All Stories Are Love Stories (13 page)

As Gene made his way deeper into the city, he saw that those not also on the move had collected dutifully in clusters of need. Here, a man on the sidewalk with his wife and some concerned strangers standing around him; there, some dirty teenagers huddled outside an apartment where they had been squatting or toking or both, watching smoke pour from one of its windows as they might watch a movie screen. Waiting, no doubt, for help, for rescue—not quite sure why it hadn't already come. This is how people live in cities, emergency services their first thoughts in an emergency. Passing them, Gene battled a wave of hysteria worse than any so far. He was beginning to guess at a truth most of them would never have imagined: that there might not be any help coming.

There was only so much a state-of-the-art hospital or an underfunded fire department could do when the city's narrow, hilly streets were blocked by all manner of debris. And earthquakes weakened bridges, potentially limiting or even preventing access into the city from two of its three entry points. That third point—which was accessed primarily by the 101 and 280 freeways to the south—was in the area where Gene suspected the epicenter had been. Thinking of the spot on the 101 where he'd left his car, he knew no one
would be able to pass through there. And with the wind and rain and cloud cover typical of such a bad winter, air and sea arrivals would be nearly impossible.

The terror was squeezing his throat, the full impact of what was coming dawning on him with brutal clarity. Because it wasn't even the seismic events themselves that truly frightened Gene. It was what the damage had no doubt ignited and the wind was spreading and the water would never reach that brought scenarios to mind Gene could hardly bear to imagine. The moment the earth began moving beneath them, he knew that gas lines and power cords would have snapped and sparked, igniting anything from the complicated tangles in multistory office buildings to faulty kitchen toasters and in-wall wiring not up to code. All this and more would have started fires in many of the thousands of buildings sandwiched in next to each other citywide, ready to share flames like whispered secrets between lovers. And the city's only defenses included a severely limited firefighting population, a statewide drought, and major water sources over the San Andreas Fault itself: early city planners had found “lakes” there and assumed they were the result of good fortune long before they were understood to be “sag ponds” created by the fault's earlier shifts. As far as fire was concerned, San Francisco was nothing more than an overpopulated tinderbox, a feast that took moments to prepare and could go on for hours or days. Possibly even weeks.

Fresh pinpricks of light pierced his vision, making Gene nearly stumble as he walked. How had he ever been able to
bear this information clinically? How had any of his colleagues, or anyone else? Had everyone within shouting distance simply been laboring under a collective, contagious insanity? As the self-doubt swelled, Gene's deeper fears began climbing steadily to the surface. God, was this going to be the moment when he realized his father had been right? Was he nothing more than a talking head? But it was even worse than that. He hadn't just built his career on this house of cards; he'd built a home here, too.

Home.
Franklin. Oh God
. Again. Those words in his heart and on his lips were half-prayer, half-plea.

Every block revealed a new terrain of blown-out windows, streets as wet and shiny with glass as they would normally be with rain, crumbling buildings and disarray of every kind. Gene broke into a trot and then took the mess at a run, eager to be on the other side of it. Passing by the brick warehouses of the design district, Gene found himself in the midst of a shouldering, shoving crowd. He pushed through, desperate to escape. But pushing only got him jostled to the left toward a building that had crumbled, a cloud of dust still filling the air all around it. Gene was just steps away from the rubble when, like a circus performer with a gruesome act, a bald man with a copper-colored handlebar mustache emerged from the building's remains carrying a small, silver-haired man in a torn security uniform with an open gash on his left thigh. The cut was almost obscene, blood pouring from a part of the body too intimate to be exposed. Gene locked eyes with the rescuer, and as the space closed between them he heard the victim muttering
incoherently in a language Gene didn't recognize. Then the old man was looking up and reaching out to him, reaching toward Gene as if he knew him, or expected him, or both. There was nothing Gene could do but receive his injured body and lower him to the ground.

The rescuer spoke only a few words to Gene, most of which he did not comprehend. He stared up at his moving mouth, noticing he had wax on the corners of his mustache. When the rescuer turned and went back into the collapsing building, Gene saw a star tattoo on the nape of his neck. What made a man do that? Take ink into his own skin and offer himself to strangers, just walk into a building that was more likely to fall on top of him and walk out with someone who was almost dead?

The older man was tugging at his pants. Gene bent down, trying to understand the man's hands as they gesticulated wildly, describing light circles in the air like two hysterical birds. He was speaking, too, a stream of words in a dialect of Chinese it wouldn't have done Gene any good to name. Still, the words spilled from his flat-lipped mouth. He had liver spots on his cheeks, the stubble on his jawline as coarse as the silver hair on his head was thin.
The man must be in his seventies
, Gene thought.
Maybe even eighties
. Gene couldn't blame the man for growing more and more frustrated, bleeding out in the care of a stranger who could only stare, dumbstruck, as the unmistakable urgency of your last words streamed out of you.

“Please,” Gene begged. “I can't understand.” But the man went on.

He must know some English
, Gene thought, listening,
to work in security
. Though in San Francisco, with international investors of every kind in every kind of industry, maybe English wasn't much of a necessity. The man was slowing down, muttering. His hand now on Gene's wrist was delicately soft and defined, the bones protruding like sticks under the surface of mud.

What was he supposed to do? Franklin would know. While Gene's academic accomplishments might be impressive to some, when it came to people, Franklin was the real genius. Gene looked desperately around him, searching for someone to give him guidance, realizing as he did how much he lived every moment of his life with Franklin by his side, either in spirit or in mind; and at this, one of the worst moments of his life, certainly the worst since he'd known Franklin, Franklin was not there. Was this what life would be like if Franklin died? Or worse, when his illness progressed? While he was still alive, but no longer living the life he'd created for himself.

“Your best bet is a hospital.” The mustached man was suddenly there again, another anonymous life in his arms. “Though he's pretty far gone.” As he met Gene's gaze, his expression shifted into something darker and more truthful. “I could use the space,” he added plainly, though Gene could see that it pained him to say so. The block was already choked with the dead and dying.

The man on the ground between them had closed his eyes. Gene pressed his fingers cautiously to the pale skin at his wrist, startled when the man lifted his hand and slapped
Gene's distractedly. Was this hope? Tentatively, Gene slid his arms beneath the man, collecting him, expecting him to cry out in objection or pain, but instead he seemed to relax in Gene's arms, as if he had been waiting to be carried.

“Where?” Gene asked as the mustache set a still body near them, wrapped neatly in a blanket, the clinical cocoon of it a horror all its own.

The man indicated with his chin the direction from which Gene had come. “SF General. Corner of Twenty-Second and Vermont.”

Gene tried to thank him, but the man had turned around, wholly reabsorbed in his nightmare, quick to be rid of its minor characters.

SF General
, Gene thought, turning back around dutifully. Twenty-Second and Vermont was south of there, on the border of Potrero Hill and the Mission. Which meant he had to turn away from home, away from Franklin. The man was bleeding heavily; a hospital was his only hope. Maybe Gene could find someone else to take him. Just go in that general direction for a few blocks, find someone, then run back to make up for lost time. He began to walk toward the hospital on stiff legs, even as his heart pleaded with him like a dog to follow the path home.

“No, no, no,” the older man rasped furiously, squirming in Gene's arms. He reached out and grabbed Gene by the collar as he opened his eyes and locked a desperate gaze on him, his lids collapsed with wrinkles. He was older than Gene had first realized, perhaps even older than anyone he had ever held before.

“Stockton,” the man insisted.

His face seemed to be losing more color as Gene looked into it, the amount of blood coming from the wound dumbfounding. Gene was already soaked in it, the lines between them quickly blurring, not only in blood, but in thought. Although Gene was the engine of their movement, he did not feel he was directing their path. He took a few more hesitant steps south, toward the hospital.

The man released his hold momentarily, stabbing the air over Gene's shoulder.

“Stockton. Sacramento.”

Which one was it? “You need a hospital,” Gene said, his voice swallowed by the multitude of indefinable, inescapable noises around them. They stared at each other with the intensity of love, though they were attached to each other by fear, a much more unforgiving bond.

“Please,” the man begged him. “Go! Stockton!” He shook Gene's collar as he might a stubborn mule's lead. “Quick, quick!”

You need a hospital
, Gene wanted to cry out. But the man was now clawing at him, trying to clasp his hand around his throat or chin or neck, his desperation escalating as quickly as the blood was draining out of him. “Go!”

Stockton. Sacramento. Stockton at Sacramento? Was there a hospital there he didn't know about? If there was, it was miles away, practically in Chinatown—no, definitely in Chinatown.

“Chinatown?” Gene wondered aloud.

The man released his hold, nodding or deflating or
sinking deeper toward death, but quiet again in Gene's arms. Maybe there was a hospital there. There must be, right in the middle of the city. Gene was tall and fairly strong, but he certainly couldn't keep walking if his load wrestled with him every step of the way. He stared down at the stilled form in his arms. The man's skin was growing waxy, his lips dry.

Gene turned around and quickly began heading north again, toward Chinatown and North Beach and Franklin, heading deeper into a city on the verge of falling to its knees, a half-dead man in his arms. As he did, a small pinprick of elation ignited inside him and his pace took on a new rhythm. There was nowhere safe to go, so they might as well go home. It was a relief to recognize at least one truth, and to head directly into it. He ducked his head and set his jaw and surged forward, as compelled and terrified as a man staring down new love.

Ellen Santiago was already in hair and makeup when her boss, Silas Demetrious, KSRO station head and chief pot stirrer, stormed in, scattering interns and assistants as he walked.

“Where the hell have you been?” he barked. “I've been calling your cell for ten minutes.”

“Right here,” she replied evenly.

He grabbed an apple from a basket on a nearby table and bit into it viciously. “I'm putting you on anchor,” he said, watching for her reaction.

She nodded professionally. Though they both knew this was the story she'd been praying for, the once-in-a-lifetime news event that would reach all the way to Sacramento and pluck her up and onto the national scene. All of a sudden, four years of reporting on small-town car thieves and local dog shows didn't seem quite so bad. “Where's Natalie?”

“MIA, apparently,” he said brusquely. “You realize, don't you,” he said, staring her down, “that we're closer than anyone on this thing, the first station with power between here and San Francisco, which means we've got a worldwide exclusive for the next few hours, maybe more.” He narrowed his eyes, watching her closely to see if she'd betray the excitement he knew she must be feeling. Satisfied, he went on, “But we don't have much yet. You're going to have to be prepared
to do some fluffing at first. No, no, no.” He grabbed the makeup artist's hand as she reached for a lipstick. “This isn't
Entertainment Tonight
. Jesus, do I have to spell out
everything
around here?” He glanced at his watch. “You ready?”

“Of course.” It was her job to be unflappable.

“Great. We're live in five.”

Max opened his eyes to blackness. Unseeing, he wondered if he was still alive. Could a person be dead without knowing it? Maybe. But he must be alive, because death couldn't possibly bring so much pain.

He moved his neck first, trying to turn it. The pain ripped up his ear and down his collarbone. He lay still. Without moving, he could tell that his right leg was in the worst shape; it was painful in a way everything else wasn't, a searing so acute it verged on numbness. He guessed that it was pinned above the kneecap by something that—his fingers stretched to feel—might be wood, dense, but with some give. His right arm was twisted under him and he itched to wrench it free, but wasn't sure he could move without injuring himself more or toppling whatever had fallen just short of crushing him. He could breathe, but the air felt thin, contaminated. As far as he could tell, which was very little—but every detail he could glean felt essential—a large section of balcony had fallen over them. The rows they'd ducked between must have stopped it from crushing them.

Them.

Had Vashti really been there? Was she there now?

Surely she had been; surely she was. But maybe he had hit his head, been hurt worse than he realized. He worried
suddenly that he was in the midst of a cruel psychotic distortion, one he was too far gone to recognize. Perhaps he was already dead; perhaps this was not his birthday, but the day of his death. First there was his father, then Vashti, a cluster of unexpected visits from ghosts whose voices he had never expected to hear again.

“Vashti?” He barely heard his own voice. He swallowed the panic brimming in him, the urge to shout so powerful that it was a physical thing he had to battle, a wild creature thrashing against a foreign enclosure.

But if he screamed, no one would hear him. Anyone who could have helped had cleared out long before he'd come back inside the auditorium. His head began throbbing and he felt a new wave of panic as he recognized the agonizing wait that was before him. If only he could make everything just come crashing down and finish him at once.
If she hadn't struggled
,
she would have lived.
Typical. His father giving great advice for once, but at the worst possible moment. Max's anger flashed incongruously, forcing out fear. Typical of his father's timing to reach out to his mother now, unsettling her just before she headed into catastrophe.

His mother. He froze.
Please God
, he begged silently, knowing he had never been a religious man, but also knowing there was no one else to call,
protect her from at least some of this
,
shield her somehow. Please
. He closed his eyes again, trying to picture her safe and tended to up on that beautiful hill, an oasis in the middle of this hellish nightmare, sure to be surrounded by competent caretakers. She would be so disappointed his birthday was ruined.

But he could only hold on to the hope for an instant before it wriggled free. Panic spread through him again, even as he continued to fight it. Heat flew into his cheeks and head, drying his mouth and closing his throat.

There must be plenty of places in the city that were just fine.
After all
, he told himself,
it couldn't have been that bad, could it?
If there was any city to be in during an earthquake, it was San Francisco, without a doubt. Surely citywide preparations for just such an event were kicking into gear at that very moment. Of course there would be a way to get out. Rescuers. Holes. Possibilities. He closed his eyes, trying hard to imagine these things, as if imagining them could conjure them up. But he found an ocean of negative possibility lurking in the back of his mind, threatening to draw him in. He touched his toe to it. He had never thought of his own death, not really, and he wasn't sure he could bring himself to entertain the possibility of it now. Or rather, he did not think he could manage to think of dying there without going right ahead and stopping his own heart with the terror of it.

“Vashti?” he tried again.

He heard something stirring.
Oh God
,
please
, he prayed anew, but he couldn't land on the words that might soothe him. Words that would convince him she had survived. If she had been there in the first place.

Vashti wanted to answer, but she was still drifting in and out, trying to grab the line of his voice though it kept slipping away from her. It was shock or pain or both that had submerged her, and she did not want to crawl out from under the weighty blanket. But her hands didn't want her to go back
to sleep; they were fidgeting or trembling so hard, they made her shoulders ache. She closed her eyes.

“Vashti?”

The panic began to climb again, and Max was seized by the frantic desire to know if she was there or not, alive or not. He felt around with everything he had available to him, using his free hand to snatch at the dark as if hunting for his last bit of food, the overwhelming fixation drowning out the jolt of pain in his neck and the shriek of warning reverberating through his head about shifting the rubble. But then, after an excruciating few minutes, his hand found its mark—his longer fingers could just reach her ankle. Gratefully, he rested them there, the pulse steady, the skin warm. He sobbed in relief and astonishment. He was about to speak to her again when he heard his name—whispered, but definitely there. “Max.”

His stomach sank with delayed joy. Why had she come? On that day, of all days? Were people actually as unlucky as this?

“Max,” she said again, as if about to say something else. But if she did, his straining ears didn't hear it. Still, a moment later, she stirred, a movement he felt only indirectly, but the thrill of it was electric. Suddenly, the urgency to find a way out caught up with him like a frightened beast, impossible to hold back. “Vashti,” he said insistently, still working through the circuitous, illogical problem involving why she had come in the first place, “we have to . . . do you think . . . there must be a way . . .”

“How?”

Her voice was a memory in itself. He struggled against its pull, the urge to go back in time, even if that meant being haunted by memories he thought he'd put to rest. Even those who didn't love her thought it a lovely voice, he remembered noticing that, the way people turned toward it—bright but warm, melodic, the sort of voice that didn't need to be raised to draw attention. He closed his eyes, allowing himself to savor a few of his favorite memories of it: the way it sounded building to a laugh; the hundreds of times she'd lulled him to sleep with it, even when the prospect of dreaming was much less alluring than staying awake. The endless number of times he'd tried to get it to say his name again, the endless number of times it mocked him with a recording.
You have to stop calling her
,
Max
, a Vancouver-based Javi finally told him, taking pity on him when Vashti wouldn't return any of his messages.
I'll call her until she answers
, a belligerent Max had answered, speaking in a new voice of his own, one informed by the yawning ache of being without her for months.
Max
, Javi had said gently, so gently that the similarities between how she and her sister spoke pierced him,
she's not going to answer.
He raised his voice, beginning to take his anger out on her.
Max
, she'd interrupted him calmly, so calmly it froze his heart a split second before what she said did.
She doesn't want to hear from you. She's started a new life. She's married now
,
Max.
He thought he hadn't heard her correctly. He told her as much. She spoke to him as simply and plainly as she would to a child.
She married another man
,
Max. You have to let it go. You have to let her go.

“Max?” Vashti brought him back to where they were. “How? How will we get out?”

“I don't know,” he said, “but there's got to be a way. There must be a way.” His mind sparked with renewed energy, leaping to sure thoughts of repair, revision, rescue. They wouldn't just lie there until they starved; they were in the middle of San Francisco, for God's sake—surely they would be found, even down here. Good shifts could be made. Someone might look for them. Someone
would
look for them, would look in a collapsed auditorium for survivors. Of course they would. And in the meantime, they might find a way out. Maybe in the morning. Yes! That was it. “Maybe in the morning, the light will get through. We'll be able to see more, see a way out. We can call or dig ourselves out or both.”

She didn't answer. Then, “OK.” But he could hear that she didn't believe him.

“Vashti,” he said after a moment's painful hesitation, “why did you come here? And why today?” He was suddenly as confused and irritable as he was afraid. Why did she have to choose this day, of all days, to come, whatever the reasons might be?

Her voice, when it came, was very thin and soft, like old fabric. “I don't know, Max.”

He tried to make sense of this. “You don't know.” The sudden racing in his heart felt like anger again, though surely it wasn't. He had not been angry about Vashti in years. Surely his blood boiled as a way to make it flow, an excuse his mind was using to keep its body alive, a trick of survival. He was
just afraid. And surprised. She was here, even though it was clear she should never have come.

If only he'd been more of a man, in the way people spoke of men. Strong, resilient. The sort of man who would have known what to do in an emergency, who wouldn't have had to run up and down stairs to take care of the simple problem of a little girl who was hurt—
God
,
please let
her
be out already
,
of all my broken prayers
,
please allow at least that one through—
the sort of man who didn't have to go looking for help when help was needed and run into the woman he'd once loved so much that he never quite wanted to love another woman again.

“You have to know. Why did you come? Why today?”

She was grateful to him for his insistence on this particular question. There were so many others he could ask. Still, she had no answer ready. She had come without an answer to
why
, the simplest of questions! Javi would have known why. If only she were there to explain to her sister, once again, why she'd done such a foolish thing. To explain why she'd ever done anything.

“It's your birthday,” she tried.

“Yes. I have a birthday every year.”

“I know. I'm sorry,” she began. She was sorry. She heard her own voice as an echo. For what, exactly? The list of reasons for why she might be sorry was longer than either of them cared to recite. “I should never have come,” she whispered. How had she been so clearheaded before? Was it only Javi's influence, her borrowed courage? She wondered when her sister would hear about the earthquake. Would she check
the news? Would she call when she landed, then call again, worrying when no one picked up?

“I promised Javi,” she tried again.

Max didn't trust himself to speak.

After all this time, she had come to see him on his birthday because she'd promised her sister. Was this nothing more than a joke? A memory of a similar outrage engulfed him, even though, had he been asked even the day before, he would have said it was long behind him. The heart was a pathetic muscle, never able to return to its original shape after a wound. Max shook himself back to the present. “You make it sound like it was some kind of dare. Your sister made you come.”

She did. But a dare between sisters almost always flirts with a pact. Vashti could taste dirt in her mouth. She could hear her sister's voice. She suddenly remembered, the relief cooling, easing the confession.

“I came because of the dreams,” she said, though that suddenly sounded hollow, too. Why? It was the truth, wasn't it? She closed her eyes and plunged further into it.

“I've been dreaming about you, Max. After Dale died, I started dreaming about you. Constantly. And the dreams won't stop.” She hesitated, her voice breaking. “It's been six months, actually, almost exactly six months. Every night, another dream.”

Max was silent. If he could have said what was in his heart, he would have said that he was wrong to have ever believed that people could just walk away from love, that they don't have to rip themselves away, taking the torn edges of the other person along with them.

“You came because of a dream?”

“No,” she said, because he was only glimpsing the truth. “Many dreams.”

She could hear him listening to her. Waiting for more.

“I know,” she said, her words flailing, “it sounds crazy. It is crazy. I thought I shouldn't come, but then I couldn't stop the dreams, and then Javi started hounding me, but I wanted to come anyway, even if you—”

“No,” he said quickly, the tone of her voice telling him what he wanted to hear. “I'm glad you came.”

The unsaid things between them crept in from the edges, bloating the space into which they might have spoken. For several long minutes, they were both silent, not knowing if those unsaid things needed to be stated and expelled or brought along stoically, like so many limping soldiers.

For her part, Vashti understood that a love so deeply entrenched defied explanation, maybe even reason, but she was not immune to being frustrated by the way it left her dumb and baffled. She wanted desperately to speak but felt herself growing more and more untethered from words, grasping about for footholds that weren't there.

For his part, Max wanted to ask about the dreams. He wanted to know the details of them: what he had done and what she had done and why they had made her want to see him. And why she hadn't come before. If this was the first time she had wanted to see him, or if she had wanted that all along. He wanted to know why she hadn't just come the moment she returned to the city, instead of sending him
those deadeningly polite e-mails. In a buried corner of his mind, he still wanted to know why she'd left at all, in the first place, midlove.