Chapter 26 Something Nice About a Disaster
Something Nice About a Disaster
Night falls fast, and no one wants to be alone.
Groups gather on sidewalks, weary eyes taking in collapsed roofs and buildings left in heaps.
At one corner, a little girl sits cross-legged on a steamer trunk, her dog in her lap.
To her left, a long balcony’s crushed three cars, and a man stands in the street, staring at the remains, a ring of keys hanging from his hand.
There is no electricity. Streets are dark, windows black.
Entire blocks look abandoned, but now and then there is the orange glow of bonfires and clusters of people gathered around the light, afraid to be inside or alone.
Above, the moon and stars form a velvet bowl pinpricked with ancient light.
Without the competition of the city lights, the stars are center stage at last, and it feels like something blooming, as if this whole time, the sky needed pure dark to grow and to radiate and to shine.
But below, it’s different. A world of shadows, landmarks darkened.
A thrumming hint of danger. She pulls onto a road she doesn’t know, trying to get her bearings.
There are only two people on the planet she wants to be with now, and neither is truly an option.
Not now, not after Jack hurled his accusation, and not after her questions about Nico have spiraled.
It’s not always what you’re asking but the fact that you’re asking it in the first place that’s the problem.
Never has she felt this alone. What she would do for her mother right now, or even just some proof that she still exists somehow, that all the love Frankie had for her and all the love Fiona gave remain somewhere, pulsing and beautiful despite this feeling of empty solitude.
But there’s nothing. Just distant sirens through the window and moonlight on the hood of her car.
No voice comes to her. No magic or sign.
No hope. How can a life, magnificent and monumental, just disappear?
She’s crying when she pulls through a darkened intersection, the Pacific Electric Railway switches crisscrossing in the air above her. The only light comes from her headlights. Passing a shuttered bank, she barely makes out the shape of a man pacing outside.
Suddenly, a couple of kids are running alongside her car, trying to flag her down.
She slows, pulling to the curb, but then glances at her side mirror in time to see two men step out from behind a broken wall.
They’re heading toward her, and they’ve got what look like pipes in their hands.
She slams her foot down on the gas, screeching away from the kids and the men.
Still, they follow. Quickly, she takes the next turn, and catches sight of the men in her mirror, running toward another car.
That driver slows—either a saint or a victim.
Another few turns, and she’s back on a familiar road, but it’s congested.
Car after car after car in a slow crawl.
No matter, there’s comfort in being with so many people, everyone trying to go anywhere that’s not here—until she hears a noise.
A chugging sound. Her car. Her eyes find the gas gauge. It’s close to zero.
There is a gas station in the distance. Hoping to avoid the main thoroughfare, she pulls onto a different street, barely pausing at a stop sign.
With one hand, she opens her coin purse but only finds thirty-five cents.
Just enough, she thinks, remembering the shuttered bank.
How much does she have at home? As long as she can get there, she should make it through the week. She thinks.
But up close, the station is dark. Not believing it, she pulls beside the one other car there. A man, the owner of the car, she presumes, stands at the teller’s window, trying to see through the glass.
“No one’s there?” Frankie calls to him. Her car’s engine has started to falter.
The man turns to observe her. “No, ma’am. You should use whatever gas you have left to get someplace safe.”
But then he must hear her car, must understand that she’s out of gas, because he looks at his car and back at the line of traffic before deciding something.
He motions to her to shut off her car, which she does—and that’s when she realizes that he could do anything.
No one would even notice. Scenarios scroll through her mind as her heart hammers, but then she sees that what he’s doing is siphoning gas out of his own car and putting it in hers.
“This wasn’t gonna get me to Utah, so it might as well help you get where you’re going.”
How does one thank a perfect stranger for coming into their life at the exact right time?
For returning a bit of faith she didn’t think she could get back?
Without thinking, she hugs him, and instantly remembers the woman from the restaurant long ago who let her cut in line.
Like her, the man stiffens at first, surprised, but then hugs her back.
It’s not much, but it gets her home. As she approaches her neighborhood, the damage seems less—a lot of chimneys and broken windows.
Then she thinks of the little house that’s supposed to be hers, and wonders how it is.
She imagines being there alone when the quake struck, and knows the solitude she loves would turn on her.
When she pulls onto her block, the road is packed. Everyone is outside and in the street, clustered around multiple bonfires.
“Thank God, thank God, thank God,” Susan says when she finds her. A few feet away, a family of five sits on dining room chairs, blankets over their legs.
“What about our apartment?” Frankie asks, peering down the street.
Virginia rubs her hands together. “It’s fine, from what we can see. But who knows about foundations or gas pipes or if it’ll happen again. I’ll sleep out here if I have to.”
“Me too,” Susan adds.
Frankie knows they won’t. They don’t know what it’s like to really be cold, because if they did, they would know there is almost nothing worse.
You can’t sleep, you can’t think—but though you cannot concentrate on much of anything, your mind becomes consumed with the body’s state.
A hyperfocus of misery. Los Angeles, for all its palm tree postcards and sunny beaches, gets cold at night.
Frankie bets almost everyone here will be inside by one a.m. But now it’s still early enough, and people go from bonfire to bonfire, warming their hands, faces lit orange from the glow.
Kids play in the street. Someone has a guitar, and more than a few people can really sing.
“Look at all those stars,” Virginia says, holding a cup of hot coffee someone made over a fire.
Susan tilts her head to the sky. “For once, Hollywood can’t compete.”
Virginia laughs. “There’s something nice about a disaster, isn’t there?”
And that’s when Frankie sees Nico. Hands in his coat pockets, he searches the faces on the street. He’s cast in the bonfire’s glow and smiles at a kid before handing him an orange from his pocket.
All it takes is raising her arm, and he sees her. Immediately, he smiles, and her heart lurches because she misses him and she misses Jack and she misses how everything used to be and what she thought it would become.
“Whew,” he says once he’s made his way to her. “That was some shaker. Your building all right?”
“Supposedly,” she says. That he could’ve been involved somehow with Tank weighs down her words, making her response less than friendly.
But Nico doesn’t appear to notice. “Good. Us too. But the phone lines are down, and everything’s a mess.
Imagine if this happened even a couple hours before it did—all the kids still in school.
Hundreds of schools collapsed, you hear that?
Thank God it was at night. Dinner plans shot to hell, but at least people were together. ”
“I almost ran out of gas.” She gives a hesitant smile, knowing she’s in for a lecture.
“Kid. What have I told you? Fill it up at half tank. Never trust the gauge.” When she doesn’t say anything, he shakes his head. “You didn’t have money.”
“I left it at home.”
He’s digging in his pocket, then opening his wallet.
“Nico, I’m home now. Honestly, I have plenty of money.”
“What’d I say about leading with the word honestly?
And you already told me you didn’t go to the bank before they shut down, so I’m onto you.
Though I heard California banks are defying the government and opening, because of the emergency, but I wouldn’t bank on that.
” He stops to laugh, then peels off a five-dollar bill.
“Take this. Don’t argue. Fill up tomorrow and keep it full.
There’s a problem? You need gas in your car.
Always be prepared for a fire to break out—how you gonna outrun it if you run out of gas?
You saw the lines of people today. You’ll burn fuel just sitting there. ”
She promises to fill up, and then, almost hesitantly, says, “Have you heard how others are?”
“Got some crazy reports in, some sticky situations we’ll have to clean up—but everyone’s alive.” He pauses, then adds offhandedly, “Jack got out in the nick of time. Pretty sure that house of his barely trembled.”
She nods, thankful. “And Angela and Gabriella?”
“Fine. Scared but fine. You’re the one I couldn’t get through to, so a drive was in order.”
She flushes with guilt. She’s never had this. Fiona, as protective as she was, had so much to worry about and so little control over their lives that Frankie never felt truly taken care of. After all, how can you offer help when you’re stuck in the struggle yourself?
“Tank Adams called me,” she says before she can think better of it. “He said he shouldn’t have done what he did and wanted to know if June loved him. He said someone told him she didn’t.”
“Yeah, me. I told him that a thousand times. Including when I scared him away from the premiere. You were there, don’t you remember?”