I.

Enrique was awakened by a booming clap of thunder that seemed to shake the ground under his bed. He looked around in the dark and could see that his brothers were still sleeping, unfazed by the chaos in the skies above them.

He rose from bed, his bare feet striking the cool stone floor, and walked out to the front of the house, which contained the small kitchen and the area where they lived and ate. His mother was not there, having finished preparing her meals for the next day and gone to bed.

Enrique continued out to the covered porch, where the heavy rain drummed against the tin roof. He sat in the old wooden chair where his father used to sit in the evenings, smoking his cigar and accepting visits from the other men in the town. The porch was absent those visits now since his father had died. As he watched the lightning crash through the sky like cracks in a glass window, he recalled how the men had come to see his mother and offer their sympathies. She would send young Enrique out to play with the neighborhood children while the men spoke in low voices about how his father had died in the home of one of his mistresses, apparently struck down by a heart attack.

He remembered that on one such occasion, he ran back to the house to look for a ball for his baseball game. He stopped short at the door when he saw one of his father's friends sitting in the kitchen while his mother served him some coffee. He listened outside the doorway as the man told his mother that he would give her more than enough of the money she needed to raise her children if she agreed to be his mistress. A boy of ten, Enrique knew enough about sex to know what the man had meant by his proposal and he held his breath, waiting to hear what his mother would say. It was true that she was a very beautiful woman and having been quite a bit younger than her deceased husband, she still had every opportunity to seek the company of men or perhaps remarry. Since her husband's death, she'd been working long hours cleaning houses for the wealthy residents of Havana. Since Enrique had her to credit with teaching him how to play the guitar and sing, he had asked her if she could work as a performer instead. But after so many years of being a traditional wife and mother, she no longer had the confidence to perform publicly. She now pinned her hopes to Enrique's burgeoning musical talent; she had higher expectations for him than she had for any of her other children and he knew it. When he heard her say to the man that she appreciated the offer but her family would be fine, Enrique ran back to his friends, knowing that the time was soon coming when he'd go to work to help her.

As he sat on the porch this late night, remembering these things, he enjoyed the rumbling and almost rhythmic sounds of the thunder and the rain. He made a point to remember the sounds he liked so he could try to duplicate them with the drum that his uncle had given him. As the thunder faded into the distance and the rain lightened its assault on the house, Enrique fell limp, asleep in the chair.

II.

Lucy hurried to get back to the apartment as dark, rain-filled clouds started to roll over New York. The low rumble of thunder could be heard in the distance, even over the normal sounds of traffic and bustling activity in the city.

While most people began heading for cover out of a desire not to be soaked by rain, Lucy did so out of fear.

Lucille sat up in bed, clutching a doll tightly to herself, having been awakened by an explosion of thunder that sounded as though it had ripped through her bedroom. It used to be that whenever something such as this scared her in the night, she would run to her parents' room and her father would comfort her with some rhyme or little song until the storm passed. Since he had passed away that winter, this was the first time she'd be awaked by a storm and not had him there to call out for.

When the next round of thunder roared outside, accompanied by a flash of lightning, Lucille scrambled out of bed and to her parents' bedroom. Her mother was soundly asleep and Lucille shook her. "Mommy!"

Lucille's mother blinked her eyes as she began to awaken and sat up slowly, clicking on the decorative lamp at her bedside. "Lucille, what on earth is the matter with you?"

Lucille climbed onto the bed next to her mother, still clinging to her doll. "Mommy, the thunder scared me!"

Her mother's eyes widened as she now heard the storm outside. "For heaven's sake, Lucille, did you wake me up because of a summer storm?"

Lucille nodded. "It's so loud!"

Her mother got up from the bed, took Lucille by the hand and led her back to her own bedroom rather unsympathetically. "I'm not going to coddle you the way your father did, Lucille. You're going to get back into your own bed this minute and understand that the sounds you hear are only the weather."

Lucille crawled back under the blankets of her bed as her mother left the room without another word.

Just as the first drops of rain were falling from the sky, Lucy dashed into the apartment building and up the stairs. When she opened the door, she saw Ricky standing in the living room, looking at the mail. "Hi, honey!" He smiled at her. "I was wonderin' where you were, it looks like rain!"

"Yes, it's raining now," she said, trying to hide the stammer in her voice.

Ricky looked at her, recognizing that she didn't seem like her normal self. "Are you alright?"

Lucy nodded, embarrassed to admit to her fairly new husband that she was afraid of thunderstorms. "Of course, I'm fine!" She went to the kitchen, breathing a bit easier that the thunder seemed to be softer than it had been.

Ricky followed her into the kitchen. "Hey, you din't gimme a kiss," he teased.

She smiled and kissed him sweetly. "I'm sorry." She turned to the refrigerator. "I'll have some dinner ready for you soon."

He nodded slowly. "Ok. I'm gonna take a shower, I'll be back." He walked out of the kitchen as she carried on in silence.

III.

The rest of the evening did not bring much peace to Lucy, as storms persisted intermittently while Ricky was at work. She passed the time trying to read, but with each boom of thunder, she lost her concentration. She turned on the radio for a time, but the music did nothing to mask the violent sounds outside.

When Ricky finally arrived home, Lucy was waiting, unable to relax enough to sleep even if she'd wanted to. He walked into the bedroom with a smile, his hair wet from what seemed like a hard rain outside. "Hi, sweetheart! Boy, it's comin' down!"

The thunder clapped again as he undressed to his boxer shorts. When she didn't answer him, he turned to look at her again and frowned. She was as white as a sheet, the blush having vanished from her face, and she seemed to be trembling.

He climbed into bed beside her, worried. "Lucy, what's wrong?"

She looked at him with wide, fearful eyes. She didn't want to admit to what she knew was a childish phobia, but neither did she want to keep it from him, especially since it was so obvious to him that something was wrong. "I…I never told you this before, Ricky, but I'm afraid of thunder and lightning."

Lucy braced herself for him to laugh at her or tell her that she was being silly, but Ricky looked at her warmly and put his arms around her, drawing her into his embrace. When another round of thunder echoed around them, she jumped slightly, but the protection of his arms and the warmth of his skin comforted her.

His voice was soft. "Why din't you tell me?"

She bit her lip. "I don't know, I guess I was embarrassed. It's kind of childish to be afraid, isn't it?"

"No," he replied simply. As the storm above them continued to roll through, Ricky's embrace tightened around Lucy and he began to sing softly to her. The melody was foreign to her and the words he sang were in Spanish, but it was beautiful and calming. And although his voice was low and steady, it seemed to drown out the storm.

Ricky continued to sing to her until it seemed that the storm had passed and his voice was the only sound in the room. Lucy looked up from where she'd been resting her head against his chest and he smiled. "Feel better?"

She nodded. "Yes. Thank you. What song was that?"

He shrugged slightly. "An old song my mother taught me."

Lucy grinned and sank back into his embrace. "What's it about?"

Ricky laughed softly before quietly relaying the message of the song. "Actually, it's about a little cat. See, it was rainin' and her brothers and sisters were in dry places but there was no room for her. So she was out cryin' in the rain and they laughed at her. But a man heard her cryin' and he took her inside his house and that's where she stayed forever."

She ran her hand along her husband's skin and smiled. "What about me? Will you keep me forever?"

He rested a hand on her cheek and lifted her face to look at him. "I thought I said that pretty clear six months ago when I married you."

"That's right, I remember now," she whispered with a smile as he lowered his lips to kiss her. Their tongues slipped together slowly as rain began to pelt against the bedroom window, this time without the accompaniment of thunder.

Ricky lowered Lucy gently as he continued to kiss her, his hand sliding down the side of her body to rest on her thigh. He withdrew his lips from her momentarily and smiled. "Do you want me to keep you forever?"

She giggled and raised one of her knees along his side. "How can I make that more clear to you?"

He smiled broadly and kissed her again, his hand gliding over her knee as the light cotton of her nightgown slipped away from it.

Their kiss grew deeper and more passionate as Ricky's fingers moved lightly along the inside of Lucy's thigh until they reached the source of all his desires. As he pulled the lace panties away and tossed them to the floor, his lips moved close to her ear. "Did you know that I'm like a thunderstorm," he asked in a low, seductive tone.

Her breathing grew shallow as his hand returned to its journey inside her thigh. "How?"

Ricky touched her gently, his fingers teasing her without yet entering her depths. "They start with clouds that come slowly through the sky and the thunder is quiet," he whispered.

Lucy closed her eyes and drew in a sharp breath as he moved over her and nimbly undid the small buttons of the gown she wore until it fell gently away from her. He left small kisses around her breasts, like the first raindrops scattering across the ground. "Then the storm is over you and it's getting' louder and you know somethin' is comin'…"

She whimpered softly as he positioned himself between her knees, his hand sliding down her stomach and back to waiting entrance. He caressed her so slowly that it caused her great agony and she arched her back, reaching for him to fill her.

He smiled, his excitement heightened by her anxious want of him. "Then the lightnin' strikes," he rasped, tugging one of her nipples in his teeth and probing her center with his quivering erection.

Another small cry escaped Lucy's lips as Ricky's hands moved teasingly up her sides, raising her arms above her head and clasping her hands. "Do you know what comes after the lightnin'," he hissed in her ear, the tip of his manhood beginning to push gently into her.

She was nearly crazy with need. "Ricky, please…"

The desperate sound of his wife's voice made Ricky's blood race hot through his veins. "What comes after the lightnin', Lucy?"

"Thunder, it's thunder," she conceded breathlessly.

"That's right, mi querida." He gave her the full length of himself in reward as she cried out loud with pleasured satisfaction.

Lucy strained upward to receive him as he penetrated her repeatedly. When Ricky released her hands, she threw her arms around him, clinging to his back in an attempt to bring her body as close to his as it could be.

He continued his possession of her, her breasts pressed against him. His fingers wound through her soft red curls as her nails indented his back, the pinching pain driving him more deeply through her in the same way that a spur causes a horse to gallop.

Finally, he groaned loudly with one strong thrust, his seed rushing through her like a rain swollen river. She cried his name with abandon as his body tensed against her and climax surged through her like a bolt of lightning.

Ricky and Lucy lay against each other, the sounds of their breaths harmonizing with the gentle rain outside their window.

She nestled herself again into his embrace and he smiled. "And then the storm is through and the trees and rivers have water and it's quiet again until next time."