“Jay. Jay!”
“… What?”
“Are you going to just sit there staring into space?”
“Sorry. No.”
“What were you thinking about?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Let’s go down to the beach.”
She wasn’t enthusiastic about that, either, since she’d already been down there, but when he went to put on his coat she got up and joined him.
They avoided the northern part of the cove, made their way down to where the landmass marked the end of Ben’s property. The tide was out and they were able to skirt around the point onto the beach below the big neighboring estate.
Quite a place, from what he could see of it through a long open crease in the cliffside. What must be the main house sprawled back behind a long redwood deck—two stories of weird angles and windows in different geometric shapes, all of it looking cobbled together as if from a collection of mismatched pieces. There was a kind of a dormer at one end that was almost as high as the backdrop of pines.
“Some architect’s wet dream,” Macklin said. “I’ll bet Lomax hates it.”
“Why would anyone build a home like that if they weren’t going to live in it full time?”
“More money than good sense.”
“It’s a wonder the Coastal Commission approved the plans.”
“With enough money you can get anything done.”
“Well, we’ll never know if that’s true or not.” Trace of bitterness in her voice? Hard to tell, with the wind yowling at them.
“No,” he said. “I guess we never will.”
They didn’t stay long. The wind gained velocity, sweeping in vanguards from a wall of fog that was making up offshore. The sudden drop in temperature drove them back up the steps to the bluff top.
Just as they were coming onto the landing, there was a loud engine roar and a harsh clash of gears from out on the lane. Sports car, shooting past toward the highway—Decker’s Porsche. Another grinding downshift, and the engine sound faded to silence.
Macklin said disgustedly, “Sweet car like that Boxster—Decker treats it the way he treats his wife, like crap.”
“He must’ve decided to go home after all.”
“Or off to see one of his girlfriends, or to the store for more booze.”
“If he’s going to Santa Rosa, I’d like to think Claire’s with him.”
“Probably not, from what she told you today.”
“No, probably not.”
Inside the cottage, he stacked kindling and started a fire while Shelby rummaged through the music CDs, selected one, and plugged it into the boom box. Classical stuff, baroque, a violin concerto—Vivaldi, he thought. She knew he didn’t much care for that kind of thing; his taste in classical music ran to the soft background variety, Brahms or Mozart, but what he really liked was jazz, any style but preferably Ellington or Coltrane or Miles Davis. He wondered if she’d picked Vivaldi to irritate him. No, she wouldn’t do that. She wasn’t petty. Probably chose that CD because it matched her mood.
Shelby curled up with a book in one of the chairs facing the fire. So he rummaged around in the bookcase and found a local history of the Mendocino coast from Gualala to Fort Bragg. History was a subject he’d always enjoyed—American, foreign, regional, all kinds. One of his pet peeves was the average person’s ignorance of and disinterest in past events. How could you understand what was going on today in politics, economics, religion, countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, society in general if you didn’t know or care what influenced and shaped each over years, decades, centuries? How could you support your opinions and make informed decisions without a historical foundation?
The book was easy reading and informative—a good thing, because his attention span wasn’t what it used to be. He hadn’t known that this part of the coast had been a hotbed of liquor smuggling during Prohibition. Ships loaded with Canadian whiskey had made regular runs down from British Columbia, anchoring just outside the five-mile limit, and rumrunners had gone out in launches and fishing boats and brought in cases and hid them in barns until they could be trucked inland across the Coast Range. Around the time of Repeal there’d been a gun battle between bootleggers and federal agents in a place called Bourne’s Landing, near Gualala. One of the agents had been wounded and another one kidnapped and held hostage.
Exciting times. Bad times, too. Andrew Volstead’s so-called noble experiment had been anything but. Hadn’t somebody once said that the country would’ve been saved a lot of grief if Volstead had been a drunk like everybody else?
Macklin lowered the book so he could watch Shelby over the top of it, something he never tired of doing. Her slender body was as flexible as a cat’s; she sat coiled with her legs tucked under her, her head tilted away from him, seemingly absorbed in her paperback. Her face, in profile and lit by the fire, had a kind of Madonna-like radiance.
He loved her so damn much.
T E N
ON THE ROAD AGAIN …
He liked driving the coast highway. Day or night, rain or shine, it didn’t really matter. He’d been here long enough, put in enough hours traveling back and forth along the fifty-some miles between Jenner and Fort Bragg, so that he knew every twist and turn and switchback. He could drive Highway 1 in his sleep now if he felt like it. Not too fast, not too slow, always with pleasure and always in control.
Always in control.
He liked being close to the ocean, too. He wished he’d been born and raised with the Pacific in his backyard, or at least that he’d discovered it a lot sooner than he had. He’d been to a lot of different places in his life and there wasn’t one even close to as good as this. He liked everything about the area. In clear weather the eye-stinging silver sparkle of sunlight on the water, and the way the moon glinted off its smooth blackness at night. On wet days the clean smell of the rain and how the big waves rolled up hard and glare-white against the shoreline. The sea wind in his face, salt tang in his nostrils. The gulls and pelicans and other seabirds, even the squawking crows that wheeled around overhead like miniature stealth aircraft. The state and county parks, the wilderness areas, the coves and gulches and beaches, the pastureland where sheep and cattle grazed, the stands of old-growth pines and redwoods along the cliffs and inland hills … all of it open and beautiful and unspoiled.
That was what mattered most to him, that this part of the coast was still largely unspoiled.
Oh, sure, there were people and wherever you had people, you had the trappings of what passed for civilization—trailer parks and campgrounds, motels and inns and B&Bs and restaurants and gift shops and minimalls. But they were widely scattered and for the most part they weren’t offensive, they blended in—as Sea Ranch, the ten-mile stretch of retirement and rental homes south of Gualala, blended in—because the residents and the Coastal Commission demanded it. He didn’t mind most of the people, either, the full-time or part-time residents and the visitors and pass-throughs who made an effort to maintain the area as God and nature intended. People like him who understood how important open space and natural beauty were in a world filled with ugliness. Brothers and sisters under the skin.