The dog bowl was almost empty now, the sidewalks steadily heaping up with smashed stucco, smashed bricks, smashed tiles, smashed glass. But in the middle of the street it was okay, at least so far, though when Alida felt the ground beneath her moving like it had muscles, it made her think of horseback riding: she was riding the quake, saddle joggling underneath her, holding on.
Amazing that the bottom of Elliott Bay was bared. With the sea gone so far out, how and when would it return?
It came to her, as she saw the Smith Tower go into a kind of slow corkscrew motion, twisting impossibly, defying whatever law of physics ought to govern steel frames, wood, and terra-cotta, that never ever had she been so piercingly conscious of her own singular existence in the world.
A cat — one of Mr. Kawasuki’s — bolted across the road, a yowling streak of stand-on-end orange fur, and its terror roused her from her dreamy detachment. Where was Tad? Had her mom taken shelter safely? This temblor was going on forever. For the first time since the quake began, Alida felt fear, a wrenching twist of ice in her bowels. The chorus of car alarms was joined by a mad band of sirens and whistles, and, from somewhere close by, a thin and lonely cry, like a sheet being torn down the middle, that Alida was shocked to realize was her own.
MINNA, sitting on the patio, was puzzled. She was certain Augie had said the tide was coming in and that’s why he’d be going out in his kayak before dinner. Yet she could see the water withdrawing from the bay, retreating to the cold deeps of Puget Sound. One by one, new turtle-backed sandbanks were surfacing. Either she or Augie must have got it wrong. It was probably her mistake; she got so muddled nowadays, and had never understood the mystery of the tides. Augie had tried more than once to explain the phases of the moon and the force of gravity, but she hadn’t listened properly. Now, watching the sea draining from the land, she felt a little safer in herself, as she always did at low tide; she just wished it would stay that way. She was glad that Augie wouldn’t be kayaking this evening. They could have an early supper of clams in a sauce of shallots, parsley, cream, and cheese, and Minna thought that in a few minutes she’d better start preparing the sauce.
She heard the sudden clatter of Augie’s footsteps coming down the uncarpeted stairs.
“Minna? Minna? Minna!”
Jiminy crickets! What did he want now?