The Cornerstone by Anne C. Petty Page A

subside. What. The. Fuck. Tom locked the door and turned off the lights in the store front.
    He stuck his head in Nanette’s office. “Did you feel that?”
    “Hm?” She pulled her attention out of numbers and sales figures. “Like…what?”
    “Like a rumble, in the building.”
    “Oh, sort of…I thought it was a big truck going by or something.”
    Tom stood for a moment, unsure, replaying the sensation and not coming up with answers.
    “Everything all right?” Nanette was looking at him funny.
    “No, I mean, yeah. No problem, everything’s fine. Front is secure.” He came in and handed her the keys.
    She took them and regarded him from under iridescent-shadowed lids. “I know you have a lot on your mind, nearly getting killed in traffic and having to put your baby in the shop. Go home and go to bed.”
    Good advice. He’d heard it from someone else recently, too.
    “Thanks, I will.” He slipped out the back door and into the employee parking lot behind the bookstore. It was dark as pitch. No moon, faint stars. Letting his eyes adjust before walking across the lot, he allowed himself a moment of dismay at the sight of the tin can rental car squatting in his parking place. The only thing it had going for it over his Harley was it was warmer. But not by much.
    He was about to get in when he felt the tremor again, a faint shaking under his feet as if the solid earth had suddenly gone fluid. Automatically he started counting the seconds…one-one hundred, two-one hundred, three-one hundred…the tremor stopped. Definitely not his imagination. He got in the car and sat in the dark for a few minutes, waiting to see if it would happen again. When it didn’t, he started the engine and eased out of the parking lot.
    He drove slowly most of the way home, and passed few cars on the highway. Everything seemed normal. Tom’s mouth settled into a tight, thin line. Normal his ass. A cast member inexplicably injured in rehearsal, the new back tire of his bike blowing out for no reason he could find, red mist onstage that the lighting guy hadn’t programmed, that stupid tarot card reading forecasting destruction and exploding towers, and now earthquakes where to his knowledge there had never been any. No, things were not the hell normal.
    The street where he’d rented a one-room studio apartment over a garage was completely dark this early in the morning, even though its neighborhood edged up against the Georgia Tech campus. Normally you could hear the typical background noise that afflicted most student housing blocks—loud music, parties, groups of people standing around on sidewalks, and continual sounds of cars coming and going. But tonight, all was dark and quiet. The garage was a freestanding wooden car barn set somewhat behind the main two-storey house to which it belonged. He parked the rental car in one of the bays under the apartment and climbed the outside wooden stairs up to his room.
    Although billed in the real estate ad as “spacious studio housing near campus,” it was in reality one largish sparsely furnished room with an adjoining smaller room the size of a closet containing a tiny shower stall, sink, and toilet that could have fit comfortably into a mobile home. There was a clothes rack against one wall for hanging things like suits and coats (which he didn’t own) and an old, scarred chest of drawers for everything else. Built-in cabinets above a six-foot kitchen counter on the eastern-facing wall were designed for glassware he also didn’t own. The counter contained a sink and a small apartment fridge under it, but no stove. He’d bought a second-hand microwave at a yard sale, which so far served his needs adequately. He ate a lot of ramen-in-a-cup.
    The view of the green tops of oaks and elms from the eastern window over the sink was pleasing enough to make up for any missing amenities. Tom was accustomed to living frugally, and when he was on the move, he carried his worldly belongings in a