before dawn. The fire was blue and orange coals, and the rain was a bare drizzle. I stumbled up to bed.
By midday Sunday the clouds were rolling away, fast-forward, eastward over the hills. I opened the parlor windows to rid the place of stale wood-smoke, and nearly swooned in the heady rush of freshness. I had to be out. I grabbed my parka and, almost an afterthought, the notepad and pen from the kitchen counter, stuffing them in my pocket. Outside the air was crystal, the clouds speeding overhead as white as cotton, all the gray rained out. I headed straight for the beach stairs.
Tramping down, I could see the white surf roiling below me. The last twenty steps had sprung free from the bluff, hanging by a thread and waterlogged like a beached wreck. Gingerly I descended, feeling the last steps sway and strain. Though the tide was officially low, the storm waves heaved and smashed, leaving a bare few feet of beach between the bluff and the water. I walked south for a while, my hood up and my face glazed with the salt spray. The water was magnificent, mad with power, spewing seaweed, foam that seemed a foot thick.
I'd gone a few hundred yards when I was stopped short by a huge pile of rocks extending out into the rushing tide. A crag of the bluff had apparently split off and tumbled down. One slab of sandstone teetering on the pile was covered with grass, which meant it had hurtled all the way from the top. Part of the aerospace mogul's lawn. He must be crazed, I thought with wicked satisfaction, to see his zillion-dollar shorefront crumble away. This slab alone, maybe ten by twelve, was probably worth a hundred grand.
I turned and wandered back, my southward footprints already nearly vanished along the wet sand. I thought of the Malibu tribe, which probably commanded these heights and beaches a thousand years before the Baldwins. There was an old story that made the rounds of the tanning summer flocks—that the Malibus invented the surfboard, not those big Kahunas in Hawaii. I couldn't help but feel a pang for the kingdom Merle had lost, though he certainly didn't act like a man dispossessed. In the wild of the storm's aftermath, it was hard not to think Los Angeles itself was the mirage. Impossible that all that urban shit and negative entropy lay only a half hour south of this new world.
I reached the base of the steps, rapturous as Crusoe. I could see that the hollow behind was clean as a bleached skull, the high waves having flushed it. I ducked under the steps and sat on the stone sill, protected from the wind. Sat there I don't know how long, watching the clouds break now and then to a piercing glimpse of blue. When I brought out the pad and pen from my pocket, I honestly thought I was going to jot some nature notes. I was startled as if by a blip of ESP when I brought the pen to the paper and wrote: "Dear Brian—" Oh. It took a couple of moments for my head to catch up with my heart. Then I started writing in earnest. "I just wanted you to know I'm glad you came. I don't exactly forgive you for the past—not the abuse when I was a kid and certainly not the dumb-fuck attitude about being gay that severed us for good. But I sort of see you as somebody else now. We'd still fight, no matter how much we saw each other, because the old blood never forgets. All the same, I think you're probably an okay guy—"
I stopped at the wimpy idiocy of that remark and contemplated the surf again. Just then, a black-green crab two feet between the claws came scampering out of the foam and stared at me. It swayed on its pontoon legs and bugged its eyes, positively prehistoric. Then it skittered sideways down the beach. I bent over the pad once more, telling myself this was all a first draft.
"I'll probably never meet Susan and Daniel, so give them my love. I wish all of you long life. What I've learned from this thing is just to say what I feel—"
That didn't sound remotely true, not to mention self-important. It was probably
By midday Sunday the clouds were rolling away, fast-forward, eastward over the hills. I opened the parlor windows to rid the place of stale wood-smoke, and nearly swooned in the heady rush of freshness. I had to be out. I grabbed my parka and, almost an afterthought, the notepad and pen from the kitchen counter, stuffing them in my pocket. Outside the air was crystal, the clouds speeding overhead as white as cotton, all the gray rained out. I headed straight for the beach stairs.
Tramping down, I could see the white surf roiling below me. The last twenty steps had sprung free from the bluff, hanging by a thread and waterlogged like a beached wreck. Gingerly I descended, feeling the last steps sway and strain. Though the tide was officially low, the storm waves heaved and smashed, leaving a bare few feet of beach between the bluff and the water. I walked south for a while, my hood up and my face glazed with the salt spray. The water was magnificent, mad with power, spewing seaweed, foam that seemed a foot thick.
I'd gone a few hundred yards when I was stopped short by a huge pile of rocks extending out into the rushing tide. A crag of the bluff had apparently split off and tumbled down. One slab of sandstone teetering on the pile was covered with grass, which meant it had hurtled all the way from the top. Part of the aerospace mogul's lawn. He must be crazed, I thought with wicked satisfaction, to see his zillion-dollar shorefront crumble away. This slab alone, maybe ten by twelve, was probably worth a hundred grand.
I turned and wandered back, my southward footprints already nearly vanished along the wet sand. I thought of the Malibu tribe, which probably commanded these heights and beaches a thousand years before the Baldwins. There was an old story that made the rounds of the tanning summer flocks—that the Malibus invented the surfboard, not those big Kahunas in Hawaii. I couldn't help but feel a pang for the kingdom Merle had lost, though he certainly didn't act like a man dispossessed. In the wild of the storm's aftermath, it was hard not to think Los Angeles itself was the mirage. Impossible that all that urban shit and negative entropy lay only a half hour south of this new world.
I reached the base of the steps, rapturous as Crusoe. I could see that the hollow behind was clean as a bleached skull, the high waves having flushed it. I ducked under the steps and sat on the stone sill, protected from the wind. Sat there I don't know how long, watching the clouds break now and then to a piercing glimpse of blue. When I brought out the pad and pen from my pocket, I honestly thought I was going to jot some nature notes. I was startled as if by a blip of ESP when I brought the pen to the paper and wrote: "Dear Brian—" Oh. It took a couple of moments for my head to catch up with my heart. Then I started writing in earnest. "I just wanted you to know I'm glad you came. I don't exactly forgive you for the past—not the abuse when I was a kid and certainly not the dumb-fuck attitude about being gay that severed us for good. But I sort of see you as somebody else now. We'd still fight, no matter how much we saw each other, because the old blood never forgets. All the same, I think you're probably an okay guy—"
I stopped at the wimpy idiocy of that remark and contemplated the surf again. Just then, a black-green crab two feet between the claws came scampering out of the foam and stared at me. It swayed on its pontoon legs and bugged its eyes, positively prehistoric. Then it skittered sideways down the beach. I bent over the pad once more, telling myself this was all a first draft.
"I'll probably never meet Susan and Daniel, so give them my love. I wish all of you long life. What I've learned from this thing is just to say what I feel—"
That didn't sound remotely true, not to mention self-important. It was probably
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