Rushing Waters

by Danielle Steel

  “It will be frightening down here if things get out of hand,” he told her, but she remained unconvinced. “You don’t want to have to wade out of the building, or swim,” he said pointedly. “And what about Blanche?” he asked, hoping to sway her, but he could see that he hadn’t, and he left them to pack his go bag, and put his ancient typewriter in its traveling case with his current manuscript wrapped in plastic, although he had a backup copy in his safe upstairs.

  He rang the doorbell again before he left, and gave them his cell phone number in case they needed it, and they wished each other good luck as he left. He was sorry to see them staying, and reminded the doorman on the way out to check on them. The doorman promised that he would—he was fond of Grace too. And the superintendent was staying in the building to deal with flooding as it happened. No one really believed it would be as bad as Sandy, but nature was unpredictable, and even if it was less extreme, there could still be some serious flooding at high tide. According to the reports on TV, the full force of the storm wasn’t due for another twenty-two hours, unless the winds picked up, in which case, Ophelia would be in New York sooner. The police were going through the neighborhood from door to door, to make sure that everyone evacuated that night. They couldn’t force Grace to, but they were urging everyone strongly to heed the warnings. Bob noticed as he left that there were police boats parked in the street for use the following night, if the river overflowed its banks at high tide as it had before. It unnerved him seeing it, and he was worried about his neighbor who had decided to stay. But at least she had Ellen with her, he thought to himself. He would have insisted even more, if she had been alone, and offered to take her with him or drop her off somewhere in a neighborhood out of the potential flood zone. But Grace was adamant and had her daughter to assist her, so he left. He hoped that Ellen would make her listen to reason in the coming hours and convince her to evacuate.

  —

  They were sitting in Grace’s bedroom, talking quietly that night, when the power went off. It was a precautionary measure by the city, and it seemed strange when the apartment suddenly went dark. The emergency generator in the building was operating only in the halls and for the elevator. Ellen lit candles, and Grace turned on a large battery-operated light that she had bought at a camping store for an occurrence such as this, or for one of the power outages that sometimes happened in New York, mostly in the summer.

  “Are you okay, Mom?” Ellen asked her with concern, and Grace smiled. The bedroom was piled high with her fragile belongings and the coats from the closet downstairs.

  “I’m fine.” Ellen was hoping to convince her to leave in the morning but didn’t press the point that night. It was too late to leave now, after midnight. And Blanche was perfectly content, sound asleep in Grace’s lap. As long as everyone was there, she didn’t care what else was going on, and the dog was exhausted by all the activity with both of them going up and down the stairs all night, moving things. Blanche had followed Grace every step of the way.

  They went to bed shortly after the electricity went out, and Ellen took care to fill the bathtubs with water in case they needed it. They had bottled water too, though not a lot of it, and had thrown away any food that might spoil. They were as ready as they were going to be, and as she lay in bed, Ellen thought about George in England. He hadn’t called, and she didn’t want to exhaust her cell phone battery since she wouldn’t be able to charge it now, and they might need it in an emergency. She wondered if George was having fun at the house party. He seemed a million miles from what was happening in New York, and she was glad to be there with her mother. She wouldn’t have wanted her to be alone, although Grace didn’t seem in the least frightened or concerned. She had been totally matter-of-fact about their preparations for the hurricane and remained convinced that it would be far less dangerous than the warnings claimed. Ellen hoped she was right.

  —

  The building on Clinton Street on the Lower East Side looked old and ramshackle, and was in poor condition, but the rents were low, and students had been renting apartments there for years. There were one or two artists, but mostly students from NYU. It was one of those buildings that people heard about by word of mouth, and vacancies never lasted for more than a day or two before someone snapped them up. Peter Holbrook and Ben Weiss had been living there for two years. They were twenty-one years old, and juniors at NYU. The apartment was dingy and desperately needed a coat of paint, and they had furnished it from rejects off the sidewalk and at Goodwill. Their parents weren’t thrilled about it, and Ben’s mother worried about electrical fires in the dilapidated building, but both boys loved their apartment, their independence, and the fact that it was so cheap. It was a sixth-floor walkup, with no elevator, which only tenants as young as they could endure.

  They woke up early on Sunday morning, and met in the living room. Ben was sitting on the beaten-up couch with his dog, a black Lab named Mike, sprawled next to him, as Peter walked into the room and glanced out the window at the rain. The sky looked heavy and dark, and the wind was blowing harder than the day before. They had admitted to each other that they found the hurricane exciting, and wondered what it would be like when it hit New York. They were safe from floods in their aerie on the sixth floor, and Ben had gone to the supermarket and stocked up on food and water. They had everything they needed, and it seemed foolish to evacuate, to both of them. What was there to be afraid of? They could always go to Ben’s parents’ apartment if they wanted to, but neither of them did. It would be more fun to stay here, and they were perfectly content to remain in the cozy apartment until the hurricane passed. There were public schools in the neighborhood designated to be used as shelters if they had to leave in a hurry and couldn’t get uptown, and announcements on TV and in the newspapers had said that people could bring their pets, so they knew they could take the dog. But neither Peter nor Ben wanted to go to a shelter with hundreds of people, maybe even thousands. They were better off at home.

  Peter was from Chicago, and was an econ major at NYU. Ben was studying drama at Tisch at NYU, and had grown up in New York. They had met when Peter started dating Anna, a drama student at Tisch, two years before. Ben and Anna had been childhood friends since kindergarten, and Anna had introduced Peter to Ben. The two boys had become best friends and roommates three months after that, and they had been an inseparable threesome ever since. The Three Musketeers, and Mike, Ben’s black Lab.

  Peter opened a box of doughnuts and peeled a banana as his cell phone rang. He saw that it was Anna. She lived in an apartment in the West Village, with two roommates, and the girls had decided to stay at their apartment after the curfew the night before. Her mother was picking them up that morning and taking them uptown to their apartment, and Anna had wanted the boys to come with them, but they hadn’t made up their minds the previous night.

  “So are you coming with us?” Anna asked him. “My mom will be here in half an hour. We can swing by and pick you up.” Her mother had an Escalade big enough to hold all of them and whatever they were taking with them. The girls had packed go bags to last them for a few days at Anna’s parents’.

  “What do you think?” Peter asked Ben as he played with the dog. “Do you want to go with them?”

  “We can stay at my parents’ if we want to go uptown,” Ben said practically. He had a younger brother who was fourteen and still lived at home, and his parents had an apartment on Central Park West. “What do you think? Why don’t we stay here?” The wind was strong and it was raining, but there was nothing ominous happening. And as long as they stayed indoors, they’d be fine. Ben didn’t feel like dealing with his family and all the hullabaloo about the hurricane. It seemed simpler to just remain where they were. “Tell her we’ll call her later, if we want to come up.” Anna was like his sister after knowing her all his life.

  “We’re not leaving for now,” Peter informed her as he took another bite of the doughnut, and the dog looked at him with pleading eyes. The supplies they’
d bought were mostly junk food, water, sodas, and beer.

  “That’s really dumb,” Anna told Peter. “What if it floods down here again? You could be stuck in the building for days with nothing to eat. And nothing will be open.”

  “We stocked up yesterday,” Peter said proudly, and Ben grinned.

  “With what? Doughnuts and beer?” She knew them well. “You won’t even have electricity. You’ll be sitting in the dark every night.”

  “We’ll see how it goes. We can always come uptown if we get bored,” Peter told her, and Anna wished him luck before they hung up. Half an hour later the three girls were on their way uptown with Anna’s mother, who also thought it was a bad idea for the boys to stay downtown.

  “They probably think they’re cool and macho not evacuating,” Anna said with a disgusted look as the girls chattered in the car on the way to the Upper East Side. Both her roommates were from other cities and were happy to have a place to stay. Their parents had been calling frantically, ever since the first warnings of the hurricane, and had called Anna’s mother to thank her for taking care of them. And Ben’s mother would have been happy to have Peter stay with them. She loved Peter, and he had become part of the family in the past two years. But the two boys thought it seemed more “adult” and “manly” to stay put, and they were curious to watch the hurricane from their own windows instead of evacuating. Ben had told his parents they’d be fine, had food and water and everything they needed. And his parents reluctantly agreed to the plan and assured Peter’s parents the boys would be safe, although they would have preferred that they come uptown.

  Peter and Ben went out for a walk that afternoon with Mike, to give him some exercise, and were surprised by how strong the wind was. There were gusts that nearly swept them off their feet. It was exciting, and it was after four o’clock when they went back to the apartment, less than two hours before Hurricane Ophelia was supposed to hit. And even Mike had been happy to get some air. They were tired of being cooped up in the apartment all day. They had finished the first box of doughnuts by then, a can of Pringles, and a bag of chips, washed down with Gatorade.

  They made sandwiches in the kitchen before it got dark, and Ben gave Mike his dinner, and then they sat down to eat and talk and wait for the storm to hit. Anna had called them several times that day and told them they were idiots for not evacuating and coming uptown. But at least she knew that in a sixth-floor apartment, they might eventually get hungry when they ran out of food, but they weren’t going to drown. She and her friends had watched movies all afternoon, and her parents were glued to the Weather Channel, watching the progression of the storm, which was moving faster than earlier reports had predicted and was gaining speed. Anna and her roommates were tired of watching the same images and interviews repeated again and again on TV. There was nothing to do but wait for the storm to hit, and see how bad it really was.

  —

  It was five o’clock when Gina finally returned Charles’s calls. He was nearly frantic by then, wondering where they were. He had been in New York for almost two days, and hadn’t heard a word from her. And for once, she apologized profusely the minute he picked up her call.

  “I’m so sorry. My phone was dead.” She sounded like she was in an airport or a train station, with a huge amount of noise. He could barely make out what she was saying. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”

  “I didn’t know till the last minute. I sent you a text from the airport when I left, and started calling you Friday night as soon as I arrived. Where are you?” He was desperate to see them, and seriously worried about them now, with the hurricane due to hit New York that night.

  “We’re at a shelter in SoHo. They evacuated our apartment building last night. They just set up a location to charge cell phones, so now I can call you. This place is a madhouse, but the girls are loving it. There are a million kids here, and cats and dogs. They’re delighted we have to stay here.” Gina sounded relaxed and in good spirits, which was more than he could say for himself after the last forty-eight hours of trying to reach her, with the hurricane bearing own on New York, and no idea where they were.

  “Where’s Nigel? Is he with you?” Charles sounded worried, but Gina was calm, despite having to evacuate with the girls.

  “No, he went out to Red Hook in Brooklyn yesterday, to try and secure his studio and take his cameras and equipment to a friend’s. They were planning to be there all last night moving things, and he was going to try to help some of the other guys today. There are a number of famous artists there. And Red Hook was one of the hardest-hit areas last time. He’s afraid it might be again. I haven’t heard from him since he left yesterday. He said he’d find us. He’ll probably show up at the shelter tonight or tomorrow, after things calm down.”

  “He left you alone with the girls?” Charles was shocked, although he usually tried to refrain from making comments about Nigel to her.

  “All the equipment he owns is in his studio. He can’t afford to just leave it, and stay with us. He’ll turn up sooner or later, and we’re fine. The girls aren’t even scared. They’re happy playing with the other kids. They think it’s an adventure.” She had packed bags for all three of them, with enough clothes for a few days, toiletries, medicine, and their passports. Hers was important because she had a work visa in it from Vogue. And Charles had an idea as he listened to her. He didn’t know how she would feel about it, but he would have preferred staying close to the girls.

  “Would you mind terribly if I come to the shelter to see them? I don’t have to stay if you don’t want me to. And if Nigel comes, I’ll leave. But I’ve been waiting to see them all weekend.” She hesitated for only an instant as she thought about it, but she couldn’t see any harm in it, and she was sure Nigel would understand. He didn’t like Charles, but had no real issue with him, since he was the winner in the contest for her.

  “That’s fine. He’ll probably come tonight, but not till late. He couldn’t call me either since my battery was dead, so I don’t know his plans. But the girls would love to see you.”

  “Thank you,” he said gratefully. “They haven’t evacuated my hotel yet, but they might later.” She told him where the shelter was located, in a school not far from where he was, and a few minutes later he was braving the fierce winds, and walking toward the temporary shelter three blocks away. It was pandemonium when he got there, with close to a thousand people in the gym and designated classrooms, on cots and in sleeping bags on the floor. Just as she had said, there were dogs, cats, a woman with two parrots in a cage, hamsters, guinea pigs, rabbits, and a boy with an iguana on his head. There were children of all ages running everywhere, and food was being served in the school cafeteria. Charles spent twenty minutes wending his way through the crowd, and then he saw them in the corner of the gym. Gina was talking to a group of women, and Lydia and Chloe were playing tag with their new friends and squealing with delight. Gina didn’t see him until he was standing next to her, relieved to have found them. People looked as though they had dressed hastily, and the room was stifling from the heat of a thousand bodies. The smell of food and people was heavy in the air. Gina glanced up at Charles and smiled cautiously when she saw him.

  “I can’t believe you found us.”

  “Neither can I.” He was wearing jeans, as she was, and a perfectly starched collared blue shirt, with his raincoat over his arm. He looked as respectable as he always did, and she was wearing a T-shirt with no bra with her jeans, and silver sandals. And by then his daughters had spotted him and came running over.

  “Daddy!” they screamed happily, and threw their arms around his legs. “How did you know we were here? Did you come to New York just to see us? A hurricane is coming, named Ophelia.”

  “There’s a girl in my class named Ophelia,” Lydia added. “She’s mean and I don’t like her.” Charles smiled at what she said.

  “I know about the hurricane,” he told them, squatting down with an arm around each of them as he h
ugged them. “I came on business, and I’ve been trying to find you since Friday. Mommy just told me you were at the shelter, so here I am.” He looked as ecstatic as they did.

  “Can we have ice cream? They have some in the cafeteria.” A nearby supermarket had donated it to use immediately, before it could melt once the power was off. Gina nodded when Charles glanced at her for her permission. He followed the girls to the cafeteria then, and they were back half an hour later, as the girls finished the last of their ice cream, which had run out by the time they left the cafeteria. He wiped their faces, just as they got to Gina, who was staring at the enormous screen that had been set up, so everyone at the shelter could follow the progress of the hurricane. It had just hit the Jersey shore, and was dragging houses, trees, boats, and several buildings in its wake. The room fell silent as people watched, and knew it would reach land in Manhattan within minutes. The reporter on the screen said that high tide had just been reached. The circumstances had become uncomfortably similar to Sandy in the last few hours. There were weather maps in the corner of the screen, showing where it was expected to hit hardest. Red Hook, where Nigel was, in Brooklyn, was foremost among them, and Charles could see that Gina was worried. It hurt to think it had been a long time since she felt that way about him. She was terrified that something would happen to Nigel. And the weather map showed as well that lower Manhattan was likely to be clobbered, just as it had been before. It seemed incredible that another hurricane so similar to Sandy was about to beat the city to a pulp again. Experts had predicted it as a possibility all along, but no one had believed them. And suddenly the safety measures that had been rejected since Sandy seemed like a tragedy yet again. And without question, people in the suburbs and outlying areas, and even some in the city, were about to lose their homes.