Kayla, Her Nose, and the Notification

Kayla got the notification while she was picking her nose, but when she thought back to this moment, she decided she would leave out that detail. Instead, she’d tell everyone that she was just getting out of the shower, which was technically true. This would add to the drama of it, despite the reality being that she was only getting out of the shower because she had just finished hanging up a new curtain liner and had been technically standing up inside the tub, fully clothed, and not feeling at all exposed. But she had gotten the notification while picking her nose.

She reached for the toilet paper roll on the wall next to the toilet and then decided to just wash her hands instead. She still had about seven minutes, by the time she finished washing up. She stepped out into the hallway, looked down toward the open window, and took in the view for a few seconds. Fascinating. Nothing looked amiss. The beach a hundred yards away looked perfectly inviting, and she wished she’d gone swimming earlier in the day, instead of dedicating this warm day to chores inside the house.

Reading the notification one more time, she darted across the hall and into her bedroom, where she took the back brace down from a hook near the door and slung it around her waist, tightening the straps and Velcro. Content that it held her muscles and spinal discs in place, Kayla took a deep breath, noted that breathing was still fairly comfortable, and then began to search for her dog.

Eddie had only four places where he spent any time. The nearest was at the foot of her bed, and he plainly wasn’t there, even under the twisted, messy blankets. She wiped the sweat from her brow and scooped up the straps of a tote full of books, which she kept next to her bed to peruse every night before falling asleep. She was quite pleased with how effective the back brace was during that movement. She smiled and turned on her heels to head to Eddie’s Favorite Location No. 2.

"Alright, pooch. Where are you?"

The hearth hadn’t been dusted since she’d finished remodeling—or rather, rebuilding and reinforcing—the front window three or four weeks ago. The cracks between the bricks of the hearth were mostly filigreed with sawdust. She spied a loose screw she must have missed in her half-hearted cleanup and stooped to pick it up. The tote full of books slipped from her shoulder and spilled open onto the bricks, sending fluttering book pages and sawdust in opposite directions. Coughing on the floating bits of pine and squinting through the cloud of yellow dust, she began to pick up the novels, some of which were splayed open as though they’d jumped dramatically to their own demise. Chuckling at her own cartoonish imagination, Kayla squatted lower and repacked the tote, deciding to leave it on the hearth until she’d tracked down the aging mutt. On to Eddie’s Favorite Location No. 3.

The air stewing inside the screened-in porch was more humid than she cared for, which was why she’d turned on her air conditioning in the first place.

Wait, had she really left the window open down the hall, with the air running? Damn. What a waste.

Looking to her left, she studied the mounds of pillows and cushions atop the wicker couch that Eddie frequently claimed. He was not there, either. Seriously, pooch? She had to go all the way outside, for this?

She had about five minutes left now, she figured. She had to shut that window down the hall, and now Eddie was as far away as he could be, resting under the willow at the edge of the garden. When had she last been outside with him? Had he stayed out overnight without her realizing it? God, that couldn’t be right. They went on a walk this morning, didn’t they?

If she went to get Eddie first, her arms would be full when she came back inside, and the window would still be open. If he weren’t so damn deaf, she’d just call out and leave the screen door off its spring, to let him back in. But she wasn’t even sure she’d be able to hear herself from the porch to the tree, if she’d been in his paws.

Even so, she hoped he’d get up on said paws just because he felt like it, and stroll on inside. She reached up, careful not to tweak her back—again—and popped the spring out of the hole on the screen door, and then swung it wide. She gave a half-assed call for the aging, deaf mutt, and then went back into the cooler interior of the house.

Down the hall, she detected an out-flowing breeze escaping through the carelessly open window. As she hurried toward it now, with a glance at her watch, she realized the screen was still in place. Eddie couldn’t have climbed up and through a window two inches off the ground, let alone this one, with its sill at waist level. Four minutes left. She set a timer on her watch, and then pulled down the windowpane and locked it once it was in place. Taking a deep breath, she considered how silly this all seemed, in light of what was on the horizon. Even so, she slid the cage across the window and locked that into place, as well.

Her heart began to race. Time was running out. Eddie was still outside. She had to go get him. Now.

Kayla spun on her heels and half-ran down the hall and through the living room, looking at the tote full of bags on the hearth just to be sure she kept it in the forefront of her mind when she got back inside. She could see the cover of the novel she’d stacked on top after the spill, and found her mind wandering to the author’s name. Was his first name Silas or Samuel? She’d even written to him once to thank him for such a beautiful book about the reconciliation of estranged siblings. She couldn’t remember his name and was truly ashamed of that. She’d been so inspired to reach out to her own sister to try to reconnect, but nothing had come of it.

The humid air outside her front door brought an instant layer of sweat to her forehead again as she bounded across the porch, down the steps, and onto the garden path. She called out to Eddie, her throat drying out. The broad, swaying branches of the willow came into view around the bend ahead, as she rounded a cluster of peach trees she’d been meticulously caring for. She sighed as she noticed they hadn’t borne any fruit yet. She could grab a pear from the bowl on the kitchen island if she hurried up and found Eddie.

Kayla spotted him exactly where she’d expected: in the last place she looked. His front paws were stretched out in front of him, but his back legs were tucked up against him, the right leg under his haunches, the left lazily kicking the air behind him. His eyes were closed and his lips flapped up and down with muted barks as he chased something in his dreams.

She knelt beside him and cooed into his ear as she placed a hand on the side of his face, brushing him gently awake. He opened his left eye, rolled it toward her hand, and then abruptly—for an old dog—sat up and blinked, nuzzling into her cupped hands.

“Let’s go, pooch. It’s almost time.”

Kayla scooped up the groggy doggy and took a deep breath as she pushed up from the dirt under the willow tree, careful to focus on her posture. Once on her feet, she turned on her heels to march slowly back to the house. The alarm on her watch started beeping. Two minutes left. She walked faster, trying not to look toward the barren peach trees. Jesus would have cursed them, anyway. No sense in wasting more thought on them.

Leaving the screen door ajar and unlinked by its spring, she shifted Eddie in her arms until she had a few fingers around her doorknob. She felt an out-rushing of air as she opened her front door and stepped inside, struggling against the strange vacuum pull that forced the door against her in its own inanimate effort to follow the suction.

Finally inside, irritated by the energy wasted on the problem door, the beeping from her wrist, the choice between a bag of books or a fresh pear, and the second door she’d have to open, she dropped Eddie onto the living room couch with less care than she’d meant.

“Sorry, pooch. One second.”

She pushed the coffee table toward the hall, rolled up the rug underneath it, and reached down to twist the flat ring on the bunker door. With a spring-assisted heave the door came open and stood tall. Lights flickered on in the cool grey of the cement chamber below. Her watch continued to beep. Her heart rate had not yet slowed. Her throat was totally dry. Eddie barked twice.

Kayla looked toward the front door and could see a new feature on the landscape beyond the front door—namely, that the landscape was gone, replaced by a grey-green wall of foam. She spun on her heels, all but slapped Eddie’s rear end, and corralled the dog toward the stairs leading below the floor.

As the dog hopped down a few steps, she looked longingly at the fruit bowl in the kitchen, six or seven paces away. She looked back at the tote of books a pace or two in the other direction. She then looked through her front window and saw one of the peach trees tearing through the screened-in porch.

Her eyes doubled in size as she grabbed the rope on the trapdoor and jumped through the opening, pulling down the door above her and sealing off the bunker below.

The tsunami crashed through her allegedly reinforced front window, her living room wall, and presumably out through the back wall of her house. Water roared overhead and Kayla watched Eddie’s mouth snap open and shut repeatedly without making enough sound to be heard above the destruction just above her.

She clung onto the rope handle and eyed some water droplets forming at the edges of the bunker door’s seal. For a few seconds, the wave was kept outside. And then her hand was off the rope and her finger was at her nose without her realizing it. Suddenly, of course, the seal on the door failed. As the bunker filled with water around her and Eddie, she remembered the author of that book she loved. Silas. His first name was Silas. She’d have bet anything his peach trees produced fruit. And he probably didn’t pick his nose.