Heading home, Hu passed other morning joggers. This was a favorite track. Nods were exchanged, or not—some of the runners were lost in hidden music, others in their personal reveries. He recognized most; he’d been running this track for more than a year. He was probably regarded as a regular by now.
The final leg. He trotted past the last of the brash touristy areas. Later this strand would teem with summer crowds, exploring the souvenir stands, the ranks of T-shirts printed with single entendres, the displays of dreadful art, all the different fortune tellers and street performers, but right now, this community was still lazily awakening, coming back to life at its own pace. There were still the occasional shapeless lumps on the stone benches—the homeless, wrapped up against the chill of the night, waiting for the heat of the day to revive them. Even in July, the morning air had a bite, with a salty flavor from the grumbling sea.
Hu turned and jogged up the narrow way that pretended to be a street, a block and a half, slowing down only in the last few meters. He hated to stop, hated to drop back into that other pace of life—the faster more frenetic life, where you weren’t allowed to run, you had to walk, walk, walk everywhere.
He glanced at his wristband, looking to see where his numbers were today. Not bad. Not his personal best, but good enough. “Probably still stuck on the plateau,” he muttered. “Gonna have to push to get off. Just not today.”
Hu opened the back gate and started peeling off his T-shirt. He liked the feeling of the cold morning air cooling the sweat off his skin. He took a moment to slow down, to let himself ease down into this world, then finally stepped through the door and called affectionately, “Honey, I’m homo—” then headed straight for the shower.
Hu Son didn’t just appreciate hot water, he loved the luxury of it. In eighteen months, he’d have his master’s degree in cultural anthropology, and after that, he’d go for his doctorate, but already his studies had given him a clear sense of how lucky he was to be living in an age where clean water was taken for granted—and hot water available on demand.
California’s drought had officially ended some years before, but Hu rarely lingered in the shower. Even at this remove, he could still hear his mother banging on the door, shouting, “Leave some for the rest of us!” Old habits endured. Today, however—today was special. So he took his time, soaping up and rinsing, three times over. He closed his eyes, paced his breathing, and allowed himself to sink into his personal contract with himself.
“I am powerful,” he whispered. “I am vulnerable,” he continued. And smiling, he concluded, “And I am loving.” He repeated it a few times, a personal mantra, until it was no longer a declaration, only his renewed experience of himself. And then, one more phrase. “Especially today!” Opening his eyes, Hu nearly shouted that last. “Because today, I am getting married!”
An electric screech interrupted him—alarm sirens outside. It sounded like the whole city was howling. Like any other Angeleno, anyone who’d lived in the city more than six months, Hu ignored it. It was meaningless noise. Everything was noise, from the daily growl of motorcycles and Asian “rice-rockets” to the nightly screams of drunks and junkies.
Hu turned off the water and heard James calling from the kitchen. “Hu, you need to get in here!” Something was wrong, James only called him Hu when he was upset. He grabbed a fresh towel and wrapped it around himself. A second towel for his hair and he headed toward the kitchen where James was standing, leaning with his back against the counter, a mug of tea in his hand—but focusing intensely on a small television on the end of the kitchen table. Without looking up, James held out the usual mug of tea for Hu.
Hu took it and pecked his fiancé on the cheek. “What’s up, Bubble? What are all the sirens for? Some kind of test?” He didn’t wait for an answer, but took his first sip. Chai…. “Ahh.” He glanced toward the television. The president was talking.
“Now what? Are we at war?”
“It’s Hawaii,” said James.
“We’re at war with Hawaii?”
“There’s been a quake—”
Hu’s buoyant mood evaporated. “Oh no. How bad?”
“Both Honolulu and Hilo were hit by tsunamis. Really big—the biggest ever.” James turned to Hu. “When did your folks fly out?”
“They didn’t. Dad needed an extra day. So they’re flying out this evening, they’ll catch up with us tomorrow at the hotel.”
“No, they won’t. And we won’t be there either. Honolulu airport is gone.”
“Wait. What?” At first, Hu didn’t understand. How could an airport be gone? Then he realized what James was telling him. “That’s not possible. A whole airport—?”
“And half the city—”
“Oh, shit,” Hu said, his mug of tea suddenly forgotten in his hand. “That’s—just bad.”
On the TV, the president was still talking, a row of grim-faced people stood behind him. Or maybe it was a repeat. The scroll-bar across the bottom of the screen was filled with incomprehensible words. They moved too fast for him to make sense of them. And outside, the sirens still screamed.
“Shit!” said Hu. “All I wanted was one little honeymoon—” He became aware of the sirens again. “And what’s all that noise about—? We’re not—Shit! What’s going on?”
James put down his coffee. He turned to Hu. He took Hu’s mug from him. “Squeak. Sweetheart—” His expression was grim. “It’s not just Hawaii. It’s the whole California coast. The tsunami is headed for us now. We’ve got maybe three hours before it hits—”
“A tsunami? Here—?”
“A tsunami. Here. A mega-tsunami. Just like the movie, only bigger—”
“But that was only a movie—” Hu stopped in mid-sentence, remembering that movie, that scene.
James Liddle had been SCUBA diving since his teens. After college, he’d set up his own small company, specializing in SCUBA services to local studios. “Underwater? Let it be a Liddle thing. Call us!” Because of his skill, his professionalism, his dependability, and his charming good looks, he was on speed dial for several stunt coordinators.
More than once, James had been called in to teach various film and television actors how to dive safely—or at least look like they knew how to dive safely. More than once, he’d doubled for actors who were too valuable to the studios to be allowed to do their own diving, but he couldn’t say who. Most of the bigger shoots involved nondisclosure agreements.
Hu’s family had moved from Hong Kong to Vancouver when he was eight, where his father opened a consulting service/business school, where he taught westerners how to do business in China and occasionally set up deals himself.
When Hu was twelve, an aunt he’d never met died of cancer, so his mother came south to Los Angeles to manage her brother’s large unruly family; she brought Hu with. As the new kid, as the Chinese kid, and also as the smallest and the smartest in his class, Hu was a target for bullies of all sizes—so his uncle enrolled him into a series of physical activities to build up not only his body, not only his ability to defend himself, but also his self-esteem. Eventually Hu studied karate, judo, Tae Kwon Do, and modern dance. By the time he was nineteen, Hu was earning extra money doing stunts in occasional action films. Though he never doubled for any of the major actors, he was often somewhere in the background—and in a memorable comedy, he’d been featured as one of the dancing ninjas.
James and Hu had met at Culver Studios. A massive team of stunt doubles had been assembled for a disaster picture, another overblown disaster picture, a fantasy of multiple simultaneous disasters—hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanoes, tidal waves, and the return of disco. Everyone knew the picture was going to be awful; it was assumed (though never spoken aloud) that nobody upstairs knew how bad it was—either that, or it was actually intended from the beginning to be a flop, a tax write-off, or perhaps even some bizarre kind of money-laundering. Who knew? The only people who understood Hollywood financing were alchemists, and few of them were ever allowed out of their dungeon laboratories into the light of day.