"I think I was bored. Day after day I hardly have to lift a finger here, and as much as I love my home there aren't any crises to challenge me. I think I need to rise to conquer something once in a while to feel good about myself. This sudden problem makes me feel alive again. And feeling alive when you're here, makes me feel attractive. I'm the object of your desire, not just because you're a horny old man but also because I'm sexy and alluring."
"I'm glad you clarified that for me. I didn't realize you felt that wealthy. I knew you'd made it from poor-farm-girl to working-professional to token-wife, then through nurturing-mother all the way to widow-with-means, transitioning to comfortable-thank-you, but I didn't know that you'd made it all the way to bored-idle-rich. That's real upward mobility, all right. Any words of wisdom to encourage a lowly peasant?"
"Yes. I just turned off the last burner on the stove. Come over her and give me a kiss and tell me how brave I am in the face of disaster."
My response was immediate, but I didn't utter a word.
It's funny: I remembered all the intimate things we did that night, but when I woke up in Kim's bed next morning I couldn't remember how or when we got there. My last recollection of a place was the family room floor, on a quilt in front of the fireplace, having a wonderful time teaching Kim things to do and positions to do them in that she'd never tried before. Surely we must have gone to sleep there, but then I was waking up in the middle of a king size bed with Kim sort of wrapped around me, both of us naked as newborns. And almost as gooey.
I slipped out from under her and walked over to the window. It was still raining, but without that awful gusty wind. I was wondering if we still had electricity, but then the ceiling fan rotating lazily above the bed gave me the answer. And hanging from one fan blade was a pair of black lace panties.
If anybody ever offers a prize for an essay on the most enjoyable hurricane I've ever experienced, I could win it hands down.
The bedroom was in the front of the house, and from the window I could see barricades blocking off the street and the live wire still arcing and sputtering in the middle of the pavement. That seemed like a hint that we could wait a long time to get the pole replaced and the wires fixed. I decided to let Kim sleep for a while, so I gently covered her with a sheet and a light blanket. Then I tiptoed to the linen closet for a towel and to the bathroom for a shower. The hot water spraying on that tender spot on my lower back felt good, and I was taking my time, thinking about how lucky I was to have found Kim, when the shower door slid open and Kim found me. I was already clean so I let her stand there and be taken care of while I soaped, rubbed, fondled, and rinsed her. As I turned the water off she reached up with both arms, enveloped me in a tender hug, and kissed me for about a year.
We dried each other and lay back down on the bed. "Just hold me," she said. "You are the most gentle, considerate lover in the whole world. I don't think I've slept that well in years. You left me feeling so good, and also so good about myself. Everything you did and said, told me that you have me on a pedestal, and that says something about me but even more about you. But I have to know, was that a true expression of your feelings toward me?"
"Kim, I couldn't have faked that even if I wanted to. We were rolling around on that quilt for hours, and it was the best evening I can remember. You are wonderful. I suppose it's too soon to use the L word, but I hope we keep this up for, well, forever. Just one question: how'd we wind up in the bed?"
"I think we must have fallen asleep out there, and come in here later without completely waking up. I do remember moving around on the bed to get comfortable, and the position that felt the best was with my leg draped over your thigh and one arm up over your shoulder."
"Then you didn't move after that, because that's how I found you this morning. If I hadn't had to go to the bathroom I wouldn't have moved. You're the best snuggler. I had the feeling that I wasn't just with you, I was wearing you, like a favorite jacket that just feels so good."
We were lying side by side, halfway lying down on our backs and halfway leaning up to face each other. Kim looked up. "How'd my panties get up there?"
"Search me. I like them there. Sort of like a flag. In the Army a general officer used to have his personal flag, and it was run up on the flagpole to tell the world that he was on site and in command. Maybe the panties symbolize that we're here and taking care of each other. Too bad you don't have a flagpole so we could display them out front."
I reached across and slid her over to me, lifted her up onto me, front to front, and wrapped her in my arms. She wriggled herself into place and laid her head on my shoulder with a contented sigh. We closed our eyes and dozed off for a half hour or so. Who needs a timekeeper? I wiggled my shoulders a slight amount and she whispered, "Oh, please don't move. This feels so good."
A noise out front broke our silent mutual adoration. I could hear a truck engine, some big things clunking on the ground, and men talking. Kim seemed reluctant to stir, but she raised her shoulders up off me, wriggled in a sinuous, sexy, graceful motion for a few seconds, and then sprang up like a young athlete and went to the window. "There's a man up on that other pole, the one with the big tank thing up by the top, and he's getting some sort of a tool from the other man on the ground, hauling it up on a rope."
"I joined her at the window and watched. The man up on the pole busied himself while the other man walked toward Kim's front door. "I'll handle it," I offered, and walked out to the front hall to answer the door.
"Sorry to disturb you," the man said. I stood in the open doorway, stark naked, yet I didn't feel embarrassed in the least; it was as if I had every right to be there like that, and was staking my claim to the territory. "Your power will go off in a minute or so, and it won't come on again until we can get a pole crew here to replace that one that fell down. Once we have these wires disconnected, we'll get the broken pole and wires out of the way so the street can be used. "
"How long will we be without power?"
"Hard to say, but easily a day or two. What you see here is repeated hundreds of times, all over the county. We're getting crews in from out of state to help. This is a big storm."
I thanked him for the news and closed the door, just in time to see the hall light wink off. I was aware of how quiet the house suddenly was, even though I hadn't been aware of any sounds before. I reflected that the things that had just fallen silent were probably the two refrigerators. Time to execute Plan B.
An hour later we were on the road in my car, carrying a load of clothes and perishable food, headed for my place. We started off with a steady conversation, but as we passed places where the storm had caused serious damage we fell silent, our laughter replaced by gasps. One house was cut right in half by a huge tree that had fallen like a meat cleaver, crushing everything in its path. Utility crews were tugging tangles of power lines off the streets, cutting fallen trees into pieces they could move out of the way, and we saw more fire trucks and ambulances than we really wanted to, reminders that the most fragile objects in most neighborhoods were the people who lived there.
Kim let out a little whimper and I turned to see her wiping away tears. "Oh, those poor people. Did you notice that car that the big tree limb fell across? The roof was caved right in where the driver would have been!" As if she had called for an encore, we rounded a corner and were held up for a few minutes by policemen directing traffic around a wrecked car that was being cut open by a crew of firefighters, presumably to rescue somebody trapped inside. A mile farther down the road a big tree had fallen right across the road. It had been sawed off even with the curbs, and the part in between dragged out of the traffic lanes and stacked in pieces in the parking lot of a supermarket. Scars in the pavement showed where it had skidded across the road, probably dragged by a fire truck. Looking over at the supermarket beyond the heap of tree limbs, I could see that the big front window had been smashed, leaving the front of the building open to what was left of the storm. Another store in the same shopping center had a big sign half in and half out of its smashed front window. Cars were all over. Some were sitting as if they had been parked, others looking as if they had been scattered by a giant hand. We saw some on their roofs, some on their sides, and one perched precariously on top of a truck, looking ready to fall off rear end first. Some houses looked undamaged except that parts of their roofs were missing, rafters and all. An overhead garage door was leaning against a signpost, with no indication of where it had come from. A shudder ran through my body, a signal from my central nervous system to tell me I'd seen enough.
As we crossed the industrial area on the southern edge of the city, we saw less damage, either because the buildings were more substantial or because the storm hadn't hit as hard there. In a residential suburb we saw very little damage at first, then suddenly a space of a hundred yards or so that had been swept nearly clean, with not a single house that was still whole. My home was past a row of hills beyond, and the suspense was getting to me as we neared the top of the ridge, where we'd be able to look the area over. Miraculously, the far side of the ridge was almost untouched, and I breathed a silent prayer of thanks.
I parked in my driveway, and was unsnapping my seat belt when Kim reached over to me. She hugged me to her and whimpered a little, then pulled back and between sniffles, said in a small voice, "I'm so glad to have you to lean on with all this, this, uh, wreckage around me. We're so lucky to have our homes spared, and we're so lucky not to be going through this alone. After seeing all that, I feel so tiny and so vulnerable. I guess I was feeling in control of my life, and this has shown me how foolish I was. Nobody's in control when this happens."
