Christopher Nicole - Her Name Will Be Faith

“As a matter of fact, no,” she said.

At last he raised his head. He was quite a good-looking boy, early twenties, she estimated, spoiled only by the looseness of his mouth, the laziness in his eyes. “Well, what d’you know,” he said. “What do you know,” he repeated, as he inspected her from her ankles, slowly up the length of her summer skirt, which was inclined to sheerness in the afternoon sun, to her breasts. “Well, if you’re looking for a fuck, I guess we’ll have to use your place.” He grinned. “I ain’t got one.”

Jo opened her mouth and then closed it again. She wished she had chosen someone else. But his reaction might be interesting. “My name is Josephine Donnelly,” she said. “I work for Profiles Magazine, and I am doing some research on hurricanes.”

The young man leaned back and tilted his hat over his eyes. “Siddown,” he suggested.

Jo hesitated, then chose a relatively clean piece of step. It was the middle of the afternoon and they were surrounded by at least a thousand people: but she was careful to keep out of arm’s reach.

“You are something,” he remarked. “I like your feet.”

“Thank you,” she said. “You ever been in a hurricane?”

“But I like your ass better. You know what I’d like to do to your ass?”

“No,” she said. “What about the hurricane?”

“Bit of breeze,” he said.

“You’ve seen one?”

He shrugged. “Can’t say I have. You gonna let me feel your tits?”

“No,” she told him. “What would you do if you were told a hurricane was coming straight for New York?”

“Nuts,” he declared.

“It could happen.”

He sat up again. “You gotta be dumb.”

“Imagine it,” Jo recommended.

He gazed at her for several seconds. “I’d stand out there in the rain and say, hallelujah.”

“You’d be blown away by the wind.”

“That I’d have to see. Like your tits.” He suddenly reached for her, and she had to leap to her feet. “You scared of men?”

“I’d like to see that too,” Jo remarked. “You being blown away.” She hurried down the steps.

She caught a cab; she was too angry to walk, and the heat was intense — the air-conditioning inside the automobile had little effect and she mopped her face with a Kleenex. Her skirt and blouse were damp and crumpled, and the waistband was saturated. Her contentment of the morning — how much had that had to do with the thought of lunching with Richard? — had quite dissipated beneath the insults of that vulgar lout.

A haze lay over the city, and the avenues were like brick ovens, the high-rise buildings reflecting the heat on to the traffic and pedestrians, the stench of melting tar filling the air. Every few minutes dust and paper swirled up in a flurry of hot air and then subsided on people and cars as suddenly as it had started. A cacophony of motor horns screamed before their drivers’ frustrations and wheels rolled only a few feet before jerking against their brakes.

“It’s these fucking trucks stopping in the middle of the street while they unload that causes this fucking foul-up,” the driver fumed. He rolled down his window and shouted, “What the fucking hell’s the matter with you, you anemic asshole? Can’t you carry those pissy little boxes a few extra yards instead of bringing the whole fucking city to a standstill?”

“You mind your fucking…” the culprit yelled back, but his comments were silenced as the cabbie rolled up his window again.

“Heat’s bad enough without goddamned assholes like him snarling us up. Jesus, lady, did you ever know heat like this in June before?” He mopped his bald pate with a very dirty red and white spotted handkerchief. “Now, if I was a metio… a metori… a weather forecaster, I’d say there was a fucking big storm coming.”

Jo’s head jerked up to look at him, her annoyance dissipating. Here was the perfect man in the street. She flicked her notepad open. “I’ve been told there could well be even a hurricane up here. What do you think?”

“A hurricane? Fucking hell, lady, this is New York, not goddamned Miami.” He revved the engine, moving the cab a few yards before braking again.

“Everyone thinks it’ll never happen to them; even people in Florida and on the Gulf Coast,” Jo said. “But it could. What about Gloria? New York was pretty lucky to escape her.”

“Bullshit! New York was damned unlucky she came so close. Won’t be another that near in a thousand years.”

Jo smiled to herself at his total conviction. “Just supposing there was a hurricane warning broadcast on radio and TV for the New York area, would you get yourself and your family out of the city?”

“Out of the city?” He strained his neck to give her an incredulous look in the rear-view mirror. “What the hell for? You taking me for a dumb bunny, or something?”

She had to laugh, he was so like the dropout, although, for all his bad language, so much the pleasanter personality. “No. I’m a journalist,” she confessed. “And I’m trying to get people’s reactions to the possibility of a hurricane hitting the city, for an article.”

“You want my opinion?” He still sounded incredulous.

“Yes.”

“You can have it in one word: fucking bullshit. Sorry, that’s two words. Both unprintable,” he added, straight-faced.

“Thanks. May I quote you?”

“Sure. If you change the wording a bit. Look…” he took a piece of cardboard from the glove compartment and held it over his shoulder. “Here’s my card. You can use my name, too. Al Muldoon.”

Michael stood at the cocktail bar with his back to the door, fixing a drink, when she came in. “Hi there,” he said over his shoulder.

Jo frowned. He was home at least an hour early, and suddenly she had bad vibes.

He smiled very sweetly as he handed her a sherry on ice. “Let’s sit down, darling. Boy, has it been hot today!” He set his bourbon and soda beside the chair, sat and stretched out his legs.

“Michael? What is it?”

“What’s what?”

“Don’t play games with me. You have something on your mind. Oh, my God!” She started to her feet. “Where’s Owen Michael?” “In the den.”

“But he’s all right?”

It was Michael’s turn to frown. “Shouldn’t he be?”

Jo sat down again with a sigh of relief. “Just that he had a tummy ache on Monday. He’s been getting them kind of regularly. So I took him along to the clinic. Knapps was away, but Glenville saw him. Said he had a nervous stomach.”

“You never told me any of this,” Michael accused.

“Well, I didn’t want to bother you, unless it was serious. But if it isn’t Owen Michael…”

Michael gave as close to a sheepish grin as he was capable of. “It isn’t Owen Michael. Fact is, my love… I won’t be able to come to Eleuthera with you next month, after all.”

“Why not?”

“Well… I had to call the guys, of course, and tell them I wouldn’t be available for the Bermuda Race, and they were pretty upset.”

“They were, were they?” Jo said.

“I did tell you that we reckon we have a good chance of a trophy this year,” Michael explained. “But only if we have our best team. Sam and Larry flipped at the idea of me not skippering. Quite apart from being short of a crew member…”

“Are you going to tell me they can’t find a volunteer to race in Esmeralda? To Bermuda? Any of those guys up in Newport would jump at the chance.”

“Sweetheart…” He was still speaking very reasonably. “You can’t just take along any beach bum on a race like the Bermuda. Every crew member on that has to be part of a team, used to working together and…”