Michael looks through the windows into Anastasia Cafe and sees a single customer, an old man reading a newspaper and sipping from a small espresso cup. Too early, he thinks, for daydrunk moms at champagne brunch.
Down Ocean Avenue to the ocean itself. Past Zinc Cafe, where prosperous, fit, well-adjusted couples sit with oatmilk lattes in their hand and leashed dogs at their feet. Past the wrought-iron-framed Wells Fargo and the building now housing the Whole Foods, a building whose ivy-covered brick speaks of a past life. Past the little galleries. Past Rasta Tacos, “one love in every bite,” and the sushi bar and the Irish pub.
The handfuls of people on the beach itself include not a single homeless eccentric. Too early for them as well, Michael thinks. The sky is a single flat grey. He walks down the little boardwalk past two young lifeguards, one texting away, the other lost in thought, doubtless in a daydream about what teenaged boys daydream about. He checks his phone. 7:29. A tanned, shirtless, long-haired man has a caffeinated conversation with a middle-aged couple sitting on a bench and drinking coffee from white portable cups.
Michael looks out to sea, where surfers are already waist-deep in cold water. He feels the sand give under his feet. That first touch of sand, between the toes of his bare feet, had magic once. He checks his phone again. 7:34.
A man in an Angel caps and Rainbow sandals is scanning the beach with a black metal detector. Michael asks himself about the ROI of such an endeavor, if one averages out the hourly wage. The model in the man’s hand appears solid, metal and not cheap plastic. Yes, he might once in a while stumble upon a lost wedding ring or expensive watch, but there must be hour after hour in which he literally makes pennies.
Michael walks past the scanning man, who continues to scan, and continues down the beach. Rows of empty chairs in front of the hotel, an abandoned Sprite bottle, an elaborate heart-shaped sand sculpture bearing the message “Katherine, will you marry me?”
That scanning man, Michael reflects as his eyes follow a seagull’s flight, may not be engaging in a lucrative activity, but he is truly searching for buried treasure.
He himself used to do that all the time, he thinks as he walks, but not in the real world. With his controller he guided Super Mario past obstacles and over bottomless pits to hidden stars, or Banjo and Kazooie to golden jigsaw puzzle pieces, or parties of adventurers down dungeons and through monsters for enchanted relics. Killing, with mouse and keyboard, the same respawning WoW enemy over and over again for the rare loot drop.
And before that? Playing as pirates, pretending that the sandbox was a desert island beach and that the buried superball or action figure or nickel was a treasure chest.
A surfer in a black wetsuit wades into the ocean. A young couple lies on a red and white striped blanket. A seagull alights on the beach and cracks an empty crab claw with its beak. The sun begins to peer through the clouds.
And the scanning man, Michael thinks as he steps over a stream running from a drainpipe to the ocean, cutting a little riverbed in the sand, the scanning man at age 40 or 45 is digging for real buried treasure. He has not put away the childish love of digging. Michael checks his phone again and decides to start walking back. “Katherine, will you marry me,” the same couple on the same blanket, the same Sprite bottle.
He is sure that, if asked, that man with the metal detector would say that his discoveries bring the same species of excitement as the old sandbox make-believe, just as the artists in the galleries, at least the good ones, would call what they do an extension of what they did, many years ago, with fingerpaint on construction paper or crayons on menus.
He doesn’t ask, of course, as he walks past that man, who has made some progress down the beach.
Michael sees a growing crowd on the sand, in groups of twos and threes and fours, jogging middle-aged couples in college sweatshirts and young parents holding the hands of small children. A volleyball game, mixed doubles, has begun on the sandy court. The sun will cut the clouds to patches.
A beach in California, he thinks, a destination people fly across the country or across the Pacific to get to. Vacation destination numero uno. And what if you start out here?
The sea-breeze animates palm fronds. Hands apply sunscreen to necks, to shoulders, to backs, and the unctuous smell brings back memories, memories of young, sunlit, sandcastle-building days at the beach and of adolescent days and nights at the pool and then the jacuzzi, the girls revealing much more of their skin than they dared to at school.
I wish they all could be California girls, he hears in his mind. The warmth of the sun is with me at night. Little surfer, little one, make my heart come all undone.
A giggling gaggle of teenagers, some with braces, laugh and joke as they wait for the outdoor shower. A tall, thin boy in a Sublime t-shirt says something about smoking loud that makes his buddies re-erupt into laughter.
Back in my day, Michael thinks, we didn’t say loud. It was always dank, dank weed, the dankest of weed. And now they call good weed loud instead.
He waits for the light at a now-crowded intersection and crosses the street back to Ocean Avenue. He looks back to see the beach, the waves, the palm trees, the seagulls flying overhead, the volleyball players, the joggers and the distant red dot of the treasure hunter’s baseball cap.
Beyond, a white boat is in motion, away from the shore and towards the horizon.
Zinc Cafe, two hot Americanos, one with whole milk, one with 2%. An indie rock song that Michael has heard before but cannot identify plays on the speakers.
Tim Raymond, sitting across from him, makes his monthly mortgage payments on time. Tim Raymond does likewise with his health insurance payments. Tim Raymond has a pregnant wife who is expecting her first baby in October. Tim Raymond has replaced his refrigerator after more than a decade of service. Tim Raymond is considering purchasing a new car but needs to narrow his search down to a smaller number of makes and models.
Tim Raymond speaks of all these things. Michael’s wandering mind scrapes against the week’s petty grievances, that tailgating motherfucker on the morning commute and the inconsistent Wi-Fi, the unceasingly talkative coworker and the vapelord puffing the magic dragon and exhaling like a steam engine just as he walked by.
Tim Raymond is very interested in reliability and good gas mileage. Tim asks Michael for guidance in this area, which he cannot give. The brilliant blue sky has erased the subtler morning light. Each parking meter on the street has a car parked in front of it. A man walks by, one hand holding his young daughter’s and the other pulling a wheeled cooler.
Thoughts bubble up in Michael’s mind, as if from a boiling cauldron. Santa Catalina like a dream atop the Pacific and the open ocean beyond it, Hawaii and Fiji and Japan over the horizon, distant. He thinks of the white boat on a course away from the shore.
Tim Raymond mentions that the Flame Broiler has recently raised the price of chicken bowls.
A sailing ship, a dream island far from any coastline.
The conversation moves to firmer ground, to the fond memories of events long past. Each in-joke catalyzes a short round of laughter. The same smiles as a decade earlier, the same laughter.
The morning commute and the highway that leads to faraway cities, the crab’s life in the tidepool and the Pacific Ocean yards away, the nutshell and infinite space.
Knowing that he lacks both the right occasion and the right interlocutor, Michael, his mind voyaging, nonetheless brings up the possibility, the hope, the necessity of attaining adventure.
Author’s Note: When asked where he gets his ideas, Stephen King once responded that he buys them wholesale from a store in Bangor. Lacking a Costco-esque membership at this particular retailer, I have to look elsewhere for my stories.
This story began when I noticed a man with a metal detector at Laguna Beach and for some reason began to imagine a more neurotic version of myself pondering the ROI of metal detecting. I decided to begin a story there and just see where it would go.
This story is called “On the Beach I” as a Neil Young reference, of course, and also because I’ll write a Part II, either a sequel or the same morning seen from the perspective of another character on the beach.
Your words paint such a vivid picture, quite an immersive experience. I felt like I was at the beach too.
Interesting read, love the description and images, the pop culture references. I just felt that it didn't really get anywhere.