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By Root 561 0

Long cracks branched along the west wall. She changed into walking shoes, put on a padded ski jacket and turned off the lights except for a lamp by the door. Then she placed herself on the sofa between a sheet and blanket, her head resting on an airline pillow. She closed her eyes and folded up, elbows at her midsection, hands pressed together between her knees. She tried to will herself to sleep but realized she was listening intently, listening to the room. She lay in a kind of timeless drift, a mindwork spiral, carried on half-formed thoughts. She passed into a false sleep and then was listening again. She opened her eyes. The clock read four-forty. She heard something that sounded like sand spilling, a trickle of gritty dust between the walls of abutting structures. The room began to move in a creaking sigh. Louder, powerfully. She was out of bed and on her way to the door, moving slightly crouched. She opened the door and stood under the lintel until the shaking stopped. She took the stairway down. No neighbors popping out of doors this time, bending arms into coats. The streets remained nearly empty and she guessed people didn’t want to bother doing it again. She wandered well past daybreak. A few campfires burned in the parks. The horn-blowing was sporadic now. She walked around her building a number of times, finally sitting on a bench near the newspaper kiosk. She watched people enter the street to begin the day and she looked for something in their faces that might tell her what kind of night they’d spent. She was afraid everything would appear to be normal. She hated to think that people might easily resume the knockabout routine of frazzled Athens. She didn’t want to be alone in her perception that something had basically changed. The world was narrowed down to inside and outside.

She had lunch with Edmund, a colleague at the little school where she taught music to children of the international community, grades three to six. She was eager to hear how he’d reacted to the situation but first talked him into eating outdoors at a table set against the facade of a busy snack bar.

“We could still be killed,” Edmund said, “by falling balconies. Or freeze in our chairs.”

“How did you feel?”

“I thought my heart was going to jump right through my chest.”

“Good. Me too.”

“I fled.”

“Of course.”

“On my way down the stairs I had the oddest conversation with the man who lives across the hall. I mean we’d hardly said a word to each other before this. There were two dozen people barreling down the stairs. Suddenly he wanted to talk. He asked me where I work. Introduced me to his wife, who was pretty goddamn uninterested at that point in the details of my employment. He asked me how I like living in Greece.”

Skies were low and gray. People called to each other on the street, chanted from passing cars. Eksi komma eksi. They were referring to the first one, the bigger one. Six point six. Kyle had been hearing the number all morning, spoken with reverence, anxiety, grim pride, an echo along the brooding streets, a form of fatalistic greeting.

“Then what?” she said.

“The second one. I woke up moments before.”

“You heard something.”

“Like a child tossing a handful of sand against the window.”

“Very good,” she said.

“Then it hit.”

“It hit.”

“Bang. I leaped out of bed like a madman.”

“Did the lights go out?”

“No.”

“What about the first time?”

“I’m not sure actually.”

“Good. Neither am I. Was there a glow in the sky at any point?”

“Not that I noticed.”

“We could be dealing with a myth here.”

“The newspapers said a power station may have failed, causing a flash. There’s confusion on this point.”

“But we experienced similar things.”

“It would appear,” he said.

“Good. I’m glad.”

She thought of him as the English Boy although he was thirty-six, divorced, apparently arthritic and not even English. But he felt the English rapture over Greek light, where all Kyle saw was chemical smoke lapping at the ruins. And he had the prim outdated face of a schoolboy in a formal portrait, wire-haired and pensive.

“Where was