crusted in a dried puddle of blood. The iced tea was cloudy with particles of plaster and stucco, and the headline on The Globe shrieked: Inside Clarissa Blake’s Lesbian Love Den! Her Bisexual Galpals Revealed! As curious as Marty was about Clarissa and her galpals, he wasn’t about to touch the magazine.
“When he wakes up, Mr. Cathburt and I usually water the garden,” the old lady was just chattering away. “Everything would die if it was left up to the Flannerys.”
Marty heard another voice, barely audible. At first he thought it might be Mr. Cathburt, squeaking from underneath the veranda, but then he recognized the scratchy broadcast cadence: the voice was coming from a speaker. He looked around and found a tiny head-set dangling from a cord that was pinched between the rubble and the smashed chaise lounge. Somewhere under all that, a Walkman had survived. The cord was sticky with blood, but Marty’s desire to hear some news was stronger than his revulsion. He crouched beside the late Mr. Cathburt, picked up the head set, and held it close to his ear.
The newscaster’s voice was weak and quivering, as if he was fighting himself to speak at all.
“… total, catastrophic devastation. The destruction is simply indescribable. The death toll is surely in the thousands. We don’t have details because the city has gone dark, there’s no electricity, the phone lines are down, all we know is what we’re seeing from our traffic chopper and picking up on the police band. We do know the epicenter was somewhere around Chatsworth, and damage extends as far north as Santa Barbara and as far south as San Juan Capistrano. There have been two strong aftershocks and dozens of smaller ones.
The coastal communities of Santa Monica, Marina Del Rey, and Playa Del Rey have been decimated. Wildfires are raging in Baldwin Hills, Malibu, and above Sherman Oaks. City Hall, the Griffith Park Observatory, the UCLA Medical Center, Dodger Stadium, the Santa Monica Pier, and Sleeping Beauty’s Castle are a few of the prominent structures that have crumbled. We’re hearing widespread reports of chemical spills and explosions, landslides, and bridge collapses. Underground gas lines have broken, fueling intense firestorms that have razed neighborhoods in Chatsworth, the Fairfax district, and Culver City.
Every freeway has sustained massive damage and most major streets are impassable, drastically impeding official rescue efforts, which are sporadic at best right now.
Los Angeles International Airport is on fire, its runways destroyed. Van Nuys Airport and Santa Monica Airport have also suffered severe damage.
The National Guard has been called in, but with virtually no way into the city, it could be days before they arrive in significant numbers.
We are on our own …”
Marty dropped the headset, his hand shaking. He was scared. There was no news about Calabasas, his home, but he didn’t take any relief in that. Calabasas wasn’t far from the epicenter of the quake and more than once had been threatened by fires that spread from Malibu canyon. Was their house destroyed? Was his wife about to be consumed by a raging wildfire?
“We spend the whole day out here, Mr. Cathburt and I, reading mostly,” the old lady was still talking. “It took Mr. Cathburt three weeks to read
The Pelican Brief
. I finished it in a weekend, but I’m not like most people. I like literary fiction.”
“You should go,” Marty got up quickly and went to her. “It isn’t safe here. The rest of this building could come down.”
“I have all the John Grisham books, if you’d like to borrow one. We could read here together, by the pond.”
The garden didn’t seem nearly so peaceful anymore. Now he could hear the flies buzzing over Mr. Cathburt, the wailing car alarms on the street, the thup-thup-thup of a helicopter in the distance, the tingle of bits of glass still falling to the ground.
“I have to go,” Marty told the old woman. “You
“When he wakes up, Mr. Cathburt and I usually water the garden,” the old lady was just chattering away. “Everything would die if it was left up to the Flannerys.”
Marty heard another voice, barely audible. At first he thought it might be Mr. Cathburt, squeaking from underneath the veranda, but then he recognized the scratchy broadcast cadence: the voice was coming from a speaker. He looked around and found a tiny head-set dangling from a cord that was pinched between the rubble and the smashed chaise lounge. Somewhere under all that, a Walkman had survived. The cord was sticky with blood, but Marty’s desire to hear some news was stronger than his revulsion. He crouched beside the late Mr. Cathburt, picked up the head set, and held it close to his ear.
The newscaster’s voice was weak and quivering, as if he was fighting himself to speak at all.
“… total, catastrophic devastation. The destruction is simply indescribable. The death toll is surely in the thousands. We don’t have details because the city has gone dark, there’s no electricity, the phone lines are down, all we know is what we’re seeing from our traffic chopper and picking up on the police band. We do know the epicenter was somewhere around Chatsworth, and damage extends as far north as Santa Barbara and as far south as San Juan Capistrano. There have been two strong aftershocks and dozens of smaller ones.
The coastal communities of Santa Monica, Marina Del Rey, and Playa Del Rey have been decimated. Wildfires are raging in Baldwin Hills, Malibu, and above Sherman Oaks. City Hall, the Griffith Park Observatory, the UCLA Medical Center, Dodger Stadium, the Santa Monica Pier, and Sleeping Beauty’s Castle are a few of the prominent structures that have crumbled. We’re hearing widespread reports of chemical spills and explosions, landslides, and bridge collapses. Underground gas lines have broken, fueling intense firestorms that have razed neighborhoods in Chatsworth, the Fairfax district, and Culver City.
Every freeway has sustained massive damage and most major streets are impassable, drastically impeding official rescue efforts, which are sporadic at best right now.
Los Angeles International Airport is on fire, its runways destroyed. Van Nuys Airport and Santa Monica Airport have also suffered severe damage.
The National Guard has been called in, but with virtually no way into the city, it could be days before they arrive in significant numbers.
We are on our own …”
Marty dropped the headset, his hand shaking. He was scared. There was no news about Calabasas, his home, but he didn’t take any relief in that. Calabasas wasn’t far from the epicenter of the quake and more than once had been threatened by fires that spread from Malibu canyon. Was their house destroyed? Was his wife about to be consumed by a raging wildfire?
“We spend the whole day out here, Mr. Cathburt and I, reading mostly,” the old lady was still talking. “It took Mr. Cathburt three weeks to read
The Pelican Brief
. I finished it in a weekend, but I’m not like most people. I like literary fiction.”
“You should go,” Marty got up quickly and went to her. “It isn’t safe here. The rest of this building could come down.”
“I have all the John Grisham books, if you’d like to borrow one. We could read here together, by the pond.”
The garden didn’t seem nearly so peaceful anymore. Now he could hear the flies buzzing over Mr. Cathburt, the wailing car alarms on the street, the thup-thup-thup of a helicopter in the distance, the tingle of bits of glass still falling to the ground.
“I have to go,” Marty told the old woman. “You
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