“Pardon?” Charlie felt like he was missing something, like he didn’t understood the words.
“Grace.” Navaro looked at him though hooded eyes. “She lives next door to you.”
“Grace?”
Navaro laughed and kicked his right front tire.
The Center for Earthquake Studies occupied a former sound stage on Culver Boulevard just west of Overland, catty-corner to the Sony Pictures Studios. Big and boxy and windowless, the building was painted a stucco shade of tan.
Inside, an arched ceiling hung above the space like a dome of sky, reminding Charlie of a beehive. He nodded hello to a couple of faces he thought he recognized, and moved quickly across the room to a locked, unmarked door.
It was always the same in the Prediction Laboratory, a subtle shade of twilight, quiet beneath the ever-present electrical hum. With its computer models and maps marked with pushpins tracing earthquake activity, the lab reminded Charlie of a command center, more military than scientific. Kenwood was already at his desk, staring at the wall above it as if deep in thought. Charlie didn’t want to disturb him, but then he realized Kenwood wasn’t working, just looking at a picture of a dark-haired woman. “You should really take it down,” Charlie said, his voice as even as the wind.
Kenwood didn’t move. His face looked normal, except for the mouth, cut into an exaggerated mask. “You know what the thing of it is?” he whispered. “I keep thinking that in twenty years, she’ll just be someone I loved when I was young. I won’t even remember her. She’ll be obsolete.”
“People die,” Charlie said.
“We were married one year.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“What’s not his fault?” Charlie turned to see Sterling Caruthers standing in the door. Caruthers was the only other person with a key to the lab, and he made it a habit to show up unannounced, peering through microscopes and at computer screens as if he knew what he was looking for.
“Nothing,” Charlie said.
“What did he do?”
“It’s personal, OK?”
“What did you do?” Caruthers folded his arms across his chest and glared at Kenwood.
“We were just talking,” Charlie told him.
“You should be working. What about Indio?”
“Indio was nothing.”
“There were two temblors less than a mile apart.”
“Tremors like that happen all the time out there.”
“Listen,” Caruthers said, “if you don’t think Caltech’s getting ready to make a prediction of its own …”
“Sterling,” Charlie said again, “those quakes don’t add up to a thing.”
“Then it’s your job to make them add up. We are here to predict an earthquake, gentlemen. Now, if we mark a course from Indio up to L.A. …”
Caruthers sat down at Kenwood’s work station and began to tap at the keyboard. On the screen, a map of Southern California took shape, a latticework of fine green lines. Charlie stared at it for a moment, thinking there was something delicate in its construction, a fragile balance similar to that of the earth itself. Certainly, he thought, there had to be a way to read that balance consistently. But it would take time to find.
Caruthers’s voice droned on and on as he plotted points on the computer, and Charlie stopped listening, hearing it as if through a wall. It was like a sound that came at him from the other apartment. In the last week, there had been lots of noises, and once he thought he’d heard someone in the hall, but it was only a cat scratching at his doormat, looking for a place to get warm. Charlie tried to concentrate on what Caruthers was saying, but he couldn’t stop thinking of the girl next door.
IAN WAS ALONE IN GRACE’S BEDROOM WHEN THINGS started to get weird. First the lights went out, then the darkness seemed to harden into solid particles. There was a moment of utter stillness, the most vivid stillness Ian had ever known, before a rumbling erupted all around him, the floor and walls and ceiling began to shake, and he felt himself going down.
Ian sat bolt upright, eyes blurred and rheumy, his face a greasy mask of sleep. Slowly, he took in the familiar surroundings: the wicker chair in the corner, the comfortable clutter of his clothing on the floor, and a pile of scripts—Grace’s weekend reading—by the bed. He put his hands out beside him, patting down the mattress as his breathing calmed. Solid, he thought. It was just a dream.
Suddenly the ground trembled somewhere behind the building, and the entire apartment groaned. Ian dove back under the covers, but the noise and movement didn’t last. So, after a minute, he got out of bed and looked out the window.
In the backyard, workmen were driving twenty-foot-long metal poles into the ground at even intervals. A sandy-haired man stood at the back door, consulting a clipboard. As Ian watched, the man nodded, and blasting renewed, the workmen punching another hole into the earth.
Charlie was halfway up the stairs when he saw Grace’s front door open. For weeks, every time he’d stepped into the hallway, the possibility of this moment had been at the back of his mind. Now, he felt unprepared. He hesitated, one foot dangling in the air, waiting to see her emerge.
But Grace didn’t emerge, just a wiry guy with uncombed dark hair, and a chin covered with a few days’ stubble. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. The boyfriend, Charlie thought, and passed him on the landing, taking out his keys.
“Hey.” Charlie turned around. The boyfriend was staring at him. “That your stuff in the yard?”
“Uh-huh,” Charlie answered.
“Building something?”
“It’s … an experiment.”
“You a scientist?”
“A seismologist.”
“No shit.” The boyfriend grinned. “From Caltech?”
“CES, actually. We’re a new …”
“You guys are gonna predict the Big One.” The boyfriend’s face opened in recognition, eyes bright as lasers. “I know you. You’re the guy who predicted Kobe. I read about you in the Reader.”
“Charlie Richter.”
“Yeah, that’s you.” The boyfriend stepped forward and put out his hand. “My name’s Ian. You want a cup of coffee?”
Ian finished brewing the last of Grace’s mocha java and poured Charlie a cup. “Be honest,” he said. “Is it true you guys already know how to predict earthquakes?”
Charlie laughed. He’d only known this guy five minutes, but already he was acting as if they were old friends.
“That’s what they said in the Reader,” Ian continued. “Among other things.”
“Don’t believe everything you read.”
Charlie sipped his coffee and glanced at a stack of snapshots on the table. A pretty blonde in a bikini stood on Zuma Beach, jutting her hip provocatively and sticking out her tongue. Charlie had a pretty good idea who it was.
“That’s my girl friend,” Ian said, “Grace.”
Charlie examined the curve of her thigh, and the way her hair shimmered in the light. “Do you live together?”
“I have a place in Silver Lake, but Grace works all day. You work at home?”
“Sometimes. Today I’m buying a car.”