Hurricane Days

by Renée J. Lukas

“Keep telling yourself that.”

  Dad had always told me never to talk politics or religion with people unless I knew we were on the same page. He said it was a sure way to make enemies. I was beginning to see that he was right.

  “Telling myself what?” I asked.

  “Look, everybody wants to fix the economy. But nobody likes to hear anything they don’t like.” Seeing my blank expression, she continued, “No one wants to take medicine. They only want sugar. So you tell ’em no taxes ever, even if it throws the country down the fuckin’ toilet. That’s what your daddy does.” Her tone had become very angry. Here it was; her mood was about to turn ugly fast.

  “Okay, look. I guess I can see the positive and negative on both sides.” There. That was a nice diplomatic way to escape the volcano.

  “You should go into politics then,” she said. “Then you can talk out of both sides of your mouth and fit right in.”

  I could see this wasn’t a good night to talk about this. “Well, anyway, I’m sorry I didn’t know about your…situation.”

  “I don’t go around telling everyone. They’d look at me differently.”

  “I won’t.”

  She held open the door for me. “Good luck with that guy or the roommate. Just don’t do anything too stupid or I’ll have to kill you. And since I’m not stable, you know I will.” She winked at me before giving me a quick hug good-bye.

  I was relieved that we were still friends.

  Chapter Forty-One

  The next night, the stage was set. I would go with Adrienne to Sean’s apartment, where Boyd would also be. A double date where no one goes anywhere. I was uneasy, but held fast to my plan.

  It was another hot and sticky evening, the kind that suffocates you until you find life-saving air-conditioning. We traveled along the sidewalk toward the on-campus apartment, neither one of us saying very much. We wore shorts and light tops, but I still felt the heat sticking to my skin.

  “Hey.” Sean handed us a couple of beers. He and Boyd had obviously chugged back a few already.

  “Hey.” Adrienne slid her arms around his neck, giving him an extra friendly welcome.

  I remembered I had a part to play, so I did the same with Boyd and topped it off with a deep kiss. I pulled back, ignoring his lovesick, or lustful, expression and glanced around the living room. Now without as many people as there were the night of the party, I could see the apartment layout. I noticed there were two bedrooms and a bathroom down the hall. If Sean lived here by himself, he must have let his buddies come around and use the other bedroom for more private “parties” like this one. I felt light-headed. I held Boyd’s shoulders and steadied my balance. Thankful for the air-conditioning blowing at full speed, I took a sip of beer and tried to hide the inevitable sneer of disgust that followed that first sip.

  “I made a mix tape,” Boyd said with a smile. He crouched down in front of the stereo and ran his fingers with expert precision over the buttons to get to the right song.

  “None of that ‘Gene Loves Jezebel’ shit,” Sean warned.

  “Aw, c’mon, man.” Boyd frowned and fast-forwarded the tape.

  “‘Desire,’” Adrienne said. “That’s what they sing, right?”

  Sean nodded.

  “I like it.” She winked at me, so all I could do was turn away. I watched Boyd as if he was the most fascinating creature I’d ever seen.

  All the songs Boyd had picked out for me to listen to merged together into one angst-ridden guitar. Of course I was intensely aware of Adrienne and Sean, beside us on the couch, making out. I couldn’t look. Or listen.

  After a few beers, I started to come on strong, sitting in Boyd’s lap and kissing him fiercely. I was vaguely aware that Sean and Adrienne were moving away from the living room.

  Now it was me and Boyd on the couch. I ran my fingers through his long, blond hair, and imagined he was Adrienne as I kissed him hard, over and over. My lips were on fire as I fantasized, holding his face as I wanted to hold hers. It helped that he had long hair. But the fantasy ended abruptly when he guided my hand down to the rock in his crotch. Knowing I had to play my part, I cupped it in my palm, making excited moaning sounds I’d heard in movies. It was a long way from my church back home. I put on a really good show for Adrienne, until I looked up and saw that she was gone. She and Sean were both gone.

  “Where did they go?” I asked.

  “I dunno.” He wanted to keep kissing.

  I looked around in between kisses. They weren’t in Sean’s bedroom; the door was open and it was eerily quiet.

  Oh no. I was alone with Boyd. This wasn’t part of the plan. Apparently, I hadn’t thought it through. How can you make someone jealous if she’s not there to see it?

  “Let’s move this party,” Boyd muttered, biting my earlobe.

  I knew he meant the other bedroom. But I never intended to go quite this far just to make Adrienne jealous. Was I insane? I’d have to think fast.

  “Come on,” he breathed in my ear. His sweaty, musky smell turned my stomach. It was a pungent odor mixed with cigarettes and days-old beer from bottles scattered about the apartment.

  “Oh shit,” I sighed. I gave my best look of disappointment. “I felt something. I, uh, I think I just got my period.” Yes. That was perfect—the phrase no guy wants to hear before sex.

  But he was so ready. “Huh.” He had to think a moment. “I’m not one of those guys who cares about that. Really!” Unfortunately, he didn’t seem like other guys, which would have made it a little easier. The nicer he was, the crueler I felt. I was using him. I was worse than the meanest femme fatale.

  “Thanks for saying you don’t mind,” I said. “But I do. I just don’t feel as pretty.”

  “But you are! You’re so hot!” He was practically begging. Even his blond frizzy hair, getting frizzier from the heat, seemed to be begging too, as it blew upward in front of the air conditioner.

  “I’m so sorry. I can’t tonight.” I gave him a quick good-bye kiss and started for the door.

  He jumped up and grabbed my arm. “Are you shitting me? You’re leaving?” Suddenly, he switched back to the guy I could picture hanging around with Sean Voight. He pinned me against the wall, by the front door. “Tell me you’re not just a cocktease, are you?”

  Now I didn’t feel quite so bad about using him. Cocktease. I wasn’t familiar with the term, but it wasn’t hard to guess what it meant. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I replied. “Of course I want to be with you. Just not tonight, okay?” That’s it. The nicest, most polite way to leave a bad situation. Even though it was a lie, he didn’t know that. What if I had cramps? Diarrhea? What if I didn’t feel well? It was always about whether the guy was happy or not. It seemed that way with most things.

  He held the doorknob behind me. I started to get scared, then scanned the room for objects I could use to strike him if he didn’t take no for an answer. There was a kitchen knife on the table; the kitchen was visible from the living room. I could pretend to change my mind and want to do something kinky on a kitchen table, then cut him right in the stomach. I would have to do it if it came to that. I did watch 20/20, after all.

  “Okay,” he mumbled. “I’m…sorry. Geez. I was just so…you look so…I was thinking you might be messin’ with me.”

  “Would I have kissed you like that if I didn’t want to?” How easily it all came to me—the deceit, the manipulation. I was a natural. All I needed was a long cigarette and a Siamese cat on my lap.

  “Okay.” He kissed me again. It was the most awkward kiss I’d ever have to endure, and that was saying something, because every kiss I had with boys had been awkward. I couldn’t break away fast enough. But I had to do it convincingly, with all the fake disappointment I could muster. “When it’s, you know…” he mumbled. “Over? Your period, you know. I really want you.” He moaned into my ear, about to stick his tongue inside when I jerked away.

  “Yeah, oh yeah,” I lied, vowing never to return. />
  Finally, I opened the door to freedom. The muggy Florida night air…I’d never been so grateful to breathe in the thick humidity. There was a full moon glowing down on campus. I stared up at the sky and wiped my mouth hard.

  * * *

  When I returned to the room, Adrienne was there, finishing a Stephen King book.

  “Robin?” She seemed surprised that I had come back.

  “What are you doing here?” My eyes were glassy and unfocused.

  “We had a fight.”

  “Oh, well thanks for leaving without a word. I didn’t exactly enjoy walking on campus alone at night.”

  “I did try to tell you I was going! But you guys were all over each other. I guess you didn’t hear.”

  “I guess.” I moved listlessly to my bed, my mind screaming, as I swore I’d never do that again. It was such a close call. I could’ve ended up as some statistic. I felt sick, thinking of what that would’ve done to my parents.

  Adrienne came over and sat at the edge of my bed. She took my hand in both of hers. “Are you all right? What happened?”

  I wanted to tell her that I’d slept with him just to make her jealous, to see what her face would look like. But I couldn’t. “Nothing.”

  “You okay?”

  I shook my head and felt hot tears slip off the sides of my face onto my pillow. “No.”

  She stroked my hair and looked at me with the same tenderness as the night we spent together.

  “Why do you care anyway?” I sniffed.

  “What do you mean? Of course I care,” she said. “Honestly, I was kinda surprised you liked him.”

  I sat up on my elbows. “I don’t like him. Wait. What did you say?”

  “I was surprised you liked him.”

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t really think he was good enough for you.”

  “What about all the stuff about me calling him?” I screeched. “How I should give him a chance? What was that?”

  “I don’t know. I say a lot of shit.”

  I hated her. Of course there was a slim difference between love and hate, about the width of a razor’s edge. And that’s exactly what I was balancing on. I rested my head in her lap, letting her run her fingers through my hair. Her touch felt so good, so comforting, even though I hated her tonight. Neither of us said anything. Slowly I drifted off to sleep.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  When Robin and her staff checked in to the hotel, she took Peter aside.

  “I have something to take care of,” she said.

  “I know,” he replied. “I’ll have Donny bring the car—”

  “No cars. I’ll be in contact.”

  “But Governor…”

  She scurried toward an elevator at the far end of the hall, which took her up to her room. The woman who emerged from Robin’s hotel room was dressed in plain jeans and a flannel shirt, covered by a long, black wool coat. She wore a knit hat pulled down around her ears. It was a good disguise; no one had ever seen Governor Sanders dressed like this. But her outfit served more than one purpose. As a Southerner, her blood was too thin for a Boston evening in autumn. She had to be prepared.

  Robin fled across the street, dodging the glow of streetlamps, staying in the shadows and away from curious eyes. There was a feeling of excitement, exhilaration, surging inside of her as she crossed Boylston Street, following the map on the paper she’d stuffed in her coat pocket. She needed to find Commonwealth Avenue. Block after block…it was a confusing city with diagonal streets that seemed to lead to nowhere. She caught a glimpse of a cobblestone side street with old houses that looked like they hadn’t been updated since the Pilgrims’ arrival. Finally, there it was. Her heart pounded faster when she came to the street. She turned up the collar of her coat to keep off the chill from the nighttime breeze blowing off Boston Harbor. It was a different world up here, a long way from the scent of magnolia trees, the sway of royal palms and the warm Florida nights she and Adrienne used to share.

  * * *

  Adrienne Austen lived in an old Victorian brownstone in the heart of the city off Commonwealth Avenue. Her sprawling condo had bay windows that overlooked a park with statues of great feminist icons—Lucy Stone, Abigail Adams and Phillis Wheatley. The irony was not lost on Robin, who, for a long time, had tried to get Adrienne to see the objectification of women, how it had become so normalized, especially in the heavy metal videos they’d watched together. But like so many of her passions, Robin came to accept the things she couldn’t change, and she compromised like crazy, hoping that someday, if elected to the most powerful position in the country, she could introduce some of her ideas that might be considered radical by her constituents. But for now, everything she believed, everything she cared about, all took a backseat to her ambition—she’d grown to love and nurture it most of all.

  * * *

  Robin passed a wall of mailboxes in the empty lobby, then took a long flight of stairs up to Adrienne’s apartment. Robin had asked her brother Kenneth to call as a favor to her, rather than one of her staff members. She distrusted them with this delicate situation; it was too tempting for information to be leaked. But she trusted her brother. Even though they hadn’t spoken in a while, he agreed because, as he’d told her, she sounded desperate on the phone. So he communicated to Adrienne that Robin only wanted to talk, and that she’d be alone—no security, no annoying advisors. Adrienne told him that she hoped Robin was in good shape. As Robin huffed breathlessly on the fifth-floor landing, she realized what Adrienne meant. Robin hadn’t been the most physically active. She always said she never had time to exercise and couldn’t imagine herself as one of the “jogging presidents.”

  “Take up golf,” Lara had told her. “It’s not that active.”

  Robin had given her a sideways glance.

  “Seriously,” Lara continued. “You drive around in a buggy all day. How tiring can it be?”

  “It’s a golf cart,” Robin corrected.

  “Same thing.”

  The door to Adrienne’s apartment opened while Robin was still making her way down the hall.

  * * *

  “Surprised isn’t quite it,” Adrienne said, taking Robin’s coat. “When I got the call, I thought you’d hired someone to kill me.”

  “Not yet.” Robin scanned the living room, taking note of the bay windows and the breathtaking nighttime views she had. There were streaks of orange in the sky, just over charcoal brushed clouds creeping closer, and twinkling streetlights below. “Your band must do pretty well.”

  “We have sort of a cult following.”

  Robin wouldn’t admit that she’d seen her band online. She tried to appear whimsical. “Is it heavy metal?”

  “Heavy metal has…fallen out of favor.” Adrienne sounded as if she were trying out the words. “But it still influences rock, and the music we play. You didn’t come here to discuss music genres, did you?”

  “I might have,” Robin said. “I can be unpredictable.”

  “So I see,” Adrienne said. She was cautious with her. “Can I get you something?” she asked.

  “No.” With hands clasped firmly behind her back, Robin stepped further inside, noticing built-in bookshelves stuffed with feminist authors, some of whom she knew, and newer lesbian romances she wasn’t familiar with. Her eyes fixed on the beaten-up guitar case in the corner of the room. She still had it.

  Robin curled her hand around a random Roman column in the center of the room, another detail adding to the charm and character of the place. “This must cost a pretty penny.”

  Adrienne pulled bottles out of the refrigerator of a small kitchenette set off with a counter and barstools. “One of my friends has a few properties,” she replied, matter-of-factly.

  “I imagined you lived with five other people over a garage.” Robin smiled, but it didn’t seem like a joke.

  “Because I’m in a band?” Adrienne asked with a smile that suggested she knew something Robin didn’t. “We do okay. You may
have heard of us. Eye of the Storm?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “That’s the name of my band,” Adrienne said.

  Robin nodded, not revealing that she already knew.

  “Why did you come?” Adrienne asked. The pleasantries were over.

  Robin noticed photos of Adrienne and an unknown woman laughing together at a place with boats in the background. Her chest surged longingly, seeing a quick snapshot of the road not taken and hearing all of her silent regrets.

  She looked at a larger photograph above the mantel. It was Adrienne and the same woman from the boat picture, a woman with dark hair and clear blue eyes like Robin’s.

  “Well?” Adrienne wanted an answer.

  Robin let out a long, slow breath. “How could you tell me you love me?”

  Adrienne came back to the living room, holding two bottles. She shrugged. “It’s the truth. I don’t have a problem with the truth.”

  Robin strode across the living room floor like she owned the place. “You lied on TV because you love me?”

  Adrienne paused, leaning against the column. “That’s why you’re here? Because I said I love you? I didn’t think it mattered.”

  Robin took the beer she didn’t ask for. “Of course it matters. You drop a bombshell like that…”

  Adrienne gazed at her, her smile turning up at the corners. “After all these years,” she said, “I realized it was true. Hard as I tried not to, as much as you pissed me off…it’s true. I love you.”

  Robin was uneasy. She set her beer on the coffee table and sat on a plush, though small, couch. “I don’t know what to do with that,” she said. She didn’t make eye contact with her.

  “I’m not asking you to do anything,” Adrienne said. “Don’t get a big head. I loved my partner.”

  Obviously, the woman from the boat picture…

  “Her name was Jenny,” Adrienne continued. “We were pretty happy for a while. It was sort of on-again, off-again. Then she got sick.”

  “I’m sorry.”