that was the smell of Emily's childhood. She stuck her head into the garage where her mother was pounding out three miles on her gerbil wheel.
“Morning,” Emily said.
“Tell your father not to eat eggs,” Barbara said as she huffed along. “His cholesterol is sky high.”
“Okay. I will.” She hesitated. “I need to ask a favor.”
“Ask away.”
“Can I borrow your SUV?”
“Why?”
“I need to go downtown.”
“Why? It looks like a war zone. You probably shouldn't go home for a couple of days.”
“It's a job.”
She paused the treadmill.
“Okay. I'm all ears.”
“So, I know this reporter, and he works for Be Here Now, and he asked me to shoot a story he's working on.”
“Which reporter?”
“Travis Roberts.”
“Ugh. He's an asshole.”
“No he's not. Anyway, I have to go right now.”
“Do they pay?”
“Yes. So, can I borrow your vehicle?”
“For how long?”
“I don't know. A day or two.”
“And I'd have to drive the MINI?”
“I guess. Unless you could get Gerald to drive it. The tires are kind of bald.”
Her mother considered this, then said, “There's a press pass in the glove compartment. Hang it on the rearview and you can park anywhere.”
“Thank you. I really appreciate this.”
“Wait. There's a condition.”
There was always a condition with Barbara.
“You have to take that girl with you. No leaving her here.”
“I wasn't going to leave her.”
“So what are you going to do with her? You just going to let her out downtown and say ‘see ya later, have a nice life?’”
Emily hadn't thought that far ahead.
Barbara moved to the heavy bag. Before she landed her first punch she said, “She's not all together, all together, if you catch my drift.”
“I know she's damaged.”
“And there's another condition
.”
“What?”
“You can't let her live with you. I mean, what do you know about this girl? If you let her live with you she's going to need her drugs one day and just take your purse or your television or something.”
“I'm not going to let her live with me.”
“Promise me.”
“Okay. I promise.”
An hour later Emily and Lorelei were in Barbara's Acadia on their way downtown. Like the majority of cars in Austin, her mother's vehicle was bright white. There was no telling what color it would be after today.
“You don't look like you come from a place like this,” Lorelei said as she watched the commercial signage whip by.
“Everybody's got to be from somewhere. Where are you from?”
She didn't answer, so Emily just left that line of thought open. “You're right. My parents belonged to the country club, but I never liked the plaid polo crowd.”
“Yeah. I knew some of those kids.”
“How about alternative rockers? The ones around here are pretty sad,” Emily said, trying to connect. “Posers.” She'd hung around with a few of those types in high school, but most of them never got past the first few riffs of Smells Like Teen Spirit on their thousand-dollar Fender birthday presents.
Lorelei stared out the window and chewed a fingernail.
After a few minutes of lull, Emily said, “So, I got a photography job today for a newspaper. You ever read Be Here Now?”
“Sure. You can get it all over the place for free.”
“Do you read the column by Travis Roberts?”
“Yeah. I read the whole paper. That guy, he's pretty smart.”
“Yeah. He is smart. That's what I like about him.”
A pause.
“Do you like like him?”
“I don't know. Maybe.”
“Does he like you back?”
Emily shrugged. “I don't know. I'm betting he'll come around.”
“You have a lot of boyfriends?”
“I wouldn't say that. I date a lot.”
“So you have sex a lot.”
“Well.” Why did this embarrass her? “Well, I guess that's true.”
“God, don't wig out. I've had sex.”
“Really.”
“Everybody my age has had sex. Especially gutter punks.”
“Why?”
“That's just how things roll. I used to do it with a guy who was like, thirty or thirty-five.”
“That's gross.”
“Why? Because you think I'm jailbait?”
“There's no way you're eighteen.”
“Maybe I am, maybe not.”
She jiggled her foot. She seemed eager to get back into town. Maybe she had taken something that had her jacked up. If she'd smoked crack in her parents’ bathroom, Emily would never hear the end of it.
The southern part of town was a mess. Stalled cars were abandoned in giant pools of water right in the road. Gutters were clogged with fast-food cups and plastic toys. One intake drain was clogged with a Virgin Mary and a tiny donkey cart filled with flowers, popular Austin lawn ornaments.
Every so often, Lorelei would whisper, “Wow. Look at that.”
The SUV plowed through standing pools and rubble, water raking the undercarriage, monster sprays of water pluming from both sides. There was no way the MINI would have made it.
As the road gradually descended toward the river, the drama increased. Downtown damage would be worse around the creeks and the low-lying parks. There would be nowhere for the homeless to camp and all the shelters would be filled. Emily knew when she promised her mother that Lorelei wouldn't stay that it was probably a lie.
Still, her mother's warnings rang in Emily's head. It was true. Lorelei could take advantage of her, but if Emily wanted to gain her trust she would have to trust first. But even with this thought, when they pulled up outside of her house, Emily chose to leave her important things in the vehicle. No need to unpack just yet.
The yard was a pit. The front porch stained clay-red. All around her house was a ring of sienna about a foot high. The first few steps leading to the back door were slimed.
“Just grab what you need and leave the rest here. I'll be back later.”
Lorelei had only two things, and she took them both. She slipped her boots off when she reached the top step and left them outside.
“I have some house shoes you can wear. You can sleep on the futon in the spare room.” Emily pointed down the short hall. “Just throw your stuff in there.”
She went to the spare room. Water came on in the bathroom.
Emily tried the television. It was dead. When Lorelei came back, Emily said, “Sorry to tell you this, but there's no TV. I don't have a house phone and I'm taking my computer with me, so you don't have much to entertain you here.”
Lorelei looked at Emily's bookshelf. “Are you kidding? You have all these books.”
“Knock yourself out.”
“Sweet,” she said absentmindedly, already absorbed in the titles on the spines. Emily suddenly realized that Lorelei always lived without phones and televisions and computers. A book was most likely the height of entertainment to her.
“There's not much food. I'll bring a pizza when I come back, but I have no idea when that will be. You can eat anything you can find.”
“Whatever. I'm not hungry.”
Back in her mother's vehicle, Emily slowly picked her way downtown toward her meeting with Travis. He was a mystery. He seemed indifferent to her charms, but she was determined she'd get his attention.
She cut through her neighborhood over to the Congress Street Bridge, a strong high structure that was a main artery into the city. If any of the bridges into downtown were open, this would be the one.
As she drove it occurred to her that there was beer in the fridge and a cheap bottle of wine already open on the counter. If Lorelei took a mind to get drunk there was plenty of alcohol around. She could have a cell phone tucked away somewhere. What if she called some of her friends and invited them over to the house? Maybe her mother was right. What did Emily really know about this girl? And why did she feel compelled to help her?
Maybe she did have a crummy people filter. This could really come back to bite her in the ass.
Travis
HIS ASSIGNMENT had gone from the dry subject of drought to the juicy job of writing about the aftermath of a major flood.
The last great flood ripped through Austin back in 1981. That event took Shoal Creek from ninety gallons of water per minute to six million. Just like then, thunderstorms had ringed Austin for miles, and the city had gotten ten inches of rain in four hours. Dark purple clouds spun out tornadoes that eviscerated the area. The capital city was a raw sore waiting to be examined.
Like rescue workers and the military, reporters and photographers ran toward events and places everybody else tried to escape—fires, war zones, natural disasters.
If it bleeds it leads. Loss of life is always first on the agenda, followed by the number of people forced to flee. Next is the dollar amount of property damage.
Travis needed a photographer, but their chief photojournalist was trapped outside of the city with his family in a flooded house. The other BHN photographer was in the hospital delivering her first child. None of the stringers were answering calls.
“Bob,” Travis said as he flung himself into the editor's office chair, “I'm getting nowhere with photographers. I got my own stringer. Mind if I bring her on board?”
“Just get me a cover shot.”
“Will do.”
“Do whatever you have to do. Deadline is three on Tuesday.”
He'd just finished packing his reporter paraphernalia when in walked Emily. She said she had wheels for the situation, so Travis had agreed to let her drive.
She stopped at the front desk and talked to Lily, who looked back at Travis, a little frown on her face that made him smile. She pointed Emily toward his desk.
“H
ey,” she said. “I'm ready. Let's do this thing.”
“Did you just drink a triple espresso or are you an adrenaline junky?” he asked.
“Both,” she said.
He followed her outside to an enormous SUV.
“Whose wheels?” he asked as they got in.
“My mom's.”
“The dashboard looks like the cockpit of a 787.”
“I know, right?”
A press pass dangled from the rearview.
“Where'd you get credentials?”
“Those are my mom's too.”
“She a reporter?”
“Public relations.”
Travis wondered where the woman had snagged a precious press pass, but there was no reason to bring this up to Emily.
“So? Where to?” she asked
All business. He liked this side of her.
“Drive down to the waterways. Pease Park first. You know, down by Shoal Creek.”
“Where we went that first day?”
“Exactly.”
“Bet it's all underwater.”
“Guess we'll find out. Things will probably go by fast, so if you don't mind, I'm going to talk into my recorder while you drive.”
“Fine by me.”
Travis grabbed a digital recorder from his pack. Within a mile, he had clicked it on.
“Too much water,” he said. “In all the wrong places.”
Emily
BARBARA'S SUV plowed through deep pools awash with debris that would have thwarted a lesser vehicle. At the top of a rise, Emily abruptly halted. The slope was steep and the road below ended in dirty coffee-colored river roiling with plastic bottles, clothing, lawn furniture and general yuck.
“Whoa,” she said.
“Can you make it?” Travis asked.
Emily swallowed hard and gripped the steering wheel when she realized where he meant.
Stranded at the bottom of the hill, two guys and a girl huddled on the roof of a car. Water spiraled above the tires.
She checked to make sure the all-wheel drive was engaged and then slowly plowed on.
“Where's your camera?” Travis asked.
“In the back, in my bag.”
He took it out and began shooting the marooned storm victims as they approached. Something about his actions seemed callous, but Emily shook it off. There was no reason he couldn't get his story at the same time they helped the kids.
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