The Walk (2 page)

It wasn’t always that way.

They used to make love in the mornings, then lie tangled together, the sheets twisted around them, waiting for the radio alarm to go on and the chatty newscasters to drive them out of bed. Not any more.

He got up.

His house was above the smog, or at least he was high enough on the Calabasas hillside to enjoy the illusion that he was. From his bedroom window, he looked down onto the San Fernando Valley, at the thick, brown haze blanketing the flat urban sprawl. The layer of floating crud was trapped between the hills, which were slowly being devoured by tract homes like his. Only those homes cost about $300,000 less and were crammed onto a mere 6000-square-foot patch of dry graded dirt. They were stucco boxes for the Camry class.

Marty shifted his gaze to the red-tile roof of the Spanish colonial guard house and the morning progression of gardeners and pool cleaners and housekeepers climbing up the steep hill of his gated community in their over-loaded pick-ups and dented cars. He wondered if they knew they weren’t supposed to breathe today.

He trudged naked into the bathroom, and as he stood urinating into the toilet, reminded himself of all the things on his schedule. First, visit the set of
Go to Heller
, a supernatural pilot about a dead cop who rises from the grave and becomes a private eye.

Marty’s plan was to shake a few hands and pretend the network was wildly enthusiastic about the footage they were seeing, then rush back to the office for the weekly staff meeting where, as the guy in charge of current programming, he was responsible for the creative direction of the network’s shows.

Standards & Practices was in an uproar over the nipplage in the romantic adventure series
Sam and Sally
. Seeing erect nipples under clothing once in an hour was considered an acceptable accident. Twice was salacious. Three times was offensive content. They wanted Sally to start taping herself down. Marty was adamantly against it.

In the shower, under the hottest spray he could endure, he considered the various ways he could argue his point. He could try and shame them: Nipples are a fact of life. We all have them. What are we trying to hide here? It’s not like she’s running around topless. It was ludicrous to demand that an actress “restrain her aggressive nipples” so some tight-ass censor could pretend women didn’t have them.

Or he could take the artistic, pragmatic approach. More and more viewers are fleeing the artificially chaste world of network television for the more realistic programming on pay-cable, where nudity, sex, and profanity are commonplace. If they are going to successfully compete, they have to be less puritanical in their thinking.

Or he could try the truth. The only reason anybody watched
Sam and Sally
was to see Sally’s nipples. And if she taped them down, they might at well cancel the show.

As Marty slipped into his beige pants, white shirt, and navy blue dark jacket, he decided to go with the truth, if only to see that standards prick Adam Horsting turn pale.

He headed for the stairs, pausing for a moment to look in the kid’s room. They didn’t have a kid, but they had the room. For some reason, he just couldn’t pass the open door without looking in. Stuffed animals with permanent, vacant stares looked at him between the slats of the empty crib. We’re waiting.

Marty went back and closed the door, but he knew it would be open by the time he got home. He hurried down the stairs and into the kitchen with an enthusiasm he didn’t feel.

Beth was sitting at the kitchen table in her bathrobe, leaning over the LA Times and a cup of coffee, her bare feet entwined in the fur of their sleeping dog, Max. The fat golden retriever delighted in being her ottoman. It was one of two things Max was good at. The other was the ability to pick the most expensive shoes Marty owned to chew on. Max obviously liked the taste of Italian leather.

His wife had short blond hair, bright blue eyes, and a band of freckles across her nose that made her look like a mischievous child. People thought she was cute, and she hated that. She was certain it meant that no one took her seriously.

“Good morning,” He said, sticking his head in the pantry, looking for something he could eat on the run.

“They found a shark with a mouth that glows in the dark,” she said. “It got caught in a fisherman’s net. They think it’s some unknown species that lives in the deepest, darkest part of the ocean.”

“Uh-huh.” He peered into an open box of Cinnamon Pop Tarts. There was one foil package left inside. That would hold him until he could swipe some fruit off the craft services table on the set.

“They think the shark swims with his mouth open. The light attracts the fish and they swim right down his throat,” she flipped through the pages, scanning the headlines. “They think there could be lots of species down there we’ve never seen.”

“Sounds like there could be a series in that.” He stuck the foil pack in his pocket and went to the refrigerator, where he snagged a can of Coke, absently knocking something on the floor. “Though the last successful underwater show was thirty years ago.”

“The whole world doesn’t revolve around television.” Beth said, followed by one of her dismissive sighs.

“Most people wouldn’t know what they wanted to eat, what they wanted to wear, or who they wanted to fuck if the TV didn’t tell them,” he bent down to pick up whatever he dropped. “So as vice president of current drama, I obviously play a vital role in our society.”

Marty smiled to let her know he was joking, or at least being delightfully self-deprecating.

“You dropped something,” she motioned to the floor with a slight nod of her head.

It was a tiny vial. He picked it up. Pergonal. It had expired months ago. He was about to throw it out when he saw her staring at him. So instead Marty hastily put the vial back in the refrigerator and slammed the door, as if the vial might fight its way out again. The last thing he wanted to do was resurrect The Discussion.

When Marty turned around, he was relieved to see she was reading her paper again. He popped the top on the Coke and took a big gulp, studying her over the top of the can as he swallowed. She was especially lovely in the morning, hair tussled, face still flushed with the warmth of sleep.

Beth seemed to sense his eyes on her and the affection behind them. “Are you going to be late tonight?” she asked softly.

“I should be back before primetime.” That used to make her smile, a hundred repetitions ago.

And then, as if reading his thoughts, she gave him a small smile and returned to her paper.

9:16 a.m. Tuesday

Marty sat on his Richter scale, picking bloody bits of glass out of his hair as he wondered what the hell he should do.

It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. He wasn’t supposed to be here.

In all his earthquake scenarios, he was always at home, where he was fully prepared. Everything in the house was bolted, strapped, or stuck down. There was bag under the bed bulging with survivalist stuff?bought in a binge after the last quake. There was even a sack of food for the dog. And on the slim chance the house was decimated, they had camping gear in the garage for emergency shelter.

At least he knew that Beth was safe.

If the house didn’t collapse on her
.

There was nothing to worry about, he told himself. They had a thorough geological survey done when they bought the house. The report said it was earthquake safe and built on solid bedrock.

Yeah, and the house inspector said the drainage was great and what happened the first time it really rained? Water flooded the yard, seeped under the French doors, and ruined the hardwood floors. Remember?

He had to go home.

But how?

He was stuck in downtown LA, a decaying urban wilderness, thirty miles from the safety of his gated community in Calabasas, his Mercedes crushed. And even if it wasn’t, the roads and freeways were going to be all but impassable for any vehicle.

He’d have to walk.

No easy feat for a guy who’s idea of a long walk was from the couch to the TV set, but he could do it. He had no choice, unless he wanted to stay here. And he knew what happened to guys like him who took a wrong turn and ended up in the ’hood alone, looking white, rich, and privileged, armed with only a spring-loaded Mercedes key-fob.

His heart started to race. He thought he might begin gagging again. He took a deep breath and willed himself to focus.

Marty looked back at his E-class. The trunk, defiantly shiny and unscratched, pinched out from under the rubble. He hurried over to the car, popped open the trunk, and rooted around the piles of scripts and videos until he found an old LA street map. Then he grabbed his gym bag, which was wedged into the furthest corner. It had been six months since he used the bag, back when he was caught up in the early enthusiasm of a new year’s resolution and a two-year gym membership. He went twice and never went back.

Inside the gym bag were a pair of old Reeboks, a t-shirt, some sweats, and a bottle of water. He shoved the tire iron, a flashlight, and the Mercedes first-aid kit into the bag.

It was a start.

As he kicked off his stiff dress shoes and put on the Reeboks, he started thinking about what else he’d need for his journey. Packaged food, lots of water, duct tape, matches, dust masks, some rope. Basically, he had to make a mini-version of his home survival kit.

No problem. He could find most of those things right here, between the catering wagon, wardrobe trailer, and the grip, prop, and lighting trucks. Film crews had everything.

All he needed now was a plan of action.

Marty figured there was maybe nine hours of summer daylight left. If he started walking now, even as out of shape as he was, he could easily be in the valley and heading down Ventura Boulevard by nightfall.

That was okay.

He certainly had nothing to fear in the valley, where Tarzan and Universal Studios had entire communities named after them and the oldest historical landmark was the Casa De Cadillac dealership.

All he had to figure out now was the best way to get there.

It was possible to live your entire life in Los Angeles and never see the bad parts of town, except in a seventy-mile-per-hour blur on the freeway or channel-flipping past the evening news on the way to a
Cheers
rerun.

Even so, Marty knew where those dangerous neighborhoods were, and he was well aware that to get home, he’d have to walk through some of them. There was no way around it.

But he tried to make himself feel better by looking at the bright side. He’d be walking in broad daylight, in the midst of chaos, and would only be in truly bad places for a few miles. There were far worse parts of the city he could be stuck in. At least he wasn’t visiting Compton, or South Central, when the quake hit.

He slammed the trunk shut and spread the yellowed, torn street map out on top of it. Calabasas was on the south-western edge of the San Fernando Valley, on the other side of the Santa Monica Mountains and the Hollywood Hills.

There were two major freeways into the valley, the 101 over the Cahuenga Pass just five or ten miles north of downtown, or the 405 through the Sepulveda Pass, a good fifteen miles or twenty miles west. Between the two passes, there were three major canyon roads that snaked over the Hollywood Hills.

The other option was to head due west to the beaches of Santa Monica and then follow the Pacific Coast Highway north to one of the canyon roads that cut through the Santa Monica Mountains. But that meant crossing the entire LA basin, which was the last thing Marty wanted to do.

He decided the quickest, safest way home was the way he’d come, taking the 101, better known as the Hollywood Freeway, northwest over the Cahuenga Pass into the valley.

That was assuming there were no major obstacles in his path. Which, of course, there would be. Toppled buildings, buckled roads, crumpled freeways.

But that wasn’t what worried him.

It was the thousands of little obstacles. The people. The injured and the dead underneath it all. The earthquake’s human debris.

Then there were the derelicts and gang-bangers, who he hoped would be too busy looting to pay attention to one man walking home.

He wouldn’t look at anyone. He’d just hurry along. Gone before anyone noticed him.

Just keep walking. Across the city, over the hills, and along the valley, never stopping until he got to his front door, where his wife would be waiting, alive and well.

Simple. From point A to point B.

Not too complicated. No reason he couldn’t do it. There were guys who walked across entire states in the frontier days. Or at least they did in the western novels his flunkies read and summarized for him.

Marty zipped up the bag and headed for the trucks and trailers to assemble his kit.

He was going home.

10
:30 a.m. Tuesday

Marty emerged from the grip truck, ready to go, his bulging gym bag looped over his shoulders like a backpack.

He pulled a white paper dust mask over his nose and mouth, slipped on his Ray-bans, took a deep, filtered breath, and headed off.

It meant going past the rubble of the warehouse again. The surviving crewmembers were too intent on their work to notice Marty, which is what he was hoping. He diverted his gaze, afraid someone would see him watching and try to draft him into the hopeless enterprise.

The three bodies the surviving crewmembers had recovered so far were laid out on the cracked asphalt under the tent that was supposed to protect the caterer’s junk food from the sun. It was amazing the tent was still standing. But the table had fallen, the donuts, candy, fruit, and drinks splattered on the street in a swath of crushed ice.

A woman Marty recognized as one of the hairdressers sobbed beside the body of Clarissa Blake, one of the twenty-something stars of the show. The hairdresser was soaking a napkin with Evian, trying to wipe the blood and dirt off Clarissa’s unnaturally pale face, the only part of her celebrated body that was still identifiable. It was as if someone placed a perfect Clarissa Blake mask on a deflated inflatable girl. Thinking of it like that, it didn’t seem real any more, just a grotesque rubber prop on a horror movie set.