Just because the sun is still up doesn’t mean a man can’t step out in his pajamas and give the Airedales a little exercise. This gentleman will be fast asleep before the day’s last light has sunk into the Pacific. And that is true also of Chuck and Charlie or Felix and Fester or whatever these pampered scamps are called. Early to bed and early—very early—to rise. He will take them out again at dawn. Judging from the sheen of his high forehead and the well-fed waggle of his un-toned jowls, he is likely a man of fastidious habits. If you were to catch him in the flower shop he owns or the art gallery he has run for thirty years, you would find him immaculate—his tie crisply knotted, his starched collar snug against that waggle. Funny, then, that his neighbors know him best in the a.m. and p.m. by his wardrobe of jammies and bedroom slippers and the lovingly frayed sleeves of his favorite bathrobe.
The scamps pause to sniff a familiar tree. Mr. Pajamas waits.
“Good boy, Felix! Good job, Felix! Fester, hurry up!”
After the earthquake everyone rushed home from jobs downtown.
Out here the damage was spotty. Long-forgotten sutures from underground creeks and dried-up riverbeds determined which addresses participated in catastrophe and which got off easy with a few broken cups. A block of apparently unaffected homes would be marred by one lifted off its foundation. A house, at first glance, in tidy good order would reveal in profile (like a battered wife’s black eye) one corner collapsed.
Getting off a packed bus or arriving on foot after a long trek from the financial district, commuters arrived home with their hearts in their throats. Many hadn’t been able to reach loved ones yet. Many hadn’t determined that everyone was safe. With power out all over the city, it was difficult to get reliable information. Who knew what was true? The Bay Bridge collapsed? The Marina on fire? Freeways down with many dead?