Tornado Warning

The sound of the conveyor lines running overhead ceased, and the vibration that thrummed constantly through the floor halted. Alex looked up. He was at his desk with a highlighter in hand. He rolled his chair out of the cubicle. At the next desk was his manager, Tim. As he opened his mouth to speak a voice crackled over the speakers and Alex cocked his head trying to hear.

“Attention please, attention please. We are currently under a tornado warning. Please make your way to the nearest tornado shelter.” The voice—feminine and nasal and indistinct—began to repeat the message. Alex rolled back to his desk and sighed.

Tim stood up. “Come on.” He had his computer under his arm, a stack of papers in his hand. Alex sighed again but stood up. He didn’t have a laptop to take with him and no work he could do sitting in the shelter area. He didn’t particularly care about working but he’d be bored if the warning went on too long.

Their desks were just twenty feet from the nearest shelter, though on the other side of a cement wall. Shelves were lined up in rows this side of the wall, and the shelves were lined with shoeboxes. Alex and Tim found an empty row and went in. Tim went the rest of the way through and vanished out the other side. Alex leaned against the rail of a shelf and slid to sit on the cold floor. He saw other people filing past his row, people he knew and people he only knew by sight. They all went by, though some nodded at him. Some few minutes later Tim came back and sat on the floor too. He opened his laptop on his legs, and then he held out the papers to Alex. “Want something to do?”

The two of them sat quietly while in the rows around them others talked loudly—a lot of noise Alex barely even heard. The papers Alex was working on were activity sheets for recording what you did during your shift. He checked names, dates, employee numbers; made sure no one had taken task-associated time for non-task-associated projects, crossed out anything that didn’t match, added tallies, signed off on the sheets. It wasn’t his job, but he knew how to do it, and it was something to do—for a little while. When he finished he shuffled the activity sheets into a neat pile and set them in an empty space on the shelf in front of him.

Tim had his phone in hand and he held it out toward Alex. The weather radar was playing in an eight-hour loop. A big wave of green skipped over the screen, over the names of nearby cities and towns, and Cyprus Bend, and then turned yellow, then red, from the inside out, and then skipped back to the beginning and started again. “We could be here a while. The warning lasts until eight.”

Alex let his head fall back against the rail with a thump and groaned. “Alex.” He looked up. Tim was still on his laptop a few feet to his right, and to his left was Brielle. She was wearing dark-grey shorts and a dark-grey T-shirt. They were baggy and made her look smaller than she was. And she was small. Not short, but long and thin, with skinny arms and legs and a long neck and angular features. If they were both standing she was nearly as tall as him. Right now though she looked small, shrunken in on herself. Alex straightened against the shelf’s railing.

“Hey.”

She smiled. “Hey.” She shuffled her feet a little, held her left elbow with her right hand; a clear plastic bag with a strap dangled from her left hand. Inside the bag were cigarettes and a lighter, a cell phone, mints, tampons, a pen, an earbud case—the assortment of daily use. Brielle gestured with her bag to the floor next to Alex. “Mind if I sit with you?”

“Sure.” He patted the floor.

The rail for the next shelf was three feet away but she sat down right next to him. She kept her feet on the floor and her knees pulled up. She set her bag down between them. Brielle was so close to Alex that the bag touched both of their hips. Alex glanced at Tim. Tim was still working on his laptop. He’d gotten an empty cardboard box and was using it as a desk. He looked focused.

Alex didn’t look at Brielle. He kept his eyes downcast and forward, watching the toes of his shoes. They were worn and faded. He’d been saying for weeks that he needed to buy new ones. But in his peripheral vision he saw Brielle's shoes—also dark—her knees, her loose shorts which had slid higher up her thighs. He pulled his phone out—he saw Tim pretend not to notice—and checked the radar again. The green wave had grown bigger in the interval, and as the forecast went on the red grew progressively bigger from the center of the green. Across the top of the screen was a narrow red banner that read: WARNING! TORNADOES LIKELY! SEEK SHELTER IMMEDIATELY!

“I don’t like tornadoes,” Brielle said.

“No?”

“No.”

“Did you see Twister?”

“Yeah, it was traumatizing.“

“It was funny.”

“The scene in the barn,” Tim said without looking up.

“Can you imagine being in that barn during a tornado?” Brielle asked.

“Of course not,” Alex said.

“And we don’t need to,” Tim said. “That’s what makes the scene funny.”

“Sure.” Brielle straightened her legs out. They reached almost all the way across the row, and between her dark shoes and her dark shorts her skin was ghostly pale. Alex focused on his own shoes. “How long are we supposed to wait?”

Alex checked his phone. “It’s only until seven-thirty now.” Brielle groaned.

“You can leave now if you want,” said Tim. “We won’t stop you. The shelters are to keep you safe.“

“Keep the company's ass safe,” Alex muttered to Brielle.

Tim heard and said, “Keep something safe.”

Brielle laughed riotously for a moment. Then she said, “Tim, do you mind if I use my phone?”

Tim waved offhandedly. “I don’t care as long as no other manager sees you.”

Brielle pulled her phone and earbuds out of her bag. She turned on music. Even though she was using an earbud the music was loud enough that Alex could hear it. If he hadn’t known Brielle was into metal he might have been surprised by what he heard. Out of the corner of his eye he saw she was texting. Almost against his will Alex looked Brielle up and down. She set her phone on her thighs and lifted her arms up and stretched with a yawn. Then she tapped Alex's foot with her own.

“You’re quiet,” she said in a whisper.

“I’m always quiet.”

She cocked her head toward him. “Not here you aren’t. The only time I’ve ever seen you quiet like this was that time we had lunch.”

Alex shrugged. He dropped his head against the rail again. “There isn’t much to keep me busy right now.”

“So you like being busy?”

“It keeps me busy.”

“No shit.”

“You asked.”

“Is this how you are at home too?”

“No.”

“Stay busy there?”

“I have two dogs, I’m always busy.”

“Pictures?” she said. Alex got his phone out and began searching for the pictures. As he found them he showed Brielle and she made noises and comments of approval, especially at the Basset's jowls and ears drooping almost to the floor.

“You know where I live,” Alex said.

“Yeah.” She picked up her phone again.

“Feel free to come see then.

“Yeah.” She held the phone out. The screen showed a picture of a kitten. It was tan and white, with long hair. Its face looked sour, green eyes narrowed to slits. “Abbey got a kitten. It’s the cutest thing ever.”

“Pretty cute. She just get it?”

“A few weeks ago. I go over way too often now just to see the kitten.”

Alex and Brielle lapsed into silence. Tim stood and left the row. Alex glanced sideways at Brielle. She was texting again. He could still hear the music playing out of her ear bud. He bumped his head against the rail, twice, three times, four; each time was a little bit harder. Then he said, “Brielle—”

“My boyfriend just said he’d come pick me up.”

Alex drew his left leg up and rested his arm on his knee. “Does he realize there’s a tornado warning?”

“Like, no shit? I told him to stay home.”

“It was nice to offer though.”

“Yeah.”

“Dumb though.”

“Dumb as hell.”

The speakers crackled. With the lines shut off the announcement was easy to hear. “Attention please, attention please. The tornado warning has come to an end. Please report back to your department for roll call. Attention please, the tornado warning is over. Please report to your departments. Thank you.”

Alex got to his feet and offered Brielle a hand. She stood up alone. Back in front of the desks Tim crossed names off a roster as they acknowledged their survival. Alex and Brielle walked away and clocked out together, gathered their lunch bags and walked out the doors. The air was yellow-gold, humid and heavy. Thick, dark clouds still swirled in the sky, now only in dark patches. The ground was wet, there were puddles on the sidewalk and on the parking lot surface, water dripped from the eaves.

Brielle raised her arms above her head and stretched. “Sure is pretty out now.”

Alex glanced at the sky and the yellow-gold air, then back at Brielle. Then he walked away and said, “Sure is pretty.”