Eye of the Hurricane
Success proved to be a double-edged sword for Ridley Venning, frontman for the rock band Scorpio. On one hand, it brought him financial rewards beyond his wildest dreams; on the other, it destroyed all hope of his having any semblance of a normal life. Everyone he saw, everywhere he went and everything he did became fodder for the tabloids. He was constantly hounded by fans and members of the press alike.
When it became impossible for him to leave his apartment without attracting a crowd of teenage girls or photographers (and possibly another Mark David Chapman), he left New York. In the years that followed, he moved into and out of a succession of homes, each more inaccessible than the previous one. Yet despite the gated communities and the high-tech security systems, the fans and paparazzi managed to track him down.
"Do I have to travel to the ends of the earth to get free of these blood-sucking parasites?" he cried in anger when he found two stoned teenagers in the pool of the house that he rented in a rural West Virginia mountain town.
"If you really want to get away from people," his manager and personal attorney, Diedrich Wentz, joked, "you'll have to buy your own island."
It was a comment made in jest, and although Ridley did not take it seriously at the time, the idea remained at the back of his mind. Six months later, when a seventeen-year-old boy broke into his new home with a loaded .38, the harassed rock star reconsidered the possibility. Surprisingly, the cost of a private island was not out of his reach. According to the golden rule of real estate, location was the key. True, an island in the Bahamas came with an enormous price tag, but leasing a tiny unnamed island in the Bermuda archipelago, roughly two miles from the capital city of Hamilton on the main island, could be had at a bargain—relatively speaking.
The transaction was handled by his record company so his name did not appear on any of the paperwork.
"You still have to be careful," Diedrich warned him, "those paparazzi are tricky. They might trail you to the island after one of your concerts."
"No. I've got that part covered," Ridley said confidently. "I've got lookalikes, dozens of disguises and decoy vehicles to enable me to make a clean getaway after my shows. Hell, once I was smuggled out of a venue in the back of a FedEx truck!"
Two months later, after the conclusion of a North American tour, the Grammy-winning singer opened the front door of his spacious island mansion and smiled.
"Home!"
Hopefully, he would not be chased out of this house by uninvited guests.
As much as Ridley enjoyed life in his subtropical paradise, though, the demands of his career frequently necessitated his return to the "real" world. In addition to concert tours, recording sessions and television appearances, there were various social commitments he had to keep. Whenever his hectic schedule permitted, however, he escaped to the island. Since he was not the biggest fan of boats, he had a helipad built on his property, and a local helicopter pilot took him to and from his house and the main island.
"Wouldn't it be cheaper to buy yourself a motorboat?" Domingo Peña, Scorpio's drummer, asked on his first (and only) visit to his bandmate's new home.
"I suppose so, but I don't travel to the main island much. When I'm here, I keep to myself. I don't visit the local bars and restaurants. Instead, I shut the door, and the world stays outside."
"When did you get so boring, man?" the twenty-four-year-old drummer teased.
"You can say what you like, but when was the last time you had to barricade yourself in a filthy men's room for two hours to avoid a trio of fourteen-year-old girls who would love nothing more than to cut off a lock of your hair or rip off a piece of your shirt as a souvenir?"
Used to the nightlight of big cities, Domingo cut his visit sort, not staying beyond the first night. The following day, he called the helicopter service to take him off the island and rescue him from terminal boredom. Admittedly, Ridley was glad to see the drummer depart. When he was ensconced in his island kingdom, he did not want to entertain friends. Like Marlene Dietrich, he preferred to be alone.
Of course, that did not mean he was completely cut off from the world. He was not quite as extreme as the Amish, shunning all modern, "English" ways. He had several Wi-Fi devices with access to the Internet and satellite TV with a selection of popular streaming services. Still, he rarely used them. Once in a while, he enjoyed watching a movie or bingeing a TV series, but he was not one to post on Facebook or tweet on Twitter, nor did he frequent Instagram or Snapchat.
"I can't be bothered with all that like and dislike nonsense," he said with annoyance whenever one of his friends complained about his lack of presence on social media. "If I want to get in touch with you, I'll either call you on the phone or send you an email."
Once he saw Domingo off, Ridley left the helipad, went into his house and changed into a pair of swim trunks. Being the only person on the island, he could easily have slipped into the water sans clothing, but should some enterprising photographer track him down, he did not want his bare ass to make the cover of the National Enquirer or the Globe.
After cooling off in the Atlantic, the singer lay on a beach chair with a glass of wine.
This is the life! If I can manage to keep this place a secret, maybe I'll eventually retire here.
Retirement was not a word one often heard in reference to rock musicians. Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Billy Joel and Elton John were still going strong into their seventies. However, Ridley could not see himself as a balding senior citizen taking the stage in either a toupee or, worse, a ridiculous comb-over. Hopefully, the thirty-nine-year-old singer would have ten or so good years left ahead of him, and then he would bow out gracefully. He would not even emerge from retirement for benefit performances or all-star tributes. Furthermore, no matter how much money he stood to make, he would never agree to appear in Las Vegas.
There's no way I'm going to wind up like a bloated Elvis in sequin jumpsuits. I'd rather go the way of J.D. Salinger and Howard Hughes and become a recluse. Sorry, Dylan Thomas, but here's one man who wants to go gently into that good night.
Ridley was on his second glass of wine when he noticed the dark clouds rolling in and the wind kicking up the sand on the beach. Since he had assumed ownership of the island, he had never experienced heavy rainfall there, only scattered showers that quickly passed. The ominous sky threatened a more severe storm was brewing.
The singer gathered his towel, half-full bottle of wine and empty glass and headed for the house. He was just opening the front door when the first drops of rain fell.
* * *
Although no full-time caretaker kept watch over the property, Mariah Dinkins, a part-time housekeeper, came over twice a week from Hamilton to clean the rooms, wash Ridley's dirty laundry and deliver his mail and groceries. Since she had come the previous day (Monday), he would have to fend for himself until Friday.
That's all right, he decided as he put a steak beneath the oven broiler and a potato in the microwave. I've got plenty of food and enough clean clothes to last until the end of next week.
Once his steak and potato were cooked to his liking, he reached across the table for his book so that he could read while he ate. In the two weeks he had been on the island, he had read Stephen King's The Stand and was making good progress on Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. Unfortunately, during that time, he had not listened to the radio, read a newspaper or newsfeed and had only turned on the television to watch a few episodes of Breaking Bad on Netflix. He was, therefore, unaware that as he sat in his dining room, enjoying his dinner and reading about the killing of the Clutter family by Perry Smith and Dick Hickock, a full-fledged hurricane was rapidly traveling across the Atlantic and that his tiny island was directly in its path.
After finishing his meal, Ridley rinsed his dish and silverware and put them in the dishwasher. He then picked up his book and headed for the spacious sunken living room. The west-facing wall-to-ceiling window with a million-dollar view of the sunset revealed an eerie world of slate gray sky and high, choppy waves. As he watched the palm trees in his yard sway in the wind, he was not afraid. On the contrary, he felt the same sense of security he did as a child in New Jersey when he watched a blizzard from the warmth and safety of his parents' house. The only thing that was missing here was a burning log in the fireplace.
For the next three hours, the singer read his book while Mother Nature threw a temper tantrum outside his window. It was near midnight when the generator, his only source of electricity, died. The lights, and just about everything on the island except the gadgets that ran on batteries, immediately stopped working. Ridley found himself plunged into darkness with the only sound being the raindrops pelting his window, the steady hum of the refrigerator and air-conditioning unit having deserted him.
He did not bother to examine the generator to see what was wrong with it. He would not know what to look for or how to correct a problem if he found one. Although he could sing like a canary, he was incapable of doing the most basic household repairs. Instead, he paid people to do the chores he either could not do or did not want to do himself.
Unable to read or watch TV without power, he decided to go to bed.
"As Scarlett O'Hara said, tomorrow is another day."
The following morning, Ridley opened his eyes, but he could make out only vague shapes in the unnatural semidarkness of the storm. A glance at the luminous dial on his watch revealed that it was half past eight. Using the flashlight on his phone to navigate the windowless hallway, he made his way to the kitchen. With no power to the stovetop, microwave or toaster, his breakfast options were limited to cold cereal and fruit juice. Hopefully, the milk had not soured overnight.
If I don't get that generator repaired soon, most of the meats and dairy products in the fridge will spoil.
But then, he expected Mariah would arrive on Friday, like the Seventh Cavalry to the rescue, bringing him fresh groceries.
I suppose I can make myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch, he thought as he examined the contents of the kitchen cabinets. And maybe a tuna salad for dinner.
Despite the inconvenience the storm caused, he was still not worried for his own safety. As he saw it, it was a temporary situation, and he could adapt to challenges. It was a lot like going on a camping trip and "roughing" it. He only hoped it would not last too long. This was no Gilligan's Island. There was no professor to invent time-saving devices from unconventional materials—and no Ginger to dazzle him with her perfect hair and makeup and a seemingly endless supply of evening gowns and jewelry.
As the rain continued to pound against his roof—thank God it didn't leak!—the wind became fiercer and the waves grew higher, sometimes breaking on his lawn within a few feet of his house. The fierceness of the storm did not frighten him. He passed the time by calmly reading Capote in front of the living room window.
I'm almost done with this book. I should have brought another one with me. Maybe I'll order a supply of reading material from Amazon and keep it here. And while I'm at it, I ought to look into purchasing a propane lantern and cooker in case I ever have another power outage in the future.
Ridley ripped out a blank page from the front of his book, took a pen out of the drawer of his coffee table and began to make a shopping list. He had just written down the titles of four novels he wanted to read when suddenly a palm tree was uprooted and smashed through the window with the million-dollar view.
"Jesus Christ!" the singer exclaimed and jumped from his seat after a wet palm frond slapped him across the face.
The wind through the broken window created havoc with the drapes. His shopping list took to the air and, after a short flight, landed in the dining room. In a matter of minutes, the rain made puddles on his tile floor and saturated the upholstery of his couch. Exposed to the elements, Ridley experienced the first stirrings of unease creep over him along with a profound sense of uselessness. The storm was invading his house, his haven, like a rampant paparazzi bent on destroying his privacy, and he had no way of keeping it out. There was no tarp he could put over the broken pane, no shutters he could pull closed to keep out the rain. All he could do to minimize the damage was rearrange the furniture.
As he pushed the sofa, chairs and accent tables into the dining room, kitchen and hallway, he wondered if his personal assistant, whom he entrusted to see to all the mundane details of his life, had taken out homeowners' insurance on the house. His concern at that point was only for his personal property. It had yet to occur to him that his life might be in danger.
Once his furniture was out of harm's way, he picked up his book, which somehow managed to avoid becoming soaked, and sought shelter in the kitchen. The window above the sink was still intact, but its small size let in little light.
I should add candles to my Amazon shopping list, he thought as he spread Skippy peanut butter and Smucker's raspberry jam on two slices of white bread.
He closed his eyes after the first bite of the sandwich, its taste reminding him of the school lunches he had as a boy.
Mmmm! I forgot how good these tasted. When I was a kid, I practically lived on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I wonder if they sell Skippy and Smucker's brands at any of the grocery stores in Hamilton. If not, I'll order a case of each online.
By the time Ridley finished his second sandwich, it was almost noon. The storm had yet to lessen. On the contrary, the winds were stronger than ever. Several of the trees in his yard were uprooted, but thankfully no others had fallen onto his house. His wooden beach chair had been swept out to sea and was most likely on its way to the Royal Naval Dockyard.
When is this storm going to be over? he wondered, still unaware that he was experiencing a full-blown hurricane.
He reached for his phone to check the weather forecast, only to discover it needed to be charged, which was impossible since there was still no power on the island.
That's just great! Now I'm truly at Mother Nature's mercy.
It was half-past one when the rain finally stopped and the wind died down. Ridley had just finished the last chapter of In Cold Blood. The only other reading material at hand (besides The Stand, which he had already read) was a four-month-old issue of Sports Illustrated, now floating on the surface of the small lake that had formed in his sunken living room.
In the wake of the storm, an unnerving stillness seemed to permeate the house.
The silence is downright creepy, he thought, unaware that he was in the eye of the hurricane.
For the first time since taking possession of the island, he felt lonely and completely cut off from civilization. He wished he had some way to pass the time. If he had a deck of cards, he could play solitaire. Or he could do a crossword puzzle if he had a newspaper or magazine, but he could find nothing to occupy himself.
Maybe I should try my hand at writing a song.
As he carefully made his way through the dimly lit house to one of the second-floor bedrooms that had been converted into a home office, he began rhyming words in his head: rain-pain, love-above, tears-fears, heart-apart, away ....
When he opened the door to the room, something outside on the lawn suddenly caught his eye. Catching a glimpse of white fabric, he briefly wondered if one of his living room curtains had blown outside through the broken window. He squinted to get a better look. It appeared to be—no; it couldn't possibly be!—a girl. In a moment, she was gone.
I must have imagined her. How could anyone have gotten on the island during that storm?
Ridley turned away from the window, opened his desk drawer and took out a notebook and pencil. Then he returned to the kitchen. After opening a can of lukewarm Coca-Cola, he began to write.
"My heart hasn't been the same since you went away," he said aloud.
He went through a list of words that rhymed with away: stay, day, say, pray .... As he took a sip of his soda, his eyes strayed from the paper and glanced in the direction of the kitchen window. What he saw startled him. The can of Coke slipped from his hand and spilled out onto the floor. The face of a young girl, who looked to be no more than sixteen, stared back at him. There was only one possible explanation for her being on the island: she was one of his fans who had somehow managed to find him despite all the precautions he had taken to secure his privacy.
I'll have to move again. But is there anywhere I can go where they won't find me? Outer space? Maybe Jeff Bezos or Elan Musk will sell me a rocket, he mused with a mixture of anger and black humor.
Meanwhile, the soaked, bedraggled girl continued to stare at him with large, mournful eyes. However, she made no attempt to either speak or tap on the window pane.
"Go away," he said in a low voice that she could not possibly hear. "Please! Just go back where you came from and forget you ever saw me."
His words were more of a prayer to heaven than a command to the young trespasser. It was a prayer that remained unanswered; the girl did not leave. Ridley's anger slowly passed, replaced by weary resignation and then something that resembled compassion.
I don't suppose I can leave her out there, he thought and opened the back door for her to enter.
"How did you get here?" he asked when the stranger stepped across the threshold, her sodden clothes and hair—a blond so light it was almost white—dripping water on the tile floor.
The waif of a girl, who was barely five feet high and weighed less than a hundred pounds soaking wet (literally), did not reply. She appeared to be in shock.
"Are you all right?"
Silence.
It occurred to Ridley that his initial assumption might be wrong. Perhaps the girl had not come in search of him. Maybe she had been a passenger on a boat who was swept overboard by the storm, and the waves carried her to the island.
"Are you hurt?"
She did not even look at him when he spoke; she simply continued to stare straight ahead.
"You need a doctor, but I have no way of calling one. My phone is dead. But now that the storm has passed, I expect my housekeeper will be arriving in a couple of days. You can go back to Hamilton with her when she leaves. For now, though, I'll find you some dry clothes you can change into."
He went upstairs to his bedroom and returned with a terrycloth bathrobe and two towels.
"You can use the powder room to change and dry off."
The girl remained standing in the middle of the kitchen. She did not even take the robe and towels he offered.
This is bad! She's completely unresponsive.
"Would you like something to eat or drink? I can't cook anything, but I can make you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Or maybe you'd prefer tuna? How about a can of warm Coke?"
He might just as well have been talking to himself for all the reaction he got.
"Why don't you sit down, at least?"
He pointed to one of the living room chairs that was now in his kitchen. The fabric was somewhat damp, but it was more comfortable than the hard chairs around the table.
The girl neither moved nor spoke.
"Do you understand English? Can you hear me? Can you speak?"
"Ravenna."
The word was spoken so softly that Ridley was not sure if he actually heard it.
"Ravenna? That's your name?"
"Ravenna," she said again.
"Well, Ravenna, since you're going to be here for a while, why don't you make yourself at home? The bathroom is just down the hall, and there are several guest bedrooms for you to choose from. As far as food goes, I'm not sure if what's in the refrigerator is still good, but there are plenty of nonperishable items in the cabinets, so we won't starve."
"Ravenna."
"Yeah. I got that. And I'm Ridley."
She was not acting like one of his fans. It was entirely possible that she did not know his identity.
Maybe I won't have to sell the house, after all.
* * *
Since the girl was not much of a conversationalist—the only time she spoke was to occasionally repeat her name—Ridley gave up trying to communicate with her and returned to writing his song.
"My heart hasn't been the same since you went away," he said, reading what he had written earlier. "I feel it breaking every day."
Unhappy with his first attempt, he tore the page out of the notebook and crumpled it up.
"Ravenna," the girl said again.
"That's a nice name. Maybe I ought to write a song entitled 'Ravenna.'"
In the remaining hours of daylight, Scorpio's frontman wrote a tender ballad about a fair-haired stranger named Ravenna who mysteriously appears to a lonely man on a dark, stormy night, only to disappear again into the sea from which she came at the end of the song. Not only did he write the bittersweet lyrics, but he also composed a haunting melody, unlike anything his rock band had ever performed.
"It's not exactly Lennon and McCartney," he declared, "but it's not too bad for a first attempt. What do you think?"
He turned in the girl's direction and saw tears in her large brown eyes.
"Ravenna," she said, her voice filled with sadness.
Despite her disheveled appearance, her delicate face held the promise of great beauty. She would no doubt grow to be a stunning woman.
"That's you. And after I record this song, hopefully, the world will know your name."
If she replied, her words were drowned out by the sound of the returning storm.
"Not again," Ridley groaned, distracted by the renewed onslaught of raindrops on the kitchen window. "Hasn't there been enough rain already?"
When he turned his attention back to Ravenna, he saw that the girl was gone. Assuming she went in search of the bathroom, he was startled when he caught a glimpse of white fabric out on the lawn.
"What's she doing outside?"
He opened the back door and called to her. Either she did not hear him above the sound of the wind and rain or she paid no attention to his entreaty for her to return to the house. Rather, she continued walking toward the shoreline.
"Ravenna, Come back! It's dangerous out there in the storm. You might ...."
A large wave broke on the beach, just inches from the young girl's feet. Ridley ran outside, intent on rescuing her. He was an arm's length away from her when the next wave, much larger than the previous one, swept both of them into the water. Thankfully, the singer summoned the strength to swim back to land and escape the path of the next wave. Ravenna, however, was not so fortunate. The singer kept watch for the next few days, hoping she would reappear or that her body would wash up on his beach, but there was no sign of her—alive or dead.
* * *
Three days later, the helicopter service brought Mariah Dinkins to the island.
"I lost power," her employer said. "Would you mind if I borrowed your phone?"
"Go ahead. But it's not a fancy one like yours."
"As long as I can call an electrician and a repairman on it, it'll do just fine."
By the end of the week, Ridley had electricity, a new window and a dry living room floor. It would take a while longer for a landscaper to restore his property to its former glory, however.
In the meantime, Scorpio kicked off a European tour to promote their latest album.
"I understand you had some foul weather," Domingo Peña said when he saw his bandmate at the airport.
"Turns out it was a Category 3 hurricane."
"Damn! I got out of there just in time."
"It was bad, but I survived."
"Hell! You not only survived, but you managed to write a dynamite song while you were hunkering down in your house."
"I didn't know it at the time, but I wrote the song during the eye of the hurricane."
He then told Domingo about the girl whose name inspired the song.
"What happened to her?"
"I assume she drowned. I never saw her again."
While riding in the private plane that was taking Scorpio to Zurich, Switzerland, for their concert at Stadion Letzigrund, Ridley lost interest in the movie his bandmates and crew were watching, a comedy that he did not find particularly funny. As he stared at the wing of the plane, he recalled Ravenna's face as she peered in through his kitchen window. Her features had had an unearthly quality about them, almost supernatural.
What a shame! She was so young, he thought, assuming the worst.
But maybe she didn't die. Maybe the storm carried her to another shore. There were one hundred and eighty-one islands in the Bermuda archipelago. She could have made it safely to one of them.
Although he did not expect to find out what had happened to her, he took his iPhone out of his pocket and googled "Ravenna, Bermuda, hurricane." On the first page of the results, there was a link to a website run by a group of paranormal investigators. According to one of the members, The Ravenna was the name of an Italian luxury yacht that was on its way from Portugal to Cuba, when it vanished in the Atlantic. Like Navy Squadron Flight 19 and The Patriot, the schooner that was taking Aaron Burr's daughter, Theodosia, to New York, The Ravenna's disappearance was chalked up to the infamous Bermuda Triangle.
The author of the article claimed that, accordingly to contemporary accounts, the ship was sailing in clear weather, with no hurricanes or tropical storms in evidence, when it was reported missing in 1954. Although search teams could locate no wreckage from the ship, the owner of the yacht, his wife, his fifteen-year-old daughter and the six members of the crew were never seen or heard from again.
Below the article was a photograph of the doomed family. Ridley enlarged the image to zoom in on the teenager's face.
What the hell? It can't be!
It couldn't be, yet it was. The daughter of the yacht's owner was the young girl who washed up on his island during the eye of the hurricane. Despite her youthful appearance, she had been dead for nearly seventy years. Like Botticelli's Venus, her specter had emerged from the sea; and like a doomed character in a Greek tragedy, it returned to its watery grave when the eye of the hurricane passed over and the ferocity of the storm returned.
People are still talking about Hurricane Sandy that hit the Northeast in 2012. Little do they know that I've had to deal with Hurricane Salem for more than 300 years!
