Moorpark Palms - 19. Chapter 19

It was 4 AM. I was sleeping. What else would I be doing? Then I was up. Whomps. Car alarms. Quivering. I was quivering, but I knew exactly what had happened. Earthquake.
You’re told to stay in bed. Blankets mask the sound of walls shattering. I huddled. Nothing heavy hangs over my bed. I was earthquake-ready. Still, the mattress bucked. Wind chimes clanged.
Finally, it stopped. What seemed ten years later. Then: Sirens. Shouting. Darkness. It was dark before, but my head was under a pillow. Flashlight? No flashlight. Floor? Yep, floor. Flashlight on floor? Nope. Books on floor. Newspapers on floor. Lamp on floor. Flashlight? Flashlight! But no electricity.
I dressed for winter though it had been eighty the day before. In January, no less. Got to gloat about something. I grabbed everything I thought I’d need. Keys. Wallet. Watch. Batteries. Batteries? Not something I normally carried, but who knew what I’d run into?
The front door was jammed, a night-latch I never use wedged in place. I found a screwdriver and dismantled the damned thing. So I could get back in – providing the authorities let me. I was way too calm for a disaster.
In the courtyard, everyone seemed gathered, half the guys without shirts – quintessential California. “Everyone safe?” I asked. No one else had. They were too busy awarding Olympic scores.
“6.5.”
“7.5.”
“8!”
We were all there. Every sniveling child and ex-husband. Edan had her kitten, Lonnie his snake. What a comfort.
“Did you shut off the gas?” I asked Dennis.
“Hey!” he decided, “Good idea.”
Still stoned, after all these years.
Later, I learned you’re only supposed to sniff for gas. Shut it off, and you wait forever to get it turned back on. Though if I’d smelled some of those apartments that morning, I would have let them explode.
We shut off the gas and then the water. We left the circuit breakers on – hopeful.
It was barely 5 AM. Stars I’d never seen lit the sky, but it was an hour till dawn. Car alarms slowly died though there were still sirens on the street. And dogs howling. Drums. You’d think the moon had eclipsed.
No one had news. Fourteen apartments and not one portable radio. Lots of beer though, oozing down those tattooed chests. I escaped to my car, tuned the radio, and promised I’d get a portable for next time.
Next time!
“A major quake!” reporters seemed to exult. “No lights! No water! No gas!”
“Don’t drive!” they exclaimed. “Don’t drink! Don’t panic!”
Right.
Despite the warnings, cars left our lot:
The two Hungarians and their dog. And pillows, lots of pillows. Who owns so many? What could they do with all of them?
Gianpaolo, in the stretch-limo. Hell of a time to get paged.
Helen. Rushing to work at the hospital. I envied that kind of devotion.
But the radio said, “Don’t Drive!” so I sat in my car. Besides, where would I go?
From Ventura Boulevard, fifty feet south, reporters sent H. G. Wells flashes:
“Buildings demolished!”
“Fires blazing!”
“Streets flooded!”
Flooding? In a desert?
“Water mains crumbled!”
Ah.
Finally – dawn. Carefully leaving my car, I circled our building. The pool wall had tumbled. Cinder blocks dove throughout LA. The pool gazebo leaned at 40 degrees – it looked like the Jetsons’ futuresque carport. Our mail kiosk was pebbles, its wishing-well roof shards. But the apartment building stood, o’er splintered windows and stucco cracks.
Everyone who hadn’t left was still in the courtyard. What had they been doing for a hour? Kyle was building a tent from sheets and charging Gini to sleep in it. Forget acting, the kid should be an agent. Edan was crushing snails with her Barbie.
Harv and Lorelle soon hauled suitcases down the steps. “Gotta a flight to catch to Honolulu,” Harv shouted. “Think the planes’ll fly?”
“Bet everyone wants out,” Mack groused.
“We got reservations!”
“Where are the twins?” I heard Annie ask Lorelle.
“With my step-mom – their half-grandma. I’m sure they’re all right.”
“They’ll be fine,” Harv assured her. “What’s safer than Northridge?”
We later found out that was the center of the quake.
Leaving the courtyard, I cut through what had been our pool wall. A water spout blocked Ventura Boulevard, shooting straight across like a riot hose and coming from what had been a fire hydrant. Glass from store windows glazed the cement. Guests from the nearby 12-story hotel crowded its sidewalks, staring up at its ravaged tower like the Hindenburg. The men all wore bathrobes. Clearly tourists. As I moved back along our street, children taunted each other while their mothers clutched rosaries.
In my apartment, everything that could fall did. Water bottles leapt, like lemmings from the cabinet over the stove. Books levitated. Magazines flew. My computer sat rakishly atilt. But only one drinking glass broke – probably clobbered by migrating water bottles.
Why own a cabinet of bottled water? Why three-dozen cans of tuna? A case of saltines? Earthquake food. And so tasty.
The radio also warned us to hoard a hundred dollars – in singles and in change. And never use your gas below a half-tank. Hang up all dangling pay phones. Who made these rules? Charismatic Fire Chiefs, whose TV ratings soared with each disaster.
I put things away. I’m generally neat. And there was nothing else to do.
Except ride aftershocks – which came steadily as Valkyries. A giant, yanking teeth. Frat Boys, butting heads.
The phone was dead, so I couldn’t call my family or check on friends. The freeways were down, so it wasn’t like I could drive. There was no heat, no lights, no running water. Joni and Mack, clearly less prepared than I was, were siphoning the pool with Ripple bottles.
I ate breakfast: Cold cereal – got a case of that, too. Then I listened to the car radio again.
“Don’t leave home!” reporters triumphed. “Don’t even try!”
As they drove all over LA.
“This is Gary Merino, standing near what – only last night – was a busy shopping mall.”
“This is Steve Kirby, perched on the ruins of a teetering overpass.”
“This is Lisa Holloway, surveying what had been Warren Beatty’s Hollywood Hills home. Say, Warren, how do you feel about this?”
How do you like your blue-eyed boy now, People magazine?
I tried to read. Tried paying bills. Even tried shining my shoes. Four pair – I was big time bored. Outside, Mack and Annie fought.
“Don’t eat that, Edan!” Annie shouted. “I told you – never eat anything Mack gives you!”
“Never eat nuttin’ you find up your nose, neither,” Mack sullenly replied.
Finally, I went to sleep. I’d been out till late the night before. Before the quake, I’d slept maybe two hours. Despite the aftershocks, I quickly dozed off.
I can usually sleep through anything – in college once, a twelve-hour Gene Pitney Fest hosted by a feeble, retro roommate. It’s genetic. Dad slept on a carrier deck all the way back from Korea. Okay, he got up occasionally to play poker.
A huge aftershock woke me near noon. We still had no power or heat. Radio reporters continued trumpeting:
“Disaster!”
“Pillars of Flame!”
“Stay Home!”
Where it’s safe?
But I needed a phone.
The freeway entrances were jammed. Who, exactly, was “staying home?” Cars blocked Ventura Boulevard. Side streets were crowded with people afraid to go back in their houses. And with children, merrily looting. Using narrow canyon roads – was I crazy? – I headed for the studio. Why? Telephones. Emergency power. Earthquake supplies for 2500 – originally stocked for nuclear war but now used for more mundane calamities.
At work, the parking lot was empty. If it hadn’t been a holiday, it was now. There wasn’t even a guard in the security booth. But the electricity worked and my magnetic ID passed me through the gate. Still, our offices were soaked – a roof-top water pipe had splintered. Open file drawers dripped rust. Suspended ceilings were fallen papier-mache. The maintenance crew knew this when I hunted them down but couldn’t help. Control rooms everywhere were flooded. Million-dollar video equipment was being ruined.
Still, the phones worked! I got through to Massachusetts without trouble. My family was relieved.
“How’d you get a line out?” Dad shouted. “We’ve been phoning for hours. Your street’s all over the news.”
I righted one of the TVs. Ventura Boulevard was all over the news. I could have stayed home and waved to friends
“When did you find out?” I wanted to know.
“Right after you. They interrupted Good Morning, America.”
The joy of satellites: strangers knows you’re dead before you do.
“Will you call everyone?” I asked. “We’re supposed to stay off the phones.”
“Don’t worry. And don’t go driving!”
Try explaining “traffic” to a man comfortably sitting home in rural Massachusetts.
“And don’t be a hero!” Mom added. “They’re showing pictures of morons rescuing puppies from burning houses.”
Forget teaching Darwin. Teach the Food Chain.
“I’ll be fine,” I promised. “Give everyone my love.”
I found a shovel from one of our sets and started digging out the office. Soaked ceiling tile is as heavy as sodden snow. Wet scripts aren’t much lighter. We had everything on disk, but who knew which computers had survived? I blotted the keyboards and monitors with diapers. Why stock tons o’ diapers? Ask the Fire Chief.
Hours later, I was getting ready to leave only to hear the TV crow: “Curfew! Curfew! Off the streets by dark, or spend the night in jail!”
Except, of course, those toughened reporters. ’Specially trained for hardships.
It was almost five. I’d hoped to be home by then, but doing that might end me up in the slammer all night, playing Pinochle with some pea-brained coke-head. Instead, I called a nearby friend and asked how he felt about overnight guests.
Hours later, after peacefully watching the sunset from a twenty-first floor balcony of a steel-and-glass apartment building, I fell asleep high above a fault. Surrounded by concrete. Occasionally feeling the ground shake. Wondering why I possibly felt safe.