Mayor Graham and Police Commissioner Hucksbee were enjoying the performance. “Girls!” was filled with good voices and great legs. These were the things that good Broadway shows are made of. They were the mainstay of the great white way where the lights of New York’s entertainment rush glittered overhead on the way to the theaters. People on the streets marched with their tickets to the theaters in hopes of enjoying several hours of top flight entertainment.
“Nice legs,” the mayor said to his commissioner.
“I might have to arrest you for harassment if you talk like that,” Commissioner Hucksbee said.
“The rush might be worth it,” Mayor Graham said with a sly grin on his face.
Gloria was the hit of the show. Her gallant smile flashed everywhere on the stage. Her part was vigorous and demanding. She moved here and there among the dancers whose grandiose voices surged through the evening’s performance with the moving sumptuousness of a fine mixed drink served by a profoundly beautiful mistress. Then, as the music reached a crescendo, the building shook once, twice, then several more times. Suddenly, the ceiling broke loose in fragments. People saw the ceiling descending upon them. As they discovered the overhead doom that was rapidly approaching them, they screamed and tried to move. However, it was far too late for that. A flood of sailing concrete, plaster, and wood dove down upon them spiraling from above in an avalanche of death. Beneath the rubble and the crushing of its patrons, the building’s edifice continued rumbling downward without any end in sight. Soon, the screams of the dying could no longer be heard. Then the walls buckled as they hurled their massive weight inward, pulling asunder everything that had held the ancient and massive structure together for more than one hundred years. It had all come apart. More and more bricks and plaster tore away from the walls and tumbled into the auditorium.
After that, no one moved. The building was totally gone. Inside its cavity, the first responders found clouds of white dust and a perfectly hushed silence.