Kim Robinson: The Gold Coast

“You can figure that out after you talk to them.”

“Yeah. Oh. I told him we’d be off on vacation for a while.”

“I heard that.” Lucy smiles.

Dennis shrugs. “It would be good to see our property.” He eats for a while, stops. Taps his fork on the table. “It’s been a strange day.”

That night they pack their suitcases and prepare the house, in a pre-trip ritual thirty years old. Dennis’s thoughts are scattered and confused, his feelings slide about from disbelief to hurt to fury to numbness to bitter humor to a kind of breathless anticipation, a feeling of freedom. He doesn’t have to take the job at Aerojet, if it comes to that. On the other hand he can. Nothing’s certain anymore. Anything can happen. And he’ll never have to deal with Ball Lightning again; he never has to listen to Stewart Lemon boss him around, ever again. Hard to believe.

“Well, I should call Dan Houston.”

Reluctantly he does it, and is more relieved than anything else to get an answering machine. He leaves a short message suggesting that they get together when he returns, and hangs up thoughtfully. Poor Dan, where is he tonight?

Lucy calls up Jim. No answer. And his answering machine isn’t turned on. “I’m worried about him,” she says, nervously packing a suitcase.

“Leave a note on the kitchen screen. He’ll see it when he comes over.”

“Okay.” She closes the suitcase. “I wish I knew… what was wrong with him.”

“ He doesn’t even know what’s wrong with him,” Dennis says. He’s still annoyed with Jim for leaving before dinner, the previous night. It hurt Lucy’s feelings. And it was a stupid argument; Dennis is surprised he ever let himself say as much as he did, especially to someone who doesn’t know enough to understand. Although he should understand! He should. Well—his son is a problem. A mystery. “Let’s not worry about him tonight.”

“All right.”

Dennis loads the car trunk. As they go to bed Lucy says, “Do you think you’ll take this other job?”

“We’ll see when we get back.”

And the next morning, at 5:00 A.M., their traditional hour of departure, they back out of the driveway and track down to the Santa Ana Freeway, and they turn north, and they leave Orange County.

By the time Tashi and Jim return to Tashi’s car, three days later, Jim is a wreck. He has several big blisters, three badly burned fingertips, a cut thumb, a bruised butt, a badly scratched leg, a knee locked stiff by some unfelt twist, a torn arch muscle in his left foot, deeply sun-cracked lips, and a radically sunburnt nose. He has also stabbed himself in the face with a tent pole, almost poking out his eye; and he tried to change the stove canister by candlelight, thereby briefly blowing himself up and melting off his eyelashes, his beard stubble, and the hair on his wrists.

So, Jim is no Boy Scout. But he is happy. Body a wreck, mind at ease. At least temporarily. He’s discovered a new country, and it will always be there for him. Both physically, just up the freeway, and mentally, in a country in his mind, a place that he has discovered along with the mountains themselves. It will always be back there somewhere.

He moans as they reach the car and throw their packs in the back, he moans as Tashi drives the car up the dirt road to the track, and heads down; he moans as he sits in the passenger seat. But in truth, he feels fine. Even the prospect of returning to OC can’t subdue him; he has new resources to deal with OC, and a new resolve.

“We should get Sandy to come up here with us,” he says to Tashi. “I’m sure he’d love it too.”

“He used to come up with me,” Tash says. “Too busy now. And…” He makes a funny moue with his mouth. “We’ll have to see how Sandy is doing when he gets back. He should be out on bail, I guess.”

“What?”

“Well, see…” And Tashi tells him about the aphrodisiac run, the stashing of the goods at the bottom of the bluff below LSR. “So with LSR’s security tightened, the drugs were stuck there, see. So, apparently the attack you guys were going to make on Laguna Space was supposed to serve as a distraction that would cover Sandy while he snuck in by sea and recovered the stash.”

“ What? Oh my God—”

“Calm down, calm down. He’s all right. I called Angela the next morning when we stopped for food, to find out what had happened. Sandy was caught by LSR’s security forces, and turned over to the police. No problem.”

“No problem! Jesus!”

“No problem. Being nabbed by cops isn’t the worst thing that could happen. I was worried that he might have gotten hurt. He easily could have been shot, you know.”

That idea is enough to stun Jim into complete silence.

“It’s okay,” Tash says after a while.

“Jesus,” says Jim. “I didn’t know! I mean, why didn’t Sandy tell me!”

“I don’t know. But then what would you have done, anyway?”

Jim gulps, speechless.

“Since Sandy’s okay, it’s probably better you didn’t know.”

“Oh, man.… First Arthur, and now Sandy.…”

“Yeah.” Tash laughs. “You changed a lot of people’s plans, that night. But that’s okay.”

And they track on south. Jim’s mind is filled again with OC problems, he can’t escape them. That’s what it means to go back; it’ll be damned hard to keep even a shred of the calm he felt in the Sierras. He could lose that new country he discovered, and he knows it.

Tash, too, gets quieter as they approach home. On they drive, in silence.

In the evening they track over Cajon Pass and down through the condomundo hills to the great urban basin. L.A., City of Light. The great interchange where 5 meets 101, 210 and 10 looks utterly unreal to them, a vision from another planet, one entirely covered by a city millions of years old.

Soon they’re back in OC, where the vision at least has familiarity to temper their new astonishment. They know this alien landscape, it’s their home. The home of their exile from the world they have so briefly visited.

Tashi drops Jim off at his ap.

“Thanks,” Jim says. “That was…”

“That’s okay.” Tash rouses from the reverie he has been in throughout southern California. “It was fun.” He sticks out a hand, unusual gesture for him, and Jim shakes it. “Come and see me.”

“Of course!”

“Good-bye, then.” Off he goes.

Jim’s alone, on his street. He goes into his ap. It’s a wreck too; he and his home are of a piece. Same as always. He observes the detritus of his hysteria, his madness, with a certain equanimity, tinged with… remorse, nostalgia; he can’t tell. It’s not a happy sight.

Over piles of junk, the trashed bookcase and the broken CDs and disks, to the bathroom. He strips. His dirty body is surely dinged up. He steps in the shower, turns it on hot. Pleasure and stinging pain mix in equal proportions, and he hops about singing:

Swimming in the amniotic fluid of love

Swimming like a finger to the end of the glove

When I reach the end I’m going to dive right in

I’m the sperm in the egg: did I lose? did I win?

Gingerly he dries off, gingerly he crawls into bed. Sheets are such a luxury. He’s home again. He doesn’t know what that means exactly, anymore. But here he is.

He spends the next day down at Trabuco Junior College, arranging next semester’s classes, and then back home, cleaning up. A lot of his stuff has been wrecked beyond saving. He’ll have to build up the music collection again from scratch. Same with the computer files. Well, he didn’t lose much of value in the files anyway.