I work as a reporter for the county newspaper. We were organized recently and given assignments to cover the recent rains and flooding in California. I'm the only guy in the whole outfit, except for the editor in chief.
As we gathered and were given our assignments, I was selected to cover the coastal landslides. With the loss of life involved, we were going to put two reporters on the scene to provide detailed coverage.
On any dual-assignment, this was the part I hate the most. I'm young and trim; this leads to all kinds of harassment from my female co-workers who are all fat, fatter, or fat and bitter. All except for one, but I never drew assignments with her. The short gal all the others hated, as physically fit as I was, had waist-long, straight red hair. Her name was Tracy, and she was engaged to the editor in chief. He gave her the good assignments.
Imagine my shock at the announcement that Tracy would be assigned with me. In thinking about the assignments, ours was the plum job. At least Tracy didn't hate me and I could stare at her cute ass all week long. The others all used my looks as a way to either claim I was harassing them or to put moves on me. Nothing can turn a stomach like a fat cow with the moon in her eyes.
I treated the assignment like an assignment but hadn't realized the extent of the damage the rains were causing. We were booked into a seaside hotel about forty minutes away from the major damage. I worked with Tracy the first day on organizing our plan of coverage. She was hopeless as far as anything happening, but at least she was nice and fun to look at. She always treated me well.
We put in two solid days of wet camera work and note taking as we interviewed local home and business owners. Seeing the damage firsthand is always more devastating than what is seen on TV. Despite whatever perspective is used, all the damage looks smaller on the tube.
At the end of an exhausting second day, I invited Tracy to join me for soup at the hotel restaurant.
She looked a little reluctant, but nodded. "Sure. Soup sounds really good."
We met at the register and were seated at a table by the window. Water dripped down from the ceiling here and there into buckets while we sat there. The rain was coming down harder. We Californians know what hard rain is, but they last only a few minutes and are gone. Invariably, some idiot decides he can prove he has a big dick by trying to swim across a river during the rains. Happens every time. But this rain was longer than any other in memory. This was a hard rain that lasted not minutes, but hours, and hours that stretched into days. This was like nothing seen in my lifetime.
I think both of us were awed by the display of mother nature, and we both kept looking out the window at the great Pacific ocean as it roiled and bubbled under the rain's onslaught.
"Sort of reminds you how mortal we are, and how powerless..." I murmured.
Tracy glanced at me in surprise. "I was thinking the same thing; how we can't stop something so vast."
I nodded.
"We're always in control all the time, managing and directing, but this makes you feel powerless against nature." She picked at her napkin. "It's almost frightening."
"Almost?" I asked. "This weather is scaring the hell out of me!"
Tracy looked nervous for a moment and smiled her wonderful smile briefly. "I thought I was the only one who felt scared."
I reached across and gave her hand a single, encouraging touch. She looked down in embarrassment.
We ate and made small talk about our careers; journalists always feel they're going to save the world. I asked Tracy about her impending marriage out of courtesy. Her and Ian the editor were going to be married in less than two weeks. The courtship had been too long - almost a year. But Ian had wanted to be sure he was established in his position before committing to marriage.
I told her about my divorce almost ten years ago. You marry young and realize you've made a mistake, so you correct the problem. But people looked on someone divorced as having some stigma of relationship-failure. You almost have to keep divorce secret for fear of it chasing you your whole life with failure after failure.
Tracy appeared interested, and not judgmental for me having admitted to a previous marriage. "You don't seem so bad; why didn't it work?"
Great, she might be giving me a chance, but even she equates divorce with "bad." "Well, she wanted a family right away, but wanted to run off on her career. I was all for career and making sure that was secure before starting a family. She didn't want to wait for either."
Tracy looked confused. "She expected to do both at once? That's not possible, is it?"
"It is if you can run off on your career path while the husband takes care of the family."
Tracy formed a circle with her mouth. "Oh."
"She was too young to consider either, seriously. So was I for that matter."
Our conversation turned to lighter subjects and we ended the evening on the second floor landing. The lights were out in the hotel hallways, except for the emergency exit lights, which were on battery back-up. Tracy lingered from going to her door down the other hall.
"Matt..." Tracy said with a tremor in her voice.
"Yes?" I turned to her in the dark.
"Umm, would you mind sitting with me until the lights come back on? I don't want to sit in the dark alone." She hugged herself.
"Oh, yeah, sure." What was I thinking? What a jerk I was to think she didn't need some emotional support during a blackout.
I sat with her in her room. She sat on the bed with a pillow hugged to her while I sat in the room's only chair. We talked and joked to pass the time. It's times like these where you miss the inanity of TV. But then, I wasn't missing it. I was getting to talk with Tracy before she tied the knot and was gone forever.
We really tried to do our job the next day. Really.
We walked outside to discover that Mother Nature had other plans. Not only had it continued to rain, and rain hard, but the ground up here had gone soft. The entire ocean side of the parking lot had given way and both our cars were laying in a tumble of broken asphalt and mud. My guess is that they were totaled. Not only the cars, but all of the telephone poles on this one side.
I pissed off Mother nature's plans, though, and whipped out my cell. Within twenty minutes, the newsroom had been apprised of our situation. We were told to continue covering from where we were since we were now in the middle of it, and we would be picked up at the end of the assignment.
"We're slated for pick-up Saturday." I snapped the cell shut.
"What are we going to do without cars?"
"Cover the reporting from here." I shrugged. Our cars were as good a picture as any, so I readied the camera for some firsthand material.
We did a fast job of splitting tasks for the day and separated. People don't like reporters, but they love to talk. Once past the initial hostility, you get tons of info, some good, some useless. Unfortunately for me, I had to write small for fear of filling my notepad. All my extras had been in the trunk of the car.
Since we were limited to the same vicinity, I saw when she approached the café. I was busy sipping coffee, and she joined me in a wet plop of jacket and purse.
"Am I ever going to be warm again?" Her teeth chattered.
My eyebrows raised into my scalp. Was I that stupid I couldn't see her shivering? "I'm sorry, you want my jacket?"
She glanced at it but said nothing.
I looked at it and realized that mine was just as soaked. Due. I felt like an idiot. "Oh, I'm sorry. How stupid."
"No, that's okay. Thanks for offering." She huddled in on herself.
She ordered soup with chattering teeth. She was really cold.
Can I be any more dense? I got out of the booth and scooted in beside her. I reached my arm around and tried to hold her as best I could in the booth. Usually, you feel some warmth created, but all I felt was cold.
"Your jacket isn't weatherproof?"
"I don't know, it's just a jacket." She started to shiver less as some semblance of warmth was generated.
"Oh. Mine is treated. It gets wet, but takes longer. You're soaked through to the skin."
The soup really helped and she thanked me for warming her. I didn't move back to my side, and she said nothing. If Ian had walked in here, I'd be looking for another job, I'm sure. Even as wet as she was, she smelled wonderful.
"I probably look like a drowned rat," she looked into her soup.
"No, you look beautiful..." I realized I was speaking my mind without thinking. "Oh my gosh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to harass you or anything..."
"Oh stop it. I'm not like those other women." She gave me a stern look.
