Patagonia

If you're trying to send me a message, you'll have to do better than that!

Gray skies but nothing like the rushing clouds of Patagonia. This was the American Midwest, and this was the wind off the prairie, softer somehow, and lacking that dry and searing harshness of that southern gale. Not the same at all.

But as she climbed onto the bus it was struck by another gust that made it rock and creak on its springs and made her stumble as she lurched back to a seat, juggling purse, shoulder bag, lunch, and cell phone. She had things to catch up on before she got to work, and she had no time to deal with this wind. And beyond that, she had her personal life to think of, Jack and his affair and what she was going to do. She shut everything out and checked her phone.

"Whoa, shit! Watch it! Easy!"

Someone called out, laughing as another blast of wind rocked the bus and sent passengers stumbling.

And then another. And another, and Caroline finally looked up, aware that something was happening. It was a springtime wind, that was all. It happened all the time. Came from nowhere and went to nowhere. Just springtime wind. A passenger was picking up some dropped papers, people joked. The windy city.

The next blast made her jump out of her seat and stand up, a sickly panicked feeling gripping her. This wasn't right. This wasn't normal.

She'd never really given much credence to Alex's shaman stories. They were local color, BS, probably a part of his pick-up line. She'd never taken them seriously. So why was she so alarmed? What was she afraid of?

She ducked her head and looked out the window, bags and purses dangling from her arms. People outside were clutching their coats, laughing and cursing as the wind made them cringe and turn their backs to it. But everything was normal. Everything was how it should be. What was she so alarmed about?

She glanced up at the few spindly trees that grew through grates along the sidewalk, still bare this time of year, with long, skeletal twigs. She looked up as the wind blew and saw that the branches above street level were hardly moving. The lower branches were waving and bowing and rocking frantically, but up above, the twigs hardly moved, as if immune to the force of the wind.

She stared. The upper branches weren't moving. Up above, there were no blowing papers and leaves, no trash, no grit, no plastic bags. Up above street level, the air was calm.

"Out! Out please! Out! Excuse me. Out! Out!" Caroline grabbed her things and pushed her way to the back exit, stumbled down the stairs and just made it to the street as the bus pulled away with a hiss of hydraulic brakes, a swirl of exhaust in its wake.

The wind seemed to follow the bus down the street, leaving Caroline standing there in confusion, not sure what she was doing. She looked around, trying to get her bearings. She was blocks from the office; the tall buildings of downtown stood in the distance like some magical city under a glowering sky. She was in the old produce district, where warehouses and factories were being turned into pricey new lofts and condos by an army of construction workers. Trucks rumbled by, and there was the smell of old fruit and wet plaster and fresh-cut lumber. Across the street, a bunch of workers in hard hats stood around a food truck having their morning coffee.

The wind came back, from the east this time, pushing at her with an airy force that caught her off guard and sent her spinning as if drunk. She lost her balance, staggered, and fell against the hood of a parked car. She turned to face it and the wind flung her coat open and blew down the bodice of her smart spring dress, then up beneath it, and Caroline cried out and clutched at the garment. It was trying to get inside. It was trying to touch her.

"No!"

The workers turned and looked at her. The wind hit them too and they ducked their heads and held onto their helmets, but not like it was doing with her. It was buffeting her, pushing her from side to side, trying to get up under her skirt. The hem flew up and she pushed it down, but now she felt a chilly mass inside her skirt, pressing against her, pressing up between her legs, like a spider web of force, a ball of air, fluid and alive. She felt the gossamer pressure on the insides of her thighs, something vague and unearthly, like a web of static electricity.

She brushed frantically at her dress, turned and ran into the street.

"Cab! Cab!"

She threw herself into the path of an oncoming taxi, waving frantically with one hand while the other held her skirt down. She saw the driver's startled face as he stood on the brakes. She yanked the door open and threw herself inside.

" Missy you crazy!?"

The driver whirled to face her. He was but a young man: toffee-colored, skinny, cheap sunglasses, hair in dreads. Very young. An Island boy maybe, or Ethiopian, North African. His mouth was open in alarm. His bottom front teeth were outlined in gold.

"Damn lady! You gimme a heart attack! You lucky I stop! I mean— Damn! "

"Drive, drive!" She pounded on the back of his seat. "Drive! That way. Straight! Downtown. Hurry!"

Her fear galvanized him. He turned back and stepped on it, glancing only briefly in his rearview to check her out.

"What's wrong, Missy? Someone chasing you?"

Caroline craned to look out the back window. Leaves were swirling in the street, papers blowing. The workers faded from view. The wind had passed. Where was it? What was it doing? She'd felt it going up under her skirt. That was no normal wind.

"Just drive. Downtown. One-eighty-one Dearborn. Dearborn and Randolph."

"I know it. I know it." He belatedly remembered to throw the meter. "Now settle you down, Missy. I get you there."

What was wrong with her? It was just the wind. It happened this time of year. Why was she so panicked like this? What was wrong with her?

Yes, she knew, she knew. She knew about the wind and Alex and Patagonia and the women on the hill and what she'd done there. She knew all that but that didn't seem to matter now. It couldn't. Not here, not in this city, not in these crowded streets. Not in her world.

At the bridge, traffic suddenly slowed and clumped up as it entered downtown. Morning rush hour and the streets were full of people, the traffic snarled. Caroline looked fearfully down at the dirty green river, the usually calm water dancing in a nasty chop. She lifted her eyes as she realized the river formed an open corridor, a perfect channel for the wind to blow through unimpeded, and realized as well that this was one of the old draw bridges, designed to be raised and lowered so made of light and suspect materials. There was nothing between the cab and the river below but the flimsy looking steel grating that served as roadbed.

"Hurry, driver! Can't you?"

She saw the driver's eyes in the mirror, looking at her with concern. "Calm you down, missy. We can't go no faster. Be there soon enough."

There was a jarring whoosh and the cab rocked. People outside grabbed their coats and hats and papers blew. A blast of dirt and grit buffeted the driver through his open window and he grimaced and quickly slid his window up.

"Hey hey!" he said. "Windy today. Maybe rain? I—"

Another blast hit them from the other side, rocking the cab as if the wind were intentionally trying to tip it over. Coffee sloshed from the driver's cup and his phone and papers slid to the floor. Car sirens went off in the street and the crowd of pedestrians on the bridge started quick-stepping along as the wind pushed them. In front of them a woman's coat filled with wind and she fell to her knees. Another man stumbled over her.

"Whoa, man!" The driver's eyes filled with alarm as he stared out the window. "That's not right. Some nasty wind like that!"

Another blast and the bridge shook. It blew across the grating with a low and evil hum and the bridge bounced with a slow, sickening rhythm, up and down, up and down, shuddering as if a giant were jumping on it.

"Driver, please! Can't you go around them? We have to get off this bridge!"

He glanced nervously in his side view mirror, apprehensive now. The left lanes were clear, oncoming traffic was stopped at the light ahead. "Just wait she turn green then—"

Caroline leaned forward and grabbed the back of his seat. "We have to get off this bridge! It's after me! This wind is after me!"

That was all he needed. No questions, no looks. He spun the wheel and pulled into the left lane and gunned it as the bridge started bouncing like a diving board. They got as far as the light, where they sat alone in the left hand lane, facing the oncoming traffic waiting on the other side of the light. From here, sitting on a slight elevation, they could see all the way down over the long canyon of snarled traffic and out into the openness of the lake beyond.

Caroline looked and couldn't believe her eyes. This must be a hallucination. This couldn't be real.

"Oh my God," she whispered. "Oh my God!"

There, in the slice of lake they could see framed between the tall buildings, whales were swimming, great dark forms breaking the surface and diving, breaching and arching with ponderous beauty. And as she and the driver watched speechless, a whale leaped and didn't fall, but hung in the air for an impossibly long moment, stuck there against the sky as the morning sun broke through and gleamed on its dripping skin, casting a long shadow that reached all the way to canyons of downtown and the cab they were in.

Then another one leaped, and another, and more until there were a crowd of them hanging in the air, massive, black, and dripping. Like huge like alien airships hovering over the surface of the lake.

And then they started to fall, plunging back into the water in immense explosions of water and spray that left a brief rainbow over the lake.

Then the wind was back and the clouds closed in. The sun disappeared, and dark and water covered the scene again as if nothing had ever been.

"Oh my Lord Jesus!" the driver breathed. "That's not right. No. That's not right even one bit."

"Go! Go!" Caroline yelled. "Run the light! Go!"

He peeled out, ignoring the red light and making a reckless left into the honking cross traffic. Tires squealed and the cab fishtailed, and as he brought it under control a great sweeping rush of wind hit the back and lifted the back end so that they fell with a bump. The wind howled around them.

"There! There!" Carolyn pointed to the ramp that led down to lower Wacker Drive, the dark subterranean roadway that ran along the river and skirted the busy Loop. "Lower Wacker!"

The driver understood and took them plunging down into the darkness, past abandoned loading docks and beat-up traffic cones. On their left they could hear the wind rushing past the crumbling concrete pillars that separated them from the river.

"Those are big fish," the driver said. "Whales. No whales in this lake. And no fish can fly like that."

He was looking at her in the rearview mirror as he drove.

"Lady, what is happening? What is that wind? What are those fish? Why you be so scared?"

It was impossible to think, impossible to understand. Was this some sort of curse, some sort of bullshit Patagonian magic in some sort of bullshit stupid eco-revenge movie? Were those really whales? Were they real, or was it a hallucination?

"I don't know. I don't know. Just drive. Drive."

His name was Isaac Delahousey. It was on the license displayed in the cab, along with his photograph. Comments or complaints? Cal 847-629 033—

Something brushed against her and Carolyn screamed. Something cold and soft and invisible. It slid off her like something wet, but returned and wrapped itself around her ankles and started reaching up her legs. It kicked up dirt from the floor and the cab was suddenly full of flying debris. Caroline grabbed her skirt and pushed it down, too afraid to speak.

"Hey! What—?" The driver's head slammed forward and the cab skidded to the right as he brushed frantically at the back of his neck. "What the fuck! What the fuck! What that is? What that is!?"

"It's in the cab!" she screamed. "It's in the cab! The wind is in the cab!"

It was like a swarm of bees, rushing from one corner of the taxi to another, blowing in the driver's face and then inside Caroline's blouse, sending maps and papers spinning, coffee spraying and seat belts rattling.

"Oh holy goddamn fuck!" she heard him curse, and then the cab skidded and slid and thumped hard up against a curb. Caroline was splayed on the back seat holding her skirt down as the wind pushed against her pussy, powerful, unrelenting, oozing around her panties and pulling them away, a damp cold pressure against her naked sex.

It wanted her. It wanted her. That's what this was, and she'd known it from the start. It was going to enter her, and fill her with its pressure, male, greedy, cold, relentless. It was going to fuck her.

What was going on? What had she done? Had Alex set the wind against her? Had he cursed her? Was this about the project?

She squealed and pulled down her skirt, threw herself against the door but a roar of wind outside like an ocean wave held it closed, while inside this invisible demon pushed her back down, found its way under her skirt, pressed against her.

"No! No! No!"

She threw it off somehow, then dove into the front seat, squeezing through the pass-through and pressing herself against the terrified driver. He sat there immobile, paralyzed with fright. The wind followed her, slid up her leg again, and Carolyn frantically pushed herself away, pressing against him, then onto his lap, jamming herself between the steering wheel and his rigid form. Skin and bones. He hardly had any meat on him at all.

He was shaking with fear.

She turned, pushed, grabbed at the nothing between her legs and then climbed on top of him, straddling him, and now the wind relented, retreating into a corner, just licking at her, ruffling her dress.

Now she knew. She knew what it wanted. She knew how to appease it.

"Missy—"

She looked down at the driver and saw herself in his glasses.

"Fuck me," she said. "Fuck me. Put your cock inside me. Do it!"

"Missy—!"

The wind hit him in the face and slammed his head into the headrest. Caroline raised herself up and felt for his cock beneath her. She knew what she had to do. Without knowing how, she knew, she knew this would work.

He was hard, just like she knew he would be. He was paralyzed with fear but his cock was hard as she freed it from his pants and pulled it a couple times like she was trying to start him up. He got harder still.

"Oh holy God you crazy, missy! Crazy!"

She pressed her mouth against him. "Shut up. This is what it wants. I know this wind. This is what it wants..."

She used his cock to push her panties aside and pressed the head against her hole. She was dry, unready, but she worked it in, holding him and forcing herself open, lifting and grinding on top of him, screwing herself onto him. The wind hung in the corner, not heard so much as felt, like a concentrated pressure in the corner of the cab, a menacing density.

"Oh...! Oh...! Ohhh..." She chanted with her mouth against his as she worked him inside and felt herself fill with his human warmth and aliveness. She clutched him, her pussy spasming with defensive resistance but she forced him in, lowered herself on top of him and letting gravity do the work till she could remove her hand and put it on his shoulder. She sank down on him and engulfed him completely.

His sunglasses were skewed on his face and his head back, but he was looking at her in horrified amazement.

"Shhh... It's all right. It's all right. This is what it wants. Don't be scared."

She realized he was crying, his compressed lips trembling, a tear running from beneath his glasses. She tried to soothe him, taking his sunglasses off and holding his face and kissing him as she started to move. The wind hung in the cab like a crouching tiger, watching them, watching her. She pulled open her blouse and put his unresisting hands on her breasts, leaned forward and put her arms around him, and started to fuck him.

"Oh my Lord," he said. "Oh my Lord, Oh my Lord..."

Caroline picked up speed. The numbness inside her started to fade. The fear started to fade. He was getting bigger inside her, warm, hard, alive.

It was so simple. So easy. She had no idea what was happening with the wind, the terror, the whales, but this was so easy to understand. This answered everything, even the questions she had no idea how to ask. This was basic and deep and far beyond words, meaning so direct and consuming that she didn't have to think and she didn't have to fear. It was just what it was.

Don't think, just feel. Don't try to understand, because some things are beyond understanding. Just feel.

Isaac came alive. His slender fingers sought comfort in her breasts. His lips followed and he nursed on her like a child. His mouth thrilled her and gave her chills and she started riding him with a slow but urgent grace, letting her body guide her. She sank deeper upon him, and when he looked up at her she fused her mouth to his and let her tongue tell him what she felt.

He relaxed finally against the seat and his hands slid beneath her splayed skirt and gripped the working muscles of her ass where they scraped against the bottom of the steering wheel. He squeezed her and massaged her and then began to lift himself into her. The ball of wind inside the cab just seemed to relax too and dispersed, and Caroline felt herself lifting and rising and settling back down in a slow, satisfying rhythm, like the whales she had seen, swimming through the sea.

The road to Ultambacca looked different now that she was driving it herself, and she might have worried about getting lost had there been any other road in the area to get lost on, but there was none. Just this long, rutted highway heading south to nowhere with the sea on the left and the endless windy plains of Patagonia on her right. All she had to do was steer and the road would take her there.

All day long she'd been driving in this featureless world, but now at dusk, the lowering sun dropped below the clouds and cast long and melancholy shadows as she drove along. Very soon the sun would sink behind the distant Andes in the west and that eerie and spirit-filled dark would descend, but Caroline had no fear.

"Send me," she'd told her boss at EcoVentures. "Send me and send me now or I'm going by myself and you'll have to find a new project manager."

"Now? Caroline, we're don't need you down there yet. You know the timelines have changed. What are you going to do down there for a month, two months? We need you here. And what about Jack? Have you discussed this with him? And I thought you hated it down there anyhow, and couldn't wait to come home. "

"I'll write him a note. He'll understand. And I was wrong about Ultambacca. I didn't understand, but now I do. I have a lot to do down there. More than you can even begin to imagine."

Her boss had shrugged and authorized the ticket. He'd get her a car and a minimal per diem for expenses, but that was all. No lawyer, no support, she'd have to fend for herself.

Caroline nodded and walked out.

She got her coat, turned off her computer and the lights in her office, and picked up the confirmation and credit card from the secretary. She'd buy whatever else she needed either on the way to the airport or in Buenos Aires. She could leave Jack a voice mail from the airport too. She had no intentions of even stopping at home. Whether she'd ever talk to Jack or anyone from EV again she didn't know, and she didn't much care.

A slight rise, a bend to the east to skirt an outcropping of naked boulders, and just then the setting sun squeezed itself between the low clouds and the peaks of the distant Andes and in one final blaze of glory, flooded the landscape with fiery, molten light. The rocks glowed gold, the parched grass luminous orange, and the cold dark ocean sparkled with the brilliance of a million gold lights, tossed onto its surface.