Vancouver, West End
Dixie Morgan locked her bike to the rack and went into the Belleville Café. She ordered a skinny latte, in spite of the humid heat and the sweat pouring down the middle of her back. She carried the steaming mug to a table beside the window. Over by the espresso machine her cycling partner, Ben, flirted with the blond barista. The barista smiled and made him a double shot at no extra charge. Dixie ripped open an envelope of artificial sweetener and dumped it into her coffee. At first she thought the vibrations came from the roadwork outside. Then the glass bottles behind the bar started jumping off the shelves.
Dixie sat, riveted to the spot, arrested by disbelief. What was it Tony said to do in an earthquake? She had been too busy laughing at his paranoia about the Big One to listen. The kids told her that he wasn’t wrong. It wasn’t a question of if, but when. She always answered that he was selling fear and she wasn’t buying.
Only when the scalding coffee splashed against her hands did she snap out of her daze. The plate glass window vibrated. She shoved the mug across the table and launched herself out of her seat. As the force of the tremor flung her against the sharp edge of a table, breaking glass showered down on the spot where she had been sitting. She fell to her knees and her head hit the floor. Tables and chairs cantered around her. The barista was nowhere in sight. Ben sheltered under a wooden table, holding onto a leg of it. The walls are strongest in the washroom. I’m sure that’s what Tony said.
She clawed past the spinning, bouncing furniture. Deafened by the sound of the world exploding, Dixie rounded a corner to the back rooms. At that exact moment the under-engineered walls of the building started to buckle. A cloud of concrete dust blinded and choked her and she patted the ground, trying to find safety. No such place existed and she swayed on the edge of oblivion. As the arch over the hallway collapsed, her homing thoughts flew to her children. Mikey! Rowan! Listen to your father!
Vancouver, downtown
The hotel receptionist pulled up Linda’s account on the computer with inch long, multi-coloured fingernails. Linda Patterson wondered idly how the girl—because she couldn’t be a day over sixteen—was able to type. When the receptionist handed over the swipe machine, the phone rang and the girl pushed her gum into her cheek to answer it. Linda tapped in the PIN for her Visa. $2,000 for one night. A deluxe suite, spa treatments, room service breakfast and dinner for everybody. It was all worth it to see her sister Wendy happy after decades of being a bridesmaid. Linda had wanted it to be the best bachelorette party ever, and it was.
Transaction approved. Please remove card. Linda slipped her card out of the machine and into her wallet. The paintings on the wall behind the reception desk started to sway. The receptionist looked up at her from under peacock-blue eyelids and her mouth made a small “o.” As the quake gained momentum, the man waiting to check out next grabbed Linda’s wrist and dragged her into the lobby.
“Get down—under a chair,” he said. Linda slid across the marble floor on her belly and pushed her head and shoulders under a leather wing chair. She held on to its scuffed legs and thought about her son, Jacob. She knew he was in Tony Morgan’s house and probably a lot safer than she was. Above the screech of the bending building she heard a shrill scream. Horrified, she realized the voice was hers.