“Let’s get out of here, Alex–out of the city.”
“Sure,” I said, looking over at the dog, head-butting the bedcovers.
“Do we take him with us?”
“I’m not talking summer vacation, just dinner. Somewhere far enough to feel different. He’ll be fine. We’ll leave food and water, the air-conditioning on, give him a couple of chew-bones.”
“Okay, where would you like to go?”
Her smile was barren. “Normally I’d say Santa Barbara.”
I forced myself to laugh. “How about the other direction– Laguna Beach?”
“Laguna would be peachy.” She came over and placed A L V.
my hands on her hips. “Remember that place with the ocean view?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Calamari and pictures of weeping clowns– wonder if it’s still in business?”
“If it isn’t, there’ll be someplace else. The main thing is we get away.”
We left at seven-thirty, to avoid the freeway jam, taking the truck because the gas tank was fuller. I drove, enjoying the height and the heft and the power. A tape Robin had picked up at McCabe’s was in the deck: a teenager named Allison Krause, singing bluegrass in a voice as sweet and clear as first love and running off fiddle solos that had the wondrous ease of the prodigy.
I hadn’t called Milo to tell him about Meredith.
Another scumbag, he’d say, world-weary. Then he’d rub his I thought of the man on the tape, chanting like a child, reliving his past….
Bad thoughts intruding.
I felt Robin tighten up. Her fingers had been tapping my thigh in time with the music, now they stopped. I squeezed them. Strummed the fingertips, let my hand wander to her small, hard waist as the truck roared in the fast lane.
She had on black leotards under a short denim skirt. Her hair was tied up, showing off her neck, smooth as cream. A man with a functioning brain would have thanked God for sitting next to her.
I pressed my cheek against hers. Let my shoulders drop and bobbed my head to the music. Not fooling her, but she knew I was trying and she put her hand high on my thigh.
A babe and a truck and the open road.
By the time I reached Long Beach, it started to feel real.
Laguna was quieter and darker than I remembered, the art fair over, nearly all the tourist traps and galleries closed.
The place with the squid and clowns was no longer in business, a karaoke bar had taken its place–people getting slogged on margaritas and pretending to be Righteous Brothers. The painful sounds made their way to the sidewalk.
4U J N Al A N k LLLl M A N We found a pleasant-looking cafe farther up the street, ate huge, cold salads, decent swordfish, and excellent Chilean sea bass with french fries and coleslaw, and drank a bit of wine, then strong black coffee.
Walking it off, we went far enough past the commercial zone to get an ocean glimpse of our own. The water was a thousand miles of black beyond a white thread of sand. The waves rolled drunkenly, sending up ice chips of spray and an occasional roar that sounded like applause.
We held hands so tightly our fingers ached, grabbed at each other, and kissed until our tongues throbbed.
Barely enough light to see Robin’s dark eyes, narrowing.
She bit my lower lip and I knew some of it was passion, the rest, anger. I kissed her behind her ear and we embraced for a long time, then we returned to the truck and drove north, out of town.
“Don’t get on the freeway,” she said. “Drive awhile.”
I got onto Laguna Canyon Road, went for several miles, and made a random turn onto an unmarked strip that corkscrewed up into the mountains.
No talk or music. Her hands on me as she cried out her tension. We passed a pottery studio, its wooden sign barely lit by a dusty bulb. A glimpse of chicken-wire fencing. A couple of horse ranches, an unmarked shack. Then nothing for a long time and the road dead-ended at brush.
Crickets and shadows, the ocean nowhere in sight.
I put the truck in reverse. Robin stopped me and turned off the engine.