Hurricane Days (22 page)

* * *

Robin passed a wall of mailboxes in the empty lobby, then took a long flight of stairs up to Adrienne’s apartment. Robin had asked her brother Kenneth to call as a favor to her, rather than one of her staff members. She distrusted them with this delicate situation; it was too tempting for information to be leaked. But she trusted her brother. Even though they hadn’t spoken in a while, he agreed because, as he’d told her, she sounded desperate on the phone. So he communicated to Adrienne that Robin only wanted to talk, and that she’d be alone—no security, no annoying advisors. Adrienne told him that she hoped Robin was in good shape. As Robin huffed breathlessly on the fifth-floor landing, she realized what Adrienne meant. Robin hadn’t been the most physically active. She always said she never had time to exercise and couldn’t imagine herself as one of the “jogging presidents.”

“Take up golf,” Lara had told her. “It’s not that active.”

Robin had given her a sideways glance.

“Seriously,” Lara continued. “You drive around in a buggy all day. How tiring can it be?”

“It’s a golf cart,” Robin corrected.

“Same thing.”

The door to Adrienne’s apartment opened while Robin was still making her way down the hall.

* * *

“Surprised isn’t quite it,” Adrienne said, taking Robin’s coat. “When I got the call, I thought you’d hired someone to kill me.”

“Not yet.” Robin scanned the living room, taking note of the bay windows and the breathtaking nighttime views she had. There were streaks of orange in the sky, just over charcoal brushed clouds creeping closer, and twinkling streetlights below. “Your band must do pretty well.”

“We have sort of a cult following.”

Robin wouldn’t admit that she’d seen her band online. She tried to appear whimsical. “Is it heavy metal?”

“Heavy metal has…fallen out of favor.” Adrienne sounded as if she were trying out the words. “But it still influences rock, and the music we play. You didn’t come here to discuss music genres, did you?”

“I might have,” Robin said. “I can be unpredictable.”

“So I see,” Adrienne said. She was cautious with her. “Can I get you something?” she asked.

“No.” With hands clasped firmly behind her back, Robin stepped further inside, noticing built-in bookshelves stuffed with feminist authors, some of whom she knew, and newer lesbian romances she wasn’t familiar with. Her eyes fixed on the beaten-up guitar case in the corner of the room. She still had it.

Robin curled her hand around a random Roman column in the center of the room, another detail adding to the charm and character of the place. “This must cost a pretty penny.”

Adrienne pulled bottles out of the refrigerator of a small kitchenette set off with a counter and barstools. “One of my friends has a few properties,” she replied, matter-of-factly.

“I imagined you lived with five other people over a garage.” Robin smiled, but it didn’t seem like a joke.

“Because I’m in a band?” Adrienne asked with a smile that suggested she knew something Robin didn’t. “We do okay. You may have heard of us. Eye of the Storm?”

“Excuse me?”

“That’s the name of my band,” Adrienne said.

Robin nodded, not revealing that she already knew.

“Why did you come?” Adrienne asked. The pleasantries were over.

Robin noticed photos of Adrienne and an unknown woman laughing together at a place with boats in the background. Her chest surged longingly, seeing a quick snapshot of the road not taken and hearing all of her silent regrets.

She looked at a larger photograph above the mantel. It was Adrienne and the same woman from the boat picture, a woman with dark hair and clear blue eyes like Robin’s.

“Well?” Adrienne wanted an answer.

Robin let out a long, slow breath. “How could you tell me you love me?”

Adrienne came back to the living room, holding two bottles. She shrugged. “It’s the truth. I don’t have a problem with the truth.”

Robin strode across the living room floor like she owned the place. “You lied on TV because you love me?”

Adrienne paused, leaning against the column. “That’s why you’re here? Because I said I love you? I didn’t think it mattered.”

Robin took the beer she didn’t ask for. “Of course it matters. You drop a bombshell like that…”

Adrienne gazed at her, her smile turning up at the corners. “After all these years,” she said, “I realized it was true. Hard as I tried not to, as much as you pissed me off…it’s true. I love you.”

Robin was uneasy. She set her beer on the coffee table and sat on a plush, though small, couch. “I don’t know what to do with that,” she said. She didn’t make eye contact with her.

“I’m not asking you to do anything,” Adrienne said. “Don’t get a big head. I loved my partner.”

Obviously, the woman from the boat picture…

“Her name was Jenny,” Adrienne continued. “We were pretty happy for a while. It was sort of on-again, off-again. Then she got sick.”

“I’m sorry.”

Adrienne nodded. “With you,” she said, “it was always there. I’d see you on TV or hear your name on the news. God, you pissed me off! But I couldn’t help it. You’re like a disease with no cure!”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Why else would I go against my better judgment?” Adrienne came closer to her. “Your heart doesn’t listen to your head. It’s fucked up.”

Robin smiled knowingly. How true that had been for her when they were in school together.

“It’s hopeless,” Adrienne said. “I’ll meet someone else, but you know how sometimes you think about how…just before you die, there’ll be that one person you’ll think of right before the end? For me, I know it’s gonna be you.”

Robin had had the same thought years ago, but she wouldn’t admit it. She stood up, pretending to be interested in the décor. Being here in this apartment with her, now a stranger, and yet feeling something so familiar still between them—she wondered why she had really come. Had she wanted to hear Adrienne say those words again and to be sure she meant them? She hadn’t planned what she would do once she heard her say it.

Adrienne smiled to herself. “You’ll probably fuck up the whole country, but there it is. I couldn’t hurt you if I wanted to.”

“You mean
again
? You couldn’t hurt me
again
.” Robin’s voice was sharper than a knife. Her wounds were now showing.

“Yeah.” Adrienne lowered her eyes.

Robin took her seat on the couch again. “I love my husband,” she announced abruptly.

“Good for you.” Adrienne made herself comfortable in a chair across from her and crossed her legs.

Robin glanced at her, taking brief note of Adrienne’s black stockings and heels underneath her skirt. Through the stockings Robin could see something she hadn’t noticed the other night. Adrienne had some kind of new tattoo, almost like a snake or serpent-type creature, swirling up her calf. Still the wild child in the way she dressed and in her attitude, Adrienne would always be her temptation—the poison apple she couldn’t ponder too long.

She was lost in the sight of her, vaguely aware of the hum of traffic noise below.

Adrienne sighed. “I really should thank you. If it wasn’t for you, I would’ve kept running for a long time. I’ll always be grateful to you for that.”

Robin didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Instead her mixed emotions came out in an inaudible, awkward chuckle. “How ironic,” she sighed. “You’re thanking me for something…”

“Your whole campaign is against?” Adrienne hung on the verge of a laugh, her lips turned upward. “Seeing you again,” she said, “I figured you’ll suffer more living a lie than having some nutcase call you out.”

“I am not living a lie!” Robin would have been more convincing had she not shouted it quite so loudly. She set down her beer and rose to her feet. “It obviously meant more to you,” Robin lied. There was that fear again, protecting her like an old friend.

“It will eat away at you,” Adrienne said. “You already look older.”

The governor could take anything but that.
She looked older?
Now she was furious. And she didn’t know whom she was furious at—Adrienne or herself, for coming here in the first place.

Robin walked purposefully across the hardwood floor and stopped, face-to-face with the person she pretended meant nothing to her. They stood in front of each other, moments stretching like hours, until Adrienne held her face in her hands. “I’m not trying to hurt you,” she said.

Robin lowered her eyes. “I want you to know,” she said. “You broke
my
heart. Remember that.” She went toward the door as Adrienne let go.

“I was a scared kid,” she told Robin. “Years ago, when you told me you loved me…everything was so intense. I was afraid.”

Robin released the door handle, frowning at the memory. They weren’t kids anymore. It was time to tell the truth, at least while no cameras were around. “You weren’t too scared to parade around with that boyfriend of yours.”

As soon as the words slipped from her tongue, it was obvious to Robin, and probably to Adrienne as well. Robin remembered it all, every hurtful detail. Even more obvious to Robin was the awareness that her feelings weren’t confined to the past. They were with her still, even now. She’d heard about how a first love never completely leaves you, but she’d done everything she could to be the exception, to remain above it all, as if she’d never experienced any of it.

Adrienne would never know how Robin ran home to Georgia and remade her identity as the Southern belle who dated boys at Emory. Or how she threw herself into her books. How she went to church more times a week than she needed to. How she did everything to be the perfect daughter for her parents. And how she locked the year at FSU away in her mind and thought she’d thrown away the key. She thought she had come so far, only to find herself unchanged in the presence of the woman she couldn’t forget, the woman she still loved.

Robin turned around slowly. There was no point in pretending anymore.

“I know I really hurt you.” Adrienne ran her hand through her blond-streaked hair in the familiar way she used to. “I’m sorry. I guess we both did what we had to do at the time.”

“I guess we did.”

Adrienne’s eyes were bright, intense. “So what now?” she asked with a slightly awkward smile.

“I’m doing what I have to do.” With that, Robin opened the door and went to the stairs. In spite of her recent realization, Robin couldn’t let herself succumb to her feelings. She could feel the hollowness inside of her expanding with every step she took. She reached the first landing quickly.

“Say hi to your husband,” Adrienne called. Her voice was cold, like a slap in Robin’s face.

With white knuckles Robin gripped the banister… “Adrienne, there comes a time for everyone, a sort of crossroads, where you can see the right path and the wrong one. I know what’s right, and I have to follow what I believe is right.”

“I agree.” Adrienne folded her arms in judgment, standing in the doorway, looking disappointedly at her on the stairs. She had to have been wondering why Robin bothered to come here at all.

“Good-bye, Adrienne,” Robin said, like she was finally closing this chapter of her life once and for all. Even though it seemed over, she had to wonder if it was really over. It had taken her years to push everything down. Now that it had all come bubbling back up, how much longer would it take to push it back down again? Would she be able to now?

As she took another step, she tried to seal up the door to what seemed like someone else’s life.

Chapter Forty-Three

The green Gulf of Mexico glistened in the hazy morning light. In spite of the turmoil, of course I had agreed to get out of town with Adrienne for the weekend. Falling in love was like that—anger, then willingness to do anything no matter how irrational. I was convinced I was no longer in charge of my brain. The outing gave me the idea, no matter how stupid, that I would try to broach the subject neither of us had been able to talk about. During this trip, I was somehow going to find out if I was alone in this relationship, if it was a one-way street that only led to a dead end. Of course, if she told me she only thought of me as a friend, one whom she happened to have sex with, it would be a very long, awkward ride back home.

Before we left that morning, Lydia the RA blocked us in the lobby. “A storm’s headed this way.” Her brow was crinkled. She seemed to thrive in times of impending catastrophe.

“We won’t be out long,” Adrienne reassured her. Then in the parking lot: “Who the hell does she think she is? The Gestapo?”

We doubled over with laughter until we saw Lydia guarding her post at the glass door of the lobby. So we quickly climbed into the car and sped out of the parking lot.

Adrienne’s little Camaro zipped down the highway as we headed west. We listened to a heavy metal station, and I was proud to recognize many of the songs. I even liked them, the ones with not-so-offensive lyrics. My hand beat against the door along with the drums.

“I love this one!” I shouted, singing as much of the words as I could to “Rock You Like a Hurricane.” I glanced at the little notes tattooed on her upper arm. “This is so great!” Until I heard the words more clearly than ever: “What does he mean? ‘
Give her inches
?’”

Seeing my horrified face, Adrienne replied, “He’s talking about a ruler. He’s going to give her a ruler!”

I shook my head as she laughed at me, as usual.

“You like a lot of misogynistic songs,” I said.

“There you go with the big words again. Focus on the song, not the words.” She turned off onto an exit.

“It’s hard not to because he’s screaming them at me!” I kept shaking my head. The whole world was going to hell.

With the windows open, I could immediately smell the salt air of Panama City. The excitement, the anticipation of the beach and this place I’d never been—the air seemed to crackle with electricity.

We passed run-down tourist shops and seedy motels, each a different pastel color reminding me of the 1950s. A bit tired-looking compared to how it had been in its heyday, Panama City was still situated along some of the prettiest stretches of beach I’d ever seen.