Ear to the Ground Read Free Page B

his colleague’s extension and arranged to meet him in the hotel bar, where he explained that Kobe could go at any moment. The man laughed in Charlie’s face and spread the word to some other seismologists, who reacted similarly, behind his back. Twenty-four hours later, no one was laughing.
    Maggie Murphy stood now, as did the Times reporter and the guy from ABC. Sterling Caruthers hadn’t opened his mouth in half an hour, as Charlie, blithely sipping from a glass of water, more or less became the subject of these proceedings, deflecting and focusing the debate, explaining technical principles in layman’s terms. Finally, he and Caruthers exchanged a meaningful but complicated glance. Things were winding down.
    â€œWhat are your present plans, Mr. Richter?” asked Murphy with a smile.
    â€œI go where the promise of seismic activity exists.”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œAnd I’ve just taken an apartment in Los Angeles.”

THURSDAY NIGHT
    YOU CAN FIND THEM BY THE BAR, OR IN THE BACK booths of the last room at the Formosa on Thursday nights, where there’s no smoking until ten-thirty, after which the waitresses couldn’t care less. Just half a year ago, they went to Dominick’s off San Vicente—slews of them from Fox and Paramount, and from Sony—but when Dominick’s faded out, and the Olive dissolved into Jones, everyone cut to the Formosa. Among studio youngsters, Friday has always been Hangover Day.
    Grace watched Ian peeling off his Budweiser label at a table across the room, while two girls sitting next to her—an agent’s assistant and a VP (in title only)—admitted freely that they’d fuck him at the drop of a hat. Women liked Ian, which exhilarated Grace because it made her nervous, but it disappointed her that, as a result, she felt more attracted to him. Was he better on paper, she thought, or in bed?
    Ian was in good form just then. “Imagine,” he said, “if we had interactive cameras in our living rooms, right?” His whole table listened. “And there was an earthquake, and some computer geek, in Iraq for chrissake, could watch our TVs smashing and our books falling out of the shelves, and paintings coming off hooks; and us walking in, rubbing our eyes, checking our limbs, freaked out but alive, as the car alarms are going off and the dogs are howling and soon everyone around you is awake …”
    â€œNobody’s putting a camera in my living room,” announced a former writing partner.
    â€œWhy not? Everybody’ll do it. Or mostly everybody.”
    The others seemed unsure.
    â€œLook at it this way,” Ian continued, “a hundred years ago, Bell was shouting into this archaic telephone: ‘Watson, can you hear me?’ Now we have voice-mail, and car phones; we hang up on each other, and Star-69. Two hundred years ago”—he was on a roll now—“if you wanted to listen to music you either played it yourself, or you heard someone else playing it. I mean …”
    â€œThat’s true,” said a guy from Fox.
    Ian leaned back, satisfied with himself. Fox thinks I’m smart, he thought. He thinks I’m smart, and he’ll probably hire me—not right now, but down the line. In for a penny, in for a pound. Life is long. Grace came over then and scooted next to him, put her arm around him, and smiled to the others. He liked the way she smelled. She crossed her legs, making sure to pull down her skirt. She was pretty. That wouldn’t hurt him at Fox, either.
    Ian’s father still sent him two thousand a month, so he ordered another beer and one for Grace. A guy named Marcus began to talk about his new script—the dreadful tale of an airplane, a bomb, several black nuns from Detroit, and an ex-New York City cop. Meanwhile, under the table, Ian ran his hand lightly up Grace’s thigh. She tried to take it seriously—the story—because this