“Get down here!” Andrew shouted at them, and the three of them walked cautiously down the stairs. The house had stopped shaking, and the groaning sound was receding, but they could still hear it.
“I smell gas,” Tyla said as she walked into the kitchen. It was dark in the house, and Andrew found a flashlight and shined it on them. It was pitch black outside, and the old wooden house was creaking loudly as it settled after the earthquake.
“I need a wrench to turn the gas off. What did you do with the tools?” he asked her. He looked startled but not frightened. “Stop crying,” he said to Daphne, as Tyla pulled her close. She was shaking.
“I don’t know. I think they’re in the garage where you put them.” He pulled open the front door, and they could see wires shooting sparks in the street, and people gathering with flashlights. He told Will to come and help him in the garage, and Tyla held Daphne’s hand as they walked outside. People were talking to one another and everyone looked shocked by the force of the quake, and panicked as an aftershock brought another wire to the ground across the street.
“Where the hell did you put the wrench?” Andrew asked through clenched teeth when he came back to them, with Will trailing behind him, looking scared. He wasn’t sure what was worse, his father or the earthquake, or the pitch black outside, and the live wires across the street. “I can’t turn the gas off without one,” he said to Tyla.
“I don’t use it,” she said quietly, trying to calm Daphne, “maybe we don’t have one.”
“Well, we’d damn well better find one before the house explodes or catches fire,” Andrew said, as people began coming out of their houses and walking into the street.
Daphne started to wail then. “Our house is going to burn down, and I left Martha inside.” Martha was her favorite doll, and Tyla didn’t dare go inside to get her, in case something fell, or the house exploded from the leaking gas.
“We’ll go inside soon to get her,” Tyla said, holding Daphne close to her, “and the house isn’t going to burn down. Daddy’s going to turn off the gas.”
“Daddy needs a wrench and he can’t find one,” she continued to cry, as Tyla held her, and she saw Andrew walk to the house next door, and bang hard on the door. No one answered. They were either out or injured, or too frightened to open the door. Andrew continued pounding, and Will came to stand next to his mother. She could feel his whole body shaking as he huddled next to her, as Andrew went on banging his fist on the door. He wasn’t going to leave until someone answered, so he could borrow a wrench.
* * *
—
Peter Stern was hunched over his old manual typewriter, typing as he did every night in his small bedroom in the attic. He worked in the advertising department of a local magazine by day, and had worked for Arthur Harriman at night for the past year. Peter considered it an honor to work for him, and the night job he had with him had saved his life. He made a very small salary at the magazine and lived on the commissions he made from selling advertising. Both amounts combined weren’t enough to allow him to pay rent for even a studio apartment in a decent neighborhood, and he didn’t want to live with half a dozen strangers as roommates anymore, particularly since he wanted to write at night. He’d been working on a novel for the past two years. At thirty-two, he didn’t have a job he loved, but writing was his passion, and completing a novel and getting it published was his dream. He hoped to be a successful writer one day.
He’d been living in a seedy apartment in the Haight-Ashbury with five roommates he’d found on Craigslist, and with all the comings and goings of his roommates, it had been almost impossible to write.
He’d found the job working for Arthur Harriman in the Chronicle. He needed someone to sleep in his home at night, and provide occasional assistance. His housekeeper of many years, Frieda, stayed until eight P.M., and cooked him dinner. She arrived at seven in the morning. A man came to assist him on weekends. He needed someone to sleep in his home seven days a week, in exchange for a small salary and a bedroom. He was a world famous concert pianist, and had been blind since a car accident when he was eighteen. He was eighty-two years old and managed very well on his own. He just needed to know that there was someone in the house, but he was very independent and extremely self-sufficient. Peter had expected to meet a frail old man when he came to interview for the job, and was astounded to find him walking all over the house, managing the stairs with ease, with more energy than people half his age.
Peter was nothing more than a presence in case of an emergency of some kind, but there had never been one. They had long philosophical discussions, and often Arthur practiced at night. He was interested in the subject of Peter’s novel, and he was vital and alive, well informed, and had someone to drive him when he needed to go out, who also traveled with him when he had a concert scheduled in another city. When he traveled, Peter had time off, but he rarely went out at night. He was intent on finishing his novel.
When the earthquake hit, Peter stopped typing for a minute while he wondered what was happening. The moment he realized it was an earthquake, he lurched toward the stairs across the floor that felt like it was rippling beneath his feet, and shouted as loud as he could.
“I’m coming, Mr. Harriman! I’m coming!” He slid down the stairs, reached the floor below within seconds, and found Arthur Harriman sitting underneath his grand piano, looking surprisingly calm. “I’m here, Mr. Harriman, I’m here. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. It’s a big one, get under here with me!” He’d been playing when it happened. “Are you hurt?”
“No, I’m fine,” Peter told him.
“Do you have shoes on? There will be broken glass everywhere.” The sound of the earthquake tearing the earth beneath them was awful, and unconsciously, Peter held tightly to his arm. He’d never been in an earthquake before. He had come to San Francisco from the Midwest two years before. He was a good-looking young man with dark hair and brown eyes and had a boyish quality to him and a gentle manner. He had grown very fond of the older man he worked for every night. He reminded Peter of his own grandfather, who was a dignified old gentleman, a lawyer in the small town where they lived. Peter had gone to college at Northwestern, and had dreamed of moving to San Francisco for years. Growing up, his family life had been wholesome. His father ran the local newspaper and his mother was a teacher, but their small town was lackluster and dull. His brother and sister had moved to Chicago after college and Peter had dreamed of coming West.
“I have shoes on,” Peter reassured him. “Where I come from, we have tornadoes. That’s even worse. They just pick up houses and they fly away.”
“It’ll be over in a minute, son. Don’t be afraid,” Arthur said in a kind voice, listening and waiting for it to pass. “Is the power still on?”