They left the hostel when the sun was just cresting the Seus-like hill. Gia carried the backpack and wore Emma’s scarf when she got too hot. The path was smooth and long like a tongue winding through the throat-like valley. The birch woods to the left gathered enough shadow to keep the field glittering with frost. Emma stopped too many times to look at crystallized leaves and Gia kept tugging her to move. When they finally saw the dunes Emma was limping hard. They climbed the tiny sand hill and down to the golden stretch of coastline. They could see Point Reyes dancing in morning fog, reaching into the Pacific. The beach was smooth and tan like a woman’s back. The girls knew they were alone, if only for the morning, and shed their layers of clothes. They walked down the sand separately, feeling the sun hit their bellies and backs and breasts and faces upturned. Gia picked up shells and examined small stones. Emma watched the curve of her back, her slender bird-like body barely making an indent on the sand. When a man appeared on the horizon, huffing behind an eager dog, they joined hands and entered the sea.
Roger hurried behind Scout, tugging desperately at the leash. He lived for mornings, a chance for peace before the family woke up. His wife always insisted he take the dog with him for exercise so she wouldn’t have to later. He wondered what she did all day while he was at the office. He figured they did roughly the same activities—sitting around, hitting a keyboard every so often, both feeling lonely and reveling in the solitude. The only difference was he took the dog for a walk in the morning, she fed the kids and got them to school, and then he got paid for his laziness. He tried not to stare at the two naked girls splashing in the ocean in their shapeless youth. He remembered how his wife looked before she got pregnant. He remembered how he used to think her laugh, the unabashed raucous mouth-wide-open one, was beautiful. Then he thought of Karen at the office, remembering her subtle smile, how she was always willing. The leash slipped from his hand and Scout took off down the beach towards a small hunched over figure in the distance.
She carried the thing uncertainly in her arm. She was too young to have a child, she knew that. She couldn’t believe how small the thing was, its head fitting in the palm of her hand. It felt like a toy next to the ocean, a wiggling breathing doll. She wondered at the life in her hand but she didn’t feel like it was human. Mothers always talk about the miracle of life, of giving birth to a small person, she thought. But this? This can’t be it. This thing is hardly animated. It was born out of consequence. She found it strange that she had created this thing from a one-night-stand in Las Rosas but it seemed more like a product of drink than human contact. She tried to remember being introduced to the Pacific when she was that small. She knew her father had brought her here, held her tiny hand, introduced her to the waves. She wondered how she had held on to his hand in that salty water. She brought the thing closer to the water, holding it as far away from her body as possible. She didn’t see the dog coming. A blur of gold fur bowled into her, knocking the thing from her hands.
He heard the wailing and howling some sort of skirmish between a woman and a dog. He smiled to himself thinking this is why people keep their dogs on leashes. He carried his salt-covered blanket over one shoulder. It had been a cold night and the reeds behind the dunes didn’t offer much shelter. His jeans were ripped around his knees and ankles. He couldn’t remember any shirt besides the woolen plaid sweater he wore today and the day before and the day before that. He wondered if he had begun to smell yet, or if the ocean brine cleaned him up enough. He hated the crust that built up on his skin, stretching and pulling at his back and legs and arms and neck. He liked the way his hair was all ocean-crunchy but it felt like dried seaweed after a while. It reminded him, he needed to meet up with Glen at the market by noon. It was going to be a long walk but Glen always had some chronic stuff. He fingered the last dollars and coins he kept in his fraying pocket and turned up over the dunes, away from the Pacific.
Frank sat between the reeds on top of a dune. He looked up from his writing in time to see the tattered sun-streaked man pass. He wondered how old the guy was. He wondered if all the homeless people he saw looked so ageless. Frank meditated on that for a while and wrote it down. A good detail. The sun was starting to bake his forehead and neck as he hunched over his journal. This was his winter project—to write a book, or a poem, anything really. Nothing would come. None of his characters were real. None of them breathed. He looked down at the beach stretched out below and tried to understand the strangers, tried to tell their stories. He knew it was crap and he had to be at the market in twenty minutes. He tore out the pages and crumpled them, throwing them to the sand as he walked away. There was something writerly and satisfying about wadding up paper and littering a beautiful place.
