Cambria, 1999
The weather was getting wild. He sat alone at the Sea Chest Restaurant, a sturdy Cape Cod building set only a few yards from the very angry Pacific Ocean. Yesterday, it had been playful, shining in the sunlight, and filled with sea otters and a variety of birds. He had walked for hours along the coastal paths, smelling the salt and sage in the breeze. Then the storm had arrived.
The wind whistled around the corners of the little building, and the first spatters of rain hit the windows. Big drops and little drops combined. His mother had always warned him about that—drops of all sizes foretold a big storm, she would say. Nick wondered if he was going to be sitting out the storm by himself. Kate had left a message on his cell phone that she would meet him at the Sea Chest at six. She said nothing about the weekend.
He ordered another glass of wine and watched as the very deft young cook shucked oysters behind the gleaming wooden bar. The cook wore a T-shirt that said, “Frankly, Scallop, I don’t give a Clam.” Good smells came from the kitchen, and the chatter of dinner patrons was beginning to increase in volume. The cook looked up at him. “Want to order some? Fresh today!” he said cheerfully.
Nick smiled. “Oysters, eh … not certain that I’ll need them, but give me six.”
“I don’t think that it really helps much,” said the young man with a grin, arranging the oysters on a plate with some lemon wedges and sliding it over toward Nick.
“At your age, you don’t need them,” laughed Nick. He swallowed one of the blue points quickly. It was like tasting the ocean, or, he thought somewhat sadly, a good woman. He had known several in his life, and some of them had been charming. But none of them had engaged his affection the way that Geoffrey’s little sister had. He was prepared to like her even before them met because Geoffrey had talked of her so much. He respected her dedication, her bravery, and her refusal to surrender to the inevitable ruin of the planet. The sadness in her very green eyes had caught him from the first moment. In so many ways, she wore her feelings transparently and left herself open to so many of life’s wounds. Perhaps, that is why she was so intrigued by the past, which was safely gone. Well, his own mother was similarly intrigued, although she believed firmly that she would be meeting all of her kinfolk again in the sealed family unit that the Mormon Church supported. Nick himself did not believe this but had to agree with Kate when she announced that the dead were still here, parts of them vibrating in every cell of the living. As a physician, he knew that the genetic heritage from these ghosts could kill and twist lives about. Yet there must be positive sides … somewhere, the courage and determination came through—and the ability to ignore the inevitable ending of each life.
He was lost in thought and had finished all of the oysters when Kate arrived. She stood in the doorway, sliding out of her raincoat and shaking her umbrella, regarding him with thoughtful eyes. He was seated at the end of the oyster bar, a middle-aged man with a graying beard, thinning hair, and a thoughtful expression, far removed from this steamy cheerful restaurant and the bellowing storm outside. The sight of him made her suddenly … glad.
“Eating oysters, I see. Do you hope to get lucky?” she asked. He jumped to his feet, surprised and startled. For a moment, he said nothing, then smiled slowly.
“One never knows. How was the trip up? I worried about you in the storm.”
“It isn’t so bad down near San Luis Obispo, and the wind didn’t start to buffet my car until I was north of Morro Bay,” she said as they took a table in a corner window. “A storm when you are safe and warm is wonderful!”
Her cheeks were pink and damp from the wind, and she smoothed her sleek dark hair with small hands. “So, Doctor, I am here. Surprised?”
“Please don’t call me doctor unless you need professional advice, and I’m not on duty this weekend,” he retorted. “If you’ve come to reject me, get it over with.”
“I’m still trying to convince myself that I shouldn’t get involved with you.”
“Why?” He smiled and sipped from his water glass.
She hesitated, pulling a breadstick from a glass on the table and dunking it in a pat of butter. “Because I like you so much, and I’m afraid.”
“Of me?” He looked genuinely surprised. “I’m an old man whose best years are behind him. I don’t hold a candle to the golden gods of Santa Barbara.”
She laughed. “Golden gods? Oh, that’s a good one. Take a look at me then, Nick. My family was filled with golden gods … I am the dark changeling.”
“A very pretty one. So, what changed your mind about coming?”
“I got back some fragments from a document.”
“The old pages that you took to the Manuscript Museum?” he asked.
“Yes. Now, how did you know—oh, Geoff probably, as usual. Anyway, just a few sentences could be salvaged. Nothing much, really, except expressions of love and grief and a wish to take Rebecca’s love into a new century. It made me realize that the past is gone, and it was time to move away.”
“Will you take my love into a new century?” he asked quietly.
She smiled and bit off the end of the buttered breadstick.
“That’s a very provocative gesture, Katherine. I hope that you mean it.” His gray eyes crinkled, and he lifted his eyebrows.
She smiled. “Perhaps I’m in a provocative mood, Nick. Must be the storm.”
“Well, you can’t drive home tonight,” he announced hopefully.
“I hadn’t planned on it.”
“Katherine—” he began, reaching out to take her hand.
The young man behind the oyster bar was watching them, and he grinned. “Would you like more oysters, sir?”
They ate cracked crab with cold Chardonnay, and skipped coffee. Nick had walked to the restaurant, and Kate drove them back to the San Simeon Pines Lodge, which was just minutes up the road. The rain continued to splash against the windshield, defying all effort by the wipers.
“Are you thinking of shoving me out of the car and taking off for the highway?” Nick asked after a long silence.
“No. I was just—thinking,” replied Kate. “Where do I turn? I can barely see through this rain.”
He pointed to a driveway and then to a small wood-shingled building near a copse of coastal chaparral being tossed about by the roaring wind. They retrieved Kate’s luggage from the car, becoming thoroughly soaked in the process, and struggled up the wet staircase toward a door at the end of the building.
Light from a flickering gas fireplace shimmered against the walls of the simple room. The smell of sage and ocean came drafting through from an open window in the rear bathroom, along with the sounds of the wind-whipped ocean. “It isn’t fancy, but I do have cold champagne,” said Nick, helping her off with her wet coat and moving quickly toward an ice bucket on the bedside table.
“Right now, I’m more in need of a dry towel,” she said, going into the bathroom and grabbing a couple off the rack. She tossed one to Nick and used the other on her wet hair.
“Go and sit near the fire. It may not be made of real wood, but it does give out real heat!” Nick pulled off his sodden sweater and wiped his wet face and arms with the towel. Then he wrapped the towel around the bottle of Taittinger champagne, eased out the cork with a slow gentle movement, and poured some of the sparkling liquid into two flutes. “I didn’t waste a drop.”
She smiled and settled on the floor in front of the faux fire. “I have always appreciated people who can open champagne like that. They have no need for a loud blast and foaming waste of good stuff.”
He sank onto the carpet beside her. “Er … I think that there is a major metaphor here somewhere.”
“Just idle chatter from a nervous woman,” she replied, taking a sip of the champagne. “My God, this is wonderful.”
“As promised—cold champagne, warm room, and salty winds.” He kicked off his wet shoes and leaned back against a chair leg. “I forgot to add the ‘man who loves you’ part.”
“Nick—” she began, and then sighed. “How can you know that you love me?”
“Trust me, Katherine. For God’s sake, quit analyzing things like an attorney without an off switch! Shall I ‘count the ways’ that I love you? I recognize it when I feel it. Sometimes, it is like early flu symptoms.”
She giggled. “Spoken like a doctor! I’d say that love is more like that feeling you get when a jury files into court and looks very, very downcast, and you know that you are doomed …” She drained her champagne. “This is lovely. More, please?”
“I don’t want to get you drunk,” he said, crawling to his feet and retrieving the bottle of Taittinger. He sat down again and poured more for both of them.
“I won’t claim diminished capacity,” she mumbled.
“Spoken like an attorney,” he replied. “So, here we are, a quack and a shyster—not a natural pairing.”
“I haven’t been with a man in a long time,” she began quietly.
“As I once heard in some pirate movie, ‘A fair prize doesn’t stay in the harbor indefinitely.’”
“I do, however, give blood on a fairly regular basis,” she continued. “So far, they haven’t notified me that I have any infectious disease.”
He leaned forward and kissed her gently. “We know about safe sex, sweet Kate. Let’s not talk about diseases tonight, or dying ecosystems, or dying anything!”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” She put her hands on each side of his face and kissed him in return. Then she rubbed her cheek against his beard. “I adore furry men,” she whispered. “But you are something special.” She ran her hand along the back of his neck and then moved it into the crisp hair of his beard. “You just feel so right!”
He groaned. “We’d better get to the bed right now—”
“Why?” she breathed into his ear. “Have you got something against the floor?”
Several hours later the rain stopped, but the gusting wind still whined around the corners of the motel room. When the noise eased, they could hear the ocean beyond, slamming against the bluff.
“I have always enjoyed going down to the beach here,” said Kate. “The rocks are all so colorful and rounded, and make a lovely sound when the waves toss them about.” She settled her head on his shoulder, relishing the comforting intimacy of a strong male in a warm bed.
“We’ll go down tomorrow and take a picnic laden with cold white wine, good cheese, pâté, and chocolate. Storms always wash new rocks onto the beach. We’ll look for moonstones and jade,” replied Nick with a yawn.
“I think that I’ve already found a treasure here,” she whispered, lacing her fingers through the soft hair on his chest.
His arm tightened about her. “Priceless …”
She watched the firelight on the wooden panels of the room for a long time. “Time does stop for a while for some people, doesn’t it? I mean, how many men and women have lain together in a warm bed and shut out the world? We might be in a cave, a Roman villa, a renaissance palace, or some temporary hut on the Serengeti Plain. It has a sort of … of eternal quality to it,” she mused.
“There’s a song, something about ‘All that there is to know, lovers know …,’” mumbled Nick, plumping the pillows behind his head with his free arm. “I think that the song is from Kismet.”
“It doesn’t last, though. Nights like this end. Love ends. Somebody dies.”
“So let’s enjoy it while we can and not get gloomy. I can only love you until I die,” he said with a suppressed yawn. “You keep trying to save the dead, Katie. Mormons like to do this also—my mother will adore you.”
“I love you, Nick.”
He used a remote control to turn off the gas fireplace, tucked the blankets around her bare shoulder, and kissed her. “I know. Now, let’s go to sleep.”