"...so far,” the newsman is saying, “Harvey appears to have no intention of moving from its coastal perch. Rainfall totals are expected to continue shooting upwards for at least the next twenty-four hours. One thing is for certain, Janet. If the rain continues like this for too much longer, a whole heck of a lot of people are going to be in a whole heck of a lot of trouble."
"You can say that again, Roy."
Where was he? While it wasn't unusual for Kyle to be out later than normal, it wasn’t like him to wait this long.
Maybe his luck is just as bad as yours. Maybe his boss dropped yet another last-minute task on his head. It’s happened like three times in the last two weeks alone.
Well, I couldn't let myself worry about it. I had enough on my plate as it were. He would call soon enough, and if he didn’t, I would just keep on waiting, counting the minutes until morning came. I had nowhere to be.
Now while I wait, I pass the time by doing what has become my favorite pastime of all over the last few months: dreaming of what my—no, our—life would look like once Kyle and I finally got together. In all likelihood, it wouldn't be much different than the lives we were leading now, but how nice it would be to have him beside me! More and more in the last two years since my last real relationship, if you could call being with a man who constantly cheated on you real, I had realized how lonely of a life I was coming to lead. Kyle had been like the shot in the arm for this disease that so many of us secretly carried, and I had been more ready than I'd thought for the cure. The day I'd met him was easily pinpointed as a turning point in my life.
So where will we live?, I ask the empty room, this question one of my favorites. In this trailer? In Kyle's apartment? Or will we get a house like Kyle promised, a house all our own for a shared life all our own?
And would I have to find a new job?, continue the endless parade of questions. Would Kyle? Would we move to Dallas? Houston? Another city in Texas? Or maybe even to some place neither of us had ever been, like Hawaii? Would the two of us finally not be poor?
It won’t matter if y’all are poor, not as long as y’all are together.
It was true. We could live under a bridge for all I cared. All I needed was to feel his arms around me, to hear him breathing softly right there beside me every night when I laid my head down to rest. There was nothing more important than that. Besides, I had complete faith in Kyle's side business, though I didn’t know many of its specifics. Not that my feelings for him were contingent on his success. It was just what I believed. I believed in him. Just by looking at him, by hearing the way he spoke, by seeing the way he carried himself – I could just tell he was going to make it.
I'm most of the way through constructing an exceedingly elaborate country estate in my mind, picket fence and all, when Kyle’s call finally comes. I'm so deep inside my fantasy that the sharp buzz that bursts from the speakers of my computer startles me, and I lean back so far and so fast I almost tumble right out of my chair.
Recollecting myself, my heart racing, I hit the space bar, the laptop screen humming back to life. A moment later, Kyle's face fills my vision. Despite the bad weather, the picture is crystal clear.
"Hi, baby," he says, exhaustion immediately evident in his voice. "Sorry about the delay." He smiles weakly. "Had a last-minute request from the boss. How are you? Is everything okay? Are you hanging in there?"
"Everything's fine, my love, don't you worry,” I say, and mean it. Where minutes before I'd been lost in a labyrinth of anxiety, now the worry, as I knew it would be, is nowhere to be found. Now that Kyle was here, I had no doubts everything was indeed going to be just fine.
6.
Kyle
As luck would have it, I get roped into another double at the last possible second. Not twenty minutes after I’ve finished the paperwork and returned to the freshly lunched guys, my phone buzzes in my pocket. It’s a call from Ross, my direct boss, who seems only too happy to “request” that once I’m finished with this current project, the guys and I port across town for another. As much as I want to say no, there's nothing I can do but agree, holding in my sigh until I’ve said goodbye and have heard the click on the other end of the line.
“Another double?” Tim asks the moment I pull the phone away from my ear.
“Another double,” I confirm as I slip my phone back into my pocket.
This is all I have to say. Without another word, we go back to work, neither Tim nor Mike nor Aaron nor myself talking as we resume laying the several dozen yards of remaining pipe. In moments like these, when the only options were to stay at a job you hated or to walk away from a job you needed, it was best not to think too hard of all the work you still had left to do. Best to just put your head down and do it.
Soon, with the sun beating down on our heads and the air dripping with moisture thanks to the storm raging several hundred miles south, the four of us are once again drenched with sweat. While we work, I do my best not to think about anything but the next task in front of me. With so many hours remaining until the end of the day and my next chance to check on Shannon, I can’t allow myself to get distracted by thoughts of the future, good or bad. Do that and I’d end up driving myself crazy. It’s already taking just about everything in me not to call Ross back up and quit on the spot, just so I can race home and get on the computer.
Just one step at a time. Don’t think about all you still have to do today, just think about this one pipe right here in your hand. All you have to do is make sure it’s set right. And then after that, it’s the next pipe, and then the next. Just don’t stop. There's no use in worrying. Everything will be just fine.
It’s another two hours before we lay the final pipe for the first project. Thankfully, we have no more incidents during this time; it’s just one step after another. As soon as the last pipe is in place and I’ve checked to make sure everything is as it should be, I hop into my truck and set off, Tim and Aaron and Mike following close behind. It’s early enough that rush hour has yet to start, and mercifully it only takes a mere forty-five minutes to get to our next site, yet another wide-open field in the middle of nowhere.
Parking my truck on an open stretch of shoulder, I climb out just as the others pull up. There’s no time to waste, not if we didn’t want to be here all night.
Will this misery never end?, I wonder as I go to the bed of my truck. For all I knew, this field could very well be the same field I’d just left. Everything was identical. The same patches of dirt broken up by small gatherings of grass; the same flat horizon dull in the distance; the same high-vaulted, tauntingly beautiful sky with its wisps of cloud and birds too high to identify. With every day taking the same shape and form, life was beginning to blend together, one moment becoming indistinguishable from the next. Sleep, lay pipe, eat, repeat. Was I alive, or was this purgatory?
Grabbing my box of tools from the bed, I check my still-drying clothes and then set off into the field towards several dozen sections of metal pipe piled on a pallet next to a freshly dug, narrow ditch. As I march through the sparse vegetation, Tim, Mike and Aaron fall into step beside me, their shoulders slumping and their feet dragging just like mine.