Bill Pronzini: Bones

We had just ordered-the eggplant for Kerry, the veal for me-and we were working on our drinks and I was telling her about my new case. I hadn't told her yet about dinner tomorrow night with Eberhardt and Wanda; I was waiting until her stomach was full, because I figured then she'd be less inclined to throw something at me. As it was, she was in a twitchy mood: one of those days in the advertising business-she worked as a copywriter for the Bates and Carpenter agency-that “make you want to get up on a table and start screaming,” as she'd put it.

Her drink was a martini, which was a good indicator of just how wired she was; she seldom drank anything stronger than white wine. She had already knocked most of it back, to good effect: she wasn't nervously toying with her olive anymore and her face looked less tense in the candlelight. Piombo's is an old-fashioned place with big, dim chandeliers and gilt-framed mirrors and one stone-faced wall full of niches stuffed with wine bottles; the candles are not only romantic but necessary if you want to see what you're eating.

Candlelight does nice things for most people's features, and it does especially nice things for Kerry's. Puts little fiery glints in her auburn hair. Makes her chameleon green eyes shine darkly and her mouth look even softer and sexier than it is. Subtracts ten years from her age, not that forty is an unattractive age and not that she needs those years subtracted. Handsome lady, my lady. I wouldn't have traded her for five Hollywood starlets, Princess Diana, and a beauty queen to be named later.

She was sitting with one elbow on the table and her chin propped on that hand, giving me her rapt attention. My business always interested her-too damned much sometimes, as I had cause to rue-and she found the Harmon Crane matter particularly intriguing because of the pulp angle. Like Crane, both of her parents had been pulp writers. Ivan Wade had written horror stories-still did-and as far as I was concerned, was something of a horror himself. Cybil Wade, surprisingly enough for an angelic little woman with a sweet smile, had produced a substantial number of very good Black Mask — style private eye yarns under the male pseudonym of Samuel Leatherman.

So there we were, Kerry with her martini and me with my one alloted beer, discussing Harmon Crane while we waited for our minestrone. I was just about to ask her if she thought her folks might have known Crane-and then the shaking started.

It wasn't much at the beginning; and my first thought was that one of the big Muni Metro trains was rumbling by outside, because Piombo's is on the L Taraval streetcar line and you can sometimes feel the vibrations of the Metros' passage. But instead of diminishing after a couple of seconds, the tremors gathered intensity. Kerry said, “Earthquake?” and I said, “Yeah,” and we just sat there. So did everybody else in the room, all of us poised, diners at their tables, a few people on stools at the bar, the barman and the waiters and waitresses in various freeze-frame poses-waiting.

The tremors went on and on, still sharpening. Ten seconds, fifteen-each second stretched out so that it seemed like a full minute. Silverware clattered on the tables; glasses hopped, spilling beer out of mine and knocking somebody else's off onto the floor with a dull crash. The chandeliers were swaying; the gilt mirrors quivered and leaned drunkenly; the wine bottles in their wall niches made jumpy rattling noises. The flickering of the candle flames gave the room an eerie, unstable look, as if we were all inside a giant box that was being rocked from side to side.

But this was a very San Francisco crowd: natives and long-time residents who had been through earthquakes before and were conditioned to them. Nobody panicked, nobody went charging out into the streets yelling like Chicken Little. The people sitting under the chandeliers and in the shadows of the mirrors got up and backed off; the rest of us just sat still, waiting, not saying anything. Except for the rattling and rumbling of inanimate objects, it was as still as a tomb in there.

What seemed like a long time passed before the tremors began to subside; I had no idea how long until the media announced it later. I thought the biggest of the mirrors was going to break loose and fall, and it might have if the quake had gone on any longer; as it was, nothing fell off the walls or off the tables except that one glass. When the tremors finally quit altogether, a kind of rippling sigh went through the room-a release of tension that was both audible and palpable. The people who were on their feet sat down again. The barman moved; the waiters and waitresses moved. A woman laughed nervously. Everybody began talking at once, not just among their own little groups but to others in the room. A man said in a loud voice, “Big one-five point five at least,” and the mustachioed barman called back in jovial tones, “ Voto contrario, signore! Sei a cinque! Six point five!” It was as if we were all old friends at some sort of festive party. An earthquake has that effect on strangers in public places: it creates the same kind of brief camaraderie, in a small way at least, that the survivors of the London Blitz must have felt.

Kerry said, “Wow,” and drank the rest of her martini. But she didn't look unnerved; if anything, the quake seemed to have put an end to her twitchiness and given her a subdued aspect. I didn't feel unnerved either. That is another thing about earthquakes: when you've experienced enough of them, even the bigger ones like this no longer frighten you. All you feel while they're happening is a kind of numb helplessness, because in your mind is the thought that maybe this is the Big One, the one that knocks down buildings and kills hundreds if not thousands of people. And when they end, and you and your surroundings are still in one piece, you find yourself thinking, No big deal, just another quake, and all you feel then is relief. There is little or no lingering worry. Worrying about earthquakes is like worrying about some damn-fool politician starting a nuclear war: all it does is make you a little crazy.

The guy at the next table asked me if I thought there'd be any aftershocks and I said I didn't know. The barman already had the TV over the back bar turned on and was flipping channels to catch the first news reports-epicenter of the quake, the damage it had done, how high it had measured on the Richter scale at the Berkeley seismology lab. Two guys across the room were making bets, one saying it had been over six and the other wagering under six. That sort of thing seemed a little ghoulish at this point, with the severity of the quake still in doubt, but it was understandable enough: a right of survival.

Kerry and I talked a little, not much, while things got back to normal around us; the thirty-five-year-old suicide of a pulp writer didn't seem quite so interesting or important at the moment. One of the waitresses brought our minestrone. The shakeup hadn't had any effect on my appetite, except maybe to sharpen it. The same was true with Kerry, and apparently with everyone else in Piombo's. We put the minestrone away with gusto, along with a couple of slices of bread each, even though I hadn't been going to have any bread on account of my semi-diet, and our entrees were being served when the barman called out to someone in the kitchen, “Hey, Dino! Sei a due! Minuto secondo trenta-sette. I told you, didn't I?” and then turned up the volume on the TV set.

We all looked up at the screen. A newscaster was repeating the facts that the quake had measured 6.2 on the Richter scale and had lasted for thirty-seven seconds. Its epicenter was down around Morgan Hill, near San Jose, and it had been felt as far north as Fort Bragg, as far east as Lake Tahoe. There were scattered reports of property damage, of earth fissures, but no one had been reported killed or badly injured and no structures had collapsed anywhere. There had been three aftershocks, none above three-point and none felt in San Francisco. A minor quake, really, despite its original magnitude. Nothing to fret about. The Big One was still somewhere in the future, the newscaster said, smiling.