by Ken O'Steen
Back on the waterfront it felt like home. There was a sense of relief, so our acclimation must have been complete. Still, it was important to get out of the house occasionally. If you didn’t see some people every so often, you couldn’t truly appreciate the daily joy of being completely removed from human beings.
It wasn’t especially cool that evening, but the gusts of wind got so strong our perennial airborne personal possessions problem, reached a level that was not acceptable. We closed the windows, and turned the television on while we prepared dinner. Since we’d gotten home the windows had gone black with the passing of twilight. One effect of this was to turn the windows into panels, featuring in the reflection on the glass the story of Lila and me in the corner “kitchen” of our room beside the windows preparing dinner. Another effect was that the lamps inside that were scattering splashes of gold everywhere in the room behind us, also were causing warm, yellow lamplight to flicker in the window glass at the same time as the movie of our, “Dinner Prepared.”
This was a collaborative operation to produce sandwiches of Lila’s invention that we had been eating for years, and homemade salsa. Chopping, slicing, and slathering (this sandwich required mustard and mayonnaise working in harmony) were involved, and the two of us were working together, side by side. I was closer to the television, hence could hear more clearly. The local news was reporting a story about another bunch of ill-mannered cops in Southern California, and I passed along the salient details to Lila.
“The cops are on tape flogging a guy with flashlights down in Inglewood…I think he stole a…bakery truck? A cop is saying that they were concerned he might be about to brandish…”
“A crueler?”
“A weapon. I guess an old crueler would be a weapon. Now…alright, the Chief is saying not to jump to any inclusions till all of the facts are in.”
She laughed.
“I love the smell of whitewash in the morning, “ I told her, causing her to look at me askance. I apologized for being in such a good mood.
I stopped talking, and listened while I did my work. Lila alternated between humming and softly singing snatches of the Pogues’ “Fairy Tale of New York.” At one point, reacting to something I heard, I simply said “Disney” out loud, and shook my head without utterance of a further comment. The failure by Lila to ask for explanation indicated none was required.
The sandwiches were nearly ready for assemblage, strips of mozzarella, and bits and pieces of Spanish olives, green peppers and tomatoes in heaps all across the counter. As Lila dumped cilantro, tomato, onion, and jalapeno into the super-chopper to manufacture salsa, I spoke up to convey more news of interest.
“You should hear this…the City Council…the City Council is talking about banning smoking at beaches…”
Lila stopped her work with the super-chopper as if she were frozen in the frame of a film.
“Yep…banned at all the public beaches in the city.”
“What? Pathetic. Jesus. Is this a public or a private beach?” she asked, nodding at the window and our little slice of seaside.
“Beats the hell out of me…the penalty would be a fine…”
“Yeah, that’s a law I’m planning to obey.”
“Somebody would have to report it…I wouldn’t expect anybody to just show up.”
“If they do, and they intend to fuck with me about smoking in the great outdoors, they better bring a motherfucking army.”
“So, you’re like a gangsta painter now?”
“Damn straight,” she chuckled. “But is this a public beach or not?”
“How the hell would I know? So far, I haven’t had to chase anybody off. A guy walked through once, and a lady jogged by another time, but I didn’t threaten to make a citizen’s arrest on either occasion.”
After a run of commercials ended, and about the time Lila was putting the sandwiches on the plates, and throwing some chips on, I said, “Rambo,” which signaled the weather was next. While we carried our plates to the bed, and propped ourselves against the pillows to eat, Rambo was saying, “…we looked into our records…our intrepid Channel Seven researchers went to work…”
There he was, our most excellent buddy Rambo standing smack in front of the big, blue map of the United States. He almost seemed like a member of the family now.
“…and what they discovered,” Rambo said as we continued to watch, “is that in September of 1939, a hurricane actually came ashore in Los Angeles, the only tropical cyclone to have come ashore in Southern California. More accurately, it came ashore in Long Beach, with tropical storm strength winds of 50 mph. That year, there were also two other storms: one that moved northeastward, and came ashore in Baha; the other moving northwestward across Mexico and then languishing in the Pacific off the shore of Baha. But in 1939, the remnants from both those storms combined with the storm that came ashore in Long Beach, to create tropical storm conditions along the Southern California coast. Right now, in addition to the storm that’s sitting off the coast, there are the remnants of Hurricane Darlene, which came out of the Gulf of Mexico and crossed the deserts and mountains of Arizona into California; and a storm coming down out of the Pacific northwest, bringing that additional moisture into the mix. That’s the rub. As of now, it’s difficult to predict how far south the storm will push, and whether the upper level winds will nudge the hurricane inland into Southern California; or stay too far north to have much effect on our area of the state at all. Either way, it is expected to feed some amount of moisture into Southern California. So you folks here in the Southland there are a variety of scenarios possible as you can see. Whether it’s going to be something historical, nobody can say as yet. But either way, you’re going to need those umbrellas for a while, that we can say for sure.”`
“Whaddaya know?” Lila said as we looked at one another.
“Umm…damn,” I said back.
“Kind of exciting or kind of scary,” she said, as Rambo launched into his delivery of the immediate forecast.
“If something blows in, we’re going to see it up close and personal, that’s for sure.”
“Might be exciting.”
“Might be.”
“Then again, it could be the end of life as we know it at the beach.”
“Perfect timing again for us.”
“But a hurricane here? El Nino, yeah, but a hurricane?”
“You heard what the man said…it’d be a fluke, but it has happened before…more or less.”
“Sounded to me like before it was kind of a little one that came ashore. Then it was reinforced by those other storms until it was hurricane-like here, with all of the storms combined. What was it? Nineteen-thirty Nine?”
“Yeah, Nineteen-thirty-Nine. There is going to be the Mother of all Storm Watches if this thing actually starts to happen.”
Lila wrapped herself in her computer for most of the evening. She asked me the meaning of a couple of words along the way so at least part of the time she was writing mail. My most productive endeavor during the course of the evening turned out to be forming perspiration on the ridges of my upper lip, made possible by the sticky, and as of that evening, tightly fitting humidity. Though it wasn’t warm inside by any means, the moisture was both dulling, as well as enervating. I decided to utilize the bounty of Mother Nature I was leasing practically free of charge, and try to refresh myself in body and mind, by stretching my legs and breathing the air outside the cottage. As I was putting my shoes on the news came on again. Naturally, the lead story had become the imminence of the various storms and the possibility of shore leave for a hurricane.
It had begun to drizzle. The drizzle tickled the face, and the air was indeed a rejuvenator. I walked down the street a little ways, turned and walked back, then stood for a while looking out at the ocean. The surf was at least slightly more riled than it usually was. There wasn’t much of a steady wind, only an occasional,
but forceful gust. In the drizzle and fog I could see lights from exactly none of the ships at sea.
I walked back toward the cottage, and past it a little ways, finally stopping at the edge of the street to stand and stare inland. Muddy as the view was with the shroud of drizzle and mist, I still could see lights twinkling across the massive rise of mountains and hills in front of me. Every time I stared aloft at night I was possessed by a kind of wonderment, perhaps a bit of envy that all those houses were snuggled so comfy into their niches there. You couldn’t help but be curious what the Hill People were doing right that moment to pass the time. From where I was, they did indeed appear to be sitting on top of the world.
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