“I didn’t say that,” I answer, attempting to repossess my hand. “Obviously we’re both still married to different people. And don’t worry, I’m not getting any ideas!”
“Julie, calm down. It’s just that I can’t stop thinking about you, about us,” he states. “This thing between us, whatever it is, is not over.”
I don’t say anything.
“It’s never going to end,” he insists. He is probably right about that. Manny is such a big part of my past. That’s why I’m here, isn’t it? Because I can’t let go of the past?
His thumb massages my palm in a circular motion, like a deadly spider, spinning its soothing, sensual spell around me. I pull my hand away and the sizzling sensation abates.
“Jewels?” he says expectantly. “Say something.”
“What do you want from me? I don’t honestly know what you want me to say.”
“I think you do. I need you, Julie. Can’t you see that? Do you want me to beg here?”
“What do I really mean to you, anyway?” I ask.
“That’s what we need to find out. What we mean to each other.” He is saying all the right words. “Is there somewhere we can go, I mean, to be alone?”
He knows about my condo, then. I’m sure Mackie has given him all the details.
“Maybe the car,” I suggest, wanting to slow things down because I am not quite ready to risk everything. At this point it’s not too late to turn back.
Manny pays the bill, leaving a generous tip, thanks the manager profusely, and grabs my hand again as he leads me out to the parking lot.
We have been so engrossed in each other we haven’t even noticed the weather has worsened, considerably. By the time we leave the restaurant, the rain is coming down in steady horizontal sheets. Bitter, blowing bands of wind, torrents so powerful they push us sideways, lash the sand and gusty rains, and sting our faces as we dash for his car. Covering my eyes, I hold on to Manny to keep myself upright. Churning relentlessly, the ocean across the narrow highway has grown surly in the space of only an hour and spits up monster waves, a surfer’s wet dream.
Manny’s flimsy forest green Gellar Group umbrella whips uselessly inside out in the roaring wind and driving rain. I can hardly see the parking lot; the steady rain is obscuring the view and the visibility. My throat constricts with fear. By the time we manage to negotiate our way to the car, locating it by touch, we are thoroughly drenched.
Note to God: If you let us live, I won’t go through with this. I won’t cheat.
“Get in,” Manny yells, trying to make himself heard above the wind. “We’ve got to get out of this weather.”
He opens the car door on the passenger side and helps me in, then goes around to the driver’s seat. I sense he is also nervous about the storm, but his eyes signal his hurry to get closer.
In the end, my body and my mind betray me. I long for him; he leans towards me. I strain toward him; he shifts toward me, eager to close the space between us. He reaches over the console to pull me against him, and as he opens his arms, I slip back into them. The years fall away. My tears won’t stop falling. We are both in the same place, finally, and we both want the same thing. Then he kisses me, tenderly at first, until we get the sense of each other again. Turning fierce and impatient, his cunning tongue tangles with mine, touching off a firestorm. Our wet clothes are stuck together, and I am suddenly hungry for his warmth. I want—no, need—to keep his lips against mine. The wind whines, and we answer its siren’s call.
Shit, I thought, shit, shit, shit. Nothing’s changed. I still want him. Even after all these years.
“Can we go somewhere, sweetheart?” Manny asks in a husky voice, sensing capitulation. I don’t recall that he’s ever called me sweetheart before, and I come undone. “This isn’t going to be enough.”
I bite my lip and pull back, but he grips me with his powerful arms. I am not sure I can go through with this.
“You have a condo here, don’t you? We could go there and talk, just talk.”
“I don’t think…”
“Just tell me where,” Manny says, reluctantly releasing his hold on me to start the engine. “Quickly.” When I don’t answer, he turns around. “You know we’re going to do this. I came all this way.”
Why does his selfishness surprise me? What did I think was going to happen? Well, I’m not going to let it happen.
“I think you’d better take me back to my car now,” I say, although the last thing I want to do is ride out this ugly storm alone. “You need to fill up your tank before you get back on the road.”
“I can’t drive around in this, and neither should you,” Manny argues. “It’s dangerous.”
“Being with you is more dangerous,” I reply.
“Julie, be reasonable.”
When we try to turn into the service station, two of Palm Coast’s finest are blocking the entrance. The station is either out of gas or out of power to pump the gas. The city is locking down.
“Well, I don’t have any food in the condo, so let’s stop by the Publix first, before you take me to my car,” I suggest, trying to postpone the intimacy. “I’m going to need some food in case I get stuck here.”
“You’re still practical.”
“Well one of us has to be.” I glare at him. “I can’t believe I let you talk me into this, with a hurricane coming,” I mutter, but I know I am partially responsible.
We finalized the plans to meet before the hurricane was even on the horizon, and I would have lost my nerve if we had rescheduled. He probably feels the same way. But I can tell he isn’t ready to leave me.
“Okay, come with me to the Publix, if they’re not already boarded up. I’ll get you something for the road. I don’t remember what you like.”
“I remember what you like,” he says, trying to put his arms around me again.
“I’m talking about food,” I say, swatting him away.
The wind is fitful and angry, whipping the car around as Manny wrestles to keep the vehicle on the road. Windowpanes are already out in some of the stores in the strip shopping center on the left side of the road. As we approach the toll bridge, palm fronds are strewn on either side of the entrance to the causeway, and debris is flying all around us. We are stopped over the Intracoastal by a solidly built, brick wall of a police officer, a cocky troll who won’t let us cross the waterway. His dark, beady eyes impale us.
“Sorry, folks, we’ve closed the bridge. It’s not safe.”
“But officer, we have to get to the Publix,” I plead.
“This area has been under a mandatory evacuation all day. Where have you two been? Don’t you watch TV? This bridge is too windy for traffic. You’ll have to find another way out. You could try AIA, but the roads are pretty clogged, and some sections might be washed away. We already have reports of power lines down.”
Outside, the wind and rain are picking up force. Conditions are worsening.
“There is no other way out except to drive right into the path of the hurricane,” I begin nervously. “Please, just let us over, and—
“Can’t do that,” he interrupts.
“Can’t or won’t?” Manny snarls, starting to get out his wallet. I slap his hands.
“Don’t do that,” I implore.
“It’s what he wants. It’s what they all want.”
The officer glares at Manny through the lowered window.
“I know I didn’t just see you attempt to bribe an officer of the law,” he begins, pulling out his ticket book. His other hand rests firmly on his weapon.
“No,” I say, pressing my hand against Manny’s. “My friend here was just looking for his driver’s license.”
“Let’s go back,” I say, resigned. “We can’t make it to Publix or back to my car. We’ll have to take our chances and ride out the storm at the condo. It’ll probably be okay. It was built to the new hurricane code. The windows are designed to withstand winds of up to 130 miles per hour. And the store is probably ou
t of milk and bread anyway.”
By this time, Manny is growing restless. His face is sweating and his hands grip the steering wheel as he backs out of the toll lane and turns the car in the opposite direction. I give him directions to get to the condo through the back entrance on AIA.
“Is something wrong?” I ask. His face is losing enough color to concern me.
“This is Hurricane Andrew all over again,” Manny says. “Is this a Category Five?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. I haven’t been watching the weather reports.”
“Maybe we should both go, then,” he says tentatively.
“I don’t think we can get out now. You heard that officer. It’s too late. But I’m sure we’ll be okay.” Growing up in Miami, hurricanes like Donna and Betsy were as familiar as school friends. But they weren’t in the popular group. They were more like passing acquaintances, the kids nobody wanted to hang around with—the outcasts and the bullies.
“You weren’t there in ’92.”
Matt and I had been out of the country when Andrew struck Miami, but I’d heard that Manny and Nita’s house had been totally destroyed and they’d barely escaped with their lives. My mother said when it was over, rescuers found them in a state of shock, hunkered in a bathtub, covered by a mattress, which was all that was left of the former structure and their possessions. I’d seen the devastation firsthand when we returned to find South Dade in ruins. The area resembled a war zone, and its survivors thought they’d never recover from the swath of death and destruction in the aftermath of that killer storm. South Dade was literally a dead zone populated by the endless drone of helicopters overhead. The birds didn’t return for months.
Were we about to experience another catastrophe? Like Andrew or Katrina? Our original plan was to have a leisurely lunch and see how the afternoon played out. Manny had intended to drive home later this afternoon. Spending the night was never in the cards.
“I’ve got to let Nita know I can’t get home,” Manny announces. “She’s expecting me back tonight. She’ll be worried.”
“I’ve got a better idea,” I suggest. “Let’s start a telephone tree. You call Nita, and she can notify Matt.”
“I see what you mean,” Manny agrees. “Bad idea.”
“Anyway, it’s not a good idea to use our cell phones. If we lose power we won’t be able to recharge them. We might need them in an emergency later on.”
“You’ve gotten smarter,” Manny says.
“I really miss your backhanded compliments. Now I’m remembering why I didn’t like you very much.” But as we drive toward my condo and the underground garage, what I’m really thinking is how much I still like him.
I remember feeling jealous when I first heard about Manny’s storm story. Jealous that the crisis must have brought Nita and Manny closer together, cemented their relationship. I even imagined I had been the one huddling in that bathtub with him, and we had been fighting for our lives in our house, with our son. I could pretend that he never loved Nita before, but the storm surely changed all that, building an impenetrable bond between them. Instead of being terribly romantic, this experience is shaping up to be terrifyingly real.
“Are you and Nita happy?” I ask suddenly.
“The truth is she’s turned into a shrew,” Manny says.
News Flash! That witch was born a shrew. She was wicked in the womb.
But I decide to be charitable.
“Well, you’re probably not exactly the easiest person to live with.”
“Thanks,” he says dryly, then smiles and smoothly steers the topic away from his wife as he steers into the parking garage underneath my building. The low lights of the deserted parking lot only add to the eerie feeling of isolation and give confirmation to the fact that we’re the only two people left on the property.
Chapter Twenty-Three:
Living on Love and Water
“We’re soaked,” I exclaim as we step out of the elevator on the fifth floor and walk into the foyer of my condo, dripping water. At least the electricity still works.
“Give me your wet clothes and I’ll give you some of Matt’s clothes to put on while I dry ours.” In the master bedroom, I find some clothes in the dresser I share with Matt. I come out and toss Manny an old gray T-shirt and a pair of beige shorts, then return to the bedroom to change into a body-hugging black T-shirt dress and dump our soggy clothes into the dryer down the hall. I walk into the middle bedroom, which opens out onto the golf course, and look through the sliding glass doors. Some of the streetlights are already twisted. I pull a fresh, folded towel from the linen closet, hand it to Manny, and watch while he dries his face and his hair.
“This place is great,” Manny notes, as he surveys my condo. Grateful for the distraction, I proudly show him around my home-away-from-home. Anything to keep my mind off the storm. The kitchen features shiny stainless steel appliances and sleek granite countertops. Museum-white walls provide the perfect backdrop for paintings with just the right splash of color. My favorites are the windows and doors of Bermuda and the shot Matt took recently on our trip to Cinque Terre, Italy, of the island of Monterossa. The living room furniture is a serene shade of Scandinavian blue. A companion fabric covers the dining room chairs.
“It has that whitewashed look,” Manny observes.
“I wanted it to look like Greece,” I point out.
“The musical?”
“No, the country,” I say, shaking my head. We are coming from opposite directions now. Has time severed our connection?
“Depressed wood,” he notes.
“No. I’m depressed. The wood is distressed.”
“What do you have to be depressed about?”
I just stare at him. The man is clueless. If he thinks this reunion has been easy for me…
“Three bedrooms, office, three and a half baths,” he continues, switching into realtor gear. So much for compassion.
“I’m not interested in putting it on the market,” I say dryly. “So stop playing realtor.”
“Just assessing the property,” he notes, smirking slyly. “You could get a fortune for it,” he adds eagerly, looking out at floor-to-ceiling windows that cross the entire width of the condo. “Million-dollar view, I’ll bet, if we could see it.”
On the ocean side, the darkening sky has completely obliterated the sun, and the blinding rain creates a white-out.
“With this hurricane coming, you can hardly see the ocean, but I assure you it’s out there,” I answer. You can hear the sound of the surf from almost any room. And it is growing louder.
“I want to get a closer look at the master bedroom and bath,” he says pointedly, leading me down the hall.
“Why do we always end up in the bedroom, I wonder?” I ask.
“Because we’re so good together there.”
“We are definitely not going into the bedroom,” I counter, pulling him back into the living room. He is thinking about sex. I am thinking about survival. Somebody has to be the adult, and right now I seem to be the only grownup in the room.
I walk into the kitchen and peek into the refrigerator. We have some Brie that is still good, leftover from my last visit. In the cabinet I find some fancy crackers, two unopened bottles of wine, a jar of crunchy peanut butter, a box of granola bars, some microwave popcorn, breakfast cereal, and a case of bottled water. At least if there is a hurricane and we aren’t killed outright, we won’t starve. If we lose power, we’ll find out in a hurry that you can’t live on love. Well, maybe we can survive on love and water, for a week anyway.
Used to taking direction, out of necessity I begin issuing orders like a drill sergeant, recalling the lessons I learned at Tech Sergeant Sidney Goldsmith’s basic training camp during the frequent hurricanes that plagued Miami when I was growing up.
If Matt were here, he’d know exactly what to do. Matt can handle anything. He is good in a crisis. He considers the impossible a challenge. Manny has always been useless when called on to
do anything practical. He has survived all this time on his charm alone.
While I gather the supplies we’ll need, Manny is hunched over the coffee table in the living room. When I come up behind him, he snaps to attention.
“What are you doing?” I bark. It looks like he is clipping his toenails into the drawer of my coffee table.
“Nothing,” he denies, with a sheepish grin. “Just a nervous habit.”
Holy Crapola, Cowabonga, and OMG don’t even begin to describe my feelings. My Romeo has been reduced to a sniveling toe-clipper.
“That is disgustingly gross, Manny,” I scold in my best fishwife imitation. “Stop it right now and clean up those clippings. Do you think I want to clone you for posterity?” Too late. I’ve already done that, almost, with Josh. “Does Nita know about your disturbing habit?”
“Yeah, she doesn’t seem to mind.” Maybe I am wrong about Nita. Maybe she’s not a witch. Maybe she’s really a saint.
Then I notice Manny is trembling, and we haven’t even seen the worst of the bad weather. Perhaps he is still traumatized by his experience with Hurricane Andrew, still shell shocked and storm weary and suffering from Post Traumatic Stress or Hurricane Fatigue.
I place my hand on his arm and experience what amounts to an electric current that isn’t coming from the lightning outside. Is the power flickering?
“It’s okay.” My voice is soothing, but I quickly remove my hand from the source of the shock.
“I need to get out of here now, Julie. I can’t go through this again.” And I know he is talking about the hurricane. But he is being irrational. We are trapped here. “It never goes away. It’s not something you ever forget.” The windows are rattling, and Manny is having difficulty breathing.
“Why don’t you lie down and let me get things ready,” I suggest, taking his hand and gently pushing him to a prone position on the couch. He pulls me down with him and holds me, and I can hear his great big bear of a heart beating under mine. He cradles me in his arms for a minute before I untangle myself from him.
Stones Page 20
