In the parking lot outside the Center for Earthquake Studies, Sterling Caruthers sat on a temporary dais, before three hundred journalists, waiting for the ground to move. As the clock crept toward midnight, he found himself reverting to a childhood habit — prayer. Please, he thought, let it come now. And when nothing happened, he thought again: Now. Now. Now.
At twelve-oh-three a.m., Caruthers felt compelled to take the microphone. “The earth is an inconsistent conductor of seismic energy,” he said. “Our simulations of the past few days indicated we might be running late.”
“Why didn’t you tell us before?” somebody bellowed. Similar questions came from all around him.
Caruthers fired back. “Think this is a game?” The crowd grew silent. “You think this is fun? This doom?” He slammed his fist against the podium, playing the outraged elder statesman. Actually, he had been hoping the quake would be delayed, knowing his power would increase exponentially until New Year’s. At that point, in the absence of seismic activity, he’d be run out of town on a rail.
From Honolulu, Charlie left a message on Grace’s machine — that everything had gone more or less as planned. Knowing he’d be unable to fly into L.A, he booked a flight to Phoenix instead and rented a car. He got home before midnight, and found a bottle of champagne in the fridge, a red rose, and a note:
Meeting going till late. See you after. You’re my hero, baby. XO (love) Grace.
The bed had been turned down and sprinkled with rose petals, and Charlie’s stomach fluttered at the thought of Grace being there while he was gone. He smelled her on his pillow, and the sense he got was one of home, of a life shared, complete. Her presence was like a bright light illuminating the empty corners of these rooms.
Charlie hopped in the shower. Ten minutes later, he was in his car, headed for CES. At twelve-twenty-nine a.m., he reached the parking lot and found thirty people standing in his space. News of Charlie’s presence rippled through the crowd. The reporters turned en masse and barraged him with questions.
“Charlie Richter, ladies and gentlemen,” Caruthers said, and reluctantly yielded the floor.
Charlie had saved the world, or at least part of the world. And he was in love. He knew, like few people ever know, that he’d reached the proverbial most important moment of his life. For a second, he saw white and heard in his mind’s ear a sort of cymbal crash. Then he swallowed, and gripped the sides of the podium tightly. “The earthquake we expected this evening … has been averted,” he mumbled, cotton-mouthed.
Before he had time to cough, the crowd went wild. Charlie cleared his throat and pulled a large sketchpad from his knapsack. “This is called a retroshock …”
Caruthers felt blood throbbing in his neck and suddenly wanted to be sick. “It isn’t coming,” Charlie continued, calmly. “The earthquake has been redirected. It’s nothing to worry about …”
People finally shut up when Maggie Murphy from the Los Angeles Reader climbed atop a car and began screaming Charlie’s name.
“Dr. Richter! Are you asking us to believe you just stopped the earthquake?” She seemed to shimmer like an angel, her black hair shiny under the fluorescent lights.
“Yes,” Charlie said.
Then Murphy’s eyes narrowed, her voice grew tight, and she wasn’t an angel anymore. “You guys should be tarred and feathered,” she said.
Caruthers’s mind was whirling. He had only one option — to stand by Charlie. His genius. If the earthquake came, fine. If it didn’t, at least the retroshock would provide some sort of out.
He put his arms around Charlie’s shoulder, gave him a Hollywood hug, and leaned forward to speak. “We live in a world of science and hope for the future, where great—”
That was all he could get out before the crowd pressed in, sending both him and Charlie inside to the discredited halls of CES.
THE NUMBERS GAME, PART TWO
ETHAN CARSON’S HOUSE ON THE BEACH IN MALIBU HAD been decorated entirely in black, white, and gray. The idea, he’d been told by a designer, was to accentuate the people in the rooms. This made perfect sense, because Ethan entertained movie stars who were constantly in need of accentuation. Stockpiles of champagne lay in wait in the garage’s auxiliary refrigerator. Whether that champagne would be brought out at all, or bourbon served instead, was a matter of the numbers.
People began dropping by his monochrome palace before noon, as Ethan was busy making calls to theater chains, plugging the data into a computer program called “MOVIEGROSS.” By one o’clock, Henny Rarlin was on the veranda, already drunk. Ear to the Ground had made $37 million in its opening week, but it was uncertain whether the film would continue to do business — or, as the industry put it, “had legs.” If, in the second weekend, grosses dropped by more than half, they were in big trouble. But if they dropped by, say, a quarter, they were in business. Big business.
The movie had opened on 2,900 screens on December 29, to mixed reviews. Janet Maslin of The New York Times called it a provocative concept with “Escheresque complexity,” but she also said it was “uneven in tone.” Gene Shalit, who loves everything, said it was the “scariest movie ever.” Then again, Peter Travers, from Rolling Stone, referred to it as “history’s most egregious waste of film stock.” Matters were worsened by that day’s Chicago Tribune, which ran a feature discussing the merits of capitalizing on disaster, indirectly accusing Warner Brothers of a bogus collusion with the Center for Earthquake Studies: “How Schlock Science Sells Seats.”
The fact remained that no earthquake had come. And Ethan Carson didn’t need MOVIEGROSS to spell it out: It was a crapshoot. In the absence of their “marketing earthquake,” they had little chance of making money. Losing less became his mantra, and soon after Bridge Bridges had been made comfortable, Ethan poured his first bourbon.
Having slept until noon without any intention of stopping by Ethan’s (he’d been invited out of necessity), Ian Marcus had a hankering for a Big Mac and Shake-’em-Up Shake. Mired in negativity and despair, he hadn’t called anyone back for two weeks. His friends, he was certain, were abandoning him. Even his mother had asked him if he’d “copied off that other boy.”
Still, Ian found solace seeing his name on various promotions connected with Ear to the Ground: in the newspaper, on billboards, television, and at McDonald’s. “Written by Ian Marcus,” it said, and it was true. How hard it was, though, to know where the ideas came from. If Ian thought back to that night at Damiano’s, he still couldn’t say whether Jon Kravitz had actually invented plot, or had simply led Ian to certain conclusions.
Ian drove to Mann’s Chinese, showed the manager his Writers Guild card, and walked into an afternoon screening of Ear to the Ground. He watched without bias and, along with a highly excited audience, truly enjoyed the movie. Bridge Bridges was wonderful, he thought. The laughs were in all the right places, and there was even applause as the closing credits rolled.
Ian was hopeful again. He strolled down Hollywood Boulevard, along the Walk of Fame and, as he happened past Pearl Bailey’s star, something came to him: “The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.” Giveth and Taketh. He jumped into his car and raced home.