Tony Partly Cloudy (13 page)

Martin reached out to pat Tony’s shoulder. “Your luck will change, don’t worry. You’ll meet somebody. And when you do, it’ll most likely be when you least expect it. But there’s somebody out there.” Martin allowed himself a smile. “Somebody with everything you’re looking for, but with no, um, extra moving parts, if you get my drift.”

Tony laughed. “Yeah, that would be nice.”

The two men bade Tony good night, and went on into the house. Tony stayed on the porch, opening another beer to try to rinse the taste of Debbie’s kisses from his mouth.

“GENTLEMEN, WE HAVE OURSELVES A SPINNER.”

“A what?” Tony asked, looking over at Travis, who had his eyes on a computer monitor.

“A spinner,” Travis repeated. “You know, a hurricane.”

“Elsa?”

“Yup. She just got upgraded.”

Tony frowned. “I thought she was just going to stay a tropical storm, and then break up out in the Atlantic. That’s what Ryan and everybody else have been saying.”

Travis smiled. “Looks like the great and powerful Ryan was wrong.”

“Say that again and you’re fired,” said Ryan Culbertson as he walked into the room. Despite his stern tone, the Meteorologist In Charge was smiling.

“Say what again?” Travis asked. “That you’re great and powerful, or that you’re wrong?”

“That I’m wrong, which of course cannot happen,” Ryan replied. “We all know that I
am
great and powerful. But what’s this
spinner
crap?”

Travis beamed. “It’s my new name for hurricanes. When I get interviewed on the news, that’s gonna be the hip new term I’ll use for them. Soon, every meteorologist will call them that. And to think, you guys were lucky enough to be around for the birth of a buzzword.”

Ryan laughed. “The day anybody shows any interest in interviewing
you
about the weather will be a dark day indeed for meteorology.”

“You got that right,” Tony said. “Now what about Elsa? Is she still headed our way?”

“That’s affirmative,” Travis said. “She just made Category 1, but she’s got a lot of open water between her and us, so that could change. She could grow.”

Tony eyed the monitor, which showed a variety of projected paths for the hurricane, some of which indicated that the storm was on a collision course with the Florida Keys.

Wistfully he said, “I wonder if we’ll actually get one this year.” While they had tracked numerous hurricanes during Tony’s first year in Key West, none had come anywhere near South Florida. If Elsa continued to head their way, she would be Tony’s first hurricane.

Ryan looked appraisingly at the young meteorologist. It was normal for a rookie to want to see a hurricane firsthand. Just as it was normal afterward for that same meteorologist to never want to see another hurricane again. With a grim smile, Ryan said, “Be careful what you wish for...”

♠ ♥ ♣ ♦

Two days later, the tone around the NWS office was far less jovial. Elsa
had
grown, and was now a Category 3 hurricane, which meant she was capable of sustained winds of up to 130 miles per hour. And she was headed directly for the Florida Keys. An evacuation order had been issued, which caused major traffic problems. There was literally only one road out of Key West, and it quickly became choked with cars, trucks, and little pink scooters, all jockeying for position.

But many people had chosen to ignore the evacuation, and instead busied themselves preparing for the storm. Tony helped Martin and Donny cover their windows and doors with the large metal hurricane panels they kept stored in their backyard shed, while other neighbors boarded up their homes with plywood, or duct-taped their windows in large X-shaped patterns, a strategy that mystified Tony.

The stores were filled with people laying in supplies, with the most popular items being batteries, water, and booze. Ryan sent Travis to the dollar store to buy as many plastic buckets and wastebaskets as he could find. When Tony inquired, Ryan said, “It’s the roof. Damn thing already leaks like a sieve, but if Elsa’s as strong as she looks, it’s probably going to feel like it’s raining indoors. We may even lose the roof entirely.”

“Isn’t this building reinforced against hurricanes?” Tony asked, for the first time feeling a bit uneasy about his surroundings. “I always just assumed a weather office would be, you know, strong enough to withstand anything.”

“Yeah, you’d think that, wouldn’t you?” Ryan said. “Once again, welcome to the wonderful world of publicly funded meteorology. I keep hearing about plans to move into a new facility, but so far nothing’s been confirmed.”

Seeing the concern on Tony’s face, Ryan said, “If you want, you can bail out. I’m already telling all non-essentials to heed the evacuation order. We’ll work with a skeleton crew if we have to, and it’s on a voluntary basis. I won’t make anybody stay who isn’t comfortable with the idea.”

Ryan took off his glasses and polished them with the tail of his untucked shirt. “The reality is that since our little island paradise also happens to be the number one hurricane threat in the US, we’re the only meteorologists in the NWS whose lives actually depend on our own forecasts.”

Ryan paused, letting this sink in. “If you want out,” he said, “I won’t think any less of you. But if you do want to bail, you’d better get a move on. The road out of here tends to flood fast, so pretty soon leaving may not be an option.”

“No, I’ll stay,” Tony said. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”

Ryan smiled. It was what every rookie said.

Elsa was two days away when Tony began to
feel
the storm. It was unlike anything he had ever experienced. Tony’s instinct for the weather – his gift, if you believed the things Nona Maria said – was usually something pretty subtle and spontaneous. A sudden feeling that the weather was about to change, a brief sense of foreboding inspired by a particularly foul patch of incoming weather. But the feeling usually didn’t last very long – often just long enough to alert Tony of an upcoming meteorological change.

But this – this was something new. This was more than Tony’s gift had ever encountered. Elsa was plodding towards the Florida Keys at only eight miles an hour, and was now nearly the size of Texas. As the massive storm moved inexorably toward him, Tony’s nerves felt as if they were plugged into an electrical socket, and somebody was turning up the juice. He felt an almost physically tangible wall of impending danger drawing ever closer, leaving his senses tingling nonstop.

It was both overwhelming and exhausting. And it kept getting stronger.

Tony longed for a way to shut these feelings off. “Jesus Freakin’ Christ,” he would say to himself when he was sure nobody could hear him. “I already
know
the hurricane is coming. You don’t have to keep reminding me. I get it already.” But the Gift ignored his entreaties, and the oppressive jangling sensation continued to grow.

Elsa was slated to arrive on a Tuesday afternoon. The weather started getting bad on Monday, as the outer bands of the storm moved over the Keys. Heavy thunderstorms were followed by brief glimpses of sunshine, as the spiral-shaped bands of the hurricane passed over Key West. Although most businesses were closed, the bars that lined the downtown streets stayed open, and were doing a thriving business. Jimmy Buffett blared through loudspeakers as people with umbrellas roamed the rain-soaked streets from one bar to another, many holding drinks that had miniature umbrellas of their own. Everywhere Tony turned, the people who had chosen to hunker down and ride out the storm were throwing “hurricane parties,” doling out peace of mind by the shot glass. Taking advantage of some of these social opportunities, Tony found that downing a few drinks helped ease his overworked nerves significantly: apparently the Gift was a cheap date.

Tuesday morning dawned, and Elsa wasn’t stopping. The shallower water along the Keys succeeded in sapping some of her strength, and the storm had been downgraded: now she was expected to make landfall as a Category 2 hurricane, which Tony knew meant Key West would be facing maximum winds of 110 miles per hour. Tony was grateful for the 20 mile-per-hour reprieve.

“We should be able to make it through this okay,” Ryan reassured his staff. “If it gets too hairy we’ll evacuate downstairs, but I think in exchange for protection from the wind we’d be looking at some flooding from the storm surge. So I hope none of you is wearing expensive shoes.”

By noon it was getting nasty. The wind howled through nearly deserted streets, and on the shore that the airport overlooked, the crashing waves continued to grow in size and intensity.

Landfall was estimated for 2:00 P.M., and Elsa was right on time.

If Tony had to sum up his first hurricane in one word, that word would be
loud
. Starting around 1:00 P.M., a steadily building roar began to engulf the island. The roar was punctuated by sudden bursts of even more intense white noise, each accompanied by an increase in air pressure that Tony could feel deep inside his ears. Tony felt the entire building vibrate, and at one point swore he could see one wall actually bulging inward slightly, but that seemed impossible; it was concrete, after all.

The storm darkened the island, both with cloud cover and by knocking out the power. The NWS office was heavily backed up by generators, but still the lights and equipment frequently dimmed and sputtered. Outside, faint explosions could be heard, sometimes accompanied by green flashes of light.

“Those are power transformers blowing,” Ryan said, yelling to be heard over the storm.

From time to time, Tony could hear objects hitting the building, some of them quite large, judging by the sound they made. Tony knew those projectiles might be anything from coconuts to sailboats, and silently wondered what they’d find imbedded in the side of the building when the storm let up.

A strange high-pitched whistle began to rise above the other noise. It was an eerie, unearthly sound, reminding Tony of the cheesy but scary sound effects sometimes used in early science fiction movies.

“What the hell is that?” he shouted to Travis, who was manning a nearby monitor that showed the edge of Elsa’s eye right on top of them.

“Power lines,” Travis yelled back. “The wind blowing around them makes them vibrate like guitar strings.”

The ethereal whistling grew louder, taking on an urgency Tony found unsettling, like a giant ghostly teapot on the boil. More than anything else Tony saw or heard during his first hurricane, it was that otherworldly whistling that would dominate his memories of Elsa. It was the creepiest thing he had ever heard.

After nearly half an hour of Elsa’s roaring assault, the sound of the storm suddenly tapered off significantly, dropping in volume so quickly that the NWS staff realized belatedly that they were shouting at each other for no reason.

“We’re inside!” Ryan bellowed. Then noticing that things had quieted down substantially, he repeated his statement in a normal tone of voice. “We’re inside.”

“Inside?” Tony asked, looking to Travis for an explanation.

“Yeah, dude,” Travis said. “Come on – you gotta see this.” Travis stood up and made for the door that led into the terminal of the airport. “Follow me!” he yelled at Tony, who sat frozen at his desk.

“Come on, Tony,” Ryan said. “You won’t see something like this every day. If you’ve got a camera, grab it. But hurry.”

Ryan followed Travis out the door, as did a couple other NWS staffers. Baffled, Tony got up and followed.

Led by Travis, the group headed outside, where they splashed out onto pavement covered by several inches of water.

“Not too bad,” Ryan said. “I was expecting a foot or two of water at least. But the storm surge was less than I’d figured. We may be down to a Category 1 by now.”

The thing Tony was trying to get used to was the silence. While Elsa had been probably the loudest thing he’d ever heard, what he was experiencing now was the virtually complete absence of sound.

Nothing moved. The standing water on the ground showed scarcely a ripple. There was no wind. No rain. No sound. Nothing moved.

Tony was just beginning to come to terms with where they were. Turning to his boss, he said, “When you said
we’re inside
, you mean...”

Ryan smiled. “You got it. We’re inside the eye.”

“But it’s so quiet!”

“I know. It’s amazing, isn’t it? When the far wall gets closer we’ll start getting some wind and some showers, but right now, this is about as calm as weather ever gets. Wait ‘til you see the barometric readings when we go back inside, assuming that none of our gear got damaged during landfall. You won’t believe how low the pressure is in here. In millibars, we’re probably talking low to mid 900’s. As you would put it, that’s pretty freaking low.”

Travis tapped Tony on his arm, trying to get his attention.

“Dude,” he said, “look up.”

Tony did, and was astonished to see clear blue sky above him. The roughly circular shape of the blue patch of sky overhead faded gradually into the whites and grays of the clouds that surrounded them on all sides. It was like looking up from the playing field of a giant stadium whose colossal walls reached up to the sky.

“Holy fucking shit,” Tony observed.

“Well put,” Ryan said, then laughed when he saw Tony’s embarrassment. “It’s okay, Tony. If a sight like this doesn’t promote an emotional response, there’s something wrong with you.”

To the rest of his staff, Ryan yelled, “If you want to take some pictures, do it now. There’s work to be done, and we need to get back inside. We’ve only got a few minutes
before—”

Ryan’s instructions were interrupted by the incongruous sound of a bicycle bell being rung over and over. The group turned to see a lone man pedaling by on a neon green conch cruiser with bright orange streamers flowing from its high handlebars. The shirtless man wore one of those novelty hats that held a can of beer on each side of his head, with flexible straws extending from the cans to his mouth, allowing him to drink hands-free while he pedaled his bike.