Sex in a Sidecar
Page 6
Gina put the car in park, leaving it running, and stared through the window at the underbrush, frozen in place.
“What are we doing here?” I yelled again. I grabbed her arm to get her attention.
She turned to me. “Sorry…” I lip-read. That was perfectly clear.
Well great! “Don’t be sorry, ” I screamed in reply. “Just get us the hell out of here.” I stabbed my forefinger in the direction of the road.
She shook her head in denial and opened her door. Blowing sand and rain filled the car. Instinctively I raised my hands to protect my face, flinching away from the attack of the storm. When I lowered them, Gina was gone.
Chapter 18
I screamed curses and fought with my twisted seat belt. The belt snapped back into its holster and I dove for the door. I stopped. If Gina wanted to die out here, that was fine, but there was no need for me to join her. Scrabbling behind the wheel, I put it in drive and started forward. But before I’d gone ten feet I braked. Why couldn’t life be simple?
The wind caught the door, smashing it back against the hinge, and dragged me from the car. I launched myself sideways as the door crashed shut above me.
I got to my feet. Ragged landscaping hid the house. I didn’t seem to have any choice but to go after Gina. In my three-inch wooden platform heels, one step forward, one back and one sideways, I stumbled towards the house. Particles of biting sand scoured my face and filled my nose and eyes.
At the house there was still no sign of Gina. I clung to the railing and pulled myself up the front steps through sand that obscured the risers to a big wraparound veranda bare of furniture. Either the owners had put the tables and chairs away or they’d blown out east to Lake Okeechobee.
I turned the knob and rattled the front door. It was locked. Plywood had been nailed over the windows. I went left around the house to the side facing the gulf. My platform sandals sunk in the six inches of sand covering the floor. I stepped out of them, hugging them to my chest with my left arm while my right hand tried to keep my hair out of my eyes.
On the gulf side, sand was piled a third of the way up the raw plywood covering sliding doors. I searched the sand at my feet, like some ancient Indian scout looking for tracks. How long would it take the wind to bury any sign of another person? A minute? Two seconds? No way anyone had gone in or come out this entrance. So where was she?
The wind bounced me along the house to the north side. Here a large Australian pine, uprooted from the property line, had crashed down onto the veranda. Back the way I came, past the front door and around to the north corner of the house to where the same great pine tree stopped me. There was no sign of Gina, no open doors, no tracks and no Gina. Was it possible that the tree had fallen as she stood here? Screaming her name, I searched under the branches. Not a scrap of blue denim or pale skin.
I was more terrified than I’d ever been in my life. I called for God and my mother. Only the wind answered.
I was done looking for Gina, done waiting. I stumbled back to the front of the house. Not even guilt could keep me there any longer. The storm carried me down the steps, carried me around the circle to the car. But there was no car.
Chapter 19
This just couldn’t be happening. I turned in a complete circle, sure that I’d see the car. Or Gina. Nothing.
I ran around the lady palms. I was positive Gina was driving around in the circle looking for me. But there was no car and no Gina. It took me two trips around the circle to convince myself I was alone with no way off the island. I sat on the steps to put on my crazy sandals that had seemed so much fun in the store. I tied the colorful ribbons tight around my ankles. The wind whipped my hair across my face and stole away my tears.
Panic and adrenalin, helped by hurricane-force winds, propelled me, half-running, half-flying down the drive. The drifts of sand across the driveways showed slight depressions where the Audi had plowed through them. I stumbled after the tire tracks to the road. I expected her to be there, waiting for me.
She wasn’t. I was alone. Alone and on foot and Myrna was coming to visit.
I swung wildly north and south, searching for the Audi. There was no sign of another human being. I ran north, working strictly on instinct now, no reasoning on the best course of action: just acting out of blind panic and a need for human contact. Being alone was nearly as frightening as the thought of the hurricane about to pound the island. I didn’t want to be alone. No matter what came; I wanted to be with someone.
Out on South Beach the houses are set far apart at erratic intervals, following no planning commission guidelines, they shelter where their owners wish them to be, without rhyme or reason. Few houses can be seen from the road, even when the greenery isn’t being whipped about, so I may have passed driveways without knowing it. I just kept pounding north, head down and gasping for air.
But then I saw a flagstone driveway meeting the pavement. I stopped and wiped the rain and hair from my face, searching the house for signs of life. Or better yet, signs of a vehicle. It was the Keaton mansion, still closed for the off-season, a pale yellow stucco with all the doors and windows covered by steel shutters, impossible to get into with bare hands and worse yet, no car left in the drive. But then why would there be? The Keatons wouldn’t be back until the season began in the New Year.
I went on, more for lack of a better plan than in hopes of finding help. At one of those S bends in the road, where it curves to avoid a tree, I found the white Audi. It sat in the middle of the street, with the driver’s door swung wide. Hope and joy sang along my veins.
Then I saw why the Audi had stopped. A palm tree had blown out of the ground, its roots spread bare for the rain to wash. A red triangular warning marker, nailed to the side of the tree, shone up through the rain, mocking me.
In front of the car I saw something else. Gina was laid out like she’d been crucified, feet together and arms outstretched. I wobbled forward and knelt beside her. “Gina,” I screamed. “Gina.” I shook her. It was too late. Even I could see that. She was cold, as cold as the rain, and her empty blue eyes were staring up at the turbulent sky. Rain slicked her hair to her head making her gay plastic barrettes look cruelly fresh and bright. With sodden clothes clinging to her body, Gina looked smaller, shrunken even and suddenly younger. She reminded me of a huge Halloween scarecrow abandoned in November. I rolled her over across my knees, took her in my arms, brushing water off her face and hair, crooning softly to her, “It’s okay, it’s okay.” But it was a lie. She was never going to be okay again. Holding her and rocking her, I gave into grief and self-pity. When it passed, I had a few harsh words with myself. I didn’t know how much time I had left before Myrna arrived but not enough to sit on my behind wailing. I sat up straight. Gina’s head flopped sideways, leaving a huge blotch of blood on my shirt.
The back of her head had been crushed in. Someone else had to be out here, no falling branch had done this damage. I searched the underbrush, looking for the monster waiting to jump out at me.
Maybe it was shock or maybe I don’t deal real well with emergencies but it never occurred to me not to take Gina with me. Fear gave me strength. I got my hands under her arms, locking them across her chest and dragged her back to the car. Gina wasn’t light. I leaned her up against the car. Her legs splayed and her head slumped. While I opened the back door I held her upright with my hip and one arm, an undignified thing to do to a corpse.
Grunting and twisting and tugging, I got Gina into the car and then I went to tackle the tree.
The top of the palm was wedged in-between two laurels. I shoved it. I pulled it. I even tried to roll it out of the way but the tree was going nowhere.
I started the Audi. Gently, I put the big car up against the palm and tried to push it forward. Nothing happened. I backed up and took a real good run at the palm, hoping to break through. The tree held. I did it again. And again the palm held. The
third time convinced me it wasn’t going to budge. There was no way I could drive through the dense underbrush and go around the fallen tree. I had one silly thought about finding boards to build a ramp and taking the car over the tree.
The truth was, I had a car but it was no good to me, the Audi was going nowhere. Neither was Gina. The clock said one-thirty. I turned off the key. How long did I have? An hour? No more. And where was Gina’s murderer?
Chapter 20
I searched the underbrush. If I left the car it wasn’t only the wind I had to worry about. Out there was someone who had killed more than once. Did he know I was with Gina? Did he want to kill me as well?
My first inclination was to stay in the car with the doors locked. But could I ride out the storm in the Audi? Hours locked in with a dead body, maybe even days. And when the storm surge came I’d drown in the car. Staying wasn’t an option.
I left the car, climbed over the palm, and started down the road alone. I wasn’t running now…or jogging or power walking…just moving forward, head down, my arms up to protect my face. I went north, sometimes blown forward by the vicious wind, sometimes barely able to move against it. The wind assaulted my lungs, making it hard to breathe, and the rain drove needles of pain into my bare skin.
I stumbled along. My brain was in gear now, working out the options. As I saw it, I had two choices: get over the south bridge or find shelter. It was about five miles to the bridge. How long would that take me? An hour at least. Adrenalin rush and fear had taken their toll; I was exhausted.
My cell phone was back in the Audi with my purse. Why hadn’t I used it? I stood still, trying to decide if I should go back for it. But I couldn’t make myself turn around. Fear of running back into the arms of the madman who’d killed Gina pushed me forward.
Could I break into a house and phone for help? And would there be anyone at the other end of the line? By now the island would be evacuated. I could break into a house and wait out the storm, not a great choice either. Even if the eye of the hurricane didn’t hit Cypress Island and even if the building withstood the winds, the storm surge would bring the gulf waters roaring in six to twelve feet or more above high tide. The storm surge is where the real damage comes. To be trapped in a house with water rising all around was no choice at all. If the house had been prepared for the hurricane, with doors and windows covered in plywood, I could drown inside a house, or I’d have to break through the roof to safety with the water rising up behind me. How do you break through a roof anyway?
I had to decide. How many houses would be high enough and strong enough to withstand what was coming? Which house would be the safest? This wasn’t my normal stomping grounds so I didn’t know the answer. But there was one house that would be tall enough and strong enough to survive the storm, the only house I really knew on South Beach, a pink fairy-tale castle complete with its own turret and witch. It was the mansion where my former in-laws lived. It was built high enough above the tide line to withstand any storm. Only a hurricane could get me back through the doors of the house where the Wicked Witch of South Beach lived, but no fear, Dr. and Mrs. Travis would be long gone by now, off to New York or Paris or someplace equally exotic and safe.
Decision made. I’d try the witch’s castle. At least there’d be a telephone. And if I called for help and no one came I’d have a chance of surviving there, provided of course I could find a way to break in. All the houses out here would be heavily shuttered, and without some kind of a pry bar I was out of luck. No matter, I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.
I scratched the hair from my face and looked around, trying to decide where I was in relationship to where their house was located. Nothing looked familiar.
In the end, it was the driveway of blush-colored concrete I recognized. Climbing and curving up from the road it rose to where the house sat on its artificial mound, lifting it above the gulf for just this sort of emergency. The tidal surge might swamp the main floor but a heavenly second story rose majestically above it. I regretted all the comments I’d ever made about this leftover from some Disney movie. It was quite perfect now.
And it got even better. I screamed my exultation into the wind when I rounded the last curve of the broad drive. There by the side door, shinning like a gift was a silver Mercedes.
I staggered up to the car and tried the driver’s door. Locked. “No, no.” I beat on the roof of the car with both fists. “Dear God, no.”
That’s when I felt a hand slide around my bare ankle.
Chapter 21
I sucked in my breath. Slowly, I looked down. A gnarled claw had snaked out and clutched my ankle.
I went crazy, jerking my foot away and stomping at the hand. I tell you, with those wonking great wood platforms you can really do some damage but even as I lashed out, my brain was identifying the skeletal, aged spotted hand, covered in rings, which had disappeared so quickly.
I leaned against the car, breathing hard and looking down, waiting. The person under the car waited too.
At last an arm snaked out and then a shoulder and then a head. I was tempted to start stomping all over again. Slowly, inch by painful inch, Bernice Travis crab-walked her upper body sideways from under the Mercedes.
The normally glacially correct painted and coiffed woman looked like death; the bones in her gaunt face we re like a living skull under a fine layer of chamois.
I screamed. I knew who it was but I screamed anyway, then I leaned towards her. “Mrs. Travis?” I asked. “Mrs. Travis, is that you?” I hoped she’d say no.
I’ve no idea what she did say. I couldn’t hear her over the storm, but by the way her lips were moving she had rather a lot to say.
I knelt down beside her. “The keys? Where are the keys?”
Something flickered in her eyes and a wily look replaced normal meanness. She knew what I was after, must have guessed, hidden deep in my most intimate heart, I’d want to take her keys and drive off without her. But then she was always willing to think the worst of me.
I bent over and grabbed her by her belt and shirt, dragging her the rest of the way out from under the car. I admit I could have been gentler, but the thought of her bare back, scraping along the concrete where the shirt pulled up, gave me my first warm fuzzy feeling of the whole day. Even above the wind I could hear her scream.
The warm fuzzies went away when I saw the blood staining the white denim of her designer jeans. I watched the rain carry it away in a red stream across the pink concrete.
Pity passed quickly. I bent over and frisked her for the keys. Nothing. I lay down on my belly and looked under the Mercedes. They winked at me from two arm’s-lengths away. I shimmied under the car and retrieved them.
Bernice, the Christian name that I never been invited to use, grew more and more agitated. I ignored her, something I’d had a lot of practice at and unlocked the Mercedes. Opening the back door, I reached down and took her in a big bear hug. The scent of an expensive perfume filled my nostrils. It was the most intimate embrace of our whole foul relationship.
Bernice, her face pressed into my neck, screamed in pain. “Sorry, sorry,” I yelled in reply.
As I had done with Gina, I tugged and cursed and pushed her onto the back seat of the car.
When I had her stretched out, pumping blood onto the white leather, I tried to decide if there was a major artery involved. How the hell can you tell? I only knew it was a lot of blood. I undid the buckle and ripped off her belt. Then I slid it under her leg, wrapping it around the thigh above where the blood was seeping out, threading it through the buckle and pulling it tight. The blood seemed to slow.
How long should I keep it tight? First aid and I had only a nodding relationship; I didn’t want her leg to fall off. I loosened the belt. I couldn’t really tell if it helped or hindered. “Is there a blanket in the trunk?” I yelled at her. Her lips moved but the wind swept away the sound.
I unzipped the closest Gucci bag and pulled out the first thing that came to hand.
In the back seat I wadded up the clothes and used the belt to keep them fixed tightly over her injury. It might help but even I knew she needed real medical help pretty damn quick.
“The best thing we can do,” I yelled at Bernice, “is get you to a hospital.”
Her lips were pulled back from her rather big ugly teeth in pain; her back arched and her hands were locked in fists by the side of her face. I patted her good leg awkwardly. “Okay, just hang on.” I scuttled back out of the car.
The Mercedes’ engine was so quiet or the wind and rain were so loud, I couldn’t tell if it had started. I put it into reverse. The car backed smoothly into the turnaround. “Thank you, God.” I said to a deity I didn’t quite believe in but like on a deathbed or in war, there are no nonbelievers in a hurricane.
All the way up Beach Road I kept praying, “Please don’t let any more trees be down. Please don’t let the road be blocked. Please don’t let Myrna hit until we get off the island.”
“T here’s no sense of trying Jacaranda Hospital,” I yelled.
“It’s closed. Any place inland will be safer than out on Cypress Island.” When a hurricane touches land it quickly loses energy. Well, that’s the theory anyway. More than once in my life that’s turned out to be a lie and Myrna sure wasn’t playing by the rules.