A ferocious jolt of the bed rocketed Jake instantly from REM sleep to complete wakefulness in less than two seconds, adrenaline surging through him. His first thought was that an intruder had broken into his home and was violently shaking the bed—apparently wishing to wake him up before killing him with a hatchet or a machete. He sat up quickly, ready to fight or flee, his eyes looking around the dark room for his tormentor. There was just enough ambient light from the clock radio and the nightlight in the bathroom for him to see that there was no one there at all. But the bed was still being hammered back and forth. And it wasn’t just the bed. Above his head, the ceiling fan was gyrating madly as well, seemingly about to rip itself out of its mounting and drop right on top of him. And over against the wall, books were tumbling out of the bookshelf and thumping to the floor. From inside the bathroom, he heard the sound of objects falling onto the counter, the contents of his medicine cabinet undoubtedly—his deodorant, his bottles of cologne, his Tylenol and vitamin B tablets.
Earthquake! his mind finally screamed at him. And it’s a fucking big one! That had to be what was happening. As someone who had lived in southern California for more than ten years, he had felt tremors of the Earth before. There were generally quakes that could be felt a few times a year in LA. This was something different though. This one was violent. This one felt like the house was going to come apart around him.
“Fuck me!” he barked, casting the covers aside and rolling out of bed. He put his feet on the floor and tried to make his way to the doorway, which was where he had always been taught to station yourself in this kind of situation. His feet, however, did not seem to want to cooperate with him. It was like he was walking across the deck of a pitching, rolling ship after drinking a fifth of Jack Daniels. He fell down, skinning his knees on the carpet. From downstairs, he could hear the sound of other things crashing to the ground and breaking. He began to crawl frantically, growing more fearful by the second. Just as he finally made it to the doorway, the shaking came to a halt.
From outside he could hear the sound of dozens of car alarms braying out. He looked around at the room. The ceiling fan was still jittering back and forth but seemed like it was trying to steady itself. The blades were still rotating. The lamp on his nightstand had fallen over but the clock radio on the dresser across the room was still sitting there, still lit up and showing the time: 4:31. The power was still on. He stood up slowly, carefully, and flipped on the light switch. The room lit up, showing a mess of books and knickknacks spilled onto the carpet, showing his bed had actually moved about a foot to the right. The walls, however, seemed to be intact, with no signs of imminent collapse.
“That was some shit,” Jake said, feeling his heart hammering in his chest. He took a few deep breaths and then opened the bedroom door. Out in the hallway he saw several pictures on the ground.
“Jake!” Elsa voice called up to him. “Talk to me, Jake!”
“I’m okay, Elsa!” he called back. “The bedroom is kinda trashed though. Are you okay?”
Before she could answer him, the house began to shake again.
“Oh Lord!” he heard Elsa cry. “Another one! Stand in the doorway, Jake!”
“Fuckin’ A!” he yelled back at her, putting his hands against the doorjamb and bracing himself.
This shaking was not nearly as violent, but it was still respectable. Jake heard a few more things go crashing to the floor or to the counters in various parts of the house. After what seemed an eternity (but which he would later find out was only eighteen seconds), the shaking subsided and disappeared once again. He stood there for another minute, afraid to move lest there be another one.
“Still okay up there, Jake?” Elsa asked.
“I think so,” he called down. “You?”
“So far, so good!” she returned. “We have a considerable mess down here though.”
“At least we’re alive to fret about it,” he told her. “I’m gonna get dressed and come down. That felt like it was a big one. The kind that kills people and destroys shit.”
“I suspect you’re right,” she told him. “I’ll get the television on and see what’s going on.”
Jake hurriedly pulled on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, nervously anticipating another round of shaking the entire time. None came, though outside he could hear the car alarms still braying away. He almost walked out of the room barefoot but then, thinking that there was probably broken glass to contend with, grabbed a pair of socks and his battered running shoes and put them on.
He left the room and made his way down the hallway, stepping over the fallen pictures for now, flipping on light switches as he went. He walked down the staircase and emerged in the entertainment room. His large screen television was still mounted on the wall, though it looked a little crooked, but several of his guitars had come crashing down. Fortunately, he saw, his most prized guitar—the sunburst Gibson Les Paul that had been signed by Les Paul himself (or Himself, as Jake thought of Him)—was still firmly in its case and hanging where it had always hung. His CD cabinets, on the other hand, had tipped over and spilled out their contents all over the polished hardwood floor and the rack for storing the pool cues had come down as well.
He made his way into the sitting room adjacent to the kitchen where he found Elsa, fully dressed in her jeans and blouse, staring at the television on the wall, the remote control in her hand, next to the remains of one of Jake’s wine racks, which had fallen over and broken open approximately three thousand dollars’ worth of premium vintages. The smell of wine was quite potent in the air.
“That is a goddamn shame,” Jake said, looking at his spilled wine.
“You do not exaggerate,” Elsa said. “I’m never going to get that wine out of the carpet. We’re going to have to replace it.”
“And the wine too,” Jake said.
Elsa shot him an irritated look. “The power is still on and the television works, but nothing is on the air right now. All the local stations are just showing a blue screen and the national channels, like CNN, are showing the technical difficulties screen.”
“The cable company must’ve been taken out,” Jake said.
“Yes,” she said. “That means it was a big one indeed. I need you to go outside right away and check the gas meter.”
“The gas meter? For what?”
She gave him another look of irritation. “For leaking gas,” she said sternly. “Why else would one check the gas meter after an earthquake? If you smell any gas at all, even a little bit, you’ll have to shut the valve off. I’m going to check around in here to see if any of the internal gas plumbing is damaged.”
“Shut the valve off? How do I do that?”
She shook her head and rolled her eyes to the ceiling. She then walked into the kitchen. He heard her opening a drawer and then slamming it shut again. A moment later she walked back into the room with a large crescent wrench in her hands. She handed it to him. “Shut it off with this. There’s a large, round valve with a rectangular protrusion atop it. The rectangle is currently pointing in the direction of the pipe. If you need to turn off the valve, put the wrench on that protrusion and turn it ninety degrees, so that the rectangle is perpendicular to the pipe. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” he said. “And I should only do this if I smell gas?”
“Or if I smell gas and instruct you to do so,” she said. “Now hurry, before we get blown to Timbuktu.”
“I’m on it,” Jake said. “Just one more question.”
“What?”
“Where exactly is the gas meter?”