Then they were inside.
The man released her and stepped back, but she felt the force of his grasp like an imprint on her skin.
He spoke again, his breathing slightly labored. It sounded like the same thing he’d said before. Again with his hands open and in sight.
“No me habla espanol.” She hoped that much translated to the island’s mutation of Spanish.
“Ah,” he said. His hands dropped. She watched them every inch, but they hung there, innocently. Then a spate she didn’t understand, until, finally “American?”
Some places were anti-American, but not Santa Estella. She nodded. “Yes. American.”
He nodded back, and water dripped from a hunk of black hair over his forehead. His head and the bottom of his worn pants were nearly as wet as she was, but a dark green slicker protected the rest of him.
“There you go.”
Her spirits rose. “Oh. You speak English.”
His rapid words flowed past her nearly as fast as the water in the street, ending with “There you go.”
“There you go?” she repeated.
He nodded. “There you go.”
He didn’t speak English. He spoke “there you go.”
He jerked his head toward the top of the stairs, retreated two steps, and gestured to her to follow.
She shook her head. He might have saved her, he might not seem threatening, but she’d done her share of stories about murderers who looked like choirboys. Hell, she’d done a story where the murderer was a choirboy.
With his hands out straight, he slowly raised them, then nodded to the door behind her. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw water seeping over the sill and across the mud-packed floor. He was right. The water was going to rise.
“On the other hand,” she muttered to herself, “sometimes a choirboy is really a choirboy.”
She followed him up the stairs.
*
During the next, awkward, half hour the man prowled the cavernous second story of the unfinished building gathering items he apparently thought could be of use. He brought them back to where a pair of shoulder-high walls, one about ten feet long and the other six feet, met to form a protective corner. He indicated a closet-like structure to one side could be used as a sort of toilet, with his and hers chamber pots.
Finally, they sat in the walled corner and shared their resources, hers from her bag, his from a backpack.
Her bottle of water. His lantern flashlight. Her two cheese and crackers packets. His string bag of oranges. Her Swiss Army knife. His matches.
All the while, the wind howled louder and the light grew dimmer.
She shivered so hard her teeth clicked audibly. He interrupted his efforts to start a small fire in the bowl of a hubcap he’d found, using torn sheets from her notebook, scraps of wood and his damp matches, to give her a sharp look. With emphatic gestures he instructed her to change into the dry shirt and socks he drew from his backpack along with the flannel lining he detached from his slicker. She didn’t argue.
Slipping behind the wall to change, she realized the ferocious wind drove the rain through the outer wall, creating a fine mist. But their refuge had the benefit of steel posts that apparently rose from the ground level and extended up beyond where she could see.
Wrapping the slicker lining around her waist as a sarong to complete her outfit, she grabbed her wet things and returned to the protection of their corner.
“Gracias.”
He nodded. He’d taken off his holey shoes and laid them near the small fire, with the slicker spread nearby. She started to do the same with her clothes, when he said something in the island language and shook his head.
“What? I don’t understand.”
He stood, and took her slacks from her as she automatically backed away. He was tall, especially for an islander–some four inches taller than her five-seven–and broad-shouldered enough to block the light from the fire. He ignored her retreat, and wrapped powerful hands around the fabric, then twisted. The water wrung out splashed on the wooden floor between them.
“Oh, I see. Yes.” She followed his example with her blouse.
With her clothes at last laid out, the man gestured for her to go first through the narrow opening between the hubcap fire and the corner where he had set flattened cardboard boxes atop a long narrow cushion. She sat with her back to one wall and he rested against the other, with the fire at their feet.
“I’m Kendra Jenner,” she told him.
He looked at her, but said nothing. The firelight shifted shadow and stark brightness across a strongly-boned face. Pronounced cheekbones, sharp jaw, high forehead, all beneath thick, dark hair that waved despite being sleeked straight back.
“Kendra,” she repeated with a hand to her chest.
“Kendra.” He rolled the “r” and lingered over the final “a.” His extended fingers brushed the back of her hand. The unexpected contact fizzed at her taut-strung nerve-endings. “Kendra.”
“Yes.”
His large hand spread across the faded red cotton of his shirt. “Paulo Ayudor.”
“How do you do, Paulo?” Not surprisingly, he didn’t answer. His eyes remained on her face. His eyes were dark, so dark their only color seemed to come from the tiny reflection of firelight. “I wonder what you were doing out on the streets of La Baja when Hurricane Aretha came to call?”
“La Baja,” he repeated. Then words she didn’t understand. But she sensed in them a faintly disapproving question, and a tilt of his head made her think he’d asked what she’d been doing there herself. He continued another stream of words in the island language. But one word caught her ear. It sounded like impetuouso.
“I suppose it could appear impetuous.
