The wind carried her breath from her mouth, the rain pounded into her eyes, and Helena stepped back until she felt the hotel’s stucco under her hand. She couldn’t see the doorway or the rug she had just been standing on, and she was able to breathe only when she made a windbreak of the crook of her elbow. She was not one to go back, though, not ever. Her place was a few steps away; it had taken her a minute, at most, to run here barefoot a few hours earlier. She dropped her shoes and felt her way painstakingly over the curve of the old convent to the wrought-iron fence around the courtyard. Here, it was slightly easier because she pulled herself hand over hand like a sailor up a mast, until she reached the next stucco texture, the next building.
By the time she got to this building’s doorway, she was weeping. She stopped and pressed her body against the glass and tried the door, but it was either locked or the wind was holding it shut. She breathed for a while in the lee of a mailbox until she stopped crying, and wiped her swollen eyes, and started out again. Stupid woman, she said to herself. Stupid, foolish, terrible woman. You deserve what you get.
She inched forward. There were three more doors, she thought, before her own wrought-iron gate that swung inward, that the wind would whip open as soon as she tried it, and pull her inside the courtyard, home. Or maybe four doors; she couldn’t quite remember, and she couldn’t believe she hadn’t paid much attention before now.
But before she was even to the third door, she tripped over something and went sprawling and felt the skin of her knee open painfully. She curled into a ball to gather her strength and lay there, crying with anger and exhaustion. She was alone and she conceded to her aloneness, she would always be alone, she would always be in these puddles that grew even as she lay in them. For a very long time, she lay there, and it wasn’t terrible, despite the wind and rain upon her. It was only blank.
* * *
—
Suddenly, something rushed out of the storm, something seized her wrist, and she felt herself being pulled bodily over the cobblestones, her limbs cracking against the hard ground. And then there was the absence of, first, the wind in her face, then the driving rain; and she opened her eyes to darkness. She was so grateful to be breathing that she didn’t wonder where she was until her breath calmed and she hushed the whimper she had just heard rising from her chest and she listened to a harsh metal clang that muffled the storm even more, then a pounding that was the wind angry to be left outside. She pulled herself painfully up and drew her legs in, the cut on her leg smarting terribly, and leaned against whatever was behind her, so soft and covered in plastic. She felt with her hands and knew she was leaning on wrapped paper towels, and only then did her dulled mind grasp that she was in the grocer’s. He, of all humans on the planet, had saved her. Now the smell of the place rose to her, the sour half-rot and flour. She heard him shoving something heavy against the door.
A flicker of something ugly began to stir in her, and she pushed herself farther against the paper towels, up onto the shelf, letting the displaced rolls pad onto the floor. She was shivering, and she put the collar of her dress between her teeth to keep them from chattering. The place was dark, the only light from a distant red flickering of something electrical, which illuminated nothing.
Helena hoped for the girl or woman she’d seen on her first visit to be here. She longed for the little body to come close to hers, to hold her hand and warm her, but she listened so acutely she could hear that there was nobody in the store but them, she and this man; their breathing was the only breathing. She forced herself to listen to him, his heavy shoes shuffling closer to where she was sitting. It was maybe an accident that he kicked her calf when he drew near; she couldn’t tell what he could see. She held her breath, but he knew every inch of the store, of course, and stepped even closer. She could smell him, a particular stink of feet and armpits and denim that has been worn to grease.
He said nothing, just stood over her for a long time. He gave another shuffle closer and the fabric of his jeans brushed her face and she was glad for the dress in her mouth or she would have shouted.
He said something in his gruff voice, but she didn’t understand and didn’t bother to respond. She tried to keep her breathing light and unobtrusive, but her stomach, so upset by her struggle and the heavy food, gave a gurgle, and he laughed unpleasantly.
The shopkeeper moved away then, and she felt the tension fall out of her shoulders. She could hear him rummaging, then the double kiss of a refrigerator opening then closing across the room. She thought wildly of running now but knew she couldn’t get the metal door up in this wind, and she was fairly sure there was no back way out of the store. And, as bad as he might be, she had been in the storm outside, and she wasn’t sure, but she thought it must be worse.
* * *
—
The man came back. Instead of standing, he sank down opposite to where she was, and she felt a sharp and sudden pain on her throat. But then the pain translated to cold, and she knew that he was holding out a glass bottle to her, and she took it in her hand. On her cheek, then, there was another feel, a slick plastic, and the man said, Biscoitos, and she took the package of cookies in her other hand and ate one to be polite. Obrigado, she whispered, but he said nothing back.
The drink was beer. She clung to the heft of the bottle in her hand. Though he far outpowered her, he had at least given her a weapon. She drank sparingly to make the weight of the bottle last. Across the dark gulf of the aisle, his gulps were thick and loud, and he must have brought more beer for himself because every so often she heard a clink of an empty bottle on the concrete floor and a hiss of a new beer being opened and the chime of the cap falling to the floor. The storm roared outside steadily, and her feet on the floor began to be tickled, then lapped, by water. The storm was coming in.
* * *
—
Worse than being in the storm was not knowing what the storm was doing. The evidence of it was everywhere: in the cold water up to her rear on her little shelf, in the blast of wind, the rattle of the building, and the sounds of distant crashes, boats, most probably, smashing into the shore. She wondered about fires blazing through the rickety old structures of this part of town, and what would be left in the morning. If she survived this night, this hulk of a man across from her in the darkness, she could close her eyes on the taxi ride to the airport, she could get on a plane, she could soar over the wreckage until the plane landed, her mother in a wheelchair beaming at her from the bottom of the escalator in baggage claim. It would not be her mess to clean up. She was a visitor only; she could be absolved. But this was cold comfort, barely any at all. The end of the storm was unreal, and she was beyond tired. The hours of waiting in the dark here, the years of waiting in the darkness at home, were too much; they overcame her in waves of exhaustion. There was no telling how fast the water would rise. It didn’t matter: the man was already here. And Helena waited for his sudden lunge, his powerful body that her own thin one couldn’t resist for long.
There was a pop outside, and the man’s bulk came closer, and he said something gruff, and she cringed, but he didn’t touch her.
* * *
—
She was lulled by the darkness, the man’s immobility save for his drinking. It must be morning by now, at least. Her fear had dulled, and her thoughts were thick with sleep. She rested her head against the towels in their packages and shifted so the cramp in her rear was soothed, and shut her eyes, as if she could make the dark any darker and push the storm and the man farther from her.
The shopkeeper stood three times, there was the kiss of the refrigerator three times, he sloshed back and groaned to the floor opposite her three times. The third time, she was nearly asleep when he leaned over and put his hand on her ankle. He had been holding a beer, and his skin on hers was shockingly cold.