For whatever reason, the driver kept them parked here at the curb, even as the columns and carved friezes of the building, the ornate chimneys and cupolas appeared to soften and droop and finally to drop out of sight. By itself, her hand brought the wineglass to her mouth. Her other hand sought the hard lump of a pill bottle in her jacket pocket.
The producer leaned next to her, holding his camera to the car window. Schlo filmed as the shivering mass of the structure, the great shattering, subsiding dome, began to slump, falling inward with a dull, dusty roar.
The facade toppled backward. The stained-glass windows and the statues in their mosaic-lined niches. Released from somewhere, a rooftop tank or cistern, a flood of water poured over the sinking wreckage. The water washed a tinkling wave of splintered glass and tile shards against the side of the limousine.
The great mass that had lined that side of the street, it continued to settle, shifting, sifting lower. The crumbling all of it disappeared below street level. The weight of rubble drove downward into whatever basement or subbasements had been beneath the structure. So deep Mitzi could see ruptured water mains spouting into the void from several locations.
The pulverized concrete and the remnants of red plush sank lower as the dark waters rose higher and closed over them. And in short order the spouting water mains themselves were submerged, and the entire site was transformed into a fairly large, very square lake.
A calm lake of black water. As dark and ominous as the La Brea tar pits. Nothing save a scattering of popcorn floated on this still, silent surface.
A building was being demolished. Foster seized on the idea. That would explain the mob of cars parking downtown so late: spectators. The demolition was taking place at this predawn hour for safety reasons. This, he told himself, made total sense.
Blush said, “Turn on the radio.” Sirens grew louder. “Turn on the radio, and get us out of here.” Her voice flat with demand.
In this world of streaming everything, a radio seemed as archaic as a telegram. Foster had to find the ignition with the key and turn it a notch before he could work the radio knobs. Flashing emergency lights were approaching, lashing the scene with blue and red.
Blush cowered in the backseat. “Drive!” She was slipping the battery into her phone.
“It was a tremor.” Foster craned his neck to check for traffic on the empty street and pulled away from the curb. The only other car in motion was a limousine passing them, headed off in the opposite direction, accelerating fast.
Blush gazed out the rear window. “Get us on the freeway. Hurry.” She threw both arms over the back of the front seat. Phone in hand, she held it for him to see the screen. A tinny shriek sounded from the phone’s speakers. The car radio announced, “…suspected microquake…”
Blush snarled at the radio, “Microquake?”
Foster risked a glance at the screen.
On the phone some cheesy disaster movie played. Countless screaming teenagers filled a theater, row upon row of contorted faces. Boys and girls, standing upon or sitting in red velvet seats. Their hands held up, fingers splayed as chunks of golden concrete crashed down upon them. The camera’s perspective swung upward to show an ornate frescoed ceiling framed in cornices of gesso and stucco, all of this architecture cracking to pieces and thundering down. The painted clouds and angels plunged from a concrete sky. And in the center of this a stupendous chandelier of what appeared to be bronze, blazing with a forest of electric candles and dripping with swags and fobs of faceted crystal. This behemoth blinked, went dark, swayed a moment and dropped. The camera shot followed its plunge, short and fast. It thudded with the impact of a meteor striking the earth, crushing to instant silence the teenage and tweenage throngs. The crash sent up geysers of sparks.
Foster snorted, annoyed. Nervous. Not sure why she was showing him this camp disaster flick. His forehead still throbbed from where he’d conked it on the steering wheel. The pain his only guarantee this wasn’t a nightmare.
This disaster movie, it appeared to take place within a movie palace. In the distance a screen showed an actor, his tortured face twisted in pain, his enormous mouth screaming. It was his scream that the audience seemed to be mimicking. As if the massed crowd was reacting in complete sympathy, screaming in the same pitch as his scream as the building around them shook to pieces and collapsed upon them.
The camera’s perspective was moving now, shifting sideways as an adjacent wall gave way, burying victims beneath a landslide of red velvet wallpaper and concrete. Steel rebar twisted like licorice. Other arms, other people in the background held phones as if documenting their own last moments. This cascade of statuary and columns continued to flatten phone-waving hordes, killing them instantly until the scene shown on Blush’s phone went dark and silent. Silent and dead, the screen reflecting only the dim shadows of Foster’s face.
It took Mitzi a moment to recognize herself. She’d been in the studio, scream surfing through the inventory. Combing through the decades of tapes in the hope she might find the original of the orchiectomy scream. What she’d do with it she had no idea.
She’d chosen a tape at random. Hit Play. And there she was, some lost version of herself. Hardly recognizable, even to her. The words woozy and strung out, the voice on the tape asked, “Do you know what the Wilhelm scream is, dear?”
Audible on the tape, a stomach growled. “Sorry,” a girl, some mystery girl, mumbled. “All this food talk makes me hungry.”
Her words slurred on the tape, Mitzi said, “Not to worry. You won’t be hungry
