Earthquake Weather

by Tim Powers

  She enunciated the syllables as carefully as if she were pushing silver dollars out of her mouth one at a time, and Cochran realized that she herself was very drunk; and when he levered open the passenger-side door and stood up and took several deep breaths of the icy air, he was so dizzy that he had to hang on to the door to keep his balance.

  He swung his unwieldy gaze over the car’s roof, and watched Plumtree shuffle to the front bumper, frowning and holding on to the vibrating fender with both hands. When she had hoisted up the hood and pulled free the wire that connected the coil to the battery, the engine shook twice and then wheezed to a halt; and in the silence he said, “I think we should … let Janis drive.”

  “She’d get lost,” said Plumtree shortly. “I’m gonna go give the man the card, sign for it—you pump the gas when I wave.” She wobbled across the damp asphalt toward the glass door, then halted and looked back at him. “On the Torinos the gasp cap is behind the rear license plate.”

  Cochran squeaked the license plate down, unscrewed the gas cap, and shoved the nozzle of the premium pump into the filler hole, and then he leaned heavily on the trunk as he held the aluminum trigger squeezed and numbly watched the wheels behind the little gas pump window roll around to, finally, fifteen dollars and sixty cents. The aromatic reek of gasoline on the cold night air did nothing to sober him up.

  He had hung up the nozzle but was still trying to get the cap threaded back on when Plumtree reattached the coil wire and jumped the solenoid again to start the engine. When he heard the hood slam down he just dropped the cap and let the license plate snap up over it, and then hurried to the passenger-side door and got in, glad of the interior warmth even if they were both about to die in a Driving-Under-the-Influence one-car crash in the foggy canyons beyond Gaviota.

  She clanked the engine into gear and drove right over the curb onto Milpas Street, swinging wide in a chirruping left turn to get back to the 101.

  “Oh, okay,” she said, and the engine missed for a moment, coming back strongly when she fluttered the gas pedal. “Whoops! When do I turn?”

  “Take that on-ramp on the right,” said Cochran through clenched teeth, pulling the seat belt across himself. “101 north.”

  She glanced at him after she had made the turn. “Scant! What day is it?”

  He relaxed a little, and didn’t attach the seatbelt. “It’s the morning of the twelfth by now,” he said cautiously, “of January. It’s been a couple of hours since we left Solville.”

  “My father is alive,” she said. “I did catch him!”

  “That’s … right, I guess. According to that Angelica woman.” He tried to remember when it had been that Janis had last been up.

  She leaned back in the seat now, straightening her arms and flexing her fingers at the top of the wheel. “This is disorienting—I don’t have to watch for cues, I can just ask you! How did we get away from there? I don’t think they wanted us to just leave.”

  “No—we snuck out. They were talking about—holding a gun on you. We’re still working with them, I guess, but at arm’s length.”

  She was gingerly licking her lips and grimacing. “I’m glad to get away from that burnt-liquor stink. Nobody got hurt, I hope?”

  “Oh no.” He let the seat belt reel back up into the slot above the door, and finally sat back and let himself exhale. “Well, not hurt—but that old man with the windshield wipers all over him died. But it was just, like, a heart attack, I guess. Nothing to do with us. And then in the confusion Cody just grabbed my hand and we walked out. And stole us this car.”

  “My father spoke to me over the telephone.”

  Cochran thought of someone who had to maintain a ’69 Torino, going out to work on a Thursday morning and finding the car gone; but at least Janis was a sober driver. She hadn’t had anything to drink since … what? A Manhattan or two at dinner, hours and hours ago. Of course it was the same bloodstream, really, but it did seem that Cody had taken the alcohol away with her.

  “Yes,” he said. “I heard him.”

  She was still smacking her lips, and now she said, “Did Cody get mouthwash?”

  “As a matter of fact, she did. A big bottle of Listerine.”

  “Could you pass it to me?”

  Cochran did, and she unscrewed the cap and took a swig of the mouthwash; she swished it around audibly in her mouth for a few seconds, then rolled down the window to spit it outside.

  “We’re going to San Francisco, aren’t we?” she said as she rolled the window back up.

  “Yes.” Cochran blinked in the new Listerine fumes, trying to remember whether Janis had still been on when San Francisco had first been proposed. He was sure she had not, that Cody had already been in control then. “How did you know that?”

  “That’s where he … fell off the building. And I caught him.”

  “We’re going there because it’s where they all—you all—hell, we all, can get Scott Crane restored to life.” According to a crazy old dead black lady, at least, he thought.

  “They’re bringing his body along, I hope?” It seemed to Cochran that she spoke anxiously.

  He thought of the vague plan Cody had described for getting Crane back into his own undecayed body—or, failing that, into hers permanently; and he discarded the idea of asking her about it, for she would probably just lose time if he did ask, and leave the drunk Cody to drive.

  “They said they were,” he told her. “We’re probably going to be meeting them at a place called the Cliff House Restaurant, on the northwest shore.”

  “I’ll be hungry by then—Cody ate most of my dinner. Did she pick up any snacks?”

  “Some Slim Jims,” said Cochran, trying to remember if he had been as unconcerned as this when he had learned that Spider Joe was dead; of course he had actually seen the body, and Janis had not.

  “Could I have a pack?”

  Cochran leaned down and dug a Slim Jims package out of the bag; and he got out too another beer for himself. He opened the can, and, before he took the first sip, he said, “Here’s to poor old Spider Joe. May he rest in peace.”

  Plumtree nodded, staring ahead. “His wife died, though, right? Recently?”

  “They did say that,” agreed Cochran. He took another, deeper sip.

  At the gas-station-and-motel town of Gaviota the 101 curled sharply to the east, inland, and soon they were climbing through the dark canyons of the Santa Ynez Mountains. The fog was a blurry wall close ahead of them, glowing gray with the diffracted radiance of the headlights, and the short patch of pavement that was visible in front of the fog seemed to Cochran’s tired eyes to be stationary, so that the black lines of skid marks were standing waves shimmying in place, and the point-of-impact of a long-ago dropped can of white paint seemed to be the beak of a diving white bird. They passed big semi-trailer trucks that were stopped on the shoulder, visible through the fog only by yellow lights along their roofs; and the lights seemed to Cochran to trace the rigging of tanker ships more remote in the night than the trucks could possibly really be.

  Cones of light, luminous triangular shapes in the darkness, resolved themselves into spotlit billboards, or steep hillside shoulders with headlights approaching from the other side, as he watched them gradually materialize out of the night; and rotating spoke-like fingers of light would turn overhead when an unseen car in the southbound lanes approached behind invisible tree branches. Sometimes Plumtree would change lanes to get around the ghostly red eyes of brake lights ahead of them, and in those transitional moments when the tires were thumping across the lane-divider bumps the turn-signal lights would strobe deeply into the fog on the shoulder, illuminating a bottle or a weed or a shoe for a brief, startled instant.

  From time to time Cochran glimpsed moonlit forests off to the side, and the sterile extents of deserts, but it wasn’t until he twice saw a vast castle in the remote distance, with rows of yellow- and green-lit windows, and then saw that it was only a reflection of the instrument panel lights in t
he close window glass, that he realized that nothing he saw beyond a distance of about six feet could be genuine. The realization didn’t stop his weary, smoke-stung eyes from registering new wonders; in fact it seemed to free his optic nerves to present him with wilder things, ships and towering siege engines and dirigibles.

  The old Ford’s engine had begun to cough when they were driving past the isolated lights of the Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo, but began to run smoothly again after that—and Plumtree, who for some miles had been folding her left leg and straightening it again and scooting forward and back in her seat as if trying to stay awake, reached out to the side and squeezed Cochran’s leg just above the knee.

  “Do we have any more cigarettes?” she asked.

  “A—whole carton,” Cochran said, suddenly very aware of the close flex of her legs in the tight jeans. He gripped his current beer between his thighs and bent forward to grope by his feet for a fresh pack of Marlboros.

  But when he straightened up she glanced at it and shook her head. “I meant More, the brand name. I suppose Cody just thought of herself, and got just the Marlboros.” Her fingers were curled around his leg now, palpably brushing against the dashboard-facing side of the beer can, and her thumb was absently rubbing the top of his thigh. “And I don’t suppose she bought any Southern Comfort.”

  “No,” said Cochran. “Just beer and vodka.” He stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray and then, as if for a sip of beer, lifted away the impeding can. Her hand slid halfway up his thigh, her fingers kneading the worn secondhand corduroy.

  “All alone in the middle of nighttime nowhere,” she said, barely loud enough for him to hear. “Some people would consider this a highly lucrative situation.”

  Cochran didn’t see how some people would, but he shifted closer to her and put his arm around her shoulder to stroke her coarsely cut blond hair. She rolled her head back against his forearm, and her right hand slid up his leg until her little finger was brushing the tight fabric over his crotch.

  “We should,” he said hoarsely, “probably pull over and park on the shoulder for a while. Till the fog clears a bit.” His heart was thudding in his chest, and he wished there was somewhere he could put down the beer he was holding in his right hand. And I should try to get a slug of that mouthwash, he thought.

  Her kneading hand was fully on his crotch now, and he simply let go of the beer can; it thudded to the carpeted floorboard as he reached across to cup the unfamiliar hot softness of her left breast through the thin fabric of her blouse.

  “Nobody can interrupt us out here,” she whispered, and snapped the turn signal lever up to indicate a lane change. “Nobody knows where we are.” The right tires were rumbling on the shoulder, and Plumtree’s leg flexed as she pressed the brake pedal. “There’s no phone here, so nobody can say we should have taken the time to call anyone.”

  “You’re a big girl,” Cochran agreed dizzily. “You don’t have to call your mother and let her know where you are.”

  “Ah!” she said, and her voice sounded sad; then she had whipped her right hand up so hard that it struck the head liner and nearly broke his elbow. Her foot slammed onto the gas pedal, and the back tires screeched and burned rubber as she steered the bucking old Ford back out into the slow lane.

  “Fog, take it easy!” Cochran yelled, clasping his elbow.

  She hit the brake hard enough to throw him forward against the padded black dashboard. He could hear his dropped beer can rolling on the floor.

  “I will drive this car straight into a wall if you try to touch me, Omar!” Plumtree said loudly. “In arousing ways! Jesus will not blame me—He will take me into His bosom, and throw you into the fires of Gehenna! You know I will, and you know He will!”

  “Fine!” Cochran gasped. “Drive normal! What’s the matter with you, Janis?”

  She straightened the wheel, and though the engine was coughing again she quickly accelerated the car to a steady twenty miles an hour, glancing harriedly from the road to the rear-view mirror and back. “I’m sorry, Scant!” she said. “I must have dozed off! God, I might have got us killed! Okay, fog still, okay. Did I hit anything? God, my arms are shaking! Are you all right?”

  “Well you nearly broke my arm,” he said harshly. “Jesus, girl!” He could see that there had been at least one personality shift, and that the erotic moment was long gone. “No, you didn’t hit anything.” He leaned down and yanked a fresh beer out of the box. The floorboard carpeting was marshy under the soles of his tennis shoes, and the hot air was fetid with the smell of the spilled beer. “Who’s Omar?”

  “That’s my father’s name! Be careful now, Scant, I don’t want to lose time with you—but—was he here?”

  “No,” Cochran said. Thank God, he added mentally. He popped the tab on the beer can. “Another woman—did I …? Do you, uh, recall putting your hand on my leg?”

  “Oh, God, Tiffany,” she said ruefully. “That would be Tiffany, I bet. She made a pass at you, right? And you thought it was me! Poor Scant!”

  He had been panting, but now began to relax. “I wouldn’t mind,” he said cautiously, “if it was you.”

  “It will be, Scant, I promise you, soon, and not in the back of an old car, either.” She patted at the seat around her legs. “Did she eat my Slim Jim? God, that woke me up, at least—I could feel that I was slipping in and out, back there. I guess Tiffany was slipping out and in.”

  Her guileless last couple of lines were echoing in his head, and he tilted up his fresh can of beer for a distancing, objectivity-inducing mouthful.

  “If you get sleepy again,” he said, “just pull over. You can catch a nap on the front seat, and I’ll do the same in the trunk.”

  “Did Cody get a key to the trunk?”

  He sighed. “I was kidding. And no, she didn’t—she hot-wired the car somehow.”

  “She is mechanically inclined,” Plumtree allowed, diligently watching the road. Her mouth was working, and she rolled down the window; cold night air blew into the car and twitched Cochran’s sweaty hair. “My mouth’s full of Tiffany’s spit,” Plumtree said, her voice frailer with the open window beyond her. “Could I have the mouthwash?”

  Cochran passed it to her, and again she swished a sip of the sharp-smelling stuff and spat it out the window. He was glad when she rolled the window up again, though the sudden scents of diesel exhaust and spicy clay and the dry-white-wine smell of the fog had been a relief from the warm-beer fumes.

  “You okay to drive?” he asked.

  “Oh, sure. I kind of did catch a nap there, I guess, while she was on. Besides, you’re a little—you’re more than point-oh-eight blood alcohol, I’d guess.”

  “Technically, I suppose, yeah,” he said. “We’d better,” Cochran went on steadily, “take the 280, to the city, rather than follow the 101 all the way up. We can stop at my house, and I can pick up some clothes and money.” And think all this over, soberly, he thought. And check the phone messages, and take in the mail. And clip the holstered .357 onto the back of my belt, if I decide we should indeed go on and meet the others.

  “Tell me when to turn,” Plumtree said.

  “Oh, it won’t be for hours yet.”

  “Won’t it … bother you, seeing the place where you lived with your wife?”

  Cochran took a long drag on his cigarette. “I suppose so. Sure it will. Gotta be done, though. Faced.”

  Plumtree shivered. “It must be scary, not having anyone you can turn the wheel over to, in bad situations.”

  Cochran smiled bleakly. “I never—”

  Both of them jumped when for an instant a big brown owl swooped into the flickering headlight glow and then disappeared over the roof.

  Cochran forced a laugh, embarrassed to have been so startled but pleased that he had not dropped his cigarette. “I wonder what owls think of this highway of lights running through the middle of their mountains.”

  “They’re hoping for a crash, a fire that’ll drive the mice an
d rabbits out of hiding.”

  After a moment, he said, “A plausible answer, Cody, but I was talking to Janis.”

  She exhaled as if trying to whistle. “Listerine! Who else was on?”

  “Somebody called Tiffany. And then—”

  “You pig.” She rocked on the seat and then brushed the fingers of one hand from the buttons of her blouse to the fly of her jeans. “What did you two do with me?”

  “Nothing.” He tried to say it as though he had resisted Tiffany’s advances. This was a disorienting basis for conversation, and it occurred to him that it might be difficult to manage any intimacy even with Janis, without Cody objecting and interfering in humiliating ways. “Anyway, she was interrupted by somebody else, a woman who cussed me out—called me Omar.” He wondered how much Cody might have sobered up in the time she was gone, and he half-hoped something he said might drive her away and let Janis back on.

  “Follow the Queen, you were playing,” said Plumtree. “You must have mentioned our … female parent, right? She comes up sometimes when somebody even just mentions her, and always when somebody asks for her. You ever play Follow the Queen?”

  “The poker game? Sure—seven-card stud, where the next card dealt faceup, after a faceup queen, is wild.”

  “Wild, right—that is, it’s whatever you declare it to be. And when our parent-of-the-fair-sex is up, the next girl is whoever you ask for. Who did you ask for? Not me, Mom doesn’t do the mouthwash bit.”

  “I guess I called for Janis.”

  “Not Tiffany? That was noble of you. Of course you didn’t understand the rules yet. Do you swear you two didn’t do anything with me?”