Look, we don't know each other, and on most days that you would meet me, you wouldn't want to know me. It's not like I'm mad, bad and dangerous to know; quite the opposite. To you, I'm one of those corporate drones in a suit, sipping his corporate coffee in his company car, a four door sedan, naturally. It's “champagne” to any rental car agency, and according to the Toyota color choice catalog it's “Sandy Beach Metallic.” To everyday humans, that translates to “gloss beige.” I don't think there is a safer color in the world. It goes with everything in an equally bland way. But it was a dealer car, with all the bells and whistles, at a great price since they were changing up the model year. Sue me.
I'm on my my way home from working out, driving in the same incessant rain that's been pouring all week. . The wife, Katherine -who prefers Kat, not Kate- is in the car with me. Both of us work at the same company, though in different departments to avoid any accusations of impropriety. We are nothing if not proper. Unlike the hoi polloi, we actually don't smell like goats coming back from the gym, though I cannot say the same for the gym bags. While I drive the twists and turns of northbound I-83, she's texting, emailing and otherwise synergizing with her team at work; they've got a bid in on an EPA project, a nice big fat one that would allow her team to keep their bonuses this year at best, and keep their jobs at the very least. All the while, she's bouncing ideas off of me, while I deal with the remnants of today's gridlock, made worse by the torrential downpour. It's tough for her. Project management is a thankless task, and I would know. I do the same, but on the Department of Defense side of the government pie. It's a much larger slice, so there is more room for advancement. Selling software to manage your bomb inventory is a lot easier than hippie-wrangling for those tree-huggers in the EPA.
So, here we both are in our mid-thirties, well, late thirties truthfully. As of last month, the marriage has been firmly in place for ten years. We're lucky we made it this far, and this well. It was a rocky start. We did the whole college sweetheart thing completely wrong. Sweet had nothing to do with it. We fought like two strange cats tossed in the same box, and the fights were over every little thing: phallic imagery in Moby Dick; homosociality in Shakespeare's comedies, although Clinton's sex scandal was a favorite topic. We analyzed it from all angles, from the Neo-realist to the Post-feminist. I defended Clinton as a fallen man -no saint, but all men are mortal-, whereas Kat looked on him as a misogynist with which she happened to share certain policy goals. We sparred and scratched, mainly, it seemed, to avoid defining what we were to each other. We had other partners then, but, for me, it was always Kat to which I returned, and vice-versa. When it came time for the post-grad stuff, I had my choices, and what I told myself at the time was that Loyola was the best choice for me, and that it was a mere coincidence that Kat was Hopkins-bound. Now, I know how much bullshit that was. I knew that she was the one for me. It just took me a while to stop the intellectual sparring enough to vocalize it. We finished our Masters, mine in political science, hers in environmental management, and got married soon after. It was a small wedding, an elopement really, but don't worry, it didn't happen in Vegas. That's just tacky.
Now, I'm not as certain as I was right about knowing that she was “the one”. We get along just fine, but maybe that's the problem. Just “fine” is where the boredom sets in. Kat and I used to rage against several different machines into the long nights, sometimes until dawn. I remember her then, an urban primitive, the shades of her hair as mercurial as her moods, her clothing as black as the coffee we downed gallons at a time, the chipped polish betraying a carefully studied anti-beauty we both considered post-modern and exciting at the time. Hey, laugh all you want, it was the rage at the time, at least among our set. You had a choice if you had any intellectual ambition in the 90's: nine inch nails and combat boots, or the pocket protector set, and both Kat and I were soft-science people, so slide rules were out. Yes, this means I wore flannel and black jeans. Let's move on, people.
At this point in the story, usually the person telling it trudges out the tired old saw of “my younger self would barely recognize me now.” I call bullshit on that. I know exactly who I am. Am I happy with everything? Hell no. Who is? But I'm pretty damn content, at least materially. Despite all my “youthful indiscretions”, the government saw fit to give me a security clearance, and let me tell you, that is money in the bank. But something isn't right, and I can't put my finger on it. It's like a popcorn kernel stuck in your teeth. It's maddening, and I can't get a grip on it.
Whatever it is, I'm almost afraid to bring it up with Kat, not because I'm afraid of how she'll react. No, I know how she'll react. We'll both dissect it like another project, objectively cutting and slicing it, storing it's component parts in little jars of metaphorical formaldehyde. No, I'm afraid bringing it up will be making it real. Sometimes, it's better to have an occasional nameless dread when your other choice is to have that concrete problem sitting there like an anchor all the time.
“Frank, eyes on the road.”
“Kat, my eyes are on the road.”
“Pay attention, you're drifting over.”
“No, I'm taking this exit. We're headed to dinner.”
“What? When were you going to tell me?”
“What the hell are you talking about? I told your assistant; you were out for lunch.”
At that news, Kat's eyes roll. “Ugh, she's new. She's barely capable of breathing without consulting a memo. The message is probably still on her desk,” Kat says, “so you've saved yourself,” she says, “this time.” She bounces a paper clip off my head.
“Hey,” my voice rising in mock indignation, “driving here.”
“Pish-posh, you're fine. Where are we going? God, I'm hardly dressed for a nice dinner, and my hair's still damp from the shower.”
“Relax, we're just going to Woodberry Kitchen. Rochelle took care of us; we've got our booth upstairs. And with this rain, no one will care about the hair.”
“Good point. Drive on, Jeeves.”
I navigate the narrow side streets and pull up into former wood mill turned yuppie enclave. Seriously, you can't swing a dead cat in the place without hitting someone affluent. The free parking is all gone, as it's a Friday, and I don't want to run in run in the rain anyway, so we pull into the valet lane. I pay the guy, give him a nice tip, and head on in.
God, this place is so nice. You know that air of authenticity that Fridays and Applebees strives for by shoving tacky shit on the wall? This place is the exact opposite. The walls are bare brick, with local art placed just so. The mill space was all used organicly when they built it, and the booths – including our favorite- are red and plush and off in the corner on the second floor loft space, allowing us to overlook the hum of the busy restaurant like minor royalty. I nod to Rochelle, the hostess, as we enter the narrow hallway entrance.
“Mr. and Mrs. Rennard, good to see you,” she says, the smile on her face actually reaching her eyes. “Your booth is almost ready. They're bussing it right now.” Kat is all smiles herself.
“Hey, Rochelle. Comment ca va 'a la fac ?”
“Ugh, ne m'en parles m^eme pas,” our hostess waving her hand as if to ward off the very thought. “It's midterm time.”
“It can't be that bad,” Kat says with a wink, “it's just Loyola.”
As the Queen would say, we are not amused. I don't fall for the dig, and I interrupt with a “How's Spike?”
“Chef is worried that the rain will bruise the tomatoes. He and Peter went up to the roof to cover them, and they got soaked to the skin. That was a few hours ago, so they've had a little time to dry. But speak of the devil; Peter's done with the table. Let me take you up.”
Peter is personable as always. Here comes the only peril of being a regular here. I consider myself a bit of a foodie, but the staff here is on a mission. I want to believe in anything half as much as Peter believes in tonight's polenta. They are missionaries worshiping at the altar of St. Localvore, patron saint of eating locally, and as much as I get it,and as much as I taste the results in some dishes, sometimes a steak is just a steak, man. Kat disagrees, but that's par for the course with us. I personally don't care how much shiatsu massage the cow had before it was quietly put to sleep. I just want you to show the resulting steak a picture of fire, let it know fear, and then bring it to me, pink and lovely on the inside. But tonight I opt for the rabbit instead, at Peter's suggestion. Kat chooses the crab cake. Neither of us are disappointed, and Peter's suggestion of wine pairings was spot on. The thrum of the rain on the roof, and the richness of the food has a soporific effect; it almost lulls me to sleep. Kat and I let our forks and knives do the talking. What minimal conversation we have deals mainly with the superior quality of our dishes.
We skip dessert, despite Peter's protestations about the quality of home-made honey sorbet. We're both training for the Baltimore Marathon, and the dessert is the last thing we need, but we both opt for coffee, Kat making hers a bit Irish, if you catch my drift. For once, neither of our cellphones went off during dinner, making the meal even more pleasant. We linger a bit longer, soaking in the atmosphere, half-hoping that the rain would stop before we had to leave. No such luck, sadly. We finished our coffee, and left the usual generous trip, and headed out into the rain to the waiting Camry.
I-83 is deserted, thank goodness. We see the trees swinging back and forth, tossed in all directions by the winds that also assault the car. I'm glad I chose not to imbibe too heavily. The gray sheets of rain and the tumult of the wind make driving harder than underwater calculus. Hell, we might as well be underwater. 83 is more a stream than a road. I half-expect to see salmon swimming alongside us. Kat has forgotten to check her phone entirely, and she's clutching the jesus handle of the car, knuckles paler than usual. She looks like the whiskey and the rough ride up the slalom of the highway might making her rethink her agnostic stance. I see her mouth moving wordlessly when I can spare a glance her way.
“You alright?”
“Eyes. Road.”
“Yes, dear,” I said, “regretting that whiskey?”
“Shut up.”
I hum a few bars from “It's Not Easy Being Green,” appropriate given her current coloration, though Kat didn't seem to think it was so funny. Luckily for me, she's not up to swinging at me. She hits like a man after taking that boxing class, from the hip and powering through. It's childish, but charming in a way. She only aims for the bicep, people, it's not domestic abuse. I think she'd throw a punch, but she's also worried about moving the steering wheel and killing us both.
We make it up into Hunt Valley, and turn onto our street. It's a nice little neighborhood, and our house, a two story Colonial Revival, is in a nicely wooded lot with a view of the Jones Falls river. We pull into the two car garage, and park below the shelf stuffed with camping supplies for that trip we're going to make someday. Someday when we both get the time off together, more likely when one or both of us are dead, I assume. “Here honey, hold my ashes, and travel down the Colorado with me,” I think. With that pleasant thought, I head into the kitchen to prepare something for the still greenish wife. She's a trooper though, and she recovers well enough to beat my ass at Scrabble. Who says the magic is gone, folks? Friday night red wine Scrabble... Jesus. Sadly, we don't have that big of a peer group. We're just about the last childless couple our age that we know. Kat and I talked about it years ago, and we didn't want kids then, and we don't want them now. I don't regret the decision, and I don't think Kat does either, but it does make us a bit of a fringe couple at times. When all you have to talk about is how precious your babies are, people who actively pursue not having babies seem like antichrists, child molesters, or line dancers – things to be avoided at all costs. Whatever, man. I get to have white leather couches and fragile sculpture at ground level. With both of us having polished off the wine, I toss the bottle in the recycling, and we both head up to bed.
And I awake with a pounding. My head is red-wine fuzzy, but clearly I hear a static noise, and the sounds of some kind of hammering. I wish a swift and silent death on any bastard so motivated this early on a Saturday. I look at the clock. It's blank. Not even a flashing twelve, twelve. I check my Blackberrytm, which informs me it's 5:45 in the goddamn AM. Whoever is doing this shit this early deserves the words that will come out of my mouth. The wine hangover is filling my head with a roar. I open the window to give the construction people a piece of my mind.
That's when I find out the roar isn't in my head. Our beautiful river view, which we hardly ever see because we get home too late, has betrayed us by over-flowing the banks. My backyard is a brown wave pool, churning and seething, surrounding the house like army ants. My beautifully manicured back lawn has betrayed us, trapped us, and royally screwed our property values. I race to the window in the front, and it's the same there.
I'm paralyzed. What do you do? You're safe, you're dry, and all is well in the three feet around you, and you have a press box view to the annihilation of all you know. It is, objectively, fascinating. Subjectively, it's something I need to do something about right now. The banging is getting louder and louder. I head down to the garage from where the sound is coming, yelling for Kat as I go. I don't know what I’m going to do clad in pajamas and socks to stop a flood, but goddamn it, this is my house. I slide down the hard wood steps, slipping as I go, and I see the first floor is a foot deep in water. Hesitating but a moment, I wade into the lake that was my living room.
“Frank!” yells my wife from upstairs as I continue towards the garage.
“What?” I yell back.
“It's flooding!”
“No shit!” I say as I reach the interior garage door. I struggle to get it open, as the water resists me tugging at it. Suddenly, I'm thrown back, as the water pressure from the opposite side slams the door into me. I look into the garage, and I realize that the banging is from the Camry and Kat's Prius floating into the garage door, battering it down. It seems the water reached a rear window, and turned our garage into an aquarium. So much for driving out. The cars are both too flooded to work. Kat appears behind me, soaked and newly awake.
Both of us stare at the mess, at the uselessness of all the stuff here in the garage. The cars, the tools, the bikes, the camping gear, the white water raft, the... Wait, hold up. I yell to Kat, pointing out the camping gear. We wade through the garage rapids and grab what we can, just in case we can't get help immediately.
“Quick, get upstairs! Hold into the raft!” I yell. At the interior doorway, we watch the drywall melt like marzipan and slough off the wall. I grip the door frame and brace myself as the garage doors finally give way. Kat and I watch as cars bob away like ducklings on their first swim. The water pressure lessens, and we make our way upstairs as the water level inexorably increases. We change into dry clothing, shivering as much from the adrenaline rush as are from the chill. I'm silent as I try to process the last few minutes.
Kat turns to me and says “I'm okay; are you?”
“Yeah. I think. I mean physically,” I say, “what the hell do we do next.”
“Have you called the police?”
“Shit! I didn't even think about that.” I leap for my Blackberrytm, and punch in 911. It makes a rude noise in return.
“No signal, Kat. How's yours? The same, I assume?”
“Yeah. It looks like we wait here until the cavalry arrives. Why don't you pump up the raft in the meantime? Just in case.” She's not even looking as she says it; she's checking her laptop just in case. “Yup, no power, no router. We can't even connect to the internet to send out an email saying 'help, we're screwed. So much for the information age.”
“Hey, what about that emergency radio lantern thing we bought from Target? If there's something going on, they're bound to be broadcasting it.” As I'm saying it, I start rooting through the gear franticly. My hand hits a hard plastic rim amongst all the crap in the trunk, and I fish the lantern out. I crank it to generate some juice, and flip it on.
“...ents are advised that there is a flood warning in the the Jones Falls corridor. Lake Roland Dam has overflowed due to heavy rains, and there is a danger of a breach. People residing near the river are advised to get to as high a place as possible and to contact authorities as soon as possible if they are affected....”
“That's just a mile down the road,” Kat says “let's get to the attic. Bring the raft and that hatchet.”
“What they hell do we need a hatchet for? Are we splitting logs in our spare time?”
“We need it for the roof, asshole. To cut a hole in it, in case we need to climb out. For god's sake, did you remember nothing from watching Katrina? Bring the power bars, too.”
“Instead of further destroying our house, why don't we just climb onto the balcony, and if we need to, climb on the roof from there? Instead of sitting in a stuff attic for hours. And how are we going to get an inflated raft in the attic, much less get it out of the attic through a tiny roof hole?”
Kat blinks, and takes a second. “Good point. Get the camp chairs and the radio, and let's wait it out.”
And so we do. The only sound is the roar of the river making a new bank, and breaking against the shoal that was once our ground floor. We watch silently as the Johnson's Land Rover floats by and wraps itself around our elm tree, and as bits of siding and other debris shoot past like cigarette boats. It's mesmerizing. Ten minutes go by. Twenty. The waters keep up their steady pace, lapping across our carefully chosen antique brick veneer, washing away all of our possessions. It's the zombie horde come to take us away, implacable, mindless, and inevitable.
Kat breaks the silence. “This would be better with a mimosa.”
I want to banter along. I want this to be a sitcom where I have the pithy response and the laugh track is there, and Chuck Lorre writes our post show bump, but all I have is a raft, some camp chairs. No laugh track, no live studio audience. And I look at her, the green-gray storm that just won't quit, and the water, water, water god-damned everywhere, and that's it. It's a shitty time, but I might not have another. “I'm not happy.”
“What? With what, the flood? What the hell?”
“I'm not happy. With us. With our lives. Flood or no flood.”
“Wait, you're having your midlife crisis now? What in the hell is wrong with you?”
“I don't know. I was just...,” I'm standing now, pacing, and it's hard to tell who has more nervous energy, me or the storm. My words are rats leaving a sinking ship, and I can't stop them. “I was afraid of bringing it up before. If I did, we had so much to possibly lose. I didn't know how it would all end up. Now...” I say, half-gesturing, half-shrugging to the scene around us.
Kat picks up the thread. “And now, we've got nothing... Wow. I'm going to really need something stronger than champagne.” Kat sighs, and and you can see the project manager face slide take over. It's an almost mechanical process; a clear singnal she's gone into crisis mode. “What's making you unhappy?”
“Besides the rising water level? The fact that it takes a flood for us to use the shit be bought 6 years ago. The fact that we've had passports for three years, and we've yet to have a stamp in them that wasn't work related.”
“Hey, we were all set to go to Brazil, and you canceled out on me.”
“That's not fair. I had to go out to Khandahar to hold a general's hand so he felt better about that contract. It saved my department, and that bonus paid for your Prius.”
“That I never drove.”
“And it's now Poseidon’s pool toy.”
“Too soon, bub, too soon,” Kat said, a tiny smile gracing her lips. It soon faded. “Do you still love me? Is there someone else?” Her voice was monotone, and she looked at the water rather than me.
“Would I leave the only woman who still quotes Wolverine?”
“You ducked the question,” Kat said, still not looking at me.
“Hey. Hey, look at me,” I say. She turns hesitantly. I take her hands in mine. “There's no one else for me, and there's never been anyone else since we got engaged. That's what scares me. If I'm not happy, and I have the love of my life, what the hell is wrong? And I need your help to figure it out.”
She chokes out a half-laugh, half-sob. “You fucker. I thought you were going to ask for a divorce. If you're unhappy with everything but me, then I think the universe just hit the reset button for us. If we live through this, we're taking a leave of absence.”
“Brazil?”
“Yes. No, wait. Nowhere with a rainy season.”
The water has risen to edge of the balcony. Sliding the raft into the torrent, we ride the current to a new life.
