Phyllis Smallman - Sex in a Sidecar

Florida has two seasons. In the rainy season we get hurricanes, in the dry season we get touristsboth can be nasty. But when they come together its murder.

October was early for tourists and with Halloween just around the corner, it was late for hurricanes. This should be our quiet time. But down in the Bahamas a tropical depression was forming. We werent unduly worried. Hurricanes need warm water to sustain them. At that time of the year, we reasoned, the Atlantic Ocean would be cooling. So the further north the swirling mass traveled, the more likely it was to starve for waters hot enough to feed it. Blinded by optimism, we ignored the fact that South Florida was in the grip of a record-breaking heat wave. With temperatures in the nineties, making it more like sultry July than October, hurricanes were able to feed farther north. But really, at the tail end of the season, how bad could it be?

Circling in the steamy waters of the Caribbean, slowly gathering strength, the storm laid its plans. It stretched and grew stronger and started to prowl northward, looking for prey. West of Jamaica its wind speed passed thirty-nine miles per hour, making it officially a tropical storm. It was given a name now. The thirteenth named storm of the year: her name was Myrna.

When they give a storm a name you start to pay attention. The word hurricane begins to shimmer at the back of your mind. Theres nothing like one of those beasts hovering offshore to remind you that life is pretty much a crapshoot. You assess your options, check in with family to see if they need any help, and start making a list on the back of some unpaid bill of things to take with you and things to do before you run.

For me, Sherri Travis, family wasnt a problem. My mother, Ruth Ann, was in North Carolina visiting my half-sisters, and as for my father well, lets just say we werent real close and leave it there. And after living my whole life in Florida, thirty years of hurricane seasons, I really didnt need a list but a list is always comforting made me feel like I was actually doing something besides sitting there waiting to have the shit kicked out of me.

On Tuesday morning we woke to find Myrna lurking malevolently south of the Florida Keys, barely moving but growing in intensity minute by minute. Even as we watched, anxious to see whose fate she held in her eye, Myrna surged to a category two hurricane. Thats why we barely paid attention to the murder of the female tourist out on the beach at the Bath and Tennis Club. We were too busy worrying about staying alive.

Lines at the lumberyard grew longer as the wiser and the more nervous among us began boarding up windows. At grocery checkouts every shopping cart held half a dozen jugs of water along with some batteries and everyone filled up their gas tanks while comparing strategies and offering advice to the person at the next pump.

By noon the circling mass arced northwest, slowly heading for the entrance to the Gulf of Mexico: good news for Miami and the Gold Coast, bad news for those of us living along the West Coast of Florida. Moving a little faster, dancing into the gulf, Myrna sang, Look at me, look at me! We looked.

Myrnas winds strengthened. In a few hours she could blow up our coast for a real good visit, and she would not be a welcome visitor. Everyone had a plan now, and what was important in life shrank to those items we could fit into the family vehicle. All those other possessions wed coveted and worked so hard for were about to be abandoned to the mercy of the storm. Around town, businesses closed and a cavalcade of cars crept slowly up to the entrance of the schools. Parents werent waiting for any official closing to pick up their kids.

Now that she had everybodys attention Myrna stalled at the mouth of the gulf, coyly hiding her intent. Ready for flight, we hovered between panic and false bravado. Late Tuesday, spinning north by northwest at eight miles an hour, she veered sharply to the west into the gulf, heading towards Texas and Louisiana. A collective sigh of relief blew out behind her not that we wished anyone any harm, you understand, we just didnt want Myrna to hit us. Living on a barrier island off the west coast of Florida, storms slam us hard. Only fifteen miles long tip to tip, Cypress Island had barely cleaned up the debris from the last storm. We figured it was someone elses turn.

All over town cars were emptied of treasured photo albums and heirlooms before the outdoor furniture was dragged from the family room back out to the patio and someone was sent out to replace the milk dumped down the sink two hours earlier.

But we celebrated too soon.