Swim to Me (20 page)

“We're going back to the turtles. Remember the turtles?” said Delores. “Remember how we talked about the elephants and how you would get to swim every day?”

“No. No turtles. Mommy comes, too.”

Gail stood up. It was important to her that Westie not see her cry. “You go now,” she said, turning away from them and walking back into her bedroom. She sat on her bed, trying not to hear Westie's wails as Delores and Lester led him down the hall.
Only a monster would let her child go motherless,
she thought to herself.
What kind of a person am I?

There's a storm cloud system moving up the Gulf of Mexico. Expect torrential downpours and hurricane-force winds tomorrow. It's going to be a wet one for President Nixon's buddy Bebe Rebozo, who'll be in town for a business meeting. Rebozo was born right here in Tampa on November 17, 1912.” Delores tilted her head and widened her eyes, staring directly into the camera as she spoke of Bebe Rebozo's birthday.

It was August, and she'd been on the air for four months. The show had been number one in the ratings, and, as a result, Alan Sommers had been asked to address the National Association of Broadcasters Convention in the spring. Soon after, local news programs around the country fell all over themselves to add gimmicks to their presentations and turn their reporters into personalities.

For the past week, Delores had been on the phone with Wally, the meteorologist from Miami, more than usual. He'd been teaching her about weather systems and helping her identify cold fronts and other patterns. Today Delores and Wally were watching the satellite images of white storm clouds forming over the Gulf. The clouds spun in a circle like a swirl of white angels. The photos were irresistibly beautiful, and Sommers put them on every night. With each shot, the clouds came closer and the dance got more frenetic until the sky turned the color of a sweat stain and the waves got
higher and more turbulent, spitting out large puddles of foam at the shore.

Wally had explained to her that there was no accurate way to predict when and where a storm might hit. After bullying its way through the Bahamas, less than one hundred miles from the U.S. mainland, the one they were calling Hurricane Claudia whooshed up the Gulf of Mexico at forty miles per hour. By the time she made landfall on the St. Petersburg coastline, the oomph had gone out of her gusts; tides were just five feet above normal and the winds were expected to get up to only thirty to forty miles per hour by morning.

Delores was a quick study, and although someone else would write up her reports, they would use the information that she would receive from Wally. During the six o'clock news, reports started coming over the wire downgrading the storm from a Category 1 hurricane to just a rainstorm. Still, people by the coastline were advised to consider evacuating their homes should the winds pick up and the storm reverse itself.

Sommers stood in front of the AP machine as updates about Claudia clicked across the page. If only this storm would reach its potential and actually become a hurricane, this would be the kind of story that could put him on the map for good. The bigwigs in New York, the network guys, would be watching. They knew him as the guy who'd put a mermaid in a bathtub and watched his ratings go sky-high. Big deal—so he was a novelty act. This was the kind of story where you had to go with your gut, make split-second decisions in the heat of the moment, even when they flew in the face of logic.

Words raced inside Sommers's head, picking up the tempo of the news wire. Now or never. Now or never. Now or never. We need something with traction. Sizzle. Okay, we've got raging sea. Palm trees stooped by the wind. Good. Good. Work with that. Reporter's
hair whipping around in wind. Nice touch. Sea spray in the face. Right. Whose face? Pretty face. Good body wouldn't hurt. A soaking wet, nice body. Brilliant. All my reporters are guys. Holy shit. I've got it. We send the water gal. Our mermaid. Jeee-zuss. Hello Walter Cronkite! Now all we need is a hurricane.

Delores was still sitting on the edge of the bathtub, having just finished her segment, when she noticed Sommers lurking behind the cameraman. He stared at her hungrily. Not the way the other men stared at her—she'd gotten used to that. As she prepared to step out of the water and wrap herself in her robe, Sommers came forward. “Allow me,” he said, holding it for her. “You were fabuloso tonight, as always.”

“Thanks.”

“That's some storm brewing out there. They say it could turn into a full-blown hurricane.” He crossed his fingers and held them up in front of her. “Look, I won't beat around the bush. This could be a big story for me. For all of us. I need a top-notch talent to go out to Belleair Beach and cover that thing. I think you're the ticket, Miss—or do you prefer Ms.?—Taurus. I mean it's right up your alley: weather, water. Lots of water. What do you think? Big story, big chance. You get this one right, and you're playing ball with the big boys. Everyone will be watching. This could be your ticket out of the fish-tank and into the fire. Catch my drift? Or should I say, catch my draft, as it were?”

“What if I don't catch either?” Delores immediately covered her mouth with her hand. It was the first time she had talked back to him. He threw back his head and went har-har-har, baring all of his ferrety teeth. “She's beautiful and brainy, and on top of all that, she has a sense of humor. Fantastic.”

Just as quickly, he stopped laughing. “So what do you say? You with me or not?”

“Yeah. Okay, I'll do it.”

“Attagirl,” he said. “You've got real
cojones.
Here's what you're going to do . . .” He laid it out: the hair, the outfit, the windy setting. “Right now, we're not exactly dealing with hurricane conditions, which is not to say that the situation can't change just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “So you're going to have to goose this one a little, if you know what I mean.” He called over the cameraman and the producer who would go with Delores, and Chuck Varne, the anchorman. “Use your imaginations out there. I want wind and rain and the works. Okay, guys? Let's go get us a hurricane!”

Delores changed her clothes and stepped out into the street with the others. She opened up her umbrella, expecting that the wind would eventually blow it inside out, but it didn't. She got into the front of the van next to Armando, the intern, who was driving. Doug Perry, the young up-and-coming producer, and Bo Quince, the cameraman who had been at the station longer than anyone, sat behind them. Armando turned the windshield wipers on to the highest speed and they made a scraping noise against the glass. “It's not so bad,” he said. “Yeah, maybe it'll get worse,” said Delores. Bo gave one of those “I've seen it all before” shrugs.

Through the crackle and static of the two-way radio on the dashboard, Sommers's voice became another presence in the car. “Where are you now?” he said. “We're just coming up onto the Watergate complex,” Doug cracked. “Need anything, boss?”

“Very funny,” Sommers shot back. “I need your ETA so we know when to schedule your spot.”

Old Bo got on the radio and spoke clearly. “Hey, Al, Bo here. It's raining real hard, but I'd be hard-pressed to call this a hurricane. You sure you want to go live with this?”

Sommers came back: “I don't care if it's drizzling. We're looking at extreme storm conditions; that's our story. Do you read me?”

Doug again: “We read every page of you.”

When Sommers answered again, it was through a mouthful of food. He chewed and swallowed his words so that no one could understand him. “Fig Newtons,” said Bo and Doug simultaneously.

“Can someone explode from eating too many Fig Newtons?” asked Delores.

“If Sommers exploded, all that would be left of him would be his pointy little shoes,” said Doug. “Do you think his toes come to a point, too?”

“Has anyone ever seen his feet?” asked Delores.

“I have,” said Bo. “But I really can't speak about them in mixed company.”

They kept up the patter, all except Armando, who was driving at about twenty miles per hour, hugging the steering wheel so close that his chin nearly touched it. From time to time, Delores would lean over and whisper, “You're doing great,” or “I think we're almost there.”

As they got closer to Belleair Beach, they came upon a policeman who held up his hand in front of the car and made them stop. He poked his head into the window and said to Armando, “We're suggesting that people along this coastline evacuate, just in case.” Doug flashed their press credentials. “Sure thing, be my guest,” said the cop, waving them ahead. When they arrived at Belleair, the wind was blowing and the sand was shifting, and the beach was lined with curious onlookers eager to watch the storm make landfall. Bo wasted no time setting up his camera. Armando stood behind him with a strobe light, and Doug stood off to the side listening to instructions from Sommers. “Make sure you keep the camera on the girl,” he ordered. “Get her close up. I want to see hair blowing, palm trees swaying. I wanna feel a hurricane. Is that too much to ask?”

Delores miked up, then looked to Doug for further cues. “Snap up your jacket,” he told her. “Toss your hair a little, mess it up.” Delores held her head upside down and shook it. It looked much more disheveled when she stood up. “Nice,” said Doug, who then shouted into his headphone to Sommers: “
THE HAIR IS GOOD!
” Next, he ordered Bo to keep the camera on Delores. “Make it seem as if she's the only one here. Get the best weather shots you can.” Then he repeated to Sommers, “
NICE FOAM OFF THE OCEAN, TREES ARE SWAYING. WE'RE GOOD TO GO.
” As he listened to Sommers, he glanced at Bo and Delores and with his free index finger made a circling motion around the side of his head and tapped his temple. It was a relief to Delores that she wasn't the only person who thought Sommers was nuts.

Doug had told her to say just what she saw. “Try to sound a little tense,” he said. “Make it as dramatic as you can. If you're at a loss for words, look at me and I'll give you some cues.” So this was real reporting, she thought. It was fun. Not that hard really; you just said what people told you to say. There were plenty of whitecaps, and the feverish water was beautiful, but it seemed to her like just another rainy day. But because Sommers decided it was a story, suddenly it was a story. Neat.

“Doug,” she whispered, not wanting Sommers to hear. She shrugged her shoulders and held out her hands as if to say, “Now what?”

“Tell them where you are and that all of West Florida is watching with bated breath to see the course that Hurricane Claudia will take,” whispered Doug. “Talk about the menacing winds and the raging sea. No, the
gusting
winds and the
roiling
sea, there you go. Don't forget the possible shoreline evacuation. The cops are out in droves. Well, at least one cop is out, but I'm sure there are others. Go ahead. You'll be great.”

Back in the studio, Chuck Varne was seated at his anchor desk
waiting to be cued up for the live report from Belleair Beach. Varne had been an anchorman since the early sixties and revered the masters of his craft: Edward R. Murrow, Eric Sevareid, Charles Collingwood. Grudgingly, he gave into the antics of his contemporaries, but in small ways—the perfectly creased white linen pocket handkerchief he wore in his breast pocket each day, his wire-rimmed glasses (he drew the line at contact lenses)—he tried to carry the integrity of Murrow and his colleagues to the WGUP news desk. As he introduced Delores's live feed, he said the following: “We are about to hear our own mermaid singing, live from Belleair Beach with an update on Hurricane Claudia.” The allusion to a mermaid singing came from T. S. Eliot's poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Nobody would get this, nor would they care, thought Varne. But it was his little joke on all of them and having the last laugh was often what got him through the day.

Everyone in the studio grew silent as they watched Delores begin her report: “We're out here at Bellaire Beach. All of West Florida is watching with bated breath to see the course that Hurricane Claudia will take.” She sounded a little like a kid in a school play, but with some urging from Doug, she was able to inject more life into her voice. “Right now, the winds are gusting and the sea is roiling.” She did the thing she did with her eyes, and Doug winked at her. Of course she had no idea Sommers had just said into his ear: “The girl's doing good. She's not as dumb as she looks.”

Delores continued with animation: “The cops are out in droves and are urging folks along shoreline communities to evacuate. The water is a beautiful greenish black . . .”

Just then, she glimpsed something out of the corner of her eye. It was a little boy playing in the surf. Doug started making swirling motions with his hands urging her to quicken the pace. She picked up again. “The waves are slamming into the shore, and all around
me you can see . . .” Again, she noticed something out of the corner of her eye. The boy was gone, and in his place was a grown man waving his arms, shouting, and running into the water. Others were running behind him. She knew immediately that the boy had been swept away by a wave. Without thinking, Delores threw off her slicker and mike and ran into the water. She swam against the tide and ducked under the waves.

No one in the studio had any idea what was going on. For a few moments they stared dumbly at the blank screen, then Sommers began repeating, “Ohmygod, ohmygod.” Only Chuck had the presence of mind to say,
“Something has happened at Belleair Beach. Stay with us as this drama unfolds.”

Doug shouted into Chuck's earpiece: “She's in the water. She's gone after some kid who's drowning. She's in the water. We'll keep the camera on her.”

Chuck stiffened perceptibly.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we have an extraordinary situation on our hands. Our reporter has gone in the ocean to rescue a young child who's been swept out to sea . . .”