Free Hurricane Days by Renee J. Lukas Page B

typed “Eye of the Storm.”
    Adrienne’s band appeared on the screen, performing to a large crowd at Boston’s House of Blues. The video had been recorded by someone in the audience. The quality wasn’t half bad, except for the occasional jerk down to the floor then back up to the stage. Adrienne was wearing a black leather body suit with a jacket that she eventually took off. Her voice was full and deep, even soulful. She owned the stage and the crowd, just as she had at their college parties, when everyone had gathered around her like magnets drawn to steel. Sometimes Robin would watch in awe, as she did now, captured by the idea of Adrienne, an otherworldly songstress singing a haunting rock ballad.
    In this moment, Robin forgot her own iconic status. Now she was a vulnerable, ordinary woman…or a lovesick college girl. She caught herself smiling as Adrienne stopped dramatically, head down, while the drums did a solo. Then she turned, sweat from the hot lights glistening on her neck, her lips turned upward in a teasing smile. The smile Robin knew.
    Robin sat back, watching, with her hand over her mouth.
    There was a close-up of Adrienne’s slender fingers working the strings of an electric guitar with such abandon; she had definitely mastered the instrument she couldn’t play years ago.
    As a woman in her late forties, Adrienne was more fully realized and more self-possessed, if that was possible, than she had been at eighteen. Her eyes, always sparkling and brilliant, were now filled with more experience, more genuine passion. Robin imagined the things she’d experienced since their time together. No doubt she’d had her heart broken. She’d lived life. There was something so undeniably sexy about the woman Adrienne , crooking her finger at someone in the audience, smiling and enjoying when people, male or female, reached out to grab her leather pants. Her ambiguous sexuality on stage made her accessible to everyone. It all made sense, Adrienne the rock star. It was inevitable. Her magnetic presence on stage, her attitude, was already like that of a rock icon. It was only a matter of time.
    Robin admired her for staying on course toward this career path, especially at an age when so many women were either more settled in their careers or home life. And by this time, it was all too common to give up on the wild dreams of youth. Then again, Adrienne never seemed to lose her wild side. It was part of her.
    A sense of regret, of loss, surged through Robin. She closed her eyes a long moment and waited for it to pass.
    * * *
    The sprawling backyard terrace was Jimmy Sanders’ favorite spot at the governor’s mansion. There he could have the illusion of privacy and kick back with his favorite cigar and a scotch.
    Abigail, her hair freshly bleached, sat by his side. She was a nervous, wafer-thin woman, always nibbling at platters of raw carrots or crackers and never gaining any weight.
    “Politics ain’t what it used to be,” Jimmy growled.
    “I know.” Robin smiled tiredly at him.
    “You need nerves of steel, the way they spread all that garbage about you. I don’t think my old ticker could take it.” He patted his chest.
    “I can handle it, Daddy.” Robin crossed her legs and held her head high, the most dignified posture she could muster. Honestly, she could withstand anyone’s judgment but his. He’d always called her “Daddy’s little girl,” whatever that meant exactly, and she tried to live up to that.
    “I have no doubt you can.” He winked at her and swirled the ice in his glass. “You know, I was no fan of John Kennedy, but even he got a private life without everything havin’ to be out in the open. That’s the problem now. Everything’s in the open. I saw a talk show with this doctor, I guess he was a doctor, askin’ a lady in the audience about her bowel movements. On national television! Doesn’t that beat all hell?”
    “What for?” Abigail squeaked, reaching for her