Hurricane Man [Excerpt]

Tom placed the omeprazole in his mouth, trying not to accidentally chew. The pill was huge, oversized. He chased it down with a gulp of water and massaged his temples, feeling the aches and creases shifting in his forehead. The screen on his desk was dark, and he avoided looking at it; he didn’t want to see his own misshapen jowls reflected back at him. The bits of graying beard around his mouth were so wispy and tattered he’d taken to shaving them off. Coupled with the roundness of his face and the wrinkles, he knew he looked like a vegetable: a sort of shriveled-up pumpkin that hadn’t yet seen enough sun.

Glowing text scrolled across the ticker in the hall outside, catching his eye. Tom mouthed along with the words: Depression strengthens into Tropical Storm Epsilon. He nodded to himself and jotted down the time (two thirty-six p.m.) on a Post-it stuck to his monitor. Above fluorescent lighting flickered, bouncing ugly, synthetic rays against the bleached bony tile of his office.

It was a bit strange, making a living off of what society deemed natural disasters; Tom never hoped for storms, of course, but without them he’d have been out of a job. Take Katrina, for example: it had been tragic for Louisiana, undoubtedly, and the WMO had retired it as a name for good reason…but it had also drummed up a ton of press for the National Hurricane Center, with more donations and grants in ‘05 than in the past ten years combined. Not that the NHC was the most prestigious meteorological organization in the world (or even the country) anymore. The World Meteorological Organization had that covered. These days the Center seemed relegated more to the realm of photo ops for the mayor, on days when they weren’t hosting middle school field trips. It was hard not to feel passed over sometimes.

A tall, bespectacled man in a turtleneck crossed in front of Tom’s door. He stopped and swiveled. “Tommy,” he said, before barging in fully and depositing himself into a chair.

Tom did his best not to grimace. “Hendricks. What can I do for you?”

“I read your new paper on wind currents,” said Hendricks. He leaned forward and smoothed back his hair. “Very enlightening.”

“You think so?” Tom couldn’t help but straighten in his seat. He couldn’t recall the last time Hendricks had given him a compliment.

“Mm. A little dry, but you still know your patterns.” Hendricks drummed his hands on the edge of the desk. “For whatever that’s worth.”

The pill hadn’t kicked in yet, and the pain in Tom’s stomach was beginning to flare up. “Is there something I can help you with?”

“One of the interns called out sick, and they asked for an extra pair of hands sorting through envelopes. You think you can manage that?”

Hendricks—looking past him, through him—didn’t wait for an answer. He got up and strode out of the office, letting the door hang open as he left. Tom followed his exit with his eyes, watching him disappear from view, then he hoisted up his pants and bent down to the lowest drawer of his desk. He rummaged around for a minute before pulling out a tiny black rectangle.

He’d help with the letters. He was a team player, after all. But he had a stop to make first.

*

Hendricks’s office was a floor above and twice the size, as befitted a Senior Specialist. The man was a few decades younger than Tom, and already he’d wowed the meteorological community with his poise, his insight, his knack for wresting endowments from government hands. Atop his desk sat a framed picture: Hendricks with a few assistants at the 38th Hurricane Committee in Geneva, surrounded by some of the most brilliant minds in weather. He’d be going again in a couple of months. Tom checked to make sure no one was watching, then carefully slipped the rectangle into the back of the frame, behind the picture. He left quickly, smiling to himself.

Despite what Hendricks may have thought of him, Tom was no fool. For twelve years now the National Hurricane Center had been languishing, kept alive on a drip feed of donor support and political disinterest. More than once Tom had read articles and tweets joking about Florida falling into the sea, by meteorologists who failed to remember (or care) that the NHC was based entirely in Miami. It made him sick to think about it. And yet there were rumblings now of change, coinciding with the results of the recent election. Rumors were spreading about budgetary shifts, staff reassignments, about renewed government oversight. There was talk even of reevaluating the National Weather Service’s relationship with the WMO and the U.N.. As cliché as he knew it sounded, there was a storm on the horizon.

Whatever was coming, Hendricks was going to be on the ground floor of it. A hundred-dollar recording device off Amazon seemed an appropriately sound investment. Besides which Hendricks liked to hear himself talk, and Tom was very interested to hear what the man said when he thought no one was listening.

Tom headed down the stairs to Lab Two, which their rotating array of interns had affectionately dubbed “the mail room.” Tom did not relish this task; the vast majority of letters they received were variations on a single theme. People were always upset about the names of the hurricanes, furious that they or their children might share an identity with a storm that had wrecked the economy or killed a distant relative. Never mind that the names were on a set schedule, one that rotated out every six years. Never mind that the NHC didn’t even run the lists anymore, that the World Meteorological Organization had placed that duty firmly under U.N. jurisdiction. People didn’t care about the facts.

One of the interns nodded to him as he entered the lab. “Hey, Tommy. Back for another round?”

He was fifty-four years old and nobody called him Thomas. Tom or Tommy or Doctor Green or sometimes even Professor Green, after that ill-fated stint at UF, but never Thomas. In his thirties his father had reached out for him, beckoning him closer towards his hospital bed—Cassie had long since left the room—and seized his hand with a tightness that defied the dimming in his pupils.

“Leave the lights on when you go, Tommy,” he’d hissed, hacking up blood between breaths. “You need to leave ‘em on for me.” No respect, not even from his father. Not even on his deathbed. He’d sounded almost accusatory, near the end.

Tom’s phone whirred with a notification. He checked it: an email, cc’d to him and Hendricks and the rest of the Hurricane Specialists Unit.

The United States of America will no longer be attending the 39th RA IV Hurricane Committee in San Jose, Costa Rica, from March 23-26, 2017. Details forthcoming.

*

“You’re one of the most respected voices in weather.” Her voice was relaxed, soothing, not quite melodic. She was from the Capitol, Tom knew, a stranger, newly appointed by a newly elected President.

“You’re promoting me?” That was Hendricks, all right.

“We need a leader. Someone who knows hurricanes better than the rest, someone we can trust. We’re excited to offer you the opportunity to be that leader.”

“What about Cole? He’s the Branch Chief.”

“You’re a Senior Specialist.”

“And the rest of the team?”

“We’re restructuring. The administration feels we’d be better served with a more streamlined approach to storm management.”

“Gutted, you mean.” There, in the background: Hendricks’s hands tapping. “You think I haven’t heard what you people are doing in TSB? Cutting the Storm Surge Unit down to two? And pulling out of the WMO, are you shitting me?”

“It’s a new day in Washington, sir.” The pace of the tapping increased. “New Secretary, new guidelines. We’re looking for the people most capable of adapting to changing circumstances.”

“You’ve got that right.” Silence for a moment. Then: “I didn’t go to Cornell for six years to be a political prop. Whatever’s going on here, with the election, the U.N…you can leave me out of it.”

“We’re sorry you feel that way,” came the voice, mildly. “If you change your mind, the Center would love to have you back.”

“Excuse me?”

“The administration wishes you all the best.”

The wave of shouting drowned out what was left of the conversation, and Tom yanked out his earpiece. He let out a rush of breath. His instincts had been right, even if he hadn’t seen the full scope of it. The Center brought back under direct supervision? The Hurricane Specialist Unit restructured? Hendricks fired, after more than a decade of being their ace in the hole?

Cassie had been with him the first time he’d ever met Hendricks. It had been at a fundraiser for the Center, a “Benefit Ball,” they’d called it, and she’d worn a brand-new dress with crimson fabric and thin straps. They’d arrived a little late—Tom had misplaced his wallet, lodged between two crumb-covered couch cushions—and already there’d been a crowd gathered around Hendricks. He was the new up-and-comer, the star of the show, and he was quickly accumulating admirers. It was all very intimidating.

Cassie had nudged him forward. “Go introduce yourself,” she’d muttered. “It’s now or never.”

He’d approached, a little wary, to shake Hendricks’s hand. They’d exchanged pleasantries, commiserated about the Floridian heat, batted a few ideas back and forth about requests for new cameras. Tom had tried not to talk down to the man; it was clear he had a bright future ahead of him, and it behooved Tom to be as ingratiating as possible. At one point he’d looked over his shoulder to see Cassie watching from the bar. He could tell she’d been impressed, despite herself.

Their divorce had been quick and easy, relatively painless. Easier than their marriage, at least. Cassie had taken the car and the house and even the furniture with nary a fight; if they’d had any kids he knew she would have taken those too. He’d just wanted it over and done with at that point. He was tired of her prodding, of her endless parade of twice-worn cocktail dresses, of her inability to see patience as anything but cowardice. He’d be happier without her, he knew. He’d been certain of it. That certainty had faded with time.

“Doctor Green?” The government woman, poking her head into his office. “Could I see you for a moment?”

Tom nodded, shaking himself out of numbness, and she closed the door behind her. Her hair was so pale it might have been dyed, tied back in a thin ponytail. She smoothed out her business suit and plastered on a smile.

“You’re one of the most respected voices in—”

“I’m ready,” he interrupted, holding out his hand. It was now or never. “I’m your guy.”

Falling

He was born and he fell on his back. Eventually he began to walk, and he fell on his back. His father lost his job while his mother cooked fried rice for the last time, and they clung to each other, and he fell on his back. His first brother was born, and he fell on his back. They moved to an apartment in a new state, and then again to a townhouse in another state, and he fell on his back. His mom dropped him at kindergarten, surrounded by strangers, and he wailed and fell on his back. He got on the bus to go home, and he couldn’t remember the stop, and he felt himself fall on his back. He told a girl he liked her and everyone else laughed, and he didn’t know why, and he fell on his back. He read a book under his desk until the teacher called on him, and he shot out of his seat and fell on his back. He played on a soccer team but really he just knelt in the grass, picking dandelions, and when a ball sailed towards him he fell on his back. He auditioned for the school musical again, and tried to belt above a G, and he fell on his back. He went on his first date with his first girlfriend, and his best friend came as a buffer, and at the end she said I think we should just be friends, and his mom picked them up and he fell on his back. He looked at himself in the mirror, at how skinny he was, and he thought to himself, what’s wrong with me? Is it because my back is so bruised?

He got a B in Algebra and his father screamed at him, and he felt something harden inside and he screamed back. He tried not to fall. He glared at the French teacher while she berated him, while she called him a serpent, and everyone else stared, silent and unsure. He tried not to fall. He slowed to a powerwalk as the lead runners lapped him, as they crossed the finish line, but he kept on pushing and he didn’t stop and he didn’t fall. He asked her to prom and she said yes, and he hugged her waist while she held up his flowers, and in the picture they both were beaming. He watched her on the makeshift dance floor, grinding against his choir friend, his best bud, and he turned and went outside. He refused to let himself fall. He headed off to a two-week summer camp in Ohio where he got really good at foosball, and shyly serenaded a girl after Capture the Flag, and made it to the finals of Writer Fight Club, and played piano while he sang for their going-away ceremony, and made so, so many friends, and for the first time in his life felt like he belonged. He tried not to cry on the plane. He forgot about falling for a little while.

He waited until Christmas break to apply to colleges, and he spent too many late nights finishing too many applications. He snarled and his father roared and he stormed up to his room and slammed the door. He stacked boxes on the stoop as they closed down the garage, and they drove away from the house for the final time. He unloaded the rest of the pots and pans in their new kitchen, in an unfamiliar town, and he turned and got on a plane to North Carolina. He shook a dozen hands at orientation, went out to a pizza place with people who already knew each other, joined an a cappella group and had his first drink and carried a bleeding, sobbing girl in from the rain. He read poetry adaptations aloud in class, and people clapped politely, and he wondered whether he’d ever be successful. He had his heart broken again, and again, and he began to commiserate with the older students down the hall. He wanted to fit in. He made a bet and drank eight shots of Grey Goose in under five minutes. He threw up in the Wendy’s and everyone else laughed, and he didn’t know why. He staggered on the way back to the dorm, and somebody shouldered him and said I got him, I’ll get him to his room. He passed out. He woke up naked in an unfamiliar bed, feeling the older boy’s hand on him, the stranger’s hand on him, the man’s hand on him, and his mind went blank and he jerked away and he fell on his back.

He didn’t say anything, because what do you say?

He found a girlfriend who had her own issues with intimacy, and eventually he learned that his friends disliked her and he tried not to fall. When he told her about what happened, she held him close as he tried not to fall. His parents found him a therapist, one who said that he was traumatized but that it was more than that, it was about everything that had happened before, and he tried not to fall. He hiked a mountain over fall break, and he felt sicker than he’d ever been, and he tried not to fall. When he returned they diagnosed him with mono. He tried to get out of bed, to write, and he fell on his back. He stopped going to class. He plagiarized part of a paper—he was desperate, drowning—and the professor submitted him for an Honor Court violation and he fell on his back. His girlfriend cheated on him over the summer, and when she finally told him he drove his fist into the wall. He stopped going to therapy. He got an email from the university with the subject line Academic Ineligibility, and he fell.

He laid on his back. He laid on his back. No one knew. He laid on his back. He jerked off. He ordered food in or he went hungry or he didn’t leave the apartment. He laid on his back. He pretended to his family that everything was fine, that he was still a student, still graduating. He laid on his back. His best friend’s ex pulled him into an embrace and he laid on his back. His roommate knocked on his door and said, I’m worried about you man. He laid on his back. He called the hotline and said, tell me everything’s going to be okay. He weighed the fear of falling forever against the relief of never having to fall again. He returned to therapy.

It seemed like you didn’t want to be here last time, she said, as he laid on his back. He unloaded everything on her, everything that had happened. She asked if he was suicidal, and he told her the truth. She gave him a look and nodded and shook his hand on the way out. Later she called him and said I’m sorry, but your parents are coming down to get you. It’s going to be okay. They opened the door and he fell on his back and he broke, sobbing. Him and his mother and his father, all sobbing together.

He returned to a home he’d never lived in. He laid on his back. He jerked off in the room upstairs. He laid on his back. He started taking antidepressants. He started working to pay off his student loans. He started talking to his father about what had happened between them, the things they had said to each other before, how to forgive one another. He kept seeing his therapist over Facetime. He laid on his back and he thought about all his mistakes.

Eventually she asked him what he wanted for himself, whether he’d thought about going back to school. He said I don’t really hope for much. “If you don’t allow yourself to hope, then you’re not really living,” she said. He gestured to himself, lying on his back, and said look at where I am. Look at what I’ve done. “Belittling yourself is just an attempt to exert control over the outcome,” she said, “and it doesn’t work.” He shrugged and said so what’s the point then? My whole life all I’ve done is fall and lie and fail. “That’s the way you’ve chosen to perceive it,” she said. “The truth is we all have narratives we cling to. It’s a crutch, but it’s one you can set aside.” She smiled at him. “You get to decide what kind of story you want to tell.”

He closed the call. He thought about that for a while. He shivered. He stood up.

Myth

“A mandarin fell in love with a courtesan. "I shall be yours," she told him, "when you have spent a hundred nights wailing for me. silting on a stool, in my garden. beneath my window." But on the ninety-ninth night, the mandarin stood up, put his stool under his arm. and went away.”

—Roland Barthes, “Waiting”

On the hundredth morning she emerged from her manse, rosy-cheeked and powdered, hair bound in ribbons and feet bound in silk, wearing all of the poise and splendor that a lady of her position might possess, only to find her garden empty.

An eyebrow cracked her icy façade. “Where is my noble suitor?” she asked a passing sweeper. The sweeper simply shrugged and gestured to the city around them.

The courtesan’s carefully-applied smile melted from her face. Surely her paramour would never have intended to disrespect her, a woman regarded by dukes and peasants alike as radiant and resplendent as the setting sun. No, some terrible fate must have befallen him. Honor demanded that she seek him out and wrest him from the depths of his misfortune. She cast her gaze skyward, and thanked the heavens for the chance to prove the strength and purity of her love.

She began her search with the orphans, criers, and beggars of the neighborhood. None knew her love, but one knew of a gambler’s den where men in debt frequently gathered. Perhaps her suitor had been unable to afford an extravagant gift that he desired for her, and had taken out a loan that he could not repay?

The den was dark and dingy, and she did not find her love there. The gamblers laughed to themselves when they heard her story, scattering coins, but one of the older men was moved by the beauty of her voice. In exchange for a single ribbon from her hair, he told her of a criminal hideout beneath an antique shop several blocks away.

The guard at the door had not seen her love, and would not let her in until she gave him her jeweled bracelet. The men inside were fierce men, solid and scarred and sneering at her passing, but they were superstitious men as well, and none would lay a hand upon her. But they would not help her, not until she gave away her jade earrings, and her emerald necklace, and her silken footwraps, and her golden comb, and her stash of perfume, and her pouch of silver, and the rest of her ribbons. Then they told her of a conscription center on the outskirts of the city, a place where men who had fallen on hard times were gathered up to serve the greater good of their country.

The officer at the conscription center would not tell her anything about her love. He declined to reveal the identity of his recruits, but offered her aid in exchange for a week’s worth of farming. The mud stuck in her hair, the brambles tore at her clothes, and the gnats ate her makeup away, but eventually she was pointed to an office of political and public records.

The scribe there refused to let her in. He had a duty to his station, he said, and could not debase himself by giving assistance to a woman so clearly steeped in sin. She begged him to reconsider, pleading that her love was in danger and that only she could rescue him; that without her love, her life meant nothing; that she would trade anything, give anything, do anything if only he would help her. He stood firm. So she waited outside for him, every day and night, through rain and cold and fog and passersby, counting the seconds until the scribe would emerge and she could entreat him for his aid once more.

After a month the scribe took pity on her, and told her of a bar where he had seen the mandarin go drinking after a hard day’s work.

Flickering lanterns, lights dying in their vessels, flanked the desolate avenues. She steeled herself and entered the bar.

“You insulted me,” she said by way of greeting. “You waited ninety-nine nights on a stool beneath my window, yet you could not bring yourself to wait the hundredth. You shamed my worth and dishonored your station. You have forced me to give up everything I had in pursuit of our love, a love that you discarded as easily as you would change a pair of shoes. You have ruined me, have made a mockery of my life and of all I once held dear. What do you have to say for yourself?”

“It was not about you,” he said, gently.

She nearly fainted, so great was her disbelief. He was there to catch her, ushering her over to his table and pouring her a cup of tea.

“I am sorry for your troubles, truly. Perhaps that is not the answer you sought. But I did not leave because of you. Perhaps my waiting was never even about you.”

“You aren’t making any sense,” she said.

He laughed, not unkindly. “I did not leave because I was tired of waiting for you, just as I did not wait because you asked me to. I waited because I had painted a portrait of us, a portrait of you and I within my head. In it, you were on the highest peak, a perfect pedestal that no heaven could have matched for beauty. And I was beneath you, prostrate and helpless, surrounded by dirt and dust and vermin and soil. I was worthless before you—before your image. And so I resolved to wait, to prove my worth to the world, and to you, and to myself.”

“Then…you never truly loved me,” she said, and her heart broke a second time.

“What?” He was shocked, for a moment, and then shook his head. “Of course I did,” he said. “You are beautiful, and strong, and impossible to ignore. How could I not? But I loved your image more than I loved you. If I had waited for you on that final day, I would have spent my life waiting for that image to love me back. And no matter how much you loved me, it would never have been good enough. Because it would not have been perfect.”

“But…why did you not tell me?” she said. “Why did you abandon me without telling me the truth?”

“Because I was afraid,” he answered truthfully. “Because that was only part of the portrait. The other part was my own image, alone amidst the garden, silent and small and scared. Waiting to be noticed, for your love to make me worth noticing. And I knew then that I was not worthy of your love, because my image of myself had never been worthy. How could someone like you love me, when I did not feel deserving of that love?

“How could you have loved me, when I did not love myself?”

She was silent, gazing into her lap. Finally, she tilted her head upwards. “And have you found the answer to that question?”

He looked back at her. “No, not yet. But I am trying.” He smiled. “As, it seems, are you.”

She sat for many minutes there, watching the steam rise from their mugs.

“The baiju here is quite good. Would you permit me to order you a cup?”

“No,” she said carefully, “thank you.” She smiled. “But perhaps tomorrow night.”

And she rose from the table and left, emerging from the bar into a night alive with fireflies.

Adversary

“I’m here to represent you,” he’ll say, grin gleaming and eyes beaming at the wide world of hopefuls thronging to him for purpose. Afterwards he’ll mill amongst them, slapping backs and shaking hands, kissing babies and wives and wrinkled-up grannies, flitting from lost soul to lost soul like a shepherd amongst dissolute sheep. He’ll smile and comfort, grieve and console, and promise and promise and promise to do whatever it takes to make them believe in him. And they will, because they need to. Because he’s authentic, and kind, and take-charge, and patriotic, and trustworthy. Because he’s the kind of guy I’d want to grab a beer after work with, you know? Because he cares.

Because who else are they going to follow, when it’s all said and done?

People liked to pretend that they weren’t easy to convince, that they were open-minded and intelligent creatures with maybe a few passionate stances that they refused to retreat from. Whether to send their people to suffer and die, or how equal different shades of skin should be, or when exactly a collection of disparate cells awakened to having a soul (that particular one always filled him with amusement). They’d argue with one another, sure, throw stones and break bottles and put up fences, but at the end of the day they were all citizens of the same great nation. Common decency would prevail, and hardworking, honest heroes would eventually emerge to lead the people into prosperity.

The truth was, people were tired. They were too weak or apathetic or broken to manage things for themselves, and so afraid of taking on responsibility that they’d sell their soul to a man who could do it for them. The trick was to do things piecemeal: to make them sign you in on the dotted line and then take from them bit by bit, compromise by compromise, moral by moral until they’d either surrendered their spirit or dropped dead at your feet. It was an old game, the oldest one there was, one he’d been playing and winning for as long as he could remember. Even since before he’d had words to explain it.

Back in ’62 (this was when he’d worn a different face, of course) there’d been a journalist for one of the major papers who’d sat him down and hurled barbed questions at him, one after the other. Questions about lobbyists and tax breaks and foreign powers, about secrets and scandals and sworn silences, questions that nearly made him burst into laughter. Sure, everyone thought the same thoughts and dreamed the same dreams, and maybe even harbored a few idle resentments now and again, but rarely so openly. It was almost refreshing to have someone so blatantly, bravely challenge the simplistic truth of the way things were. He was impressed despite himself. He’d have offered her a job if he’d been bothered to learn her name.

The rest of the evening was spent drawing up budget reports, in between silent ruminations and picking her bones out of the cracks between his teeth.

He had to admit, it was harder nowadays to get away with that sort of thing. People cared less when they didn’t think they had a voice that mattered, back when monarchs strangled whores in hedge mazes and emperors slit throats for sideways looks. But a deal was a deal, old or new, and the youth of today owed just as much to the system as their great-grandparents before them. It was all so refreshingly routine once you knew which patterns to follow: oils and opiates, wars and provisos, slaves and sex, vagrants and preachers and propagandists, a rainbow of filth-encrusted flags, banners buoyed along by the breeze, global warming—global warming, now that was a new favorite term, the ice caps melting and the seas rising and humanity sinking into a morass of its own making, strangling itself in toxins and carbon dioxide and ash, drowning under the weight of all those collected indiscretions, sins piling atop one another until the whole sorry species went the way of dinosaur dirt.

“I’m here to represent you,” he says, and the crowd erupts in celebration. It’s one of his favorite lies to tell.

Malentendu

A knight

(At least, he thinks he is a knight)

Emerges from a stairwell

Into a throng of red-and-blue noise

Clears his throat, against the thrum of sirens and walkie-talkies

Ponders for a moment

And speaks thus:

“Je pense que moi c’est tres beaucoup,

Alors, n’est pas toujours venue,

Et dans la cette que vous patin,

Mes arondites te trop moulin.”

So satisfied, he turns

Draws his blade

(To kneel or charge or salute the crowd)

And the mob opens fire

Riddling him with bullets and stones and photographs

Until his body collapses backwards into its tomb

Where an epitaph reads

“For your own safety, please stay behind the line.”