The gray sky looks threatening, and the inflation rate too. “Watch out. Something big is going to happen and soon,” Lloyd says. “I can assure you, Jennifer. A change in the algorithm.” He coughs for emphasis.

     She rolls her eyes. She’s good at rolling her eyes. What algorithm is he talking about? Lloyd is not sure exactly, but it’s a big one. It might involve the crypto-currency markets. A lot of clues come from his chirpy birds at the feeder. “Possibly, a calculation regarding the spread of avian flu.” He fumbles with the seed bag.

      “Your birds, right, like you own those chickadees,” Jennifer thinks. She helps him install a fresh suet cake in the cage and re-hang it off the eave.

     Lloyd waves a finger in the air. Or rather, he waves the edge of his hand where an index finger used to be, before the industrial accident. “Have you noticed the clock on the courthouse? It’s speeding up. The wheels of justice are finally turning,” Lloyd says. “The judge in my workman’s comp case could be ready to issue a ruling. That would be big.”  

     “Hope springs eternal,” Jennifer says.

    She is his girlfiend. Not a typo. He calls her, “girlfiend.” A term of endearment that reflects his unresolved feelings about their breakup. “Thanks for bringing the groceries,” Lloyd says, “I was almost out of soup.”

     “Ever since I’ve known you,” Jennifer says, “something big is going to happen. And soon.”

     “Are you suggesting that I’m what, a dreamer?”

     “I’m suggesting that you might focus on what is right in front of you. A sink full of dirty dishes.”

     “I am definitely not a dreamer,” Lloyd said, “My condition remains undiagnosed.”

     To reduce such tensions, Jennifer keeps her visits short and sets the timer on her phone. She stops in at his attic apartment once a week to make sure he’s still alive. In a manner of speaking. No worries about Lloyd ever harming himself. He’s too narcissistic for that. It’s more about basic functioning and Jennifer’s chronic sense of duty to lost souls (starting with her felon brother). This particular one, jut-jawed Lloyd, she had briefly mistaken for a soulmate.

     The official in-a-relationship status lasted four months, back when they were students together in the Clinical Social Work program. Between classes and practicum, they squeezed in romantic weekends at her parents’ lake cottage. Jennifer managed to graduate on time and score a job at an agency. Lloyd dropped out and took a detour into the hipster profession of gourmet butchering, which resulted in the loss of a finger.

     He could still lure her in with conversation-starters such as, “Let’s pretend the eco-system is not dying. Let’s pretend we’re indigenous people, talking about our animal guides…” Lloyd’s widescreen face comes with sub-titles. His upside-down grins say one thing, while his words say another.

     Jennifer rubs her eyes and pinches her cheeks. She hasn’t been sleeping well. Agitated by a recurring dream of a tsunami on Lake Michigan. “Honestly, you’ve been tapping out your savings, the inheritance from your dad, expecting a settlement on the workman’s comp thing, and even if you win one, it won’t be as large as you think. Why not go back to school and finish your degree? You only need six credits.”

     “Can you hear that tone in your voice? Like I’m a client on your caseload.”

     Jennifer says, “Sorry, it just seems that you’re sabotaging your future to punish me.”

     “The saboteur is an archetype. It’s bigger than either one of us,” Lloyd says.    

     The timer on Jennifer’s phone buzzes. “By the way, your grackles have a nice sheen.”

     “Yes, my grackles are doing fine. My grackles are going to take over the world.”

     Four flights down on creaky stairs. Jennifer arrives in the street, and the rain has started. This can mean any number of things. It can be a gentle mood-setter or the onset of another deluge. She wipes the mist from her glasses. More and more, in their sessions, Jennifer’s clients lapse into weather-related ruminations. Yesterday Althea, the ageless bag-lady, riffed on the Morton Salt Girl and ‘when it rains, it pours’ as a description of her life and the sad fact that one needs an umbrella at all times, not just for the rain, but also to withstand the sun.

     And, presto, there she is, under the train bridge at 8^th Street and Vine. Huddling under a golf umbrella with her cart of shoeboxes. Althea’s filing system. She archives ticket stubs and receipt slips found outside the train station.

     “Good afternoon,” Jennifer says.

     “Howdy, honey. You’re getting wet.”

     “I don’t mind. A little wet never hurt. It looks like you’re sitting under a toadstool.”

     “A magic toadstool. You’re welcome to join me,” Althea says.

     A therapeutic decision. Yikes. What would her supervisor do in this moment? And Lloyd? She still thinks of him as a mentor for gestalt-style interventions. Jennifer bends and squats and scoots in beside Althea. Hints of cheap hairspray with notes of wet, woolen sock. Zap! A time-travel sequence commences. Five-year-old Jennifer crawls under the porch at the lake cottage with piles of punkish firewood. Her evil brother locks her in and pours his breakfast juice down the slats. The liquid drips around her.

     “How do you like it?” Althea asks.

     “I’m having a flashback,” Jennifer says. A surprise bit of self-disclosure.

     “Hate it when that happens,” Althea says. “Remember what you always advise.”

     “I’m breathing through it,” Jennifer says. Or trying to. In and out, full diaphragm, in and out.

    Her agency’s documentation protocol requires that a caseworker enter a note about this overall positive interaction that demonstrates Althea’s integration of a coping skill. Blah, blah, blah. Jennifer leaves out the part about the flashback, because no one must know about her black-sheep brother. Jennifer changes the flashback to a memory of Mother’s oft-repeated slur: “Where were you born, under a bridge?”

     Later, chatting in the windowless break room, Jennifer tells her supervisor, Dr. Kalman, that she never heard it as a slur, but more of an existential challenge. “If my mom doesn’t know where I was born, who does? If it was under a bridge, well, sounds kind of cool,” Jennifer says.

     “Could be an inspiration for your profession, working with this population who do live under bridges,” says Dr. Kalman.

     “Right, exactly,” Jennifer nods.  

     Dr. Kalman is one of those grizzled clinicians who claim to have seen it all. In addition to his executive position at the agency, he teaches Advanced Addictions at the university.

     “And what is the news of Lloyd?” he asks.

     “Oh, no, busted. I was on my lunch break.”

     “It’s obvious whenever you’ve been to visit him,” Dr. Kalman says, “Everyone can tell.”

     “Really?”

     “You close the door to your office and take a half-hour nap.”

     “Anymore, sleep is my drug of choice,” Jennifer says.

     “I don’t mean to pry, but why do you feel so responsible for Lloyd? I’ve seen a lot of his ilk over the years. Do-gooders who think they want to save the world, but when it comes to the point of actually engaging the beast, they choke.”

     “I’m not sure that’s a fair assessment.”

     “I stand corrected. But, why?”

     “Because his condition remains undiagnosed.”

     “What?”

     “And I lied about the flashback.”

     “You what?” he says, raising one eyebrow.

     Possibly, just possibly, Jennifer has thrown Dr. Kalman something that he hasn’t seen before. She nods and whispers, “The truth is he reminds me of my brother, Billy the Id.”

     “The plot thickens,” Dr. Kalman says.

     “Serving a long sentence in prison.”

     “Aren’t we all?”

     “Yeah, but it gets worse. I testified against him,” Jennifer says, and senses that tonight she won’t sleep at all.

     She had visited him once at the prison in Michigan City. Billy accepted the visit but refused to speak. He folded his arms and sat that there in his orange jumpsuit and glared at her. Jennifer nervously tried to explain herself, why it was that she had needed to speak out, to give voice to all the hurt, starting with the broken arm incident. The next time she came prepared with notes. At the gate, a prison official informed her that Billy was not allowed to have visitors, because he was in solitary confinement. 

     It rains for a week. The river crests and a levee breaks and the downtown floods. The agency’s storefront office floods. It happens quickly. No warning, except for some excited yelling from the receptionist in the waiting room. One minute, Jennifer is sitting in session with Althea, and the next minute, water is flowing under her closed office door and, whoosh, forces the door open. Althea had just been talking about losing her stuff in last year’s inundation and Jennifer had been steering the conversation toward the clinical concept of emotional flooding…

     She looks out the window and, hello, Lloyd appears in a canoe. The dinged-up green canoe that has been tied in perpetuity on top of his car. Lloyd signals for her to climb out the window. “Everyone is evacuating,” he yells, “it’s deeper around the other side. You might have trouble getting out the front door.”

     Althea displays remarkable poise as she and Jennifer squeeze through the swivel window and ease over into Lloyd’s canoe without swamping it. He paddles around the side of the building to the parking lot, where Dr. Kalman and the rest of the staff are perched on top of a fire truck.

     “Yoo-hoo! We’re okay,” Jennifer calls.

     “They’re driving us to high ground at the armory,” Dr. Kalman calls.

     “I’ll take these two over to my apartment,” Lloyd says, “The entire block is sandbagged.”

     “From the looks of it, we’ll be on furlough for a few days,” Dr. Kalman nods and waves.

     “Keep an eye out for snakes,” Althea orders.

     Althea clearly relishes the prospect of boating through the downtown avenues, as if touring her realm on a royal barge. For her, the surreal is normal. Fortunately, Lloyd has brought a second paddle. Within a few minutes, Althea and Lloyd are paddling together in synch. She gracefully feathers each stroke.

     “You seem to know your way around a canoe,” Jennifer says.

     “Summer camp,” Althea explains, and pauses to tie back her thick, gray mane with a spare shoelace. “Foster kids spend a lot of time at summer camps.”

     “We could swing over and do a lap around the courthouse square,” Lloyd suggests.

     “Let’s live a little,” Althea says.

     Weaving through the sandbags, they eventually reach Lloyd’s apartment building. Jennifer feels exhausted and a bit giddy. The first floor is a giant puddle, three inches of water. The upstairs looks dim, without electricity. Lloyd and Jennifer secure the canoe to the base of the stairwell and assist Althea up the four flights.

     Hallelujah, the sink is clear. Lloyd has actually washed the dishes and straightened the teetering stacks of books. His new algorithm must be working. The refrigerator remains cold. They open a can of tomato soup and make a meal with crackers and cheese.

     “For dessert, thanks to Jennifer, we have fresh cherries,” Lloyd says, “and then how about a game of cards?”

     Okay, what the heck, Jennifer thinks. She shivers through a telescoped feeling that her entire adulthood is leading to this: shuffling a deck of cards with Lloyd and Althea, which in a literal way is true, but WTF. Privately, she’s worried about the state of her own apartment, two bus transfers away, and her street-parked car and also the cottage on the lake.

     “Do you need help picking up your cards?” Althea asks, concerned about Lloyd’s missing finger.

     “Thanks, got it,” Lloyd says, “I assume the game is euchre, the lingua franca of all dayrooms and detox centers.”

     “You have that right,” Althea says. “Deal ‘em.”

     “Can someone refresh me on the rules?” Jennifer asks.

     The evening glow from the skylight turns to gloom turns to dark. Lloyd finds a box of matches and lights candles. “Downright cozy in here,” Althea says. Several rounds later, having established a rapport as euchre enthusiasts and canoeists, Lloyd invites Althea and Jennifer to stay the night. With the futon and the couch, there’s enough space for each of them. Lloyd channels his inner gentleman. He gives over his bedroom to Jennifer and Althea.

     Expecting to be awake all night because of Althea’s snoring, Jennifer sleeps like the proverbial rock. A giant rock. A primordial rock. And, yes, here comes the tsunami dream again. Only this time Jennifer and a young Billy the Id are riding the wave on skateboards. Billy is clean-shaven, no icky goatee. He jokes that the curl of the wave looks exactly their mother’s hot-roller perm.

     In the morning, Jennifer feels better. She makes peppermint tea. Fills the birdfeeder. Despite some ethical misgivings, Jennifer leaves Althea alone with Lloyd to deal the cards again after breakfast.

     “I’m going over to check on my place and the cottage too. Will you be all right?”

     “Sure. No problem.”

     “I’ll be back by mid-afternoon. Anything I should bring?”

     “Let’s have pizza,” Althea says.

     The floodwaters outside have receded slightly. Jennifer hikes twenty blocks and makes it home with wet shoes and socks. Otherwise, everything is intact. The scummy high-water marks on the hubcaps of her Subaru are just below the engine level. She changes her clothes and pulls on rubber boots and drinks a tall glass of orange juice. Stares at herself in the bathroom mirror, and impulsively cuts off her thick bangs. She tests the car and it starts right up.

     Traffic is heavy and slow, generating a lot of spray. Jennifer heads west on Vine Street and then decides to take the inland route up and around to the cottage. Just after the exit to Shore Road, her phone buzzes. She tries to ignore the flashing screen, but, jeez, it’s the state police. Jennifer pulls over to take the phone call, appropriately enough, in the breakdown lane. She turns on the emergency blinkers.

     “Hello?”

     “Is this Jennifer Goetz?”

     “It is.”

     Jennifer thinks, “Oh, Lloyd, what have you done? I should have never left Althea alone with you.”

     “This is a special alert.”

     Jennifer thinks, “If I get fired, does that mean I lose my license?”

     “Do you have a brother named Billy Goetz?”

     “I did. Yes, I mean, I do.”

     “We’re notifying witnesses who testified at his trial that, during the flooding at the prison yesterday and the temporary evacuation, your brother escaped.”

     “Excuse me?”

     “Billy Goetz escaped from prison yesterday and we hope to apprehend him soon, but, for your own safety, we wanted you to know.”

     “Thank you, officer,” Jennifer says, professionally. She slowly eases back onto the roadway, forgetting to turn off the blinkers. Gut instinct tells her that Billy may be heading for their parents’ cottage too.

     Hands trembling on the steering wheel, Jennifer proceeds five more miles to the beloved, dusty, leaking A-frame. Her parents, now retired in South Carolina, have let things go. They haven’t even come for the past three summers and really, it’s time to sell the place. Spider webs and curling shingles and evidence of mice. Breathing slowly in and out, in and out, Jennifer resists the urge to flee. For an hour, she dutifully mops and cleans. And fantasizes about what will happen when Billy knocks at the door. How to engage him? If Billy knocks at the door. A specialist in breaking and entering, he could just as likely bust in a window. She prepares for the session of her life.

     “Open up, Jennifer!”

     “How did you know I was here?”

     “I recognized dad’s old car.”

     “Are you going to hurt me?”

     “I’d never hurt my little sister, even though she’s a rat.”

     “I’m afraid of you, Billy.”

     “Sis, don’t worry. It’s all in the past. Prison has changed me.”

     “How so?”

     “I can go days in silence, and like it. And I miss things, old things. Peppermint tea. Mom’s favorite.”

     “Probably all stale.”

     “It’ll taste good to me.”

     “Somehow I sensed that you’d come.”

     “Open the frigging door. I don’t have much time.”

     “Are we finally going to talk?”

     “About what?”

     “Anything, Billy. Let’s talk about algorithms and the weather.”

     She fills a kettle for the tea. Boxes and boxes of unopened peppermint tea in the kitchen cabinets. Jennifer and her long estranged brother, still in his orange jumpsuit, sit together on the porch glider. The swollen lake spreads out before them like a shining, silver mirror. This isn’t exactly how it happens, but close.

– Ian Woollen