The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady - Elizabeth Stuckey-French [122]
Nearby pine trees swayed back and forth so far that it was hard to believe they didn’t snap. Pinecones and pine straw jounced off his windshield and then away. The sky before him was grayish green. Instead of driving into a storm, it was like he was bringing the hurricane across the Panhandle with him. Grayson had proved to be bizarrely unpredictable, with his four separate landings in Florida, his back-and-forthing, his swelling and shrinking—storm-hurricane, storm-hurricane. Now his path was depicted on TV as a yellow brick road lined with red propeller-shaped spinners zooming over the Panhandle toward Perry, fifty miles southeast of Tallahassee.
The Volvo’s wipers slashed back and forth on high, rain spattering the windshield with a loud tearing sound. He’d tried to listen to NPR to take his mind off Ava, but the rain was so loud he had to turn it up full blast to hear it. Convenience stores had lights on inside, but their parking lots were empty. All the traffic was headed the opposite way, up toward Tallahassee. His was the only car headed down to the big wa-wa, as Suzi used to call it. Angelo’s Seafood Restaurant was boarded up. On the Ochlockonee Bridge the wind slammed into the left side of the car like it wanted to push him into the water.
Alligator Point was a long skinny peninsula like a finger curving out into the water—the Gulf on one side and the Little Alligator Bay on the other. Vic felt even more vulnerable driving out onto the peninsula, palm tree leaves turned inside out, tree trash flying. The KOA Campground was deserted. He struggled to keep the car on the road.
Travis’s grandmother’s house was one of the few old bungalows left on Alligator Point, which was now, like its snootier cousin, St. George Island, full of new stilted houses on steroids. There were a few vehicles parked near her house but in the center of the peninsula, mostly battered SUVs, Jeeps, and pickup trucks. Vic figured they’d parked there to stay clear of the water. He planned to be in the house only a minute, so he parked right in front.
When he stepped inside, Gigi called his name and rushed up to hug him like he was her long-lost cousin. “What’re you doing here?” she kept exclaiming.
Vic hugged her stiffly, aware of other people watching.
“I came for Ava,” he told Gigi. Everyone had to speak loudly over the storm. “We need to get home before the roads flood.”
“Oh, no, stay and have some lunch,” Gigi said. “It’s barely a cat. two!”
“It could get bigger.”
Ava, in a gauzy coral-colored dress, ran up to greet him, followed by Travis in his Sponge Bob bathing trunks and a sweatshirt. “Can I stay and have cake? Travis hasn’t opened his presents yet. I’m sorry I’m wearing Suzi’s dress. Please don’t tell her. Everyone here loves Elvis! There’s a three-legged dog on the beach and he won’t come in.”
Ava was having a fantastic time, that much was clear.
Vic grabbed her and hugged her and she forced herself to accept it, and he agreed that they could leave after cake.
Caroline had been flabbergasted that Gigi’s and Buff’s mother was having a party, after Buff’s name had been all over the papers for molesting children. How could she? But it made perfect sense, in a way. Old money. Stiff upper lip, and all that. She must be determined to pretend that nothing had happened, that her son would be somehow pardoned, and that life should go on, even in the midst of a hurricane. The lady was as nutty as the Mad Hatter.
Present at the Mad Hatter’s birthday/hurricane party were a handful of people, some salty preppy types, some working class, all mostly older people who were probably, like Gigi’s mom, permanent residents of Alligator Point. They were all drinking, mostly beer, happy to have an excuse to tie one on, the sort of diehards who routinely ignored hurricane warnings, money or age or machismo allowing them to romanticize the notion of going down with the ship, which was, actually, the same sort of