The beach at the mouth of the Mercy River is cloaked in fog as it often is on summer mornings on the far north coast of California, though soon the fog will move offshore and allow the sun to warm the sand.
A little electric car arrives in the empty beach parking lot, and Natalia emerges wearing a puffy down jacket over two shirts, baggy trousers, hiking boots, and a ski cap covering her ears and short auburn hair – her destination a particular place on the sand a half-mile to the north.
She checks the contents of her basket – phone, sunscreen, dark glasses, murder mystery, book of Buddhist aphorisms, apple, muffin, jug of water, beach towel, clipboard with notecards and pen attached, chocolate bar – and is about to sally forth when she hears ravens squawking furiously overhead.
Gazing skyward she sees two ravens in furious pursuit of a small Red-shouldered hawk, the roseate raptor winging away to the north, the ravens circling over the parking lot before returning to the south.
“I wonder what that means,” says Natalia, who believes in omens, though she’s never certain what the omens portend.
Trudging westward along the shore, the air warming quickly in the sudden absence of fog, Natalia longs for her dog Stormy, a gregarious Golden Lab who died seven months ago. Natalia plans to get a pup, another Golden Lab, as soon as she gets back from visiting her parents in Denmark in October, but that won’t be for six months and she’s terribly lonely without a dog.
When she moved to this small town seven years ago, Stormy was four, and his friendliness ignited several lasting friendships for Natalia that otherwise might never have been.
As she nears her favorite sunbathing spot, Natalia’s heart sinks when she sees a young man with a knapsack sitting on the driftwood log where Natalia always sets her basket before unfurling her towel.
“With thousands of places to choose from,” she whispers bitterly, “he would choose this one.”
The young man raises his hand in greeting, and Natalia stiffens in fear. Nevertheless, she makes a slight answering gesture and walks on, hoping he doesn’t follow her.
“Excuse me,” says the young man, getting up from the log, his accent German. “I’m looking for the campground. I was told there is a good campground here. I’m sorry to bother you, but I am lost.”
Realizing the young man is a tourist, Natalia feels less afraid, though still wary of him.
“You go under the bridge,” she says, pointing back the way she came. “Walk through the parking lot and follow the road inland a half-mile to the campground.”
“Oh thank you,” he says, nodding and smiling. “You are Danish. My mother is Danish, my father German. I’m from Leipzig. On holiday. Do you live here or are you on holiday, too?”
“I live here,” she says, walking on. “Enjoy.”
When she’s gone another hundred yards, she looks back and sees the man tiny in the distance heading for the campground.
“Oh good,” she says, sighing with relief and returning to her favorite sunbathing spot.
Lying on her towel in her bikini, deliciously warm in the sun, Natalia falls asleep and dreams she is in the café where she works when the young man from Leipzig comes in wearing a gossamer yellow dress, his lips painted red, a white rose in his hair. A lovely samba begins to play and Natalia and the young man dance together, the music mingling with the sound of waves breaking on the shore.
Natalia wakes with a start fearing the young man has returned, and finding she is alone in the vastness she takes off her bathing suit and lies naked in the sun until she grows hungry.
Between bites of her chocolate bar, she inserts her ear buds, cues up a favorite samba, and thinks about the young man from Leipzig and the ravens chasing the hawk.
Now she smiles out at the shining sea and decides not to wait any longer to get a puppy.
fin
Samba for Mooli from Todd and Marcia’s album So Not Jazz.