Kelly Link: Get in Trouble: Stories

“You get the man on the phone to take back those six sleepers. Today.”

“How the fuck do I do that?” Jason said.

“I don’t care. But they had better not be here when I show up tomorrow morning. If they’re here, you had better not be. Okay?” She poked him in the arm above the bandage. “Next time borrow something sharper than a potato peeler. I’ve got a whole block full of good German knives.”

“Lindsey,” Valentina said, “this Harris guy says he can call you back tomorrow if now isn’t a good time.”

“Jason will take the call,” Lindsey said.

everything must go

Her favorite liquor store put everything on sale whenever a hurricane was due. Just their way of making a bad day a little more bearable. She stocked up on everything but only had a glass of wine with dinner. Made a salad and ate it out on the sun dock. The air had that electric green shimmy to it she associated with hurricanes. The water was still as milk, but deflating the dock was a bitch nevertheless. She stowed it in the garage. When she came out, a pod of saltwater mermaids was going out to sea. Who could have ever confused a manatee with a mermaid? They turned and looked at her. Dove down, although she could still see them ribboning there, down along the frondy bottom.

The last time a hurricane had come through, her sun dock had sailed out of the garage and ended up two canals over.

She threw the leftover salad on the grass for the iguanas. The sun went down without a fuss.

Alan didn’t come by, so she packed up his clothes for him. Washed the dirty clothes first. Listened to the rain start. She put his backpack out on the dining room table with a note. Good luck with the suicide kid.

In the morning she went out in the rain, which was light but steady, and put up the storm shutters. Her neighbors were doing the same. Cut herself on the back of the hand while she was working on the next-to-last one. Bled everywhere. Alan pulled up in Jason’s car while she was still cursing. He went into the house and got her a Band-Aid. They put up the last two shutters without talking.

Finally Alan said, “It was my fault. I don’t think he does drugs.”

“He’s not a bad kid,” she said. “ So not your type.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Not about that. You know. I guess I mean about everything.”

They went back into the house and he saw his backpack. “Well,” he said.

“Filhatz warfoon meh,” she said. “Bilbil tuh.”

“Nent bruk,” he said. No kidding.

He didn’t stay for breakfast. She didn’t feel any less or more real after he left.

The six sleepers were out of the warehouse and Jason had a completed stack of paperwork for her. Lots of signatures. Lots of duplicates and triplicates and fucklicates, as Valentina liked to say.

“Not bad,” Lindsey said. “Did Jack Harris offer you a job?”

“He offered to come hand me my ass,” Jason said. “I said he’d have to get in line. Nasty weather. Are you staying out there?”

“Where would I go?” she said. “There’s a big party at The Splinter tonight. It’s not like I have to come in to work tomorrow.”

“I thought they were evacuating the Keys, after all,” he said.

“It’s voluntary,” she said. “They don’t care if we stay or go. I’ve been through hurricanes. When Alan and I were kids, we spent one camped in a bathtub under a mattress. Read comics with a flashlight all night long. The noise is the worst thing. Good luck with Alan, by the way.”

“I’ve never lived with anybody before.” So maybe he knew just enough to know he had no idea what he had gotten himself into with Alan. “I’ve never fallen for anybody like this.”

“There isn’t anybody like Alan,” she said. “He has the power to cloud and confuse the minds of men.”

“What’s your superpower?” Jason said.

“He clouds and confuses,” she said. “I confuse and then cloud. It’s the order we do it in that you have to pay attention to.”

She told Mr. Charles the good news about Jack Harris; they had a cup of coffee together to celebrate, then locked the warehouse down. Mr. Charles had to pick up his kids at school. Hurricanes meant holidays. You didn’t get snow days in Florida.

On the way home all the traffic was going the other way. The wind made the traffic lights swing and flip like paper lanterns. She had that feeling she’d had at Christmas, as a child. As if someone was bringing her a present. Something shiny and loud and sharp and messy. She’d always loved bad weather. She’d always loved weather witches in their smart, black suits. Their divination kits, their dramatic seizures, their prophecies which were never entirely accurate, but which always rhymed smartly. When she was little she’d wanted more than anything to grow up and be a weather witch, although why that once had been true, she had no idea.

She rode her bike down to The Splinter. Got soaked. Didn’t care. Had a couple of whiskey sours, and then decided she was too excited about the hurricane to get properly drunk. She didn’t want to be drunk. And there wasn’t a man in the bar she wanted to bring home. The best part of hurricane sex was the hurricane, not the sex, so why bother?

The sky was green as a bruise and the rain was practically horizontal. There were no cars at all on the way home. She was only the least bit drunk. She went down the middle of the road and almost ran over an iguana four feet long, nose to tail. Stiff as a board, but its sides went out and in like little bellows. The rain got them like that, sometimes. They got stupid and slow in the cold. The rest of the time they were stupid and fast.

She wrapped her jacket around the iguana, making sure the tail was immobilized. You could break a man’s arm if you had a tail like that. She carried it under one arm, walking her bike all the way back to the house, and decided it would be a good idea to put it in the bathtub. Then she went back out into her yard with a flashlight. Checked the storm shutters to make sure they were properly fastened and discovered three more iguanas as she went. Two smaller ones and one real monster. She brought them all inside.

At eight p.m. it was pitch-dark. The hurricane was two dozen miles out. Picking up water to drop on the heads of people who didn’t want any more water. She dozed off at midnight and woke up when the power went off.

The air in the room was so full of water she had to gasp for breath. The iguanas were shadows stretched along the floor. The black shapes of the liquor boxes were every Christmas present she’d ever wanted.

Everything outside was clanking or buzzing or yanking or shrieking. She felt her way into the kitchen and got out the box with her candles and her flashlight and her emergency radio. The shutters banged away like a battle.

“Swung down,” the radio told her. “How about that — and this is just the edge, folks. Stay indoors and hunker down if you haven’t already left town. This is only a Category 2, but you betcha it’ll feel a lot bigger down here on the Keys. We’re going to have at least three more hours of this before the eye passes over us. This is one big baby girl, and she’s taking her time. The good ones always do.”

Lindsey could hardly get the candles lit; the matches were that soggy, her hands greased with sweat. When she went in the bathroom, the iguana looked as battered and beat, in the light from the candle, as some old suitcase.

Her bedroom had too many windows to stay there. She got her pillow and her quilt and a fresh T-shirt. A fresh pair of underwear.

When she went to check Elliot’s room there was a body on the bed. She dropped the candle. Tipped wax onto her bare foot. “Elliot?” she said. But when she got the candle lit again it wasn’t Elliot, of course, and it wasn’t Alan, either. It was the sleeper. Versailles Kentucky. The one who looked like Alan or maybe Lindsey, depending on who was doing the looking. A rubber vise clamped down around Lindsey’s head. Barometric pressure.