For days, Richard has been reading the weather reports, watching the weather reports, researching weather phenomenon on the internet: wikipedia, NOAA, weather.com, various weather related blogs. Even before anyone else on the east coast knew anything about Nolan, old Dick was already buying canned goods, bread, bottled water, beer, whiskey, nudey magazines, a diesel powered generator, a prepaid cell phone. The weather radio already works on batteries, as well as AC.
Ashley left him back in the spring, long before hurricane season. His heart has never been the same, as anyone that knew the two of them would suspect. He has been obsessed with the things that he really cannot control since then, but they are all things that he thinks, through a more perfect understanding, he will be able to control. For him, it is not turning on and off the light switch an odd number of times, that’s too easy. It’s these weather phenomenon, and when a storm of this size and shape is on the loose, he is in his heyday.
Ashley left with the guy who designs the charts and graphs, the best he can figure, down at Channel 2. Said he’s hung like a horse. Tells Richard, on the night that she walks out, that he never did shit for her in the sack. He always felt like he was attentive, if not overly so.
The approaching storm is hesitantly welcome. He misses her kisses. Her orgasms, or feigned ones, or half-hearted attempts at them. The one mutual friend says that Ashley always said that he took care of her, but he’s not so sure. He feels like an ass.
If the house were washed away tonight when the storm hits, it wouldn’t be soon enough. Insurance would cover the cost of another move, and a move is what he needs. Throw the typewriter in the river. Don’t write the love notes any longer. All of the songs that could be given have already been said. Live it up. Live it in. Put a bow on this, and get on with life.
For the sake of dialogue, back then they said things like:
“Why don’t you stop drinking so much?”
“Why don’t you stop sweating me?”
“I would love you more if the night weren’t like this.”
“Piss off.”
“Fuck off.”
“No, fuck you.”
‘No, Dick, you can eat a bag of dicks.”
“Oh, please, I will, but don’t bother coming.”
And that’s where it would end. And full-stop. She couldn’t bear not being in that bed one night. The cursing and drinking was gamesmanship. Her reality was impossible to comprehend. To all outsiders, it’s no wonder she walked away, and a mystery that it was not sooner.
Storms have the capability to take away, but also wash things clean. There was one approaching that Richard knew was more than what he, or this house, could take, but he stayed. In his mind, storms could be the thing that righted wrongs as well. Could rectify karma, and, in the best instances, wash the world clean. Could give hope to the hopeless. The last will be first. The meek will inherit the earth.
Sitting in that living room, there was a sprawl of remote controls, beer bottles and various pieces of paper around him. On each piece of paper was written one aspect of the storm: wind velocity, historical barometric pressure, crude drawings of the hurricane path.
In the damp moisture of the approach, he felt whiskey going down, the feeling of first love, the desire to settle, first marriage, and the want, as he had always felt, for it to last.
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