Praying for Sleep

please. I got a wife.”
    “Oh, is she pret-ty? Do you fuck her often ? Do you fuck her in unpleasant ways? Say, what’s her address?”
    “Please, Michael . . .”
    “Sorry,” Hrubek whispered and leaned down.
    The orderly’s scream was very loud and very brief. To Michael Hrubek’s unbounded pleasure, it set in flight an exquisite owl, curiously golden in the ravine’s blue light, which soared from a nearby oak tree and passed not five feet from the huge man’s astounded face.
     
    “. . . repeating, the National Weather Service has issued an emergency storm warning for residents of Marsden, Cooper and Mahican counties. Winds in excess of eighty miles an hour, tornadoes and severe flooding in low-lying areas are expected. The Marsden River is already at flood level and expected to rise at least three more feet, cresting around one or two a.m. We’ll bring you bulletins as more information is available. . . .”
    Portia found them in the den, leaning over the teak stereo cabinet, both grim.
    Classical music resumed and Owen shut the radio off.
    Portia asked what the problem was.
    “Storm.” He turned to look out the window. “The Marsden—it’s one of the rivers that feed the lake.”
    “We were getting estimates on building up the shoreline,” Lis said. “But we didn’t think there’d be any flooding till the spring.”
    Lis left the den and walked into the large greenhouse, looking up at the sky, murky but still placid.
    Her sister saw her troubled face and glanced at Owen.
    “There’s no foundation,” he explained to her. “The greenhouse. Your parents built it right on the ground. If the yard floods—”
    “It’ll be the first to go,” Lis said. Not to mention, she thought, what the fifty-foot oak tree, hovering overhead, might do to the thin glass panes of the greenhouse roof. She glanced at the brick wall beside her and absently straightened a stone gargoyle, who grinned mischievously as he stuck out his long, curly tongue. “Damn,” she whispered.
    “Are you sure it’ll flood?” Portia asked. She sounded irritated—because, Lis supposed, her escape from the L’Auberget manse tonight was looking complicated.
    “If it goes up three feet,” Lis said, “it’ll flood. It’ll come right into the yard. It happened in the sixties, remember? Washed away the old porch. That was right here. Where we’re standing.”
    Portia said she didn’t recall.
    Lis looked at the windows again, wishing they had time to put plywood on the roof and sides. They’d be lucky to build up the lakefront by two feet and tape half the windows before the storm hit. “So,” she said, sighing, “we tape and sandbag.”
    Owen nodded.
    Lis turned to her sister. “Portia, could I ask you to stay?”
    The young woman said nothing. She seemed less irritated than daunted by a conspiracy to keep her there.
    “We could really use your help.”
    Owen looked from one sister to the other, frowning. “Weren’t you going to stay for a few days?”
    “I’m really supposed to get back tonight.”
    Supposed? Lis wondered. And who had dictated that? The hard-times boyfriend? “I’ll take you to the station tomorrow. First thing. You won’t miss more than an hour of work.”
    Portia nodded. “Okay.”
    “Listen,” Lis said sincerely, “I appreciate this.”
    She hurried outside to the garage, giving a short, silent prayer of thanks for the weather that would keep her sister here at least for the night. Suddenly, however, this benediction struck Lis as a token of bad luck and superstitiously she retracted it. She then went to work assembling shovels and tape and burlap bags.

4
    “Three in two years.” The tall man in the smart gray uniform rubbed his matching gray mustache and added, “They run away from you all here lickety-split.”
    Dr. Ronald Adler fiddled with his waistband. With a monumental sigh meant to put himself on the offensive he said, “Aren’t there more valuable ways to use this time, Captain? Don? I’ll bet there are.”
    The state trooper chuckled. “How come you didn’t report it?”
    “We reported Callaghan’s, uhm, death,” Adler said.
    “You know what I’m saying, Doctor.”
    “I thought we could get him back without any fuss.”
    “How exactly? By one orderly getting his arm exorcised around backwards and the other one crapping in his jumpsuit?”
    “He is not essentially a dangerous man,” Peter Grimes offered, incidentally reminding both Adler and the state