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he wouldn’t be tempted to text Dani while he worked.
    Suddenly, a white light winked on behind me. I took in the scene displayed in harshly shadowed illumination before turning. I saw Thom covered with white dust, the table sprawled top-down across her waist. I didn’t see any blood but she was breathing very, very heavily. Her head was under the fender. I saw Sandy with her feet about four feet beneath the passenger’s side wheel of her delivery van, which is what the vehicle sitting above us was. It was lying at an angle, the higher side being the one I’d touched first. Luke was safely off to the side. I looked back to where the cell phone light originated. I couldn’t see who was behind it.
    â€œWho’s there?” I asked.
    The speaker turned the light on himself. It showed a lean, smooth face with high cheekbones and deep-set eyes capped by a spray of curly brown hair. He looked to be about thirty.
    â€œName’s Benjamin,” he said. “I’m here on vacation. I was in the restroom, just drying my hands on your quaint pull-towel and about to head out. I heard a bang and fell backward when the floor did.”
    â€œAre you okay?”
    â€œSeem to be. Toes and fingers work.”
    â€œWhat about the phone? Does it work?”
    â€œI tried to call out—nada. Hey, I’ve got someone here—a woman who isn’t my girlfriend.”
    He shined the light to his right. The cold white beam fell on A.J. She was lying on her back, covered in raw vegetables, her eyes closed but her chest moving. “I heard her moaning a second ago,” the man said.
    I made my way to him, stepping over the wreck of what used to be a pegboard full of utensils. They were now scattered on broken pieces of floor tile and concrete. As I rounded Sandy’s suspended delivery truck, I saw Luke ahead. He was sitting just beyond the point where the front half of the van disappeared up through the floor, like Ezekiel’s battle chariot headed for the middle of the air. Actually, it looked nothing like that; I was thinking biblical because, I guess, I was kind of hoping God was paying attention.
    â€œLuke, can you scoot over to your right?” I asked.
    â€œSure—why?”
    I asked Benjamin to shine the phone past me. The cone of light illuminated the van like an oncoming truck.
    â€œHoly crap!” Luke said when he saw it.
    â€œOh my,” Sandy added. It was surprise tinged with guilt, even though this wasn’t her fault.
    Luke started to crab-walk away from the van, toward A.J., on his dragging tuchas . It occurred to me that it was a necessary but somewhat futile move; if the damn thing fell in, it would take the rest of the ceiling with it, in which case it might not matter where we were. There were other appliances above us, like the oven and fryer with its still-hot oil and the walk-in refrigerator . . . not to mention knives, sacks of potatoes and other heavy food items, people, and the structural beams themselves. If the collapse were big enough—and I couldn’t tell from here—there were also the tables and chairs in the dining area, the counter, the cash register, and my office.
    â€œShould we be moving everyone toward the walls?” Sandy asked. She was looking around in the light, the same as I was. “It seems to me the ceiling would hold up better along the sides, like standing in a doorway during an earthquake.”
    â€œUnless the walls fall over,” I pointed out as I made my way toward A.J.
    â€œOh, Jesus,” Sandy said with sudden understanding.
    â€œI hear people up there,” Luke said.
    â€œI know. Probably getting them out of the deli.” This supposition was supported by the fact that while my hearing was getting clearer, the voices were getting dimmer.
    â€œI assume you’re Ms. Murray?” Benjamin said.
    â€œI’m Gwen Katz,” I told him as I knelt between Luke and A.J. “Murray was