on my forehead. It sucks to get all sweated out before you go to work. The air smells of cut grass and tilled gardens and every few seconds a cicada will scream from one of the trees above, quickly joined by dozens of others, wailing like a tornado warning.
The tornado sirens don’t penetrate to the depths of the restaurant, through the piped in music and the rattling of plates in the dishwasher, where Hannah and I are busily assembling pizzas. I don’t know what makes me step away from the counter and down the hall. Only as I approach the back door do I hear a faint whine. When I push the door open to the back parking lot the sirens aren’t nearly as troubling as the sky. A line of dark clouds with a yellow-green hue, oddly humped, are almost straight overhead. A roar from the right turns my head. I can see the massive dark funnel, like a black hand of the devil, spewing debris as it snakes ominously across the ground. Directly towards me. Not more than a mile down the road.
I slam the door and race inside. I scream Hannah’s name and she turns from the counter. Her expression is surprise and concern. I run to her and grab her hand and pull.
“We’ve got to get the cooler!” I yell. And because we don’t have time I half drag her towards the metal door of the walk-in refrigerator.
“Tornado!” I yell and then we are inside and I slam the door shut and pull Hannah down. Just as I lay myself on top of her the world explodes and we can hear what it must sound like to be in the midst of a bomb attack. We can feel the entire room rotating, as if we were on a carousel and not solid ground, and then, as fast as it began, it’s completely quiet. I realize I’m still on top of Hannah and as she stirs, my head on the nape of her neck, I smell her hair and feel her from the tip of my chin all the way to my ankles.
I roll to the side and say, “Sorry.”
“What the hell?” Hannah says as we stand up. She’s brushing the front of her clothes with her hands, as if I had thrown her onto a dirt pile instead of a shiny, stainless steel floor. I try to open the door, and can only move it a few inches.
“Let me help,” Hannah says, and together we push, the sound of something against the door grating. We finally get it open a few feet and step outside. We stare, stunned, at the still-dark sky which somehow glows directly overhead, tornado and emergency vehicle sirens the only sound. Nothing but broken boards and twisted roofing and mounds of debris at our feet and for hundreds of feet around us. The restaurant and the other shops are just gone.
“Oh my God,” Hannah says as she throws her arms around me. “You saved my life!”
The spray of an evening sprinkler hits my face and I step away from the stuttering arcing spray. The restaurant is just a half block ahead.
Stepping into the cool restaurant is like jumping into a pool. I look down at my shirt, a few wet spots of perspiration on my chest. Hopefully not enough to raise a stink.
Hannah and I had worked assembly the previous shift and it had been great. Sometimes she seems like she’s in a bad mood. Won’t talk, does her work robotically. She’ll ask me or Steve or one of the others if they’ll close for her. Then you turn around and she’s gone, disappeared. I figure it has to do with being so far away from all her friends and stuff.
But on Thursday it was just the opposite. The night before she’d seen this Netflix movie called Fur and all she could do was go on and on about it. It was apparently about some famous photographer named Diane something.
All evening it was like, “And then she did this just amazing series of photos of these circus performers who were like deformed and tattooed and grotesque, but not in her photos. It was as if she could see past all that ugliness and find their souls. Seth, you just have to see her work.” She says she’ll text me the link and pulls out her phone and I give her my number.
I didn’t really follow a lot of what she was saying, but it was impossible not to get caught up in her enthusiasm. So that night when I got home I looked at trailers of the movie and read a little about Diane Arbus, the photographer, and looked at some of her pictures.
So after a quick stop in the restroom to mop up a bit I’m ready to pick up where we left off. Because I think Hannah’s going to be impressed that I did all this research and I’ve even got some questions for her, because some of the photos were pretty weird.
So as soon as I get to the back room, Jake, this college guy who is one of the night managers, he tells me to get an apron and start making pizzas. I barely have time to acknowledge Hannah, who’s working up front. We get really busy and I don’t even see her for most of the night. Instead I’m shoulder to shoulder with this new guy who is working to buy mods for his Honda. So all night it’s a monologue about whether a Borla exhaust system is better than a Bosch, whether twenty-inch rims are worth it and whether I think the black ones would look too dark on his black car and how much money he needs to save to lower the suspension. He has absolutely no clue that I couldn’t give a damn.
So as we clean up, I’m thinking that an entire evening is an awful thing to waste. I’m bent over the counter, trying to wipe down the stainless so it doesn’t streak, which is impossible, when someone grabs me from behind.
Hannah has wrapped her arms around me and has a chin on my shoulder. She’s whispering something into my ear.
I can’t hear her, because my blood is pounding like Niagara Falls. I don’t care, as long as she doesn’t let go. But she does.
“Well,” she says, “can you?”
I turn around and shake my head and try to indicate that I don’t know what she’s talking about without appearing to be an idiot.
“Couldn’t hear you,” I say.
“Oh,” Hannah says. “Steve and me and a couple of friends are going downtown to watch a midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show at UMKC. I’ve got the rice.”
She’s sort of bouncing up and down, singing something about a time warp dance. I have no idea what she’s talking about.
“Rice?” I say.
Hannah yells out to Steve and he comes over, a mop in his hand.
“Looks like we got a Rocky Horror virgin! Seth, you’ve got to go with us!”
I say sure. Dad’s out of town and I’m going to be up for another four or five hours anyway.
After we wrap up the cleaning we follow Steve out to his car, a little Nissan. The night air is still hot and heavy, but not as unbearable as it had been on the way to work. Hannah insists I ride up front but when we stop to pick up Steve’s friends she says, “Hop back here—back seat for the short-legged.”
I come around the back and slide in. When a guy and a girl come running out the guy jumps in the front and the girl hops into the back, so that I’m in the middle of this tiny back seat, thigh to thigh with Hannah and the new girl, who has long dark hair and looks, in the thin light, like she might be at least part Asian or Hispanic.
Steve twists around and says, “That’s Steph.” He nods towards the front seat and says, “And this is Gunda Din.”
The guy in the front seat, dark bangs almost over his eyes, looks back and says, “You can just call me Gunnar.”
Steve cranks the car and shouts back, “Everyone got their seatbelts on?”
I don’t.
