All That Was Happy

by M. M. Wilshire

  Opening the front door, Beckie stepped out into the night, surprised at how quiet it was, and how many stars were shining.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” he said.

  “I’m not kidding,” she said. “I’m going surfing. I’m doing what I should have done twenty-nine years ago. I should have stayed on the beach and let Mickey Dora devour me while he hung ten.”

  “It’s 4 o’clock in the morning,” he said. “The water’s freezing--don’t tell me you’re going surfing wearing a two-thousand dollar silver-sequined Gucci tube dress.”

  “Give me the board,” she said. “While you’re at it, you can grab yours from the back of your car and join me.”

  She didn’t wait for Huntington--it was something she had to do by herself. The board, at ten feet six inches long, was heavy, and wide, and she had to balance it on her head, the way she used to do long ago. It took some effort to cross the wide expanse of sand to the chill waters where, it was thought by some, that all life began. The setting moon, with its roadway of strong moonbeams hinted at the existence of a place beyond the freezing waters, a place where human weakness would fall away like a baby’s tears--a better place than where she now stood.

  She hadn’t forgotten how to knee-paddle, or turn turtle to roll beneath a breaking wave--for a brief instant, there was a joy to it, and she could almost sense the weight of her long blonde hair once again, and the weightlessness of it as it unfurled beneath the depths. On her way out through the breakers, she felt the joy she remembered feeling and gained a little freedom for her soul. The water was freezing cold but she paddled hard and soon her pumping blood began to warm her freezing limbs. After she was past the break line, and she could see the shadows of the rising swells of the new set coming in behind her, she turned the board and began to paddle, putting her in synch with a beautiful swell of water, feeling the awesome energy of the swell lifting her up, at which point she managed to make it to her feet, her body crouching for balance as the board shot forward, swiftly dropping her smoothly into the crest, her ears singing with the hiss of the rails--after all that--she finally felt the peace she’d been seeking, a peace which flowed through her, and which invited her to join herself with the energies around her, taking her home, a place, she knew, where romance, and passion, and the ever-changing power of life was to forever become her new constant in the never-changing world she was leaving behind. She turned around and paddled out again. This time she was going to hang five.

  Chapter 23

  “You’re going to have a real shiner,” Huntington said. “The right eye, for sure, and maybe even the left.”

  “I’ll look like a raccoon,” Beckie said.

  The pair sat together on the edge of the huge redwood hot tub just off the rear balcony of the second-floor master suite, their legs dangling in the steaming hot, bubbling waters, examining a bump on Beckie’s nose and a spreading bruise surrounding her right eye. The bump was currently rising faster than the morning sun.

  “I think it makes you look a lot like Streisand wearing a mask,” Huntington said.

  “I’d just caught the perfect wave,” Beckie said, “and was scooting up to the nose to try and hang five when my feet went right out from under me. I slipped off into the curl and took a pounding on the bottom. When I came up to the surface, the board smacked me right in the face.”

  “There wasn’t any wax on the nose of the board,” he said. “It was only waxed in the middle.”

  To properly prepare a surfboard, one had to apply a rough coating of melted paraffin which provided a non-skid, rubbery traction to the surface when wet. Beckie, in her haste, had violated this rule, and found herself attempting to maintain her balance on the slippery nose, her chances of staying on her feet at that point about the same as her chances of standing on top of a whirlwind.

  “It’s a good thing you arrived when you did,” Beckie said. “The board nearly knocked me unconscious.”

  Huntington, having elected not to go surfing at 4 o’clock on a chill April morning, and having instead chosen the softer, easier route of simply driving down to the water’s edge in the Suburban, had handily retrieved his priceless Robert August surfboard, along with his shimmering, silver-sequined, ocean-soaked tube-wrapped, newfound love, and transported both of these treasures quickly back to the comfort and security of his tiny home at the edge of the world, whereupon he attempted to remedy the various ailments and complaints presented by Beckie, chief among which was that she was half-frozen to death, and secondly, was fearful that her nose might be broken, this latter point quickly dismissed, as there was no bleeding, and no blockage of the air passages, the nose not appearing to be pushed to one side or the other, and the main damage limited to some heavy swelling and the inevitable bruising around the eyes.

  “Oh man,” Beckie said. “For a minute, just for one beautiful minute, I had my right foot over the edge of that board. I think I can honestly say that I can die now, and have no regrets--Huntington! I surfed! I did it! Nobody can take that away from me--not ever!”

  “I watched you,” he said. “When you started off across the sand with that board balanced on your head, I ran up to the loft and filmed the entire thing through the top window--it was incredibly impressive--with the moonlight shining on your dress, you looked like a knee-paddling angel. And when you caught your first wave, and came up out of your crouch, I felt like I was watching some sea-goddess at play.”

  “You got it on video?”

  “The telescope has an attachment for my digital vid cam. I captured the entire performance.”

  “Oh, Huntington!” Beckie cried, grabbing him by the face before planting a fervent kiss on his lips. This celebratory exchange between them, starting out playfully, as it did, quickly danced through their souls, lighting fires everywhere, throwing open the doorways to generous flows of heated emotions which ran together at the speed of light, uniting them with the force of the heat until both were caught up in one, singular, white-hot flame, a flame which soon consumed all the oxygen in their bodies and forced them to come up gasping for air, unable to think or speak or even look at each other, the fear being that their eyes would meet and cause a further explosion which would consume them completely and forever in an endless union.

  “I need you to go back downstairs,” Beckie said. “It’s too soon for me. But after I finish my bath, maybe we can go to breakfast.”

  “I want you,” Huntington said. “In every way.”

  “Perhaps we’ve become a gift to each other,” Beckie said. “But we’ll need to move slowly and carefully.”

  “We belong together,” he said.

  “I hope you understand,” Beckie said. “I’ve just come from a lifetime of doing what my therapist calls watching the paint dry on walls of my soul--but now I’ve got a blank canvas--I just need some time to know what picture I want to paint.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “In the heat of the moment, it’s easy to get swept away.”

  “It’s not the heat of the moment I’m worried about,” Beckie said. “I just want to be sure. I’m a little up in the air right now--I have no home to call my own. But I promise you, if what we have is real, I’m not going to pass it up--my mother always told me not to pass up something I loved. I’ve learned in the past twenty-nine years just how right she was. Tonight I found something I thought I’d lost--out there, on that ocean, I found my passion again.”

  He got up and walked to the doorway, looking back one last time at the girl in the shiny silver wrapper.

  “Pretty soon, you, too, will have a home,” he said.

  Chapter 24

  “I can’t do anything about my face,” she said, “I haven’t any makeup with me--everything is locked up and under guard in my former home--I don’t see how I can go out in public like this. I look like the poster girl for the Nicole Brown Simpson foundation.”

  Huntington was on the phone, into which he mumbled a few words before hanging up the receiver. He stood up and
smiled.

  “You don’t need any makeup,” he said.

  She’d come downstairs wearing one of her new outfits, a simple blue plaid skirt and white blouse with a draped sweater and sensible, soft, calfskin shoes with a rounded toe cap and a flat heel.

  “I’m really not dressed for meeting Bernie’s lawyers,” she said. “I just didn’t think to have the Nordy’s girl pick me out a power suit. But how do you like the Ali McGraw Preppy look?”

  “It’s classic,” he said. “Just like you. And you don’t need a power suit--what you need is a power lawyer. I just called a legal beagle friend of mine. Her name is Lauren Shane--she’s willing to offer us a little free legal advice before she heads in to the office--but it’s going to cost me breakfast at the Polo Lounge.”

  “I’m starved,” she said. “How soon can we get there?”

  “As soon as Mr. Boopers gets back,” he said. “He’s out inspecting the back alley.”

  The Suburban made good time across town and up Sunset Boulevard before turning into the palm tree’d entrance to the Beverly Hills Hotel Polo Lounge, getting a jump on the commuter jam on account of the early hour, and soon they found themselves seated over fresh brewed coffees beneath a spotlit, pink-linen’d, demi-table in a booth at one end of which sat Lauren Shane, a large, bony, bespectacled woman in a red Nancy Reagan suit, her round, cheerful face topped with a no-nonsense crown of tightly permed brown hair.

  “Forgive me if I seem a snob for meeting you here,” Lauren said. “But it’s convenient for me--I pass this place every morning on my way out to Century City.”

  “I’ve never been here before,” Beckie said. “Everybody eating breakfast looks like somebody important in the Industry.”

  “Speaking of somebody important, it’s not my fault I know Huntington,” Lauren said. “So if you ever find him behaving despicably, don’t lump me into the same category--my father was a friend of his father--Huntington and I used to play together as children in his backyard while our fathers drank too much brandy and made too much money.”

  “You and Huntington are childhood friends?” Beckie said.

  Lauren nodded.

  “Don’t let the red dress fool you,” Huntington said. “She just wears red to keep the bloodstains of her enemies from showing--if you really want to sic a lawyer on somebody you hate, Lauren’s the lawyer for you. She can bleed anybody dry in two minutes or less.”

  “That’s enough, Huntington,” Lauren said. “One more word from you and I’ll tell your companion here about what you really did during your tenure at Goldman Sachs--perhaps we’ll discuss the time you blew 1.6 million by going to the can at the wrong time.”

  “It’s a rough business,” Huntington said. “That’s why I got out. I got tired of the financial bungee jumping. I much prefer my present life.”

  “Which is what?” Lauren said.

  “Bartending and working on my tan,” he said.

  The waitperson appeared and attempted to present menus, but was rebuffed in the attempt.

  “Never mind menus,” Huntington said. “We’ll just order what we feel like eating and you can sort it all out. Put it all on my account.”

  “I haven’t got much time,” Lauren said. “Let’s order and then we’ll talk.”

  “I’m starving,” Beckie said. “I’ll take the biggest breakfast you’ve got--I’m talking pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon, the works.”

  “Make it two of those,” Huntington said, “but pile on some whipped cream and chocolate chips on mine.”

  “I’ll go with your zucchini-pumpkin muffin and one of those little jars of your Tupelo honey,” Lauren said.

  “Server,” Huntington said, “the above order is post haste--that means we want it like yesterday.” The server, used to such imperial decrees from the spoiled clientele which normally frequented the place, managed a curt not, after which he spun smartly and made quick steps towards the kitchen.

  “Lauren,” Huntington said. “I’m a little worried. I’m trading you this breakfast for your free advice, but how much free advice are we going to get for the price of a muffin?”

  “That all depends on what they charge you for the muffin,” Lauren said. “But speaking of free advice, my first piece of advice to Beckie would be learn to duck, or at least get yourself one of those Tai Bo videos. I assume one of the issues in your divorce is going to be spousal violence?”

  “This is not what you think,” Beckie said. “I got this last night from a surfboard.”

  Lauren sighed. “I understand how afraid you must feel,” she said. “But there are ways to protect yourself from your husband during the divorce--remember, once you are less afraid and feel less manipulated by fear, you’ll notice how many choices you really have. For the interim, I suggest we bring in a personal bodyguard to provide some sort of security until we can set a more permanent form of control in place.”

  “Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh,” Huntington chuckled.

  “Huntington, why are you laughing at me?” Lauren said.

  “Beckie’s telling the truth,” he said. “Last night she hit the surf and got bonked by the board--I got the whole thing on videotape.”

  Lauren threw up her hands. “Huntington,” she said, “Just because we’re friends doesn’t mean you can continue your childish pranks with me. After I finish my muffin, I’m going to show you a whole new definition of violence.”

  “I’m sorry,” he laughed. “It was just too good to pass up.”

  “I need to know one thing before we begin,” Lauren said. “Are you two an item?”

  The question caught Beckie off guard. Was she an item with Huntington? What was the answer? She’d grown very aware in the past few hours just what an effect he was starting to have on her--for one thing, her life, in spite of the cloud of divorce hanging over it, seemed to be brightening, somehow--she found herself looking forward to spending more and more time with him.

  “Never mind the question,” Lauren said. “It’s written all over both of your faces--now, from what Huntington told me this morning on the phone, your husband has seized all of your assets, correct?”

  “Just the house and the car,” Beckie answered.

  Lauren shook her head. “If I were you, Beckie, I’d give a quick call to the bank and all my credit card companies--you’ll probably find that all your accounts have been frozen.”

  “Frozen?” Beckie said.

  “This is how it works, Beckie,” Lauren said. “Do you know how the military defines a successful attack? It’s an attack that’s over and won before the enemy even knows it’s started. By now, you’re unemployed, with no money in the bank, no functioning credit cards, no place to live, no car insurance, no health or medical insurance, no nothing. If your husband is allowed to succeed, the only thing you’ll be left with is his last name, and I doubt very much you’ll want that by the time this is over.”

  “But we have no-fault divorce in California,” Beckie said. “Half of everything is going to me.”

  “Heh, heh, heh, heh, heh,” Lauren chuckled, the way the devil might do if he heard a good one. “The truth is, no-fault is a disaster for women. The reality is, by the time your divorce is over, you’re going to be on the street for good.”

  “But Bernie and I have a lot of money. Our tool business is worth millions.”

  “Beckie,” Huntington said. “You told me that, for the past six months, Bernie has been working on bringing the tool business into a co-op. Unfortunately, what he’s probably done is mortgage up everything you own to raise the cash for the buy-in.”

  The waiter arrived with the specified food, upon which Huntington and Lauren began to eat with a fair amount of zeal.

  “Good pancakes,” he said. “Beckie, do you want some of this whipped cream on yours?”

  “She’s crying,” Lauren said.

  Beckie was crying. She’d just been plunged into a world she didn’t understand, a world in which Bernie had staged a financial coup and left her twistin
g in the wind, a place where, presumably, she’d continue to twist in the coming hours, weeks, and possibly months to come.

  “Cheer up and eat, Beckie,” Lauren said. “It may look right now as though the cards are stacked against you, but perhaps it was time you had a wake-up call.”

  “I’d just found my soul,” Beckie said. “I found it last night on a smooth wave. But I didn’t realize what the cost would be--they say a soul is priceless--well, apparently they’re right--finding it has cost me everything I’ve earned in the past twenty-nine years, and then some.”

  “You’re in a fog,” Lauren said. “You’re disoriented. You don’t know where the boundaries are anymore. But the war isn’t over yet--this is just your husband’s way of turning up the heat until you’re so uncomfortable that you’ll do almost anything.”

  “Bernie’s putting the pressure on,” Lauren said. “But we can start turning the tables if we work fast.”

  “We?” Beckie said.

  Lauren smiled. “That is, if you’d like me to represent you,” she said.

  Chapter 25

  “Well, I guess that’s pretty much it,” Beckie said. “My cell phone service has been shut off. Lauren was right--my credit cards and my bank accounts are frozen. All I have left at this point is a large straw bag, a small collection of designer outfits, an old bathrobe, a small dog, and a gun.”

  “You can’t let it get you down,” Huntington said. “Remember, Bernie’s lawyers are using these scorched-earth tactics to wear you down and starve you out. The real ugliness hasn’t even started yet.”

  “The real ugliness?” Beckie said.

  They were in the Suburban, having left the Polo Lounge and were heading back to the beach to await Lauren’s call regarding the upcoming meeting with Bernie’s lawyers, which would take place in Century City, the legal power nerve plexus of Los Angeles which, from its location near the ocean on the far western side of the city, complimented and assisted an equally powerful financial district about twenty miles to the east of it, as though the corpus of the city itself, with its several divergent power centers, was descended from the legendary giant with two heads, in this case one head being legal and the other head financial.