During hurricane season, if she's lucky, she sees him in person three or four times. The rest of the time he is Bennett Shacklewood, the most popular weatherman on the national news, reporting from the sunny beaches of Southern California, the cracked plains in the drought of the farmlands or more mundanely in front of Times Square, thousands of foolish women behind him brandishing signs and vying for attention, vying for those blue, blue eyes to turn just once and look.
But Crystal isn't in it for the fame. She lives for the disaster. She wants to see sheep tossed into the air like playthings, villages threatening to be wiped away like chalk on a teacher’s blackboard. She wants to be with her weatherman, standing on the edges of destruction.
The latest is Magrite, sashaying her hips past the jagged edges of the Yucatan and Cuba to kiss the shores of Texas. Crystal beats her there, pressing her bare elbows to the cool check-in desk at the hotel as a tired woman asks for the password.
"Journalists only," she reminds Crystal, eyeing her. The rest of the town had evacuated hours ago. Crystal had passed the gridlock on the highway as she headed south. The other side of the road was packed with tourists tucking flaps under their rack tops, honking mournful horns and glancing back at the darkening sky.
"Marlene Dietrich," Crystal answers, not bothering to remove her large, moon-shaped sunglasses even though they are completely inappropriate. The password is always a movie star's name.
They send her to a second floor room at the end of the hall. Crystal showers the salty air from her skin and wraps herself in a plush bathrobe. She watches from the hotel window as the workers begin to board up. Down on the beach Bennett performs for the camera crews. He is imposing as usual, everything about him larger—even his coat is one size too big so there's more fabric to flap in the high winds. His hair is plastered to his forehead, zigzagging back and forth in clumps. She wonders if his wife and two kids, in their suburban HOA-guarded split-level back in New Jersey, are watching him on TV right now. He never talks of them—Crystal doesn’t even know their names.
When he finally comes to her, he kisses her fiercely and smells of sea salt.
"You're a sight for sore eyes," he tells her, tracing her eyebrows gently with his thumbs and searching her face like he is reading a map. They unplug the phone, shut off the lights. "Definitely a category 4," he says as the low screeches begin. The hotel's foundation rocks and Crystal thinks of Kansas and witches' feet. Bennett grabs her bathrobe and twirls her around, pulling it up to expose her.
They fuck this way, with her back to him and her hair still wet, flicking droplets of water across the bedspread and the walls, and Crystal concentrates on the shuttered windows where she can hear Magrite slamming over and over, giving Bennett a beat to work with. She is reminded of one night, long after the first hurricane she saw with him in the Florida Keys and the tornado that punched a hole in the side of a Jo-Ann Fabrics in Toledo, he told her that the reason he adored her was because he sensed she was dangerous, someone he had to chase, and it excited him like seeing a big one come up across the ocean.
Just before Bennett comes, Crystal's hands slip on the bed sheet. She falls, face forward, into the corner of the nightstand. The pain explodes, a burst that's powerful and beyond her.
"God dammit."
She rolls, curling, her face smothered in the pillow. The adrenaline kicks in and for a moment Crystal feels she's hovering above it all, looking down at herself.
"Shit, shit. I'm so sorry. So sorry. Are you okay?" Bennett is pulling at her to turn and look at him, and suddenly she does. She slaps him hard, the sound of it relieving her own pain in a satisfying way. Bennett draws back, stunned.
"That really hurt," she says, not sure of all that she means.
Bennett gets her some ice from the machine down the hall, and she presses it to her face, liking the numb. He smokes spread-eagle on the floor and hums the Battle Hymn of the Republic, his toes digging into the carpet.
She remembers how exotic he looked in his dark, fur-lined wool coat when they first met three years ago back in Hunter Springs during the freak blizzard. Twenty-two inches they'd had in the middle of March, and the hotel bar at the Sheraton was the only place she could walk from her apartment. Closest thing they ever got to a hurricane in Hunter Springs was the draft that sometimes came up in the baseball field between the middle and high school buildings during a windy day.
"I'm sorry I slapped you," Crystal says. She sits down next to him on the floor and presses her fingers into the creases in his neck.
He lifts his head, smirks at her. "Nah, my little cougar. That's why I like you."
The forecast in Hunter Springs today is partly cloudy, highs in the mid-60s. Her friends are probably walking their dogs, playing Frisbee golf, hanging their lingerie out to dry in the back lawn.
"Nothing like this would ever happen where I come from," she murmurs. When Bennett looks to her with a question, she just shakes her head. She smiles, even though it makes her face hurt, and kisses him deeply.
The storm passes by morning. They walk on the beach, a battered battlefield strewn with the seaweed guts of the ocean. Those who stayed emerge and kiss the foundations still standing, drag plywood and plastic back to their homes. Later, in the hotel room, Crystal pulls her bra straps back on and fastens them quietly. Her suitcase is packed, the moon-shaped glasses help hide the bruise. Bennett gives one more report before the news crews shut off lights, pack their trucks. The ocean sighs, quiets, murmurs, waiting for the next one.