23 Aug 11

It was, frankly, the kind of storm I just hate.

I had gone to bed at about ten; at 2:41, when I glanced at the clock, the winds were already howling, doors were banging, and there was a persistent roar of the ocean five blocks away—the first time we have heard the ocean in this apartment.

In cases like these, Raf likes to cuddle.  I, on the other hand, cannot bear to be touched.  We ended up all the way to the edge of my side of the bed—it was cuddling or a fall to the floor.

“State Capitols!” I announced.  “Capitol of Georgia!”

“Atlanta,” Raf said, sleepily rubbing my belly.

“Wrong—Augustus,” I retorted.

“Augusta,” he corrected.

“OK—Augusta,” I said, “though I can hardly be expected to keep track of every damn capitol….”

“Well, weren’t you the one….”

“Push-ups!” I proclaimed.  “I intend to arise immediately and do fifty push-ups!  I’d very much advise you to do the same!”

“You’ve never done fifty push-ups in your life,” said Raf, trying to kiss my ear.

“Ridiculous—of course I have.  I rigorously do fifty push-ups every morning before going to work….”

“Nonsense,” said Raf, “let’s just stay here and…”

“I’m getting up,” I said.  “I prefer vertical panic….”

At this point, the winds were howling harder than ever.

“I’m hungry,” announced Raf. 

“Hey, there’s champagne!” said I.

So we settled into to eat cold chicken and vegetables at the dining room.  Which meant, of course, the classic white Wedgwood, and the crystal champagne flutes.  Mr. Fernández does not lower standards in emergencies.

A charming scene, yes?  Two men of a certain age dining formally in their large, Victorian dining room, lit only by candlelight, as the storm rages around them.

No.

Because the storm, however good or bad it is, is the least of it.  It’s the next day, rising without electricity, that’s the worst.

There has been no serious damage.  Our cats, our possessions, and we ourselves are all right.

My stomach is not.  Nor is my body, which aches senselessly.  I cannot stand without getting dizzy.  Worse, I am utterly fatigued, and can only twitch when I try to lie down.

“Wal-Mart,” said the bored voice when I called at noon.

I wanted to kill her.

“Her” being Jaythel, a woman whose emotional range varies from profound boredom to a smug disdain.  She is a woman as defended against any excitement as a bag of cement.  A rain-soaked and now hardened bag of cement.

And I want to be just like her.

‘Why?’ I think.  ‘Why do I have to be so damned sensitive?  Why does absolutely everything get to me?  The good, the bad, the beautiful, the ugly—I’m tired of it!  I want to be a robot, just like her, and live my life as a constant, monotonous hum!”

Instead, I am pacing and tired, irritable, sleepy and ratcheted up. 

And worse, the storm left—apparently—little damage.  We have gone, therefore, through all of this for nothing.  There will be work tomorrow—unlike a real hurricane where one can reasonably linger about for a couple of days, inventing excuses to tell the boss.  There will be no federal aid, which will shoot sales up at Wal-Mart and almost inevitably assure a year-end bonus.  There will be no hanging around people’s desks, exchanging horror stories.

There will be, instead, four long days of work, with no sympathy for my frazzled nerves.  There will be thirty or forty orchids to be put back on the balcony, and the dirt and mud to be cleaned up.  There will be the rugs to be placed back, the furniture to be repositioned, the mess that inevitably follows a storm.

There’s only one thing we’ve been spared.  A mile away, so reports El Nuevo Día, residents abutting a mangrove swamp awoke to find their patios completely filled with…

…iguanas!

Yes, my old literary friends!  They had fallen from the tree—didn’t I tell you they did?—or found themselves flooded, and decided to rest for a bit in the patios of a well-heeled apartment complex.  Before anyone could report them to the pertinent government agency (which is anyway closed, I’m sure), in  fact, before anyone could do anything at all about them, they had picked themselves and headed back to the swamp.

As I, too, will go to work tomorrow.

The storm is over—everywhere but in my mind and body.   

Oh, and by the way—Atlanta is the capital of Georgia, but there’s no reason to tell Mr. Fernández that….