We Run the Tides(45)

I turn left on 25th Avenue, and now I know I’m headed to Baker Beach. I walk past a house where I used to babysit. One night the parents didn’t come home when they said they would. The clock turned to ten, then slowly ticked its way to eleven. I called my parents. They asked if I knew where the couple had gone. I did not. I imagined car crashes. I imagined them dying and me having to break the news to the kids, whose lips were like rose petals and whose hair smelled of ketchup. Finally, at 12:37 a.m., the front door opened, and the parents spilled inside: scarves on the floor, their shoes thumping free, a hissed Fuck! directed at the corner of a rug that caused the mom to trip.

When I get down to the beach the sand whips in my face. The waves crash. High above me, on the cliffs, the homes aren’t the sherbet-hued houses you find by other beaches in other towns. No, these houses are faded rusts and off-whites and mustard yellows, the colors of stains that don’t come out in the wash.

I have an entire section of the beach to myself. The closest person to me is a man wrestling in the wind with his large fish-shaped kite. I walk toward the water. I decide I’ll wait for the tide to greet me, the way an animal approaches its owner. When it recedes, I’ll turn back toward home. I don’t have far to walk—today the ocean extends higher up on the beach than usual. When I reach the wet sand, I hear a voice behind me.

“Bee!” it shouts.

I turn and see Keith, carrying his skateboard. I’m touched he’s followed me, and I smile. But as he approaches me I see the furious expression on his face.

“So, is it true?” he says.

“Is what true?”

“You know,” he says. He’s out of breath from his strut across the sand.

“I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe you can be more specific.”

“Okay,” he says. “Did you, specifically, let Axel, specifically, fuck you at the party last weekend?”

“That’s not what happened,” I say. “We didn’t . . . we didn’t do it.”

“Really?” he says. “That’s not what I heard. I heard it was messy and there’s proof.”

“Keith,” I say. The wind hits my face, and I feel myself get smaller. I feel like I’m one of those Russian stacking dolls that Madame Sonya has in the ballet studio—“Matryoshka,” she calls them. All my outdoor layers are being taken away, revealing who I really am at my core is the smallest doll, the one with blurry features that can’t stand on its own.

“We didn’t have sex. It was a mistake. There was this bottle with alcohol. I thought it was a silver flask, but it was a shampoo bottle and . . .” Even describing the bottle makes my stomach tense and my throat gag. I lean forward, as though I’m about to vomit on the sand.

“Why would you do that?” Keith says. “Why would you even let him give you alcohol? That guy’s a dick. You should hear the things he said about you.”

We’re near the sewer, and the wind lifts the stench to my nose and sand to my throat. Now I really do think I might vomit.

“Don’t you have anything to say for yourself? Anything to say to me?”

I’m still curled over. I’m still the littlest Russian doll, on the verge of toppling. When I open my eyes and look up, Keith’s gone. I turn and see him walking west, toward the bluff.

“Keith,” I call out. “I’m sorry,” I scream. But he doesn’t turn around. I start to run toward him, while calling out his name. As I get closer, he sees me, and begins to run away from me. Now he’s holding his skateboard like it’s a baby he’s protecting. He runs toward the promontory that separates Baker and China beaches. He’ll have to stop when he gets to it. The tide is high, and there’s no way to safely run around the bend. I slow down my pace, knowing this. He will stop and turn to me.

But I am mistaken. When he gets to the rocks, he doesn’t stop. Instead, he starts to run around the bluff. I’ve done this dash a dozen times with Maria Fabiola, but only when the tide is low.

“Keith!” I call. “Stop!” I run to the water as an enormous wave whips against the rocks. “Keith!” I wait for a response. I stare at the ocean as though it will speak and that’s when I see a shape in the water. It’s a dark oblong object being tossed about as though on a trampoline. Keith’s skateboard.

I watch the skateboard repeatedly crash against the rocks, swoop out to sea as the waves retract, and then smash against the rocks again. It’s as though I’m watching a video installation on a continuous loop. For a moment time doesn’t seem linear, but vertical.

I turn to look who’s on the beach, who I can appeal to for help. But I am alone. The wind has driven everyone away. Even the kite flyer has left. This is a Northern California beach, so there are no lifeguards, no lifeguard towers. Where is Keith?

I know better than to run around the promontory—the tide is too high and I might suffer the same fate as . . . the same fate as the skateboard, I tell myself, finishing my thought differently than it began. I have no choice but to scale the rocks and see what I can from above. My hope is that Keith’s safe on the other side of the bluff, that he’s on China Beach. China Beach where I licked his webbed feet.

The rocks are slippery today. The waves have leapt unusually high, soaking every surface. I dig the pads of my fingers into any crevice I can find. It’s more difficult for my sneakers to gain purchase. I slip down the cliff, my chin scraping against rock until I turn and offer the side of my head. I land hard on the sand. Pain reverberates in my skull. I wipe my chin, and my fingers bring blood to my lips. I spit. My lips are salty. Tears spring from my eyes, salting the cut.