All Stories Are Love Stories (10 page)

Then, as if someone shot the dog dead, everything stopped.

Gene was frozen to his seat, trying to understand. But only fragments of sense wafted through his consciousness, untethered.
Moment magnitude
, his mind said.
Strong motion
, his brain said,
strike-slip
, relevant words puncturing his awareness as if someone had released the entire lexicon of his professional career out of its neat storage box and the pieces were dropping and slipping into irretrievable domains, plinking and twanging like an infestation of dissonance in an orchestra.

A Camry that had been rolling slowly toward Gene's car struck his passenger door. The sight of its senseless driver frightened him into action. Quickly, he fumbled off his seat belt and shoved the door open and then slammed it behind him, all the while pulling and pulling at the air, trying to get it into his chest. But outside it was worse, with strange smells and sounds, a mixture of smoke and gas shot through with sounds primitive and wordless.

People who could were emerging from their cars like passengers from rough seas, unsure of their balance on land, their bodies shivering in the wake of a mind-boggling assault. Many were hushed or otherwise tongue-tied, trying to hold themselves up against the crushing pressures of pain and fear and disbelief.
This wasn't supposed to happen
, their
faces begged, right in the middle of afternoon traffic, a day lived almost to its close with the thoughtless assumption that it would be no different from the countless days that had come before it, a day promising no interruption in the patterns of life until the moment they were no longer. Armored in rainboots and jackets and corrective lenses, ready for a quick dash from car to apartment or hotel or plush dining room filled with wine and waiters, they stood still, disoriented and defenseless.

Gene's heart was ricocheting in his chest. He pressed his hand to his ribs, trying to keep it in. His throat was constricting, growing tighter, try as he might to keep it open. As he watched, a collection of people began to limp and walk and jog toward the freeway exit, as if by keeping order and following the exit signs—holding up their end of the pact they'd made with a certain reality—the sort of reliable truth they were expecting might be waiting for them just around the corner. And even though Gene knew better than most that it wasn't, he suddenly found himself straightening up and breathing a little more easily as, lemminglike, he followed the crowd. He knew the signs of shock in himself and others, but how much good does it do a man to know he's drowning if he has no chance of overcoming the water?

All he could do was put one foot in front of the other like everyone else, heading toward the city streets as if in a nightmare. He was already sweating with fear, cold under his clothes and soon to be wet on the outside, too, as a silent drizzle was blanketing everything, sealing them all in with the glue of misery. A bottleneck formed at the top of the exit,
forcing him to stop momentarily, then inch forward, keeping his eyes on his shoes, scuffed with something dark green and something white. He fought the urge to examine them closely, find out what that
was
, just as he was trying desperately not to look up and take in the scenes unfolding around him. The cursory glances he'd taken had suggested there was more to see than he could bear to know.

His hand went to his lip and came away bloody. He examined it, stars and spots swimming before him, a velvety blackness coming in from the periphery of his vision. But someone was tapping him on his left shoulder and holding out a Starbucks napkin, which he took, meekly thankful, to press against the gash. The woman who had handed it to him was saying something, but Gene's ears were unable to make sense of what she was trying to tell him. Frantically, he remembered his phone, hunting for it in his pocket, knowing it would be dead as he pulled it out, hoping against hope that he would be wrong. It flickered on: no reception. He stared at it anyway, until the screen shot of Franklin popped up.

Franklin.

Oh God.

A wave of fear wormed its way into and through him like a toxin.

North Beach—he calculated quickly, his mind stumbling as it raced—a few miles away by foot? More? He broke into a trot, trying not to push people over as he wove between them. Images of Franklin swam through his heart and mind, clouding everything else around him: Franklin and his sprained wrist, Franklin stuck somewhere, Franklin unable to find his
way out. All at once Gene was irrationally furious that every single scenario he could imagine was terrifying. How had he managed to finally find a person to love, only to have him become so weak, so susceptible? What if there was no way to get to him? He shook his head vigorously, as if he could physically rid himself of worry. No. There would be. There had to be. He grabbed onto the thought and allowed it to propel him through the crowd.

After the first wave of shaking stopped, Max found himself wedged between the seat he'd fallen off and the one in front of it, gripping the chair legs that had been bolted to the ground at his feet. He looked up, amazed to see the overhead lighting, the thirty-foot extensions of metal and glass and wiring that had been swinging enthusiastically for the past interminable minute, slow down and then stop, seeming to decide at the very last second not to drop to the floor. He took a deep breath, his chest hurting from the effort to unclench itself. Then he stood up quickly, taking in his surroundings, trying to make sense of what he saw. But the room was drawn in shards and upended angles, and the distorted view only encouraged a creeping hysteria to draw closer.

Near and on the stage, the children were getting to their feet on unsteady legs. Like newborn foals, they were determined to stand, undeterred by their own clumsiness as they struggled to right themselves. Better to be on their feet than vulnerable to the great predator that had just roared through the room. Everyone was strangely hushed, adults included, as though what had hit them was indeed alive and still out there, ready to pounce.

The first cry came from a small girl; Max knew her face, but what was her name? He felt the blood rush to his face.
How could he not know her name? He did not know the children well enough. It was too early in the season! But still, he felt terrible. A child under his care, even if that care was only temporary and musical, should be remembered. Something with an
A
. Anna? Allison? Allegra! Yes, that was it! A girl who could sing named Allegra, how oddly surprising that had seemed.

Now her left leg was crumpled under her, and her face was a river of pain. Recovering his senses, Max bolted out of his row and down the aisle, his mind directing him toward the injured girl without thought of what he could do for her. The others were now trying to help one another, too, but their movements were stiff and uneven, like grasses suddenly released from a prison of frost. A door at the entrance slammed open. Rafael stood there, calling out to him. Max had to focus to hear, to listen. Rafael was waving his hands. Of course! Max suddenly understood, looking up at the light fixture. As he watched, its swinging took on momentum. They had to get out. He glanced down again at the girl.

At any other time, he would see the odd angle of the leg beneath the knee and know she should not be moved. But, dumb with desperation, he tried to slip his arms under her so he could carry her out of there, even though he knew as he did that to move her would be to risk even more pain or damage or both. She did, too, her face pleading with him for another way, both of them listening intently to the silence, pregnant with the knowledge that it would be worse to move, far worse even than this. Incongruously, Max remembered her audition song:
a star
,
a star
,
dancing in the night with a tail
as big as a kite. S
uch an odd choice for a young girl! But it was Christmastime, her sister had explained, defensive, and all they had at home was a radio. Her sister! Of course. That was the girl he'd sat down beside, who'd run down with him, who was with her now, hysterical to the point of being furious, wild with helplessness. The younger girl locked eyes with him, her face as pinched and frantic as her body.

“Stay,” Max said. “I'll go get help, I'll be right back.”

He called out to Rafael, scooping the next nearest small child into his arms before he ran up the stairs with her, shouting at the other children to follow him as he did, all of them soon racing away, their minds and bodies jointly hopeful that danger was simply something that could be fled.

Vashti unclenched her fists and opened her eyes, afraid to believe the shaking was over. She sat up cautiously, a smattering of debris dropping off her neck and shoulders. The lights in the basement gift shop were out, which meant she had to feel around carefully with her trembling hands. She could just make out the form of the clerk, curled up against the wall beside the cash register. She told herself he might be resting or unconscious, her observations hasty and thin, the desire to mask the truth more powerful than the desire to see it. Her eyes adjusted to the dark as she crawled toward him tentatively, trying to make sense of the state he was in. It was only when she was a few mystified feet away that she realized she had been both drawn in and repulsed by him because his head was bent awkwardly back from his body, as though he had been craning his neck to see something far overhead when he died. A gash still bleeding from his forehead made him seem more alive than dead, and she fought the urge to find something to wipe up the blood. She tried to stand but couldn't yet, her legs and mind weak with shock. There was glass everywhere. Crawling toward him, she'd had to make fists inside her sweater to protect her hands. Everywhere she looked were empty shelves and a carpet littered with the shards of glass relics.

A brief aftershock made her curl in on herself like a tortoise and toppled the clerk onto his side. Vashti's heart stopped, then started again violently. She'd seen a dead body before, she told herself. Worse than that—she'd seen her mother, daughter, and husband dead. But still, she shuddered, none of those three deaths was as gruesome as this stranger's, whose sudden, violent end triggered some primal fear of contagion. She scuttled back to where she'd been and searched frantically for her purse, pulling it to her and somehow managing to get her phone out and into her hands, its comforting light responding as soon as she touched it.

Her fingers shook so hard, she couldn't pull up what she wanted. Finally, she managed to stab at the call-back button, but even as she lifted the phone to her ear, her hands were shaking. Outside, the sounds of sirens and anguish began to drift in.
No.
She found herself chanting to herself, shaking her head,
no no no
. She fumbled her way back to the phone's keyboard, dialing 911. Still nothing. Three more times, three more nothings. Javi would know to call before long to find her, wouldn't she? And oh God, their father, in his one-story Sonoma retirement rancher, would be fine, wouldn't he? She felt sickened, thinking of how he'd be reacting, how he was probably already dialing her number on a loop, his anxiety ratcheting up with every ring.

As suddenly as if she'd been slapped, she was desperate to get out. She eased herself up and—slowly, squinting—made her first few steps toward the door. Once mobilized, her legs ached underneath her with the anxious desire to flee, to lead her back outside into the world. Before she knew what she was
doing, she'd stumbled past the empty wreckage of the Peet's kiosk—barely able to peek in to confirm that no one was still there—and through the doors and up the steps to street level where,
oh God
,
oh no
, her consciousness began working its way out of the muck of shock, knocked into awareness by a wall of a thousand more hapless souls stretching up and down and across California Street, each one announcing anew confusion and chaos and fear and wonder. When she'd entered the cathedral earlier that day, California had been a solid, long street in the middle of this solid, packed city, the block she was on one of her favorites for many reasons, not least because it was flanked by the intricate Gothic majesty of Grace's glass windows and stone heights to the north and the midcentury modernism of the grand Masonic structure to the south—landmarks so central to the street's identity that they seemed to have generated a spiritual corridor, like a great stone mother and a somber marble father standing witness to the millions passing back and forth on the cable car between them. But now people swarmed at their foundations like panicked ants, gaping and picking their way among the broken detritus of trauma. Vashti tried to make as much sense of it as she could, but the run of glass doorways that marked the sobering entrance to the Nob Hill Masonic Center had shattered at its feet, its storied height nothing more than a space that was letting the wind blow through; and the Grace spire had overturned and plummeted to street level, as if someone had shot a majestic, mythical bird out of the sky.

But what she heard coming from people and their alarms was far worse—wordless anguish and confusion, a Babelesque
blathering puncturing the sky—and what she smelled was worse even than that: the unmistakable nose tickle of wood smoke. As a child in school, she had been taught about the great earthquake and fires of 1906 as if they were points of pride, myths on which the city was founded, not an inheritance they were doomed to receive. History never actually repeated itself, everyone knew that. Everyone knew that San Francisco might dip into economic turmoil or political chaos—but no one, really, she was sure of it now, now that she was standing right in it, no one ever imagined it could be lost to earthquakes—or
fire
. This was the new age; old-age horrors were nothing but stories now, weren't they? She blinked at the bright horror of her surroundings, confused momentarily about where she was and why and how she had come there.

Then, her mind woken fully, she looked up at the still standing Masonic Center and raced across the street and up its steps and through its doors, where she nearly collided with Max, who was racing through the lobby with a young girl in his arms.