I went down to the Marina District [in San Francisco just after the earthquake] with a friend who lived there, and I did a stupid thing. I went with her into her house. It was like going into a fun house room, not a square angle in the place … . I wound up bringing a number of people home with me, because they had no place to stay; so I had strangers living in my apartment.
A thing they don’t tell you is that it’s not over right away; it’s just the start. There are aftershocks, and things keep falling down. I remember a few days later watching the TV in my apartment. They were showing people being evacuated from their houses, carrying their bedding, their clothes, because their houses were about to slide down the hill. The thing was, I was watching that scene on TV and I looked out the window and there it was, right next door.
—Cassandra Shafer, recounting the aftermath of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake
“I DON’T KNOW IF I TOLD YOU THAT LOGAN’S AN ENGINEERING geologist,” I told Jack as the chair swung away from the loading point. “He goes out looking at landslides and earthquakes and such.” I did not tell Logan what Jack did.
Jack gave Logan a “Hey, dude” smile, as if he were just Joe ski bum making small talk. “Yeah, I felt that shaker we had the other morning. What went wrong? I thought you geologists got that earthquake business all figured out and fixed up.”
Logan nodded. “You bet. Superman had a little time on his hands after his last movie, so we’ve been having him go round and stick rock bolts through all the big cracks, keep things from moving so much. We just hadn’t gotten to the Wasatch yet.”
Jack chuckled appreciatively. “Just as I thought. All’s you really need is the right glue.”
“You’re so right,” Logan agreed. “The right glue, and we need to repeal the laws of thermodynamics. All that claptrap about heat flux downstairs setting up convection currents that keep pushing those crustal plates around and causing earthquakes. Damned law’s no good, and I say if a law’s no good, throw it out. Get on with things.”
I tipped back my head and smiled, tickled by Logan’s indignant summation of plate tectonics theory. I was having fun in spite of myself. The day was looking up, even though my bum leg was beginning to stiffen up from the ride up a longer lift ride.
Then my jacket pocket began to talk. The radio said, “So, Jenna, how are you liking skiing with my brother? Are you having a great time or what?”
The voice was somewhat faint, but I knew it instantly. It was Katie’s. Jenna? That wasn’t one of her sisters, and it sure wasn’t her mother. There was only one person it could be: the woman from Saint George. And the brother was, of course, none other than my engaged to be engaged sweetheart, Ray.
I began to claw at my mittens, trying to get the right one off so I could plunge my hand into my breast pocket and turn the radio off. Or turn it up, key the microphone, and scream something I was damned well not going to be sorry for. But my mittens were suddenly like bales of hay, and I didn’t want to drop my ski poles from the lift. Worse yet, we were within two towers of the upper end of the lift, and I’d soon have to see if I could once again get off without killing myself, death and murder being very much on my mind. Katie memorized my radio channel and set hers to match it, I realized. It must have taken her this long
to find the mysterious Jenna and change her channel, too, without Ray noticing. Because that’s precisely how Katie does things, underhandedly and with stealth!
As the connections between the erosion of my relationship with Ray and Katie’s obvious complicity in it—the unflattering sweater at Christmas, the importation of the “old friend” from Saint George, and now the radio—began to click together in my mind, I heard Jenna’s reply. First, she giggled. “Oh, he’s a wonderful skier, just like you said, Katie. I’m so glad you suggested I come back to Salt Lake with you all. I’m just having a wonderful time!”
“Terrific!” Katie exulted. “And I’m not kidding, you should really move up here. I’m sure I can get you a job at Hayes Associates, Ray’s having a wonderful time skiing with you, too; I can tell by the way he smiles. I haven’t seen him so happy in months and months. And you know the family just loves you!”
My heart was racing. I had my right mitten off finally, but now the zipper over my pocket was jammed. And there was no more time to turn off the radio, because we had arrived at the unloading position. I stuffed my mitten in my mouth and grasped my poles, ready to jump off the lift and race to the bottom, where I hoped to find Katie’s car and jam the points of the poles into her tires.
“Well, you’ve been right so far!” Jenna’s chirpy voice exulted from the front of my jacket. “It’s being just the perfect day! Oh! Here he comes now! He’s so beautiful on skis!”
“Oh, I know. Isn’t he?” Katie crooned.
Overhearing the conversation, Logan said, “Stupid bimbos get on the radio and yak. Mind turning that thing down, Em?”
“I’d ruv to,” I told him inelegantly through the clenched mitten. “Trutht me on this.” I shot off the top of the lift, off balance on my stiffened leg, scanning wildly for a place where I could stop and get at the offending radio.
“I’m talking to Katie!” Jenna’s voice warbled from my jacket. “Got anything to tell her, Ray?”
Oh God! I thought, Don’t say what I’m afraid you’re going to—
Ray’s voice came over the radio. “I owe this day to you!” he said, with more cheer than I had, in fact, heard from him in months.
I skidded awkwardly to a stop, stabbed my poles into the snow, whipped off my other mitten, dropped both of them on the ground, and yanked at the zipper on my breast pocket. Just as I was about tearing my jacket apart to get at the offending radio, a kid in a racing helmet careened past me and I began to slide forward wobbling on my bad leg. I slipped over an edge, hit a rock, and fell, tumbling sideways like an eggbeater through half-whipped meringue. Even in the confusion of the fall, I could hear Katie’s deceitful voice prattling on. “You’ve been so lonely, Ray. Two years since your wife died, and no one’s given you a moment’s happiness except you, Jenna. You’re his miracle sent by Heavenly Father.”
I lay on my back, no dignity left, no sanity. I yanked the zipper up, down, and got it loose. Wrenched the radio out of my pocket. Threw it as hard and as far as I could.
Logan skied to a stop next to me and leaned down on his poles. “Are you all right?” he asked, his great dark brows crushed together into one short line. “I mean, darling sweetheart, I asked you to turn the damn thing off, but I didn’t mean—”
Jack had now arrived on the other side of me, and he lowered himself to the ground all in one motion. His face was tight with concern. I looked up into his eyes, tried to take a breath, but found that I could not control it. It was stop breathing entirely or break into tears. I held my breath and shook.
“Take it easy,” he said gently. “I used to be a medic once, back in the before times. Tell me where it hurts.”
I realized that it did in fact hurt. Badly. “My ankle,” I said
miserably. “The right,” I added as Jack began to press and probe at my legs.
Logan’s face had vanished from my field of view, and I thought, Makes sense. Why hang around a loser like me? I lay on my back, staring up into the sky, amazed that it was still blue. I felt Jack’s hands supporting my leg, and a distant, painful throbbing in an ankle I no longer wanted to own.
“Can you wiggle your toes?” Jack asked.
High above me in the sky, the tiniest puff of a cloud floated into view. I tried to wiggle my toes. Couldn’t find the will to do so. Logan’s face reappeared. He showed me that he had found the radio, showed that he was turning it off, pantomimed shooting it with a pistol. “Shall I call Faye on this thing?” he asked, trying to think of some way to comfort me.
I shook my head vehemently. I didn’t want Katie to know that her arrow had so keenly found its mark.
“Call the ski patrol,” Jack said, his voice completely changed from the down-home good old boy to that of a man used to being obeyed. Switching back, he smoothed my hair and said, “You just lie still, sweetheart. You’ve had about enough for today anyhow.”