Ben Soul

by Richard George

wearing off.

  “I got the munchies,” Shu said.

  “Me, too,” Beau said.

  “There’s a mission near here,” Noah said. “La Señora’s place. If I know her, she’ll have something organized. Food, at least.” Grimly silent, Beau and Shu nodded. They followed Noah’s lead and went toward the mission, carefully picking their way through the rubble and tangled trolley wires that still shot sparks out at random. They were silent until they got to the mission.

  “I’m going to the store,” Shu said. “Way will need someone to sweep up broken things.”

  “Good luck, buddy,” Noah said. He wiped his cheek with a hand that had somewhere picked up ash or some other black dust. It smeared his cheek. Beau laughed and pointed at it, and began weeping.

  “This is worse than Anita,” he said.

  The Plaster Disaster

  A Michener might begin with the crack-up of Pangaea, the Ur-Mother continent. We, gentle reader, begin more modestly with the tension clustered between the faces of a fault line in the bedrock under the City. It was afternoon, not yet near dusk, when the earth’s clutching fingers slid from each other. The sudden release roared through the earth, shaking the City and its environs. It was not the first such temblor the City had experienced, though it was violent beyond scientific predictions. Damage spread widely.

  In the City old men trembled and young men fainted. Women shuddered and wailed. Panic set in as tall buildings seemed to leap into the air at a single bound and freeways flew through the air with the greatest of ease. On the waterfront, ships and ferries bobbled like couples copulating on waterbeds. The Bay gurgled like a draining sink. On the solid rock hills buildings swayed. Gargoyles and gewgaws fell from the older buildings to shatter and clatter on the pavements below. Some crushed pedestrian crania before they reached the sidewalks.

  On the landfill areas, buildings shook, trembled and quivered. One tower, built on earthquake absorbing springs and rubber pads, leaped up and down. It reminded an observing proctologist of a penis in orgasm. He commented on this to a lay bystander. Soon after, wherever folk gathered to reminisce, one or another would claim the tower ejaculated a lady who had climbed to its top. Some said it threw her forth to spill on the ground. Others claimed the lady floated gently to earth on the wings of a snow-white dove. The proctologist never re-appeared to confirm any part of the tale.

  In the Plaster Peacock, the plaster dust and rotten wood dust began to sift into the smoke filled air silently, almost as though it were frost falling on cold clear night. Elke Hall, at her table near the door café door, covered her half-eaten hamburger with her napkin to save it from the plaster crumbles. In the kitchen, Rosa Krushan looked up as tiles tumbled from the ceiling into the ragout she was simmering for the evening trade.

  The Plaster Peacock Café was a monument to the decorative plaster art. It was the creation of a little-known City architect, Bill Yuss. Originally, it was a brothel owned by an Episcopal bishop. Four peacocks, beaks touching in the center, tails outspread to the four corners of the room, decorated the ceiling. The plaster artist had re-created David’s Rape of the Sabine Women in full and buxom gypsum on the back wall. Nymphs and satyrs surrounded the entry door, and various cupids, cherubim, seraphim, and voluptuous female figures crowded the side walls. Each plaster figure was hued in brighter-than-life color. Friezes of hearts and grape clusters ran around the walls.

  The rumble of the moving earth shook the plaster nymphs to dust. Dust, then larger pieces rattled on the tables and the floor. The central beam, held together for many decades by one nail, collapsed with a loud crack in a shower of splinters, and the nail dropped to the floor with a soft ping. The plaster peacock eyes on the ceiling scintillated in shimmering colors in the wildly weaving ceiling lamps. Several lights sparked and burned, snapping like a campfire. Then they all went dark when the electric lines failed.

  The ceiling gave way, and Rosa Krushan’s apartment descended into the bar. Her large overstuffed chair came first. It fell half on, half off, a marbleized table, closer to Elke Hall than Elke liked. The boom deafened Elke. A small side table followed it, bounced off the chair, and across the nearby tables to fetch up against the back wall. The reading lamp that had stood on that table hung by the cord swinging over the rubble in the cafe. Ecru antimacassars drifted through the plaster dust. The antimacassars came to rest on the bosom of one of the about-to-be-raped Sabine women. Elke ran from the Café. A sideboard twisted and fell on three wire chairs entangling them like macramé. A clatter of broken crockery followed Elke out the door.

  Rosa Krushan left the kitchen. She had never before been in a smoke filled room like her cafe was now. It numbed her. The front and back walls shed their friezes. The granulation of the peacocks enveloped her. The pulverization of the cupids and buxom maidens darkened her vision. The crumbling of the rosebud-decked satyrs happened outside her ken. She did not notice the plunge of a mammoth mammary past her shoulder.

  Someone began to sob. Rosa realized after a while she was the one sobbing. The Fault howled again, and shuddered. Large chunks of plaster, no longer recognizable as manly bosoms or peacock tails, began falling. Lathing and rotten beam fragments danced among the plaster chunks.

  The toilet that had leaked for years broke loose from its moorings in the old floor and fell into the kitchen sink. For a long moment, more the earth shuddered under the City. Then there was stillness, stillness of the earth, the air, and the people. Only plaster dust danced in the air. The flow of time interrupted eternity’s standstill. The floor under Rosa’s TV gave way, and it came crashing down on a table, narrowly missing her. The shattered silence resumed.

  Rosa Krushan brushed the remnants of a cherub from her hair and shoulders. The resultant dust caused her to sneeze. She sneezed out a purple cloud of fragments of a hitherto unnoticed grape cluster across the room. Debris filled the shell that had been her livelihood. She wept. From somewhere far away she heard a siren wail.

  Elke Hall saw Rosa kneeling in the dust. Overhead bits and pieces of Rosa’s private life dangled dangerously above her. Lacy lingerie spilled from a broken drawer. The headboard, mattress, and box springs teetered on the edge of the broken floor, about to plummet onto Rosa. Elke, despite her great fear, went back into the café to get Rosa.

  “Come out,” she said. “It’s safer outside.”

  Rosa looked up at her through lashes whitened with plaster dust. A tall woman, firm-breasted and buxom stood over her. She had an air of command, as though she carried a sword, though Rosa couldn’t see one. Light from the doorway fell around her, dressing her in a yellow glow with white sparkles. Rosa remembered an angel that stood in a niche in her childhood church.

  “Are you my guardian angel?” Rosa asked.

  “No, just somebody who wants to get you out of here.”

  “Everything’s gone, isn’t it?”

  Elke looked around. “Yes, pretty much gone. Things are about to fall on our heads. Come on, now, let’s go outside.”

  Rosa allowed Elke to urge her up, and putting one shaky foot in front of the other, let Elke lead her out. Elke and Rosa turned right and began walking down the street. Two blocks down, they encountered a policeman in uniform.

  The policeman advised Elke to move along to the park, where rescue workers were setting up tents and a kitchen. Elke did not know the City well. She was terrified, but she stopped to comfort Rosa. It was better, for Elke, than collapsing hopelessly herself into the dust.

  Rosa welcomed the strong arm around her shoulder, and the close embrace that allowed her to weep out her sorrow. She also managed to weep out a lot of plaster dust, so she could see more clearly. When she calmed a little, and opened her eyes, she liked what she saw. Arms around each other’s waist, the two women stumbled toward the park, Rosa providing directions, Elke providing the strength.

  Salvación was on the street in front of the mission wh
en the temblor struck. She rode the bucking sidewalk as though it were a ship at sea in a storm. The mission’s foundation was on solid rock foundation; the building held together. At the end of Lost Lane, the park’s trees performed a graceful hula. None fell. Inspiration struck Salvación. The park was an excellent place to set up kettles over large fires to cook stews, beans, and whatever else they might salvage. Yesterday’s Carnival tents and booths should still be near; she’d send a volunteer for the organizer, DeLys his name was, for permission to use the canvas to give people a place to sleep. She called to Willy who was in the Mission.

  “Find Mr. DeLys,” she said. “You know who he is?”

  Willy nodded. At least today he had trousers on.

  “Take a note from me to him,” Salvación continued. She took a pad and pencil from her pocket and wrote hastily. She folded the note and handed it to Willy. “Now go!” she commanded. Willy ran on his bare feet, dodging bits of glass and masonry on the sidewalks. Salvación went into the mission to count her foodstuffs. She doubted she could feed very many, but those she could feed she would feed.

  When she came out again, she saw some few people had begun gathering in the park. Two women stood on her side of the street looking across into the park. The