For weeks now, as a trifecta of storms has spun in our direction, millions of people around Tampa Bay have lived in perpetual suspense. We're sick of tracking charts and infrared satellite images. We never want to hear another word about strike probabilities or evacuation zones.
In Tampa, Saturday was a beautiful day, with calm blue skies that betrayed no threat. And yet everyone could feel Ivan churning over the horizon, exerting its pull.
* * *
Monica Beersingh looks out her window but can't see a thing. She doesn't know whether it is night or day, sunny or rainy.
Her son boarded up all the windows of her four-bedroom home on Del Mar Circle in preparation for Frances, and he has left them sealed for Ivan.
Beersingh, 70, says it's gloomy, living in constant darkness, day after day. She sometimes has slept in until 9:30 and missed her 5 a.m. prayer. Even her dog, Bell, oversleeps.
About the only light they get is from the sun squeezing its way through the front door peephole.
"I'm just depressed about the whole situation," she says.
Her front door is slightly ajar. She speaks from behind it, her eyes squinting.
* * *
Dave Schulz just needed to get away. Far from his tattered roof that was dropping water into his foyer, far from the constant drone of the meteorologist warning him to batten down.
So the 57-year-old cabinet maker from just east of Orlando ended up here, in front of the Triple Stars, a 25-cent slot machine at the smokey, windowless Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino.
The ding ding ding of the slots pounds in his head. It sounds like someone punching all the keys on a million cash registers at once, he thinks. But it doesn't bother him. Sounds better than the TV and all the hurricane talk.
"My roof blew, my shingles blew," he says. "I'm tired. But this is my escape."
It is 8:30 a.m. and Schulz is in his 15th hour of pushing the spin button. He inhales perhaps his 52nd Winston since the evening before. He has lost more than $400; the machine says he has only $10.36 left.
But he doesn't care. He's relaxed.
"Million-to-one odds that Ivan hits Tampa," he says. "But don't listen to me. I'm going broke."
* * *
Herbert D. Carrington Sr. grows blooms for butterflies, waist-high penta plants in purple and red and pink. They rim his front porch, where he sits in a plastic chair, his aluminum cane leaning against his leg.
Friday night, in a house outfitted with burglar bars, he fell asleep thinking about hurricanes - Charley and Frances and now Ivan - and those people who lost everything. He saw their suffering on television. He couldn't help but think of his own home, and the oak tree that stretches above it.
"This old house here must be 100 years old," guesses Mr. Carrington, who is nearly 106.
He slept late Saturday morning, till 8, when the phone rang and his son invited him to breakfast. He steadied himself on arthritic knees, found the gray slacks and the red plaid shirt, slipped his feet into open-toed sandals and shuffled to the front door, carrying the keys to his 1998 Oldsmobile Intrigue for a slow, mile-long journey.
Mr. Carrington lives in a wood house off 22nd Street in East Tampa, within earshot of the rumble of Interstate 4. For six decades, until just a few months ago, he worked full time, then part time, as a host at the Tampa Yacht Club. His friends include George Steinbrenner. His doctor tells him he may be the world's oldest living heart valve patient.
In October, he will celebrate another birthday. He will plant snapdragons to cut for his lady friends down in South Tampa.
Storms? He's seen a few come through.
"I've seen them all."
During Frances, he sat home and got a little nervous.
He plans to ride out Ivan with his son Herbie Jr. and daughter-in-law Luella.
"I tell you," he says, "it scares me."
* * *
Spencer Davis is halfway through another lesson at Skatepark of Tampa. He's away from the other kids, riding his board up and down a miniramp while an instructor watches from above. He's been working on his ollies and his axel stalls. Now he's ready for more.
"I'm gonna try the rock and roll," he calls out, turning into the curve again.
"All right," says his teacher, an older kid who works at the park.
Spencer is 9, with light brown hair, intense blue eyes and perpetually battered knees.
"Aw man," he says, tumbling off his board again and landing flat on his back.
"You didn't get your front truck over," says the teacher.
Spencer picks himself up, examines a fresh scrape on his right elbow. Without a murmur, he notes a small but growing spot of blood.
"You want a Band-Aid for that?" says the teacher.
"No," he answers, climbing back on the board.
Spencer, a fourth-grader at Forest Hills Elementary, has had lots of time lately to work on his moves. During the long weekend when Frances was loitering over Tampa Bay, he and his mom rode out the wind and the rain in their house. Spencer passed the time practicing his kickflips off the sofas in the living room.
It was kind of fun, getting out of class for a couple of extra days, he says. But also kind of boring. And now, with Ivan approaching, school has been canceled for Monday.
Spencer doesn't mind missing one more day. He's a straight A student; he'll be fine. But what if Ivan does come this way, and more school gets canceled? He's heard that maybe the school system will make up the lost days by taking away some of spring break. And that would not be fun.
Whatever's going to happen, Spencer is sick of waiting for it to happen.
"Tired yet?" says his teacher, watching him roll down the miniramp one more time.
Spencer doesn't answer. He bends his knees, narrows his eyes. Gravity calls.
* * *
Could she smuggle her Great Dane, Dante, into the basement of St. Joseph's Hospital? Denyse Armstead, 28, ponders this outside the Pink Flamingo Cafe on Davis Islands, where brunch has just arrived, including a fish sandwich for her husband, Adam.
Dante, sprawled on the pavement in a puddle caused by him toppling a water bowl, stands up in approval, at eye level with the table.
"Dante!" Adam scolds. "You can't eat that."
If not for Dante, the Armsteads would stay at Tampa General Hospital, where Adam, 26, is an intern. Denyse is a physician's assistant at St. Joseph's. But Dante, 8 months old, is 110 pounds and growing.
"Dante!" Adam scolds. "Sit."
At home, they have prepared for the storm by purchasing large quantities of Cheez-Its and Oreos. Denyse calls it "the stress response." Food, as a reward for suffering. Hence, the hash browns that accompany Denyse's pancakes.
"Dante!"
For now, this is the Ivan plan: Adam will stay at Tampa General. Denyse and Dante will stay with her parents in West Palm Beach. Still, she wonders about Dante and that basement at St. Joe's.
She's pretty sure she could get away with it.
* * *
The Rev. Maurice Duc Duong tries to gather his thoughts. For weeks, his congregants at the Vietnamese Nazarene Church in Tampa have been asking him why God is allowing these hurricanes to come. Is God punishing us, they want to know.
Duong and his wife, Hanh Dao Duong, sit in chairs in the modest living room of their north Tampa home and open their Bibles. Outside, a strong breeze blows at the soursop tree, swaying its light green fruits like glass ornaments on a Christmas tree. The soursop fruit is called mang cau in Vietnamese; cau means "to pray."
Hanh Duong thumbs through the scriptures, searching with her husband for ways to explain the string of storms. They stop at the book of Luke, chapter 8, which touches on having faith in God.
Duong says that in life, everyone experiences their own personal hurricanes - divorce, unemployment, death.
"We can hope and we can wish for peace," he says. "But our hopes and our wishes will never come true until we trust in the Lord and believe."
His sermons of late have held similar messages. Hurricanes are powerful forces that can only be created by the hands of God, he says.
"As Christians, you have to understand it is God's power."
* * *
In three weeks, 29-year-old Melissa Nelson will marry David, but today she woke up thinking of Ivan.
She tries to push Ivan out of her head. He doesn't belong here, not this day, not at her bridal shower at the Waterside Marriott. Her future mother-in-law arrives. Friends surround Melissa, their arms cradling gift boxes wrapped in silver and gold.
"Thanks for coming," she says, leaning forward in black-strapped sandals, the hem of a flowered dress swirling around her calves. "It's so nice to see you. Thank you for coming."
Hurricane Frances frightened Melissa. She considered leaving town for Ivan, but so much of her family was here.
"Thanks for coming."
Outside, Garrison Channel glitters in the light of a perfect day. Melissa's day.
She works for a caterer. Today, others are catering to her.
Monday, she can be stressed, she decides.
Not today.
* * *
Bayley Eaglin skips down the narrow sidewalk in front of his Carrollwood home with three friends. They hop over twigs and fallen tree branches and pick up leaves and bird feathers. These remnants of Frances remind 9-year-old Bayley of rain and flooding, of thunderstorms and wind.
Bayley worries for Nemo, his red Beta fish. He suspects Nemo is afraid of storms, just like he is.
If Hurricane Ivan hits, Bayley will do what he did during Charley and Frances. He'll wrap his arms around his fish bowl and hug it. He'll pull his striped blanket over his blond head and over Nemo's glass bowl, and he'll whisper to him: "It's going to be okay, it's just gonna be a little hurricane."
Bayley stands on the sidewalk, twirling a feather between his fingers.
"I'm scared," he says. "But I have to be brave for Nemo."
* * *
Erin Mades, 23, waits in the lobby of downtown Tampa's Spa Waterside for what will be the first mud wrap of her life. Her boyfriend gave her a spa gift certificate in July, for her birthday. It sat unused until today.
"Aches," says the first-year Sarasota teacher. "Body aches. I carry a lot of tension in my shoulder."
She blames 40 percent of the tension on the FCAT, on the weight of the futures of her third-graders, on never leaving campus at 3 p.m.
At Emma E. Booker Elementary, her third-graders learn to compare and contrast. Here is what they learned last week: Hurricane Frances covered more area than Ivan, but Ivan is more powerful.
Ivan, of course, accounts for the other 60 percent of Erin's stress. She can't pull herself away from weather reports.
It is just after noon when Erin follows strangers deep inside the spa, beyond doors and more doors. Lavender and harp strings scent the air. Shyly, she climbs beneath a sheet.
The mud, Sedona mud, goes on warm and by hand. A woman massages it onto Erin's back, legs, abdomen, arms and face, then builds a cocoon around her, mounding paper first, then steaming towels, thermal wrap and a blanket. Erin giggles at a joke that she's a burrito.
"You'll be nice and mellow-yellow when we're finished with you," the woman tells Erin.
"I'm already getting there," Erin says with a sigh.
Beneath one last steaming towel, she closes her eyes. The room around her is silent. She listens to the music and tries to let it all go.
