Dark Light

“This is why I usually come in October!”

“What?”

Chestra waited for me to draw closer. “This is why I come to Sanibel during hurricane season. I have the beach to myself, and the storms are magnificent!”

We were on the beach, walking toward Sanibel Lighthouse, waves to the right, trees and a boardwalk on our left. On the horizon, storm clouds were mountainous lanterns that flared internally, discharging in random disorder. Ahead, the lighthouse turret strobed as precisely as a metronome: flash…flash—ten- second pause—flash…flash. Each frail burst was absorbed by darkness, diffused by wind.

“Do you feel that? Wait!” The woman held her hand up, and stopped. She tilted her head as if trying to identify an unfamiliar sound.

“Feel what?”

“The wind off the ocean. It’s dying.”

Darkness seemed to slow its respirations as my senses tested.

She hooked her arm into mine, a gesture so natural I didn’t notice for a moment. “The storm,” she said. “It’s nearly here.”

A squall cell moving seaward siphons air from the Gulf until just before it hits. The transition is prefaced by a momentary calm, then a gust of cold air as wind direction reverses. That period of calm is a dangerous time to linger in an open area because the storm, only minutes away, is preceded by a low-pressure wall that’s supercharged with electricity.

She was right. The sea breeze had calmed. We were standing on a base of silicone, within spray’s reach of a saltwater conductor. Hard to imagine a more precarious place. “It’s coming, all right,” I yelled. “We need to find cover.”

She was facing the storm. “Not yet. Just a little longer. Please?”

“Chessie”—a balloon of chilled air enveloped us—“this is crazy. We have to go now.”

I winced as a searing light bleached the world of color. A simultaneous explosion darkened it. A wall of wind followed, gusting cold from the east, and I felt the first fat drops of rain.

“Go ahead, Doc. I’m fine. This is what I love to do!”

In another cannon burst of electricity, I saw her face—she was smiling, skin pale as snow, and her eyes were closed.

Our arms were still linked. I tugged and stepped away, hoping she would follow. She didn’t. It was pouring now.

“Chess!”

“I’m okay. It’s what I want!”

Air molecules sizzle when torn from adhesion by electricity. Their glow is a zigzag schematic of the voltage that obliterates them. Air sizzled now as lightning bracketed us, positive and negative ions rejoining in thunderous strokes. A lightning bolt, when grounded through human tissue, is five times hotter than the surface of the sun. It cauterizes as it wounds—in one side, out another. The hole is darkened by exploded blood cells.

“We can’t stay here. I’m serious. This is insane.”

“Isn’t it! It’s exquisite!” She was laughing, her formal hairdo sodden ringlets in slow collapse.

I couldn’t leave her to the storm. A woman her age? For a moment, only a moment, I felt the same strange sense of freedom that I’d experienced during the worst of the hurricane. I was powerless against the random physics of earth and sky. Analysis was pointless, so why waste energy thinking about what might happen? A shadow vanishing into itself—that was the sensation. Release…

Above my head, there was a molecular crackle as a bolt touched the beach so near I smelled the smoke of incinerated sand. Another exploded in the canopy of a distant palm—fronds twirled like feathers through a fog of rain.

This was worse than insane, it was stupid. This wasn’t an unavoidable hurricane, it was a common squall. I squatted, swept Chestra Engle into my arms, and carried her through the rain toward Southwind.

D oc?”

Rain was rivering down the small of my back, my boat shoes were sodden. In my arms, the woman was a source of warmth, not a weight.

“Doc?”

“Chess.”

“Is…there something wrong?”

No, there was nothing wrong. Because it was the shortest distance, I’d carried her cross-country, angling into Chestra’s estate from the beach. With her still in my arms, I’d stopped just outside the picnic gazebo, the nearest structure, warm rain sluicing down. She was asking why we were standing in the rain when we could be inside. Why didn’t I carry her an additional few steps to the dry chairs that sat upon the dry floor next to the drink cart and hammock, all sheltered by the gazebo’s screens and shingled roof.

Behind us, there was a rumble of thunder…a flash. Then another. I used each micromoment of illumination to study the woman’s face. I’d been doing it since first noticing an aberration created by the brief and dazzling light— nothing else explained it. It was the illusion that Chestra’s appearance changed slightly with each incandescent blast. She’d made a remark about storms—“I get energy from them!”—that sounded offhand at the time but now seemed weirdly applicable.

“Doc? You’re a big strong guy, and I won’t pretend I don’t like being carried like some sultan’s jewel, but I think it’s time to put me down.” She laughed, and placed her palm warm against my face, tracing its shape. I’d lost my bandage in the rain, and her stroke was tender. “I promise I won’t go galloping back to the beach. Cross my heart.”

She did, touching a finger to her breast as I watched. Her white blouse was soaked, translucent in storm light, her body visible beneath. I waited for another lightning burst…then one more, my eyes now staring into hers.

The illusion wasn’t imaginary, yet it was still an illusion. Had to be an illusion. With each bloom of electricity, the woman appeared fuller, younger. I could see the way she’d looked in her fifties…now her forties. She was as beautiful as any woman in her family. Chestra was as beautiful as any woman I’d ever held.

Because of storm light? There could be no other reason. The human eye is sensitive; retina cones can numb. Stare at a star for more than a minute and it will vanish—an illusion.

Still…

No—it did make sense. Our perception of reality is visually based. Change the light and our reality is changed. We are a photosensitive species. There are certain processes in chemistry in which light alters not only the appearance of a substance but also its molecular configuration. In a laboratory, mammalian cells mutate if grown in a room with fluorescent lighting. Light absorbed through the eye affects our pineal gland’s production of serotonin. Red light penetrates more deeply into our tissues than blue light. Our DNA is coded to repair some—but not all—cellular damage caused by ultraviolet light. It’s an omission that defines the aging process more accurately than the clumsy prop we invented to measure age: time.

Illusion or reality, the storm was indifferent.

I ducked through the gazebo’s doorway, let Chestra’s feet swing to the floor, then stepped back and watched as she flipped water from her hair and hands. “My God, I haven’t had that much excitement since…since”—her voice was energized—“since…well, I think it would be indelicate for me to confess.”

“Sounds interesting.”

“Doesn’t it? I so wish it were true.”

“Don’t give up hope. I like indelicate women. Confessions, too.”

She was there again, alive behind those eyes: a younger woman inside, staring out, saying, Show me. Prove it.

I answered aloud. “Okay, I will.” I stepped closer, unsure of my own intent. I touched my fingers to Chestra’s face as gently as she’d touched mine. She held my gaze a moment longer before looking at the ground—a retreat. Or submission?

“I’m a mess, Doc. My hair, and my clothes are soaked.”