“She was involved in the sea lion incident?” Celia asked.
“Yeah,” Laura said with a giggle. “We had some pizza with her and G, and ... you know ... a few drinks, a few tokes on the old J, and pretty soon, I had this idea it would be fun to go down to the beach. So Neesh and I went out there.”
“What time was this?” Celia asked.
“It was pretty close to midnight,” Laura said.
“And you were drunk?” Greg asked.
“Hammered to the core,” Laura confirmed. “Anyway, we went down to the beach and kicked off our shoes and socks and then went down to splash around in the waves a little bit. After we did that for a while, we got to talking about how much warmer the water was here in southern California than Oregon and how you could swim in the water here, and ... well ... we decided to go swimming.”
Celia laughed a little. “But you didn’t have a bathing suit with you?”
“Right,” Laura said. “Neesh suggested we go skinny dipping. I didn’t want to at first—you know me, I’m kind of shy about things like that—but after all that wine, and after Neesh told me that it was pretty much a private beach and no one but us girls would likely be out here at that time of night ... well ... it started to seem like a good idea.”
“So ... you did it?” Celia asked.
Laura giggled a little. “We did it. We stripped out of our clothes right there above the spot where the waves were breaking and just jumped on in.”
“Oh my,” Celia said with a giggle. “Very naughty of you, Teach.”
“Yeah, but it was fun. We swam around for almost an hour, I think. And then we realized that the tide was coming in.”
“What’s wrong with the tide coming in?” Greg asked.
“We’d left our clothes right where the waves were breaking, remember? We both kind of thought of that at the same time. We rushed back to the spot where we’d undressed, but that spot was under water. Our clothes were nowhere to be seen.”
“Oh my God,” Celia said, giggling again. “What did you do?”
“We decided to split up and start looking for them. Neesh went one way down the surf and I went the other. I was running, looking in the waves for a glimpse of bra or panties or shirt or shorts, and ... well ... there was this sea lion laying on the beach right where the waves were coming in. It was black and I didn’t see it until it was too late. I ran into it and tripped and fell down.”
“Madre de Dios!” Celia squealed. “You tripped over it? Was it mad?”
“It was really pissed off,” she confirmed. “It started barking at me and reared up on its flippers. I screamed and took off running and it started to chase me.”
“It started to chase you?” Celia asked, fully laughing at the story now.
“Yeah,” she said. “It was terrifying. I panicked and didn’t know what to do. Neesh saw what happened and screamed at me to stop running along the shore, to go inland.”
“That seems a good course of action,” said Greg, who was grinning at her story.
“So I did, but it kept chasing me. I was running harder and faster than I’ve ever run before and that thing was still behind me, ark ark arking for all it was worth, and then I ran into a piece of driftwood with my foot. That’s how I got the broken toes and the sprained ankle. I fell face first into the sand. That’s how I got the black eye. I didn’t know any of that at the time, however, I was still in full-on panic mode. I jumped back to my feet and kept on running. This time the sea lion gave up and turned back to the water.”
“It’s a good thing it didn’t catch you,” Greg said. “I can only imagine what it might have done. It probably could have killed you.”
“Yeah,” Laura said, shaking her head at her predicament. “What a way to go, huh?”
“Can you imagine how the celebrity press would have spun it if my fiancé got killed by a freaking sea lion?” Jake asked.
“You’d a been in the cell next to OJ,” Obie said with a laugh.
“I wouldn’t have signed up to defend you,” Pauline added.
Even little Tabitha was laughing at this point. Celia tweaked her little nose affectionately and then turned back to Laura. “Did you ever find the clothes?” she asked.
“No,” Laura said with a sour shake of the head. “In truth, after the sea lion, we didn’t even look anymore. We just went back to G’s house. That was a bit awkward.”
“I can imagine,” Celia said. “How did you do it? Just stroll on through the door in all your naked glory?”
“Eventually, but not at first,” Laura said. “Neesh and I went up to the sliding glass door and we stood off to the side of it. She slid it open a little bit and tried to call G over so he could go get us some robes and hand them out. But G and Jake weren’t sitting in the living room anymore. The CD player wasn’t playing and their drink glasses weren’t there. She called a few times, but no one answered. She told me that G had a composing room and that maybe they’d gone up there to work on something.”
“Which was exactly what we’d done,” Jake confirmed. “We decided to co-write a tune and we had gone up there to start working on it right after the ladies went down to the beach. We were pretty hammered ourselves and we kind of got into the groove. That was why we didn’t notice they’d been gone so long.”
“Anyway,” Laura went on, “we decided we could make it to the downstairs bathroom and at least get some towels to cover up with and then get me cleaned up a little. So, we creep into the house and are about halfway across the living room, about as far from any cover as we could possibly be, when Jake and G both turn the corner in the upstairs hall and look out over the railing that looks down on the living room. We couldn’t have been more center stage if we’d planned it.”
Another round of laughter erupted, Laura included, although she was blushing furiously.
“That must have been quite a sight, Jake,” Celia said between giggles.
“It was one of the most inspiring moments of my life,” Jake agreed. “You’ve never seen two girls move so fast before. They sprinted to the bathroom and slammed the door so hard that a picture fell off the wall. The only thing funnier was listening to their explanation of what happened once they finally came out.”
“Yeah, the nurses and the doctor in the emergency room thought my story was pretty funny too,” Laura said. “And the x-ray technician, and the registration clerk, and those two cops they sent to make sure I wasn’t a domestic violence victim.”
“That part wasn’t that funny,” Jake said sourly.
“They really did that?” Greg asked, appalled.
“Of course they did,” Jake said. “I’m Jake Kingsley, the guy who rapes women and throws them off of boats, the guy who Mindy Snow implied was abusive to her. They were polite about it, but they showed up and separated us from each other and asked some serious questions about what had happened.”
“They seemed to be almost disappointed when they heard the real story,” Laura said. “Though they did think it was funny.”
“Yeah, and at least everyone’s kept their mouths shut about the whole thing,” Jake said. “There haven’t been any reports in the press about Laura’s assault on the sea lion, or about her swimming naked in the ocean—at least not yet.”
“You told them about being naked?” Celia asked.
“I kind of had to,” Laura said. “There was really no other way to explain why I’d shown up in the ER with no bra on, wearing a pair of sweatpants and a shirt that were three sizes too big for me.”
“Still,” Greg said, “I’m sure you could have come up with some explanation.”
“Maybe,” Jake said, “but then we would have been lying to them about something. Cops are pretty good at picking up on when you’re lying to them. If they would have found a hole in the story about why she was dressed like that, they might’ve started thinking there were other holes to explore as well.”