It was a horribly hot day in late June. Lila had spent the morning inside on the phone to her landlady regarding the roses growing up the side of the house. Lila lived in a two story house that had been converted into two studio apartments, one on the top floor, and one on the bottom. She occupied the bottom apartment, and the wild roses growing up the side of the house were now covering her living room window. Normally, Lila liked flowers, but not when they obstructed her view of the driveway.
The landlady told Lila that she would have the roses cut down by the end of next week, the same thing she had said about the matter for the past two months. Grumbling, Lila had hung up the phone and decided that she would just do the job herself. After all, it was a nice day, although hot, and she had nothing better to do.
She went outside and around to the back of the house, where the entrance to the underground storm cellar was, hoping to find some hedge trimmers or other tool to make the job easier. But there was a padlock on the door of the cellar, and Lila did not have a key. She glared at the padlock in frustration, also noticing the ax propped up next to the cellar door. Idly she chewed over the idea of chopping the door open with the ax, not that she wanted to cut down the roses that badly, but just for the pleasure of causing the landlady some inconvenience. But she turned away, thinking, and then remembered that she had a hunting knife in her apartment. It had been a gift from an ex from long ago. She had thought it a strange gift at the time, until he told her it was for protection. Lila remembered when he had broken up with her to date a man, and her stomach churned a little at the memory.
She went up to her apartment and after a ten minute sweaty search found the knife. It was still encased in its leather holder, never used, which Lila hoped meant it was still sharp. She took it outside, and after worming her way through the tangle of roses and vines at the side of the house, began the laborious process of cutting the rosebush branches. It was hot, sweaty and slow work. But she found a certain pleasure in it, because she was pretending that every branch resembled her ex-boyfriend's head. He had broken up with her over a month ago with no reason, and she was still furious with him. She had not dated much since then, having no tolerance for the opposite sex yet. But then, going to school and working full time did not leave her much time for a social life anyway, a major complaint her ex had had about their relationship. Today was the first free day she'd had in nearly two months, and here she was spending it cutting down roses. And getting quite scratched up in the process.
"Isn't the landlady supposed to take care of that?"
Lila whirled around, startled at the sudden sound of a voice behind her, and faced her upstairs neighbor, David, standing behind her with a grocery bag in one hand and his keys in the other.
David had already lived in the upstairs apartment when Lila had moved in seven months ago. He had spoken cheerfully to her every time she ran into him, and he had also helped her out of a tight fix when the hot water heater had broken down in the cold of March, a problem the landlady had not seen as dire as Lila had. David was apparently a jack of all trades, especially good at maintenance work, and his help had been a tremendous relief when faced with the prospect of taking cold showers.
He was a tall man, leanly built with wiry muscle, and he had dark brown hair and a pleasant, intelligent face. Lila had always thought he was good looking in his own unique way, something rare in most men. She liked him very much, for his quiet ways drew her. He never made any noise at all, in fact, he seemed to be a bit of a recluse. In all the time Lila had been his neighbor, she had never seen any guests come and go from his upstairs apartment. He seemed very content with his life, and the more she saw of him, the more her curiosity about him grew, wondering what, if anything, made him tick. Of course, she also did not mind looking at his wiry, muscular body.
Lila dropped the hunting knife and shoved her long black hair off of her sweaty forehead. "Yes, she is supposed to have it done, but I want it done before we can't find the house anymore once it's buried in roses," she replied in a tone heavy with sarcasm.
David nodded and grinned a little, and Lila, in a small corner of her mind, got the same feeling that she had gotten many times before when talking to David, that he was concentrating on keeping his eyes on her face and not staring at her ample chest, which at the moment was barely covered by a white tank top. David was not a guy to express thought or emotion to anyone, but Lila had, on occasion, noticed him watching her when she was coming and going or outside tanning. Why did she sense an intensity behind his silence? The intelligence in his eyes attracted her, but she knew she could never tell him that he had any effect on her. He was simply not approachable that way.
"You're going to end up melting out here," he finally said, looking up at the sky, which had gone from a bright blue to a rather odd hazy color of gray. Yet in the short time Lila had been outside working, the heat had grown worse.
"Probably," Lila agreed. She wanted this conversation to end before she said something to embarrass them both. She bent down to retrieve her hunting knife.
"Why are you using a knife to do that?" he asked. "Aren't there any hedge clippers or something around, maybe in the cellar?"
"I can't get into the cellar," Lila replied doefully. "It's padlocked and I don't have a key. Do you?"
"She locked the cellar? It wasn't locked last week."
"Well, it's locked now."
David rolled his eyes. "I wonder what she's worried about losing out of there," he muttered.
Lila sighed. "Well, I'm getting the job done. Slowly." She turned to resume her sawing at the branches, unaware that David was staring at the exposed skin of her lower back, now quite scratched up from the thorns.
"Don't hurt yourself," he said, and turned to go inside. Lila murmured something in response but did not turn around.
David took his groceries inside, and just in time, because he did not want Lila to see the flush on his face that he knew was there. He always felt that heat in his face whenever he was around her for any length of time. Especially when she was wearing only cutoff jeans and a halter top.
He turned on the television, just for something to listen to as he put away his groceries, but his mind was on his downstairs neighbor. Ever since Lila had moved in, David had tried to work up the courage to ask her out, or even just ask her over for a drink or something. She was extremely attractive, with long jet black hair and ebony eyes to match, yet her skin was pale and delicate. She jogged every morning and had a body that he often dreamed about at night, waking up to wet sheets, something he was embarrassed to even think about. He did not have a great deal of experience with women, in fact, he'd only slept with three, all of which had been one night stands, and nothing much to remember. It was not that he was unattractive, although he felt that on a scale of one to ten, he was just average. No, it was simply that he never had all that much to say, and a lot of women found him boring. They could not be comfortable with his silences. He enjoyed his life of solitude, though he cherished the few friends he had who had been patient enough to wait until he would let them get close to him.
As he finished putting things away he heard the slam of the door as Lila went into her apartment, and a few minutes later he heard her shower start up. The walls in the house were quite thin, and most sounds from either unit could be heard. Lila never really made any noise though, except on occasional nights, when David had lain awake and listened to the unmistakable sounds of sex from her bedroom below. Hearing Lila's moans on those nights nearly drove him out of his mind. However, he had not heard anything of that sort for quite some time. A couple of weeks ago Lila had mentioned to him that she'd broken up with the guy she'd been dating. David knew he should have grabbed the opportunity then to ask her out, but she had seemed angry about her breakup and his nerve, again, had failed him. He just couldn't find the right words, and the thought of making a fool of himself always stopped him.
The television suddenly began to make a noise that cut into David's thoughts. He wandered into the living area and saw that the program he'd had on had been interrupted by the Emergency Broadcast System. He waited for the announcement that it was only a test, but instead, the National Weather Service announced that a tornado warning had been issued for their area. Apparently a funnel cloud had been spotted on the ground and was heading their way, and residents were to take cover immediately.
David went into the kitchen again and looked out of the window. From his upstairs apartment he could see the sky clearly. It had gone a little grayer, but there was not a breath of wind and no sign of severe weather kicking in. Another false alarm, he thought. Their state was known for tornado activity, but the warnings were issued much more often than the tornadoes appeared, and most people took the reports with a grain of salt.
He went into the bedroom to change into a pair of very old, thin cotton shorts, not wanting to wear anything more in the oppressive heat. Then he returned to the living room, where he found to his surprise that the television screen was now just a screen of snow. He glanced out the window again, and his heart skipped a beat. In the few minutes it had taken him to change, the wind had picked up rapidly and was now bending the trees in the yard halfway to the ground. The light outside had taken on a greenish cast and the sky was black.
There was no doubt that the warning just issued was real this time.
Hot adreneline started to pound through David's veins, and without a moment's hesitation he tore his door open and raced down the outside steps and around to the front of the house to Lila's front door. He did not waste time knocking but just burst right into her living room, nearly colliding with Lila herself, who was just coming out of her bathroom. She was wrapped in a short bath towel, her black hair hanging damply down her back.
"David!" Lila cried, shocked at his sudden intrusion into her apartment without even knocking. Her TV was not on, and in the shower she had not heard the wind pick up.
Whatever she was about to say was cut off by the sound of the tornado sirens rising to a high pitch and screaming out their warning.
