—I'VE SEEN IT RAIN AND FIRE IN THE SKY

 

 

The Torrent

 

We drove to the clinic in gauche silence while the rain shattered everything, liquid bullets hitting every object, as if it knew our intent and disagreed entirely.

The deluge slammed our car and trees and roofs and paved streets and sent every space popping with what looked like boiling venom.

I could barely swallow. I needed a drink but was afraid to ask Maeve to grab one of Costco waters lolling around in the backseat of my beat-up, VW bug. This was her play after all, and I was just a stooge handling the lighting as best I could.  

We were fifteen miles away, 79,200 feet, 79,200 opportunities to make a different call, rain pinging off the windshield like a hundred murder of crows pecking urgently for survival.

A dog or coyote or something larger leapt into the lane and I had only the time to notice it, but do nothing else. 

The thump felt like a drunken buddy shoulder-punching you, conspicuous but somewhat slight, and so I drove on without stopping.

“You hit something back there,” Maeve said, finally speaking. “A deer maybe.”

I wanted to speak, but my tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth like a glued slug and there was no air left inside of the car.

At the clinic, I casually perused the Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness, GQ and Esquire magazines that were stacked haphazardly on a wobbly coffee table, all of them with fingered and curled pages. They made me feel born in the wrong age. They made me even more confused. They made me throw up in my mouth and swallow it.

Maeve came out wearing the same clothes, her blonde hair shaped in the same uneven box cut, but something was different that I couldn’t identify. 

No one in the waiting area raised their heads to acknowledge her. Each guy just kept on reading or staring, as if Maeve had turned into a ghost like all of the others.

I stood and whispered, “Hey,” because what else could I say?

Maeve nodded against my hair and jaw stubble, up and down.

“You okay?” I asked.

She didn’t answer, just walked in front of me, out the door, walking away on her own, like a thunder-struck animal, out into the insistent rain.