“It’s not coming anywhere near us; we’re too far north,” Penelope’s kids call to tell her. But driving through rain and wind, wine still wet on her lips, she smiles at the road jumbled with broken branches, garbage can lids, cheeseburger wrappers, orange peels. Her thoughts are like squalls of wind and water: concerned co-workers, ex-husband, grownup kids worried she’s drinking too much but too busy to come check on her.
When she shows up at the Golden Palace, no one from work is there to meet her. She doesn’t recognize the cars in the parking lot, and when she asks at the front desk about the employee party, they don’t know anything about it. Still she continues to the bar, orders a glass of wine, watches coverage of the hurricane on the corner TV: swelling rivers, power outages, flattened homes, splintered pavement. She downs the wine, orders another, turns, bumps a chair, trips over someone’s leg, swipes her sleeve through a plate of fries, wanders down the hall to the Function Room, trailing wreckage behind her.
She pauses outside the door to listen: voices, laughter, definitely a party of some kind. She sways in with her glass of cabernet, belches sautéed onion, her stomach sizzling. “Hey, is it finally her?” someone asks, looking up, hoping Penelope’s the Her they’ve been waiting for—Penelope tottering into the room, silk blouse, silver earrings, charm necklace, windstorm debris caught in her hair, knocking back the last of the wine, beaming around the room at tables of unfamiliar faces, her throat bile-blazed, shining eyes raised as she announces, “It’s me everyone, it’s Penelope!”