The Pieces of My Self

13 - Covington Beach

LILLIAN

Lillian's Neighborhood, 4 June 2174, Saturday

Odd thoughts assaulted me as I jogged uphill, floating on a cloud of endorphins.

The Knightly estate was like a beautified corpse—pretty to look at during a viewing, but dead inside, like its patriarch. Debra Knightly was the estate's resident ghost, living in Henri's shadow, imbued with Henri's lust for money. Still—maybe it was curiosity, maybe pity, maybe the misplaced generosity of one drowning human reaching to save another from drowning—I wanted to help her.

I stopped to catch my breath at the top of the hill overlooking Covington Beach, my running togs stained with perspiration. To the southeast, the floating city jutted above the landscape like a giant pyramid. Looking south, shielding my eyes, I could see glints from distant structures rising above Pontchartrain Sound—old New Orleans, roughly 35 miles away, barely peeking above the horizon.

"How's it going?"

I turned to see Adelphia Bennett, a fellow runner, grad student, sometime-instructor at my community college, and neighbor. She had arrived without a sound and was now stretching her thighs.

"Yesterday, I was hurtling toward poverty and homelessness. Now, I'm only slow-walking," I said.

"It sounds like you're angling for either sympathy or praise. Does this have anything to do with Toady?"

"Yeah. Partly."

"What did you ever see in that creep?"

It was an unexpected question. I spent so much time and energy hating the man I never stopped to think what initially attracted me to him. Maybe I was flawed or naïve. That was it. I was naïve.

"Once upon a time, when I was young and stupid, he was Prince Charming who seemed to have all those things I never had: stability, money, connections. You know, the good life."

"And then?"

"Then I saw his good life depended on bringing other people down. My prince turned into a frog, or in this case, an ugly toad, which is the exact opposite of what's supposed to happen in a fairy tale."

"Hmmm. I never figured you for a jaded rainbow-chaser, Lillian."

"I'm just chasing different rainbows. My kids are what's important, but Tony didn't see it that way."

I mentally kicked myself for revealing too much. There was damage there. Some things are meant to be hidden, not exposed. "Beautiful day," I said, changing the subject.

Adelphia adjusted her headband and began quad exercises, effortlessly weaving dialogue with lateral lunges. "Storm's a comin'. Right now, it's just a slow-moving tropical disturbance west of Dakar, but it'll grow. The weather model predicts it could hit the Gulf in a couple of weeks. Even a near miss could be a disaster. Start thinking about battening down the hatches." She huffed and puffed, segueing her routine into jumping jacks.

I closed my eyes and shook my head, imagining the impending chaos. "So, I guess the UN plan to block big storms didn't work."

She synchronized sentences with her hops. "Nope. Towing. Ice burgs. Into the eastern Atlantic. To cool the water. And dissipate energy. Pretty much failed." She stopped and put hands on her hips. "The burgs shrink to ice cubes by the time they get to Dakar. And the government plan for cooling wells around the Gulf, to pump cold water up from the bottom—too little and too late, at least for this one. Sometimes Mother Nature won't cooperate. The storm could be a bad one."

As grateful as I was for the information, there wasn't much I could do to prepare. Every year, Pontchartrain Sound seemed to widen, and the water's edge moved inexorably northward.