Another Get Rich Quick Scheme

Hurricane Cassie was called a Category 4 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or NOAA (No-ah) for short. Moogie had no idea what NOAA was until his wife, Tessa, had brought it up, calling them ‘a bunch-a skinny pencil neck geeks with nothing better to do than put a ruler on a swirling cloud.’ Moogie did know who Noah was, though, and at the moment he felt a certain kinship with the man, particularly now that the storm waters were raging down Main Street and through his socks and shoes.

Tessa had gone off on a tirade, not two hours ago, about how NOAA didn’t know nothing about no hurricanes, how ‘Category 4’ was just some geeky science talk, and how Moogie had made her a promise, and god damn, you big sissy-ass, can’t you keep a promise now and again? At the end of a solid Tessa tirade, and lord, how there had been many, poor Moogie often found himself at the raw end of a good deal, or some half-baked scheme. It was getting harder to call this particular instance a half-baked scheme, though, what with Moogie looking through the tiny window of the Winn-Dixie basement, as light poles as lawn furniture hurtled down the street at 70 miles an hour. This was very far from being half-baked. This idea hadn’t even made it into the oven.

Of course Tessa wasn’t here with Moogie, because “here” was the middle of Jacksonville Beach, ten minutes from the eye of Cassie. It was 10am but there was no sun in the sky and Moogie could hardly breath with the wind forcing the air down into his lungs. Sand and debris pelted his neck and the palm of his hands shielding his face. He would shut the window, but a mailbox had busted out the glass, and all the stood between him and the raging world outside were a few iron bars.

But maybe this would all pan out. He looked across the street and saw there, still aglow, the ATM machine wobbling in the parking lot of the Redstone Credit Union. Behind the building, beyond the pier, the heavy body of Cassie kissed the wild sea and sent it into horrible torment. Moogie tried to remind himself this was his idea in the first place.

Visualize. That’s what the self-help book from the library said. So Moogie visualized. He visualized Cassie swirling two blocks down. He saw the winds picking up that ATM, swooping it up into the air and bashing it down onto the concrete. He saw it splitting open like a eggshell. Then he saw himself running out in the middle of all that wind, a magician in a bubble of calm, sweep up all those bills into his grocery bag and whistling off down the block.

When he opened his eyes again, he saw a VW Van cartwheeling down the center of Atlantic Boulevard. There was a sudden bolt of lightening and before he heard the thunder of it, all the lights in on the block when dead.

Well, he thought, there were worse ways to get rich.