Washed up at twenty-nine. Could that really be right? Was I being too hard on myself? I thought of my dream of Morgan Stapleton, the paramour who nearly destroyed my life, and the words I’d put in her mouth: life doesn’t have to be boring.
I ordered another beer, my head already starting to swim from the first three. I started imagining another life. A life resulting from something radical, a dramatic shift of my own making. What if I left Liz? Given the way things were going, would she be surprised? Would she be hurt that bad? If I wasn’t going to marry her, why stay with her? What was I doing? Where was it all heading? What was the point?
When I’d finished the fourth pint of 12% Belgian suds, I was ready to order another when the light bulb went on. What if I didn’t need to leave Liz? What if she’d already left me? She hadn’t answered her phone all day. She’d gone out of town a day early to attend a conference with Ben Cross. What if they were in San Diego together, right now? Worse yet, what if they weren’t in San Diego at all?
I was out on the street and walking fast. My arms and legs tingled and my head buzzed, but I walked quick and smooth, like I was stone sober and ready for action. Ten minutes later, I crossed Ocean Avenue, through the perfectly trimmed strip of park that lines the ocean side of the street. Ocean Avenue sits on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Coast Highway and the beach beyond it. From the wood rail at the top of the bluff I looked down on the small row of houses that sat right on the beach. One of them belonged to Ben Cross.
I hesitated at the railing, feeling the breeze sweep up off the ocean and listening to the hum of the traffic below me on PCH. I wondered if Liz would really be so bold. And then I wondered if I cared. If she had already left me, even if only in her mind, and temporarily, wouldn’t I be free? Wouldn’t that be what I wanted, after all?
I took the pedestrian overpass over PCH and it dropped me on the beach. The strand, normally clogged with rollerbladers, bikers, and foot traffic, was empty—just a concrete swath across the dark, windswept sand. Ben Cross’s beachfront condo was a half mile north and I headed out, determined, the alcohol numbing me from the cold air.
It seemed to take forever to get there. I plodded along, focused on walking, feeling a dryness creep into my mouth. The rhythm of my footfalls coming faster and faster, keeping time with my escalating heartbeat, as my thoughts spiraled in a thousand directions, churning with the static roar of the ocean.
When I came to it, there were lights on inside. I stood on the strand, looking up, the bottom floor was a garage, so the deck loomed above me and back, behind a high concrete wall that shielded Cross’s property from the people who used the beach. I could hear music inside, something muffled, but mellow. The kind of thing I imagined Ben Cross playing while he cooked for Liz.
I crept closer to the wall, trying to hear, but the sounds remained jumbled. I looked for some way to scale the wall, to get inside, or for something to climb up on, but there was nothing. Great care had been taken to ensure that people on the beach could not get into the houses. Homeless people lived beneath the piers and in the park along Ocean Avenue, which made safety a primary concern of the wealthy who lived on the beach.
I don’t know how long I stood outside and listened. It felt like an hour, but it could have been only ten or twenty minutes. I began thinking about the warmth of the bar, having another beer, just going home and sleeping, for my own good. But I couldn’t, I had to find out if she was there. What good it could possibly do, I had no idea. What I would do with the information, I had no idea. But I needed to know, and that fact kept me lingering below his deck like a desperate, drunk, and possibly dangerous man.
And then I heard the sliding glass door open and the swell of the music—Van Morrison—then a woman’s laughter. There were a few clumsy steps on the deck.