Style. It's an Attitude.

We were browsing Jest Jewels at the Embarcadero on our lunch hour, me on the hunt for something to make me look fetching for a date with a new man. Gravitating towards the hats, I tried on a little brown tweed number resembling the ones worn by English schoolboys; close-fitting dome crown with a short bill, and snappy gold buttons on each temple. In the right light and when I tilted my head just so, the best I could manage was a slight resemblance to the Monkees’ Davy Jones. With boobs. Which might be OK, if you're confident enough with yourself to carry off looking like a boy-bander in a dress. I'm not.
“I just don’t know,” I pondered, turning from side to side in the mirror. “Something isn't working.”
“Here, Just wear it like this.” Vick took the hat and put it on her head at a little tilt so it half-covered one eye. She framed her face with her hands, turned her head like a screen star from the 1920s, and batted her eyes. “See? Very Puckish. He’ll melt.”
Fine. Out-cute me. Puck this, sister.

Mean Vick and Loma Prieta, part 2

Creaks belch from the walls as if the building ate something that did’t agree with it. And though we’re standing in what we’ve all read and heard is the safest place during an earthquake –a doorframe – that comfort is cold as a broker’s heart. We could fall. The floor could melt right out from under us we’d tumble through space, floor by floor, until we landed in a pile on top of the desks and credenzas and coffee cups of the previous 17 floors, and it’s gonna hurt. I’m struggling to plan a way in which to fall so it won’t hurt when I land. So far the plan's not coming together.
“It’ll hurt when we fall.” I inform Vick.
“I know.” She’s clutching Mosby’s waist, who’s doing a sort of shoulder hug with Tom the married guy, because even in the throes of a natural disaster that’s messing with the intestines of steel buildings, God knows you don’t grab the waist of the nearest warm body for solace. Word would leak out, and next thing you know they’d be calling you “Kitten” at the gym. “You know what’s worse, though?,” she aksed.
Brand me a loon—something about the half-light and creaking girders hinders my thought process. “I can’t fathom.”

Loma Prieta, Meet Mean Vick

Working on a story, and remembering the Loma Prieta earthquake. Funny how the smallest details come back once all the distractions are (mostly) cleared away. Here's part of the tale:

She was telling me about her favorite college gig as a backup singer in “a cheesey nightclub act.”
“Yeah, that was fun. I played tambourine, which didn’t work out so well. I had no sense of rhythm.”
“Why’d they keep you?” I asked.
“Because I’m cute. Well, plus I agreed to wear a tube top.”
I nodded. “Ah.”
“The tops would creep down during ‘Proud Mary,’ so the other girl and I figured out that if we flung our heads down,” Vick dramatically threw down her head “our hair would cover our fronts enough that we could surreptitiously pull up our tops.” Vick really did use words like “surreptitiously” in conversation, even when she was upside down. “Then we’d throw our heads back up, and it looked really cool, and our tops were fixed.” She righted herself, holding her hands at her side, imaginary tube top back in the safety zone. Flushed and a bit winded, kept going. “Next time you go see, like, Pride and Joy, watch how the . . . “
A low vibration, and the potted fern quivered.
“Suppose that’s a truck?” I offered.
“Oh, sure.” Vick shrugged before continuing, “. . . watch how the girls in the back all turn or bend down . . . “
But the floor continued to rumble under our feet, jostling pencils in the cups and causing the fluorescent lights to swing.
“ . . . at the same time . . . shit, that shaking isn’t stopping.”
The fern’s quiver progressed to an agitated tremor. A message pad perched on the edge of Vick’s desk plopped to the floor, and we stared at it as if it hollered “Geronimo!” on the way down.