Chapter 4

Jake Russo felt like a criminal. In all the years he had served as a police officer he had never felt like a criminal until now, but then he had never made it with another man’s wife before last night. And Melissa Russo wasn’t just any man’s wife; she was his brother’s wife. Jerry was out of town on a business trip and had phoned Jake to take care of his wife during the storm. But Jerry didn’t have that in mind!

It had all been innocent enough until “Jack” joined Jake and Melissa: Jack Daniels. Just a little something for a “hurricane party.” Jake had put her accordion type shutters over her windows and she had cooked him a steak and everything had gone along fine until Hurricane Camilla’s winds started to howl and Melissa became frightened. Melissa’s two months of newfound sobriety—66 days to be precise—evaporated with the first taste of “Jack” straight up on the rocks. By her fifth drink Melissa’s personality had changed from Jekyll to Hyde, and she brought out a deck of cards to play strip poker. Jake, who had a weakness for boobs like Melissa had a weakness for bourbon, cheated when it was his turn to deal and soon had Melissa down to her bra and panties.

“I think we should stop, Melissa,” Jake said, as he looked lustfully as his sister-in-law.

“That’s not what your pants say, Jake,” she replied with a suggestive smile, licking her lips with her tongue. “Deal the cards.”

Jake lost his shirt in a rigged hand, for he wanted to show off his “abs,” no longer a six-pack, but he had no love handles either. He still worked out, although he had lost the buffness he had had a few years before when he had worked part-time as a Chippendale. Hell, he was 30, not 22, he thought. But he looked better than most 30-year-old guys. Jake Russo admitted to being vain about his looks.

He had won her brazier on the next hand, and after that she said, “What the hell” and dropped her panties. She turned around and showed off her rear end, a near perfect upside down valentine. Jerry had told him that Melissa liked to striptease for him in their bedroom. And as the wind howled outside, Melissa and Jake began their adultery, falling asleep shortly after consummation.

It was a rapping on the shutters that awoke Jake. He moved Melissa’s left leg from his body and rolled his naked sister-in-law gently away from his body. The bedroom was pitch-black. He reached over to the end table and turned on the battery powered lantern. The power was gone. The A.C. was off. It was sweltering inside the house.

“Anybody home?” came a voice to accompany the rapping. Jake recognized Melissa’s neighbor, the elderly Mr. Stevenson.

“Yeah, we’re okay,” Jake yelled back.

“Okay, Jerry,” Stevenson said, thinking Jake was his brother. “You can take down your shutters, the storm has passed,” he said.

Jake recognized Stevenson’s voice. He knew some of Melissa’s neighbors, as he had been to his brother’s house on a number of occasions.

“Ah…thanks…I’ll take care of it,” Jake yelled. “My head,” he whispered. He looked at Melissa and whispered, “Shit…. Damn pussy, Russo.”

“Jerry? Is that you, hon?” Melissa said groggily, her eyes unfocused. She sat up and with a startled face said to her brother-in-law, “Jake, what are you doing here? Where’s Jerry… Oh my God! Did we do it?”

Jake nodded.

“Oh my God! I am so fucked!” Melissa said. “What did we do?”

“You don’t remember?” Jake asked.

“I blacked out. Did we have sex?”

He thought of lying, but he figured she would know if he were so he said simply: “Yes.”

“Lord Jesus!” Melissa said, looking at the bottle of Jack Daniels on the other end table. “Oh Jerry, Jerry, Jerry… Oh oh oh… Get out, Jake!”

Jake grabbed the lantern and began to walk out of the bedroom.

“Where are you going with the light?”

“To find my clothes, Melissa. They’re in the living room I think. We need to get some light in here and some fresh air. I’m going to take the shutters down. The storm is over.”

“Get your clothes on and go, Jake. I don’t want you here.”

“I understand. I’ll need to report in at the station anyway.

“I am so fucked,” Melissa said, beginning to sob. “Now I’ll have to pick up another damn white chip!”

Jake Russo realized Melissa was more concerned with her lapse of sobriety than she was with her lapse in fidelity. He shook his head in disbelief, dressed quickly and returned the lantern to Melissa’s bedroom. He said nothing to her but retraced his path to the living room, fumbled for his tools beside the living room door and walked outside to the twilight.

The white-haired Mr. Stevenson was out in his yard next door and said. “Everything okay, Jerry?”

“It’s Jake, Jerry’s brother, Mr. Stevenson, thanks for your concern.” Since they were kids, people had mistaken Jake for Jerry and Jerry for Jake, they looked so alike.

“Oh…. Officer Russo, nice to see you,” Mr. Stevenson said. “Do you need any help taking down the shutters?”

“Thanks but I can manage.”

“I bet you can,” the old man grinned.

Damn, Jake thought, there goes the neighborhood. All of Manatee Avenue will know Jake was staying with Melissa. Melissa said Mr. Stevenson was the biggest gossip in the neighborhood; he knew something about everyone and shared those secrets at the drop of a hat.

The shutters came down quickly and easily. He came back into her house to say goodbye.

“Damn phone’s not working, Jake,” she cursed. “I’ve got to call my sponsor.”

“Your sponsor?” Jake asked.

“Yes, my A.A. sponsor. Duh. I drank, Jake. Sixty-six days sober and I threw it all away…”

Jake nodded and listened. He knew women well enough to know that he was supposed to listen to her, not try to fix things, but just listen. That’s what most men didn’t understand, Jake realized—women just wanted men to listen. Melissa went on for 10 minutes before she stopped, like all the air had been let out of her balloon.

“I put your shutters in the garage, next to your Century 21 signs,” Jake said. “I’m going down to the station and report in. Power out. I’d like to leave my car here, too many limbs and things in the roads. It’s only a mile to the station from here down 10th Street. Is it okay to leave my car?”

“Sure, why wouldn’t it be?”

“You told me to get out,” Jake said, a bit confused.

“Oh that…I was angry I blew my sobriety, that’s all. If we had sex—and I blacked out, Jake…I don’t remember, it takes two to tango as they say. I don’t think we should mention this to Jerry though.”

Jake let out a deep breath and said, “Yeah.” Melissa and Jerry had only been married a little over a year and Jake had been best man at his brother’s wedding. It was not customary behavior, he realized, for the best man to pork the bride. Damn pussy hound, he cursed himself. Your frankfurter rules your head when your head should rule your frankfurter, Jake. You need a reverse Viagra pill. He looked at his sister-in-law in the bed. She hadn’t bothered to pull the covers up and the fading light of the day from the bedroom window highlighted her breasts and he was becoming aroused again. Dammit, little head, he thought, I’ve got to report in at the station.

Jake noticed some lights from Pompano. Generators, he assumed. And here and there on Manatee, he saw a few homes partially illuminated. How in the world had he slept through the storm? He looked up at the sky to marvel at stars he hadn’t seen since he had sailed to Bimini eight summers ago with his brother Jerry in his dad’s old sailboat. A 22-year-old and his 19-year-old brother, doing a rite of passage to Hemingway’s old haunt. A great time, but he had picked up a dose of the clap.

“Officer Russo?” a voice asked.

Jake stopped on the sidewalk on Manatee and turned to the voice.

“Yes?” he said, not seeing the face attached to the voice.

“It’s Javier, Javier Thatcher.”

The paralegal, he realized. He knew Javier. He had worked with him on a few cases. He could see him now, his eyes having adjusted to nightfall. But Jake was embarrassed that he hadn’t seen the black man in the darkness. He certainly didn’t want to say that to him.

“Hello, Mr. Thatcher.”

“What are you doing in the neighborhood, Officer?”

“Looking after my sister-in-law. My brother’s out of town on business.”

“Oh…I was hoping that you were bringing help, that it wasn’t true.”

“What wasn’t true?”

“Stuart has vanished, Officer Russo.”

“What do you mean?”

“The town, except for our neighborhood, has vanished.”

“That’s impossible. I’m headed down 10th Street for my station.”

“Your station isn’t there.”

“That’s not funny, Mr. Thatcher.”

“Please call me ‘Javier,’ everyone else does. 10th Street ends with St. Joe’s Church. Sarita Heights is gone. You can see. There is starlight. It’s only two blocks away. Look south…what do you see?”

Jake turned his head in that direction, expecting to see the Sarita Heights development, the ranch style homes. He saw only foliage, thick foliage on the south side of 10th Street.

“My God!” Jake cried. “What happened?”