Myke Phoenix 4: Night of the Superstorm

Prologue and Act 1: A three-hour tour

Prologue

It was a dark and stormy night.

What?

OK, genius, you think you're so smart - you tell me how to describe the night. It was long after sunset, ergo it was dark outside. And the storm was hellacious enough to wake the dead - trees were crashing onto power lines, cars were getting swamped in high water, and the winds were howling. Howling, I tell you.

You know how the wind drives against your house so hard that it sounds like an oldtime movie about people trapped in a house on a dark and stormy night? That's how dark and stormy it was.

So don't roll your eyes at me when I tell you it was a dark and stormy night. Because it was dark, it was stormy, and it was night.

I'm sorry, I guess I'm a little touchy tonight. It's dark and stormy outside now, and it kind of reminds me about the night of the superstorm.

How about this: It was so dark and so stormy that even Myke Phoenix, the mighty protector of Astor City, looked out into the dark, poured himself a cup of hot chocolate, and closed the curtains. Well, technically it was Paul Phillips, the mere mortal who occasionally became Mychus the Warrior, who decided he was going to settle in front of the television set rather than go out in the storm.

The television meteorologist grinned back at him and confirmed his instincts.

"Batten down the hatches and strap yourself in," she chirped. "It's going to be a bumpy ride. It's a dark and stormy night, just like a bad old novel."

"Bad old novel"? Everybody's a critic.

Twelve hours later, there was no grinning and no chirping in Astor City. But it certainly was a bumpy ride, which began when Paul realized his wife was not coming home that night.

Act 1: A three-hour tour

Dana Dunsmore Phillips wiped sweaty palms off on her skirt and sighed.

"This won't do at all," she said. "Come on, Dana, chill."

But she wasn't chilling and, yes, it wasn't doing. At all. She took another deep breath and tried to clear her mind. It would not be the end of the world if Gerald and Ginny Hallstrom decided not to market their products through the Dana Dunsmore Agency - but it would be the start of a new world of greater financial security. Every big new client meant a stronger and less unpredictable future for the company.

And truth to tell, the company's future was more unpredictable than it used to be. Oh, for so many years the sky was the limit; she still got goosebumps when she thought back on the day she first realized she not only needed to hire someone to help get the work done but could afford to pay that person a decent salary. And that happened more than a dozen times over the years, so that the agency was now comprised of 18 wonderfully creative and motivated people who were excited about telling their clients' stories.

In the rise and fall of the economy, clients tended to make the mistake of thinking they have to make do without marketing, not realizing that marketing is how they make do. "I have to cut the budget somewhere," they'd say apologetically, and although Dana made a convincing case that advertising and marketing is not the place to cut, the clients would cut anyway, and she'd be looking around for new clients again.

Gerald and Virginia Hallstrom were among the handful of the most pre-eminent entrepreneurs in Astor City. They had taken Hallstrom Professional Services from a mom-and-pop cleaning service to a regional economic force that included interior design and landscaping. The Dana Dunsmore Agency had a handful of clients that were Hallstrom's size and stature, and Dana knew how that kind of client can stabilize a business.