In
a way, it was fitting. I seemed to be
smack dab in the middle of a drought myself.
My nest felt as empty as the prairie, and my husband, who could’ve been
the spark to light my world, was also
brittle and dry. In fact, he was so dry
he was practically nonexistent, like the prairie grass hiding in the earth,
waiting for moisture.
Ronnie
swished a fly away from her drink.
“What’s going on, Lizzie?”
I
hesitated. She was so good at taking the
wind out of my sails. In fact, I’d swear
she was using “wait time” on me, a technique we had learned in our education
classes at the university about a hundred years ago.
Shrugging
nonchalantly, I forged ahead. I really
wanted her input. I still valued it
every bit as much as when we were nineteen.
“I think he’s screwing around again.”
I sipped my tea. Mine was sweet,
hers was not . She was usually the
sensible one—at least when she wasn’t toasted on Mexican red.
She
smoothed the shiny fall of hair off her face.
It was still the fresh reddish color of a blood orange.
“Are
you sure?” she asked. “Or is it just
suspicion?” She swirled her tea, giving
me a moment to answer. The amber liquid
climbed the inside of her glass like a tiny tsunami. She reached across the table to touch my
hand. We weren’t very demonstrative
anymore, not like when we were in school.
I don’t know why, but I suspected it was my fault. A hug upon meeting was the extent of our
physical relationship. Sometimes one of
us would hug the other when we parted—it all depended upon our emotional
altitude at the moment. But this time,
she wasn’t being demonstrative by clasping my hand, she was simply checking to
see if my wedding ring was still in place.
She turned my hand over and pushed it flat down on the table.
The
emerald-cut diamond was in the same place it has resided—almost
continuously—for over thirty years.
“Well,
I guess you’re still together, so either no proof or you want to stay.” She was
blunt, as always.
I
opened my mouth to explain, but my words were cut short by the tremendous
explosion that blasted my streaky sienna hair into a halo, shivering the plate
glass window behind us. Ronnie was on
her feet in an instant, her own heavy hair standing out from her head like a
fright wig as she stared toward the southwest, toward the Pan-Tex Plastics
plant that has crouched there for years.
“Oh
My God!” Her voice, though it should
have been loud, was dim, as though the blast had flattened her words. Later, I realized it was my eardrums that
were flattened, not her words.
I
tried to stand but my wits were scrambled.
My scarf, the one Quinn bought for me in Italy during our one and only
European vacation, was hanging from the little teal-striped awning. My eyes darted here and there, searching for
something to label. Searching for some
cause. Terrorist? Yes, that must be
it. Terrorist. My eyes continued searching high and low, but
there was nothing out of the ordinary except for the staticky condition of my
hair, the tingling of my skin, and that
pesky scarf hanging inexplicably from the awning above us. And then I realized my insides were
vibrating, tingling just like my skin.
Breakers of air rolled in from the plant, thrashing me like the waves of
tea had thrashed the inside of Ronnie’s glass.
Up
and down the street people poured onto the sidewalks, pointing southward. That’s when I saw a great pillar of black
smoke billowing from the place where there should have been only tall towers,
slim columns, and fat boilers. Inside
the smoke, orange flames were eating the edges of the deceptively serene
noontime sky. Not many folks realized
that raw plastic is made from natural gas.
I shaded my eyes and looked away. It was too much, too surreal. But normalcy wasn’t found when I looked
away. On the ground, dozens of black
smudges caught my eye, grackles knocked out of the air by the concussive blast;
the smaller gray spots were undoubtedly sparrows.
Sirens
began to whoop—both the ones at the plant and the big one atop the nearby
courthouse. The only time I’d ever heard
it go off before was during tornado season, and that was only from a distance. Up close it was like being inside a disaster
movie in surround sound.
Central
Fire Station, three blocks over, began to empty its wide bays of fire and
rescue vehicles. Police cars added their
warbling wails to the cacophony. We
watched, dumbfounded, as the cruisers shot past the intersection in a hurry to
join the maelstrom. The visible sound of
rushing flames perfectly matched the tremor inside my body.
The
second explosion knocked us to the ground.
My
head grazed a table as I fell. I sensed
the concrete rushing up to meet me, but there was no pain; instead, silence
engulfed me like deep water. Everything
slowed. After a moment, I became aware
that my knees were bleeding inside my new white Capri’s, speckles of blood
seeping through. That’s when I spotted
Ronnie crawling across the blistered
sidewalk toward me. Her face was dotted
with red like a Botox-party nightmare.
Slivers of plate glass glittered brightly all across the patio and only
then did I realize I was screaming.
My
husband of thirty-two years was at work in that plant.
“C’mon.” Ronnie had my arm, attempting to pull me
up. My extremities seemed filled with
sand. “Let’s go,” she instructed. “Who
knows what will happen next!”
I
struggled to my feet catching a glimpse of my face in the one remaining section
of the cafรฉ’s plate glass window. It
looked like a full white moon staring back at me. Touching the side of my head gingerly, I felt
a lump rising where my skull had caught the table when I fell. But Ronnie was the one who really needed
help. The second explosion had knocked
her into the edge of the new brick flowerbed and as a result, she had a large
leaking gash above one eye. This is in
addition to the dozens of pinprick-spots of blood dotting her face.
My
own head was swimmy, my vision blurry.
Together, we were able to gain our feet, and I watched numbly as Ronnie
swiped her hand across her bloody forehead.
Crumpled
napkin still clutched in my fist, I reached out, blotting at her wounds
randomly as we staggered across the street toward the courthouse like a couple
of book clubbers after an afternoon meeting complete with wine.
A
paramedic stopped us near an ambulance (when
did they arrive?), handed Ronnie a thick square of cotton and instructed
her to keep pressure on the gash. He sat
us down on the courthouse steps and told us to stay put until he came
back. Then he ran toward the knot of
people gathered a little further down the street. Was someone injured there? I
couldn’t make out exactly what was going on.
We
sat like stone mice on the warm cement steps, Ronnie’s arm clasped around my
shoulders, her other hand pressing the cotton to her forehead. The leaves of
the live oaks trembled overhead and I recalled a squirrel we’d been watching
from the cafรฉ. Glancing upward, I half-expected
to see the little creature scampering to safety, surprised by all the noise and
confusion. But it was not there.
Then
I spied my purse hanging on the back of my overturned chair across the street,
and it dawned on me: my phone was probably still there, nestled in its little
phone-pocket on the side.
The
gorgeous day was now filled with so much sound it was like white noise—there
but not there. I found it impossible to
think, and as the cloud of smoke grew heavier and blacker, the notion of fire
reminded me of the tinder-dry fields surrounding the plant. The acrid smell of melting plastic was so
strong it scratched my throat and stung my eyes, and that finally prodded me
into action.
I
disentangled myself from Ronnie and headed back across the street. The owners
of the cafรฉ were standing on the sidewalk in shock. The little tables and chairs that had seemed
so cosmopolitan only moments earlier were now scattered across the patio like
so much wrought-iron rubble. The table
umbrellas looked like giant turquoise tops upside down in the gutter.
With
great effort, I leaned down and prised my purse strap off the back of the chair
where only moments earlier I’d been sitting, sipping tea, trying to decide
whether my handsome husband was sleeping around—again.
Jana,
one of the owners, hurried over. “You
all right, Liz?”
Nodding,
I dug out my cell phone and automatically dialed Quinn. Nothing.
No ring, no voice mail, nothing.
It was as if I was dialing the very nothingness of the universe.
I
felt myself graying out, the world blowing away from me like the smoke rising
from the plant. My head throbbed, the
ground wavered as if a giant was shrugging his shoulders just beneath the
surface, and I felt myself sinking …
When
I came around I was vaguely aware of Ronnie and Jana lowering me into my
now-upright chair.
“Liz!”
Ronnie was patting at my face as Jana rubbed an ice cube up and down my bare
arms. “Lizzie! Can you hear me?”
I
could feel my eyelids fluttering, but I was powerless to stop them. Is that drool running from the corner of my
mouth? Maybe Jana rubbed the ice cube on
my lips. Then it hit me. I must’ve fainted.
“I’m
okay,” I sputtered. It came out more as,
“I yuh-kay.”
Inside
my eyes I still saw black smoke tinged with fire. Surprising tears welled up and spilled over
my bottom lid—ahh, so that’s the moisture. My eyes finally opened all the way (seemingly
of their own accord) and I was staring into the bloodshot-blue peepers of my
dearest friend. So it’s true, I thought. It really happened: the plant exploded.
The
look on her face told me I was neither dreaming, nor imagining. That one look told me it wasn’t something
that simply appeared in my head because I’d fainted; no, it was the other way
around. The realization that Quinn was
in that explosion was the reason I fainted.
Hope you enjoyed chapter one...
The novel is available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, iTunes, and Smashwords
