Stormy Weather

Edie Marsh pulled a beer from the cooler and tossed it underhanded at Snapper. "We're lucky we're not in jail," she said for the fifth time.

"Dogs wouldn't shut up."

"So you shot a hole in the ceiling."

"Damn straight." Snapper arranged his lower jaw to accommodate the stream of Coors. He reminded Edie of Popeye in the old Saturday cartoons.

"I'm go

"Wow, a math whiz," said Edie, "on top of all your other talents."

"You don't believe me?"

"The dogs are tied outside. They're not bothering anybody."

When Snapper finished the beer, he crumpled the can and tossed it on the carpet. Then he took out the pistol and started spi

Sure enough, by the time she returned to the living room, he was contentedly camped out in front of Oprah.

"Hookers," he reported, riveted to the screen.

"Your lucky day."

Edie Marsh felt gummy with perspiration. The hurricane had eviscerated the elaborate ductwork of Tony Torres's air-conditioning system. Even if the unit had worked, there were no doors, windows or roof to keep cooled air in the house. Edie went to the bedroom and changed from her banking dress to a pair of Mrs. Torres's expensive white linen shorts and a beige short-sleeved pullover. She would have been inconsolable if the borrowed clothes had fit her, but thank God they didn't; Mrs. Torres was easily three sizes larger. The bagginess provided welcomed ventilation in the tropical humidity, and was not entirely unattractive.

Edie Marsh was appraising her new look in the mirror when the phone started ringing. Snapper hollered for her to pick up, goddammit!

Not given to premonitions, Edie experienced a powerful one that proved true. When she answered the telephone, a long-distance operator asked if she would accept collect charges from a "Neria in Memphis."

Memphis. The witch was heading south!

"I don't know anybody named Neria," Edie said, straining to stay calm.

"Is this 305-443-1676?"

"I'm not sure. See, I don't live here-I was walking past the house when I noticed the phone."

"Ma'am, please—"

"Operator, in case you haven't heard, we had a terrible hurricane down here!"

Neria's voice: "I want to speak to my husband. Ask her if Antonio Torres is around."

Edie Marsh said, "Look, the house is empty. I was walking past and I thought it might be somebody's relative calling. An emergency maybe. The man who stayed here, he's gone. Loaded his stuff in a Ryder truck and moved out Friday. Up to New York, is what he said."

"Thank you," said the operator.

"What! What's your name, lady?" Neria asked excitedly.

"Thank you," the operator repeated, trying to cut the conversation short.

But Edie was rolling. "Him and some young lady had a rental truck. Maybe his wife. She looked twenty-three, twenty-four. Long blond hair."

Neria, exploding: "No, I'm the wife! That's my house!"

Sure, thought Edie, now that insurance money is in the air. Dump the granola-head professor and come ru

"Brooklyn," Edie embellished. "I think he said Brooklyn."

"Sonofabitch," Neria moaned.

Curtly the operator asked Mrs. Torres if she wished to try another telephone number. No reply. She'd hung up. Edie Marsh did, too.

Her heart drummed against her ribs. Unconsciously she rubbed her damp palms on the rump of Mrs. Torres's lovely linen shorts. Then she hurried to the garage and located a pair of small green-handled wire cutters.

From the living room, Snapper called: "Who the hell was that? The wife again?" When he heard the garage door, he yelled, "Hey, I'm talkin' to you!"

Edie Marsh didn't hear him. She was sneaking next door to clip the telephone lines, so that Neria Torres could not call Mr. Varga to check out the wild story about Tony and the young blonde and the Ryder truck.

The license tag on the black Cherokee was stolen from a Camaro on the morning after the hurricane, in a subdivision called Turtle Meadow. That's where Augustine was headed when Skink directed him to stop at a makeshift tent city, which the National Guard had erected for those made homeless by the hurricane.

Skink bounded from the truck and stalked through rows of open tents. Bo

"All these souls!" Skink cried, simian arms waving in agitation.

The soldiers assumed he was shell-shocked from the storm. They let him alone.

At the front of a ragged line, Guardsmen gave out plastic bottles of Evian. Skink kept marching. A small boy in a muddy diaper scurried across his path. With one hand he scooped the child to eye level.

Bo

When they reached Skink's side, they heard him singing in a voice that was startlingly high and tender: "It's just a box of rain, I don't know who put it here. Believe it if you need it, Or leave it if you dare."

The little boy-scarcely two years old, Bo

Augustine reached for Skink's shoulder. "Captain?"

Skink, to the boy: "What's your name?"

The reply was a bashful giggle. Skink peered at the child. "You won't ever forget, will you? Hurricanes are an eviction notice from God. Go tell your people."

He resumed singing, in a nasal pitch imposed by tiny fingers pinching his nostrils.

And it's fust a box of rain, Or a ribbon in your hair. Such a long, long time to be gone And a short time to be there.