Mitzi accepted the glass and brought it directly to her mouth. Giddy she felt. A little giddy after spending the last few days alone in her condo, like a dog that had been locked in the house for too long.
Without waiting, Schlo blurted, “Got herself kidnapped, poor kid.”
He held up his phone, showing her a photo of the actress with a gun rammed cruelly against her forehead and tears washing mascara down her cheeks. He turned the phone to look at the picture. He shook his head with wonder. “After all those movies where she was eaten alive by rabid monkeys. Talk about karma.”
The car nosed down a ramp, and they were gliding along the freeway.
Mitzi stopped drinking to catch her breath. With her half-empty glass she toasted, “Forget us our trespasses.”
The producer reached the bottle from its bucket of ice on the bar. He leaned forward and poured her glass full.
The car nosed upward, following an exit ramp. It stopped at a light among tall, downtown buildings on an otherwise deserted street. Grates covered shop windows. Other drivers were few and far between.
The car slowed. Rolled to a stop. Or rather the world stopped scrolling past them, leaving only colors and flashes of light to flood the car windows. A neon-filled marquee.
They were parked in front of a theater. The Imperial. Above the theater’s canopy a forest of dark minarets and spires rose against the nighttime sky. Dominating all of them, a looming concrete dome suggested the colossal size of the auditorium.
The Imperial stood alone among blocks of glass-walled towers. The last survivor of the downtown picture palaces built in the 1920s. The marquee lights spelled out “Midnight Sneak Preview,” beyond the glass doors the lobby looked empty, just a stretch of red carpet and the gleam of polished brass and old gilded details. The box office was dark. A sign hung in the window read, “Sorry.” The lack of empty parking spaces in every direction bore witness to how many hundreds of people must be inside. A thousand. Two thousand.
Squinting to see the lobby’s arched ceiling and damask wallpaper, Mitzi whispered instead of talking aloud. “Does this have anything to do with Detroit?”
The producer patted the air as if to shush her. “Nothing happened in Detroit. Snow load is what happened in Detroit.”
She put her glass to her lips and heard a soft ping. Like a small bell, as if someone had won something. It brought her attention to a dark spot on the blazing bright marquee. As she watched, another ping sounded. A bulb went dark. Another ping put out a third light. Bulbs bursting. The ringing rang together like a slot machine payout, like Christmas, as bulbs on every part of the canopy popped with machine-gun speed. So many so quickly, the name Imperial was illegible, and gone entirely in the next instant.
Something fell through Mitzi’s field of vision, exploding on the sidewalk beside her window. Shards of it sprayed the car. Peering up, she could see the building’s eaves where the red roof tiles rattled. Another tile broke loose and fell to shatter on the sidewalk.
A small pane in a large stained-glass window burst outward. Added to this, the popping lightbulbs and shattering clay tiles grew to a bright-sounding blizzard. A high-pitched fuselage of things breaking. The entire cluttered and complicated outline of the building seemed to shudder.
Against this ringing cacophony, the producer punched a number into his phone. “We have another incident,” he told someone. His voice flat, grim with resignation. “Get the earthquake experts prepped with scenario number two.” He spoke louder, raising his voice against the shrill din of windows bursting, exploding lightbulbs, and tiles. “Push our version out to the media now.”
The lobby doors bulged outward and became a webbed haze of fractured safety glass. A concussive wave rocked the car. The tapered outline of each concrete minaret seemed to blur with vibration as a dull, grinding hum filled the night. A nearby car alarm wailed. A throbbing wail that echoed and reverberated in the canyon of high-rises.
Foster’s car rocked from side to side. A breeze out of nowhere, it felt like, but more than a breeze. The car listed like a ship, pushed by a blast so strong it made the worn shock absorbers squeak. His body earthquake-trained, Foster sat upright, slamming his head against something. Against the steering wheel. He’d fallen asleep across the front seat. Adrenaline poisoned his blood.
From the backseat a voice asked, “You okay?” The words interrupted by a wail, an air-raid siren crescendo of wails. Car alarms by the hundreds. Blush rose on her elbows to peek out the rear window. Cars honked and trilled, their taillights and headlights flashing. Parked cars lining the empty dark streets.
Foster touched for blood where he’d hit his forehead and felt none. He saw Blush in the rearview mirror. She stared slack jawed at something in the distance. He looked in the same direction. There the skyline was changing shape. It called to mind the implosion of Las Vegas hotels. The controlled demolition of high-rise public housing projects. A thin tower sank into a cloud of dust. Other shapes alongside the tower also teetered and dropped out of sight. Strobes flashed as if from broken electrical cables.
A wine bottle flashed in Mitzi’s memory. The way the bottle and her glass had exploded at the peak of someone’s scream. Her elbow felt an echo of the pain as if her arm had its own memory. Even as she watched, the marquee canopy didn’t fall so much as it seemed to melt in slow motion. It drooped until it lay in a tangle of steel and crushed neon tubing on the sidewalk. With the same slow wilting, a concrete spire dropped from the skyline. One minaret, then all of the minarets were dissolving into themselves. They sank into the bulk of the building as it fell dark. Moorish tiles, Mexican and Aztec-inspired ceramic tiles cracked and flaked off to reveal
