Neighbors

by Danielle Steel

  “Get under the table!” he shouted at her as she pulled free of him, and ran upstairs to her children. The house was still shaking when she got upstairs. Will was holding Daphne tightly in the doorway, while she continued to scream, and Tyla reached them, and held them in her arms until the shaking finally stopped. Daphne was crying, and there were tears swimming in Will’s eyes. It had felt as though the house was going to fall down, and they could hear dishes smashing in the kitchen, as they fell out of the cupboards and crashed on the floor.

  “Get down here!” Andrew shouted at them, and the three of them walked cautiously down the stairs. The house had stopped shaking, and the groaning sound was receding, but they could still hear it.

  “I smell gas,” Tyla said as she walked into the kitchen. It was dark in the house, and Andrew found a flashlight and shined it on them. It was pitch black outside, and the old wooden house was creaking loudly as it settled after the earthquake.

  “I need a wrench to turn the gas off. What did you do with the tools?” he asked her. He looked startled but not frightened. “Stop crying,” he said to Daphne, as Tyla pulled her close. She was shaking.

  “I don’t know. I think they’re in the garage where you put them.” He pulled open the front door, and they could see wires shooting sparks in the street, and people gathering with flashlights. He told Will to come and help him in the garage, and Tyla held Daphne’s hand as they walked outside. People were talking to one another and everyone looked shocked by the force of the quake, and panicked as an aftershock brought another wire to the ground across the street.

  “Where the hell did you put the wrench?” Andrew asked through clenched teeth when he came back to them, with Will trailing behind him, looking scared. He wasn’t sure what was worse, his father or the earthquake, or the pitch black outside, and the live wires across the street. “I can’t turn the gas off without one,” he said to Tyla.

  “I don’t use it,” she said quietly, trying to calm Daphne, “maybe we don’t have one.”

  “Well, we’d damn well better find one before the house explodes or catches fire,” Andrew said, as people began coming out of their houses and walking into the street.

  Daphne started to wail then. “Our house is going to burn down, and I left Martha inside.” Martha was her favorite doll, and Tyla didn’t dare go inside to get her, in case something fell, or the house exploded from the leaking gas.

  “We’ll go inside soon to get her,” Tyla said, holding Daphne close to her, “and the house isn’t going to burn down. Daddy’s going to turn off the gas.”

  “Daddy needs a wrench and he can’t find one,” she continued to cry, as Tyla held her, and she saw Andrew walk to the house next door, and bang hard on the door. No one answered. They were either out or injured, or too frightened to open the door. Andrew continued pounding, and Will came to stand next to his mother. She could feel his whole body shaking as he huddled next to her, as Andrew went on banging his fist on the door. He wasn’t going to leave until someone answered, so he could borrow a wrench.

  * * *

  —

  Peter Stern was hunched over his old manual typewriter, typing as he did every night in his small bedroom in the attic. He worked in the advertising department of a local magazine by day, and had worked for Arthur Harriman at night for the past year. Peter considered it an honor to work for him, and the night job he had with him had saved his life. He made a very small salary at the magazine and lived on the commissions he made from selling advertising. Both amounts combined weren’t enough to allow him to pay rent for even a studio apartment in a decent neighborhood, and he didn’t want to live with half a dozen strangers as roommates anymore, particularly since he wanted to write at night. He’d been working on a novel for the past two years. At thirty-two, he didn’t have a job he loved, but writing was his passion, and completing a novel and getting it published was his dream. He hoped to be a successful writer one day.

  He’d been living in a seedy apartment in the Haight-Ashbury with five roommates he’d found on Craigslist, and with all the comings and goings of his roommates, it had been almost impossible to write.

  He’d found the job working for Arthur Harriman in the Chronicle. He needed someone to sleep in his home at night, and provide occasional assistance. His housekeeper of many years, Frieda, stayed until eight P.M., and cooked him dinner. She arrived at seven in the morning. A man came to assist him on weekends. He needed someone to sleep in his home seven days a week, in exchange for a small salary and a bedroom. He was a world famous concert pianist, and had been blind since a car accident when he was eighteen. He was eighty-two years old and managed very well on his own. He just needed to know that there was someone in the house, but he was very independent and extremely self-sufficient. Peter had expected to meet a frail old man when he came to interview for the job, and was astounded to find him walking all over the house, managing the stairs with ease, with more energy than people half his age.

  Peter was nothing more than a presence in case of an emergency of some kind, but there had never been one. They had long philosophical discussions, and often Arthur practiced at night. He was interested in the subject of Peter’s novel, and he was vital and alive, well informed, and had someone to drive him when he needed to go out, who also traveled with him when he had a concert scheduled in another city. When he traveled, Peter had time off, but he rarely went out at night. He was intent on finishing his novel.

  When the earthquake hit, Peter stopped typing for a minute while he wondered what was happening. The moment he realized it was an earthquake, he lurched toward the stairs across the floor that felt like it was rippling beneath his feet, and shouted as loud as he could.

  “I’m coming, Mr. Harriman! I’m coming!” He slid down the stairs, reached the floor below within seconds, and found Arthur Harriman sitting underneath his grand piano, looking surprisingly calm. “I’m here, Mr. Harriman, I’m here. Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. It’s a big one, get under here with me!” He’d been playing when it happened. “Are you hurt?”

  “No, I’m fine,” Peter told him.

  “Do you have shoes on? There will be broken glass everywhere.” The sound of the earthquake tearing the earth beneath them was awful, and unconsciously, Peter held tightly to his arm. He’d never been in an earthquake before. He had come to San Francisco from the Midwest two years before. He was a good-looking young man with dark hair and brown eyes and had a boyish quality to him and a gentle manner. He had grown very fond of the older man he worked for every night. He reminded Peter of his own grandfather, who was a dignified old gentleman, a lawyer in the small town where they lived. Peter had gone to college at Northwestern, and had dreamed of moving to San Francisco for years. Growing up, his family life had been wholesome. His father ran the local newspaper and his mother was a teacher, but their small town was lackluster and dull. His brother and sister had moved to Chicago after college and Peter had dreamed of coming West.

  “I have shoes on,” Peter reassured him. “Where I come from, we have tornadoes. That’s even worse. They just pick up houses and they fly away.”

  “It’ll be over in a minute, son. Don’t be afraid,” Arthur said in a kind voice, listening and waiting for it to pass. “Is the power still on?”

  “No, it’s dark, in the house and outside.”

  “It’s a big one,” Arthur confirmed. They could hear something heavy fall in the house, and the Victorian wooden structure was groaning, but it had survived the quake of ’06, so Arthur wasn’t worried. “You have to be careful of falling objects afterward, and broken glass. The aftershocks will shake loose whatever this one didn’t. Do you know how to turn off the gas?”

  “I’m not sure. What do I do?” Peter asked him, as the earth and the house stopped shaking and the noise receded, like a wounded beast going back into its lair underground.
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br />   “The valve is on the side of the house. You need a crescent wrench. We have one in the tool closet. Let’s go outside first, and see what’s happening there. Someone will be able to show you how to do it.” This was precisely why he hired a person like Peter. His last night man had worked for him for four years, and had gotten married shortly before he hired Peter. It was for times like this that he needed someone with him, and occasionally to help him get to bed, if he was exhausted after a concert. But most of the time, he preferred to manage on his own, as long as he knew Peter was upstairs. He used an intercom to call him. He wasn’t a demanding employer and Peter loved working for him, and living in the handsome old house. Moving there had been a godsend for him, and in some ways reminded him of his boyhood home in Illinois. He still missed it at times. He rarely went home now. He didn’t want to leave Arthur alone. After a year of working for him, he felt responsible for him. “Let’s go outside,” Arthur suggested to Peter. “Be very careful if there are live wires down. Don’t step on them!” he warned him, and Peter helped him out from under the piano, led him carefully down the stairs and out the front door. When he opened it, there was a man standing at their front door and a woman with two young children standing in front of the house next door. Peter suddenly realized that the man had been pounding on their front door, and in the excitement, and the noise at the tail end of the earthquake, they hadn’t heard him.

  “What took you so long?” Andrew almost shouted at Peter.

  “We were busy,” Peter answered him, leading Mr. Harriman to a cluster of people standing outside his house and talking. He was gregarious and an extrovert, and Peter knew he would want to talk to them.

  “We need a wrench to turn our gas off,” Andrew said, once he realized that the older man was blind, and bringing his tone down a notch.

  “So do we,” Peter said. “I think we have one in a tool closet. I’ll go back inside and look in a minute. You can come with me. We need a crescent wrench and I’m not sure what that looks like. You can use ours if we find it.” Andrew followed him into the house a few minutes later, as Arthur chatted with their neighbors, and Tyla and the children walked over to him. He was telling them all about the quake of ’89.

  Andrew used a flashlight to guide them through the Harriman house, and they found the closet easily. Andrew pointed to the crescent wrench they needed, and Peter handed it to him. Then he looked at Peter.

  “Is that Arthur Harriman, the concert pianist? I didn’t know he lived next door to us.” He seemed surprised and impressed. “Or does he just look like him?”

  “No, it’s him. He’s very discreet, and he travels a lot for concerts. He’s had the house soundproofed so the neighbors can’t hear him practicing.”

  “Are you his son?” Andrew asked him, curious. He spoke to Peter in a pleasant tone, and smiled warmly at him. Andrew could be very charming when he wanted to be. He had been much less so when Peter opened the front door. His tone had been harsh, but not now.

  “I work for him,” Peter said with a smile. “I’m his ‘sleeper.’ I sleep at the house at night, in case he needs anything. But he manages fine on his own most of the time, except for something like this.”

  “I don’t suppose our other famous neighbor will make an appearance tonight. The gates hardly ever open, and I hear she never goes out,” Andrew said cryptically.

  “Who’s that? Mr. Harriman never talks about his neighbors.”

  Andrew looked surprised Peter didn’t know. She was a legend in the neighborhood, and the city. It was a name everyone knew, all over the world.

  “Meredith White, the famous movie star,” Andrew told him. “She’s been a recluse for the past ten or fifteen years. No one ever sees her. She’s like a UFO. People wait for sightings, but she’s elusive. My wife thought she saw her at a yoga class once, but it’s not likely. I don’t think she’ll come out unless her house falls down, and that’s not going to happen.” He pointed toward the mansion on the corner, surrounded by the tall hedge, and Peter looked surprised. Arthur had never mentioned her. Maybe he didn’t know, and Peter never wondered who the neighbors were.

  “I didn’t know she lived there. My mother saw all her movies. I’ll have to tell her.” Peter smiled at the thought.

  The two men walked out of the Harriman house together, and Peter went with Andrew to help him shut off the gas at his place. Then Andrew followed him to turn off the gas for Arthur’s house. They could hear helicopters overhead by then, flying low, checking the city.

  “It sounds like a war zone,” Andrew commented.

  “Where are we all going to sleep tonight?” Peter asked him. “I’m not sure any of our houses are safe, even with the gas off.”

  “I have to show up at the hospital pretty soon,” Andrew told him. “It’s our protocol for citywide emergencies. I’ll have to figure something out for my wife and kids.” He looked pensive. “I think there may be shelters set up at the public schools. The auditorium at the hospital will probably be set up too.” He could always take them there. They were discussing it when they joined Arthur, Tyla, and the children.

  * * *

  —

  Joel Fine and Ava Bates had been making love when the earthquake hit. For an instant, Joel thought he had hit new heights with her, and then they both realized what it was, leapt out of bed, and rushed to the doorway where they stood and kissed, still naked.

  “That was a good one, babe, wasn’t it?” he teased her, while Ava looked panicked and clung to him, as the sound of the earthquake roared around them, and all the books fell out of his bookshelves and crashed to the floor. Joel had founded two brilliantly successful startups and made a fortune. His house had been decorated by a famous interior designer, and he had a Bentley and a Ferrari in the garage. Ava had been living with him for two years. He was forty-two years old and Ava was twenty-nine. She was a tradeshow model they had hired to do ads for his most recent startup, and she had caught his attention immediately when he attended a photo shoot. He had taken her to Vegas for a weekend, and she never left. She was going to college online now, and wanted to be a graphic designer. When he met her, Joel thought she was a gorgeous girl, and had applied all the same rules to her he always did. Give them a great time, concentrate on having fun, keep them around as long as they’re amusing and easy to be with, and future plans not included. He never dragged out a relationship once it stopped being fun, and Ava had lasted longer than most of his women. He was divorced and had no interest in getting married again, and said so. His first marriage had cured him. So had his own parents’ bitter divorce. He had spent his youth as an only child in Philadelphia as a pawn between parents who hated each other, and he fled gratefully to college at UC Berkeley. He had married after business school in their entrepreneurial program. And when he caught his wife cheating on him, he had divorced her, before they could turn into his parents. He had learned his lesson early. Marriage wasn’t for him, and he had no intention of trying again.

  He was always honest about what he had to offer. He promised nothing except great sex and good times. He had no kids and didn’t want any. His mother came from an old Main Line family, and his father was in investments. He had grown up with privilege and money, and had stayed in California to make a fortune of his own. He had exceeded all his expectations. His parents were stunned.

  As soon as the shaking ended, he walked into his bathroom with Ava right behind him, handed her a robe, and put one on himself. They both put on running shoes. There was broken glass everywhere.

  “We’d better get our asses out of here, before the place blows up. I have no idea how to turn the gas off,” he told her. They could already smell it. She tied the robe around her with nothing under it, she couldn’t find her underwear in the dark and he didn’t have a flashlight. The house was pitch black.

  They groped their way out of his bedroom and down the stairs. It was the cons
ummate bachelor pad, full of expensive art and sleek furniture, selected by his decorator. They made their way out the front door and onto the street a minute later, and walked straight to the small knot of people standing outside, an older man with a mane of white hair, who looked like Einstein, two younger men, and a woman and two children. The younger men stared as Ava walked up to the group. Peter could guess that she had nothing under the bathrobe. Joel was a handsome man, who exuded confidence and looked as though he owned the world. Peter wondered if they’d been in the shower when the earthquake hit. The woman looked nervous and shaken by the experience, and the man looked as though he was enjoying it. There was a fearless quality to Joel, which Peter almost envied. He’d been shy and had asthma as a child. He couldn’t do sports because of his asthma, and he lived through reading books, and came alive once he started writing. He exchanged a shy smile with Ava, while Joel talked to the others and seemed to forget about her. He acted as though he owned her.

  “We should have someone out here serving drinks,” Joel suggested, and Andrew smiled. They all introduced themselves, and stood chatting for a few minutes about what had happened in their homes, and what they’d been doing at the time. They were talking animatedly when a blond woman walked up to them in a white shirt and jeans and running shoes. It was a warm evening after the hot humid day, and she smiled when she saw them. They hadn’t seen the gates open, or the woman slip through. There was a couple following behind her at a discreet distance, and she was carrying a first aid kit, and a large powerful flashlight.

  “Hi, is everyone okay here? Anybody hurt or need assistance?” They all stopped for a minute to look at her, and Tyla said that they were fine, just shaken up. No one was hurt. “Does anyone need food or water?” Andrew looked at her carefully for a minute and realized who she was. He had never seen her in the flesh before, and couldn’t keep himself from staring at her. She spoke to Arthur, who was laughing and good-humored, as Andrew whispered to Peter standing next to him, “Meredith White.” Peter’s eyes flew open wide and he tried not to stare at her and couldn’t help himself.