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.