Part Three:
A Novel with No Title (as yet)
A work in progress
Parts 1 & 2 can be found below.
Part Three:
Leaving the terminal at SFO, Katherine boarded the airport tram to the car rental station, where she collected a Land Rover Discovery. The flight had been a tad under six hours from New York and departed late, plus the three-hour time difference.
Once in the car, she set the GPS for Mendocino. Driving up Highway 280 toward the city, suffering the crawl on 19th Avenue toward the Golden Gate Bridge, her mind was strained, and her eyeballs felt like they were swelling. When Katherine reached Golden Gate Bridge, she was too tired to appreciate it and ducked into Sausalito. She would rest up for the night and head north in the morning. Her father had brought her to California as a child, to Los Angeles. This was her first time in Northern California.
She called a couple of hotels and found a room at the Inn Over The Tide. There, she had dinner with a glass of wine, then went to her room to shower and turn in for the night.
When she woke, her neck felt cramped and inflexible, but there was a beautiful scarlet dawn breaking over the city of San Francisco. Sleepily, she tumbled out of bed to grab her camera, taking several shots from the balcony overlooking the waters of the Bay. Her eyes then followed a tiny red spot approaching from far off, and as her eyes adjusted, the red dot became a red sail. It moved between her and an island set out in the Bay. It wasn’t the island of Alcatraz, which she had seen photos of many times, an icon almost as famous as the bridge. It was bigger than Alcatraz. Coming up the Bay was a shroud of gray clouds, and she couldn’t tell if the clouds were coming closer or the island was being pushed back.
An hour later, she went down for breakfast and asked the server for local information. It was Angel Island. She had planned to leave early, but the town of Sausalito held her fascination. Katherine checked out and drove around the area, took some shots, and then set off north to meet up with the Pacific Highway to begin her search for that particular photograph that would eventually adorn the cover of National Geographic.
While the GPS had said Mendocino was a five-hour journey, Katherine stopped every mile or so to take more pictures. It was breathtaking, and while Alaska was foremost on her mind, this part of California was a welcome break. Nine hours after starting, Katherine checked into a hotel in Mendocino. It wasn’t plush, but it was comfortable for a couple of days while staying in the area.
Once in her room, she checked through her bags and grabbed a black Canon EOS digital camera, which she stuffed into a light backpack. Down in the hotel lobby, she spoke to the receptionist for directions. It was evening already and a breezy 59 degrees. The receptionist put her on the right path to the rocky shoreline.
A surprising number of people, old and young, comfortably dressed against the breeze off the cold water, spread out on the sands. Beyond these, three horsewomen in bright yellow, red, and green sweaters were walking in the light surf, giggling all the way. The scenery was stunning, and Katherine’s eyes seemed hypnotically directed by the waves. Looking at the ocean’s vastness, she remembered her father saying that all of humanity lives on only one-third of the Earth’s surface.
After two hours spent on the shoreline, now empty of visitors, having watched the tremendous golden ship slide into the ocean’s depths, lazily at first and then gone, pulling behind it a plume of many colors. Katherine returned to the hotel. By eight in the evening, she was tucked up in a feather-down bed, showered, comfortable, sweet-smelling, and feeling feminine for the first time in over three months.
She’d set the alarm was set for five. The hotel had kindly left her a wrapped breakfast of croissants and jam with the night clerk.
Daylight was on time, the ocean calm and serene. Perfect, if Katherine’s car engine hadn’t died on her in a remote part of Mendocino County. She got out and lifted the hood. She doesn’t quite know why. It’s an engine, and right now it’s sick. She knows this because the last ten miles have been traveled at little more than a walking pace, culminating in a complete stop when the car’s engine suddenly choked and died. She slammed the hood shut and got back in the car. ‘Fuck’ she mumbled to herself. There’s no cell service.
Joseph Duncan, feeling the effects of last night’s drunkenness, stared at the ocean. Should a butterfly land on his head, it would feel like a hammer blow — his yawn stank of alcohol in the ocean air outside the back door to his cottage.
Inside the cottage, the phone rang, his only link to the outside world. Only two people know the number, and his father died several years back. Joseph entered the kitchen, picked up the phone, and irritably yelled, “Brian, don’t worry about it, I’ll pay for the damage,” and put the phone down while a voice raged on the other end.
Half a mile away, Katherine was fumbling over the back seat for her cameras, wanting a particular one, and cursing. She then clambered out of the car, checked the camera settings, adjusted the exposure for a sky opening, and felt ready to take any shot that presented itself. She walked away from the car looking for the right angle to take the shot. She looked back at the car, deciding that fate had played its part and checked to ensure her cell phone wasn’t getting a signal. There was no signal.
Offshore, a thin purple haze hung like a velvet curtain under a sky opening from every corner.
Joseph Duncan returned outside to the bluff overlooking the crags and the frothy water below. Pulling down the zipper of his jeans that he’d slept in, too drunk to remove them, and staring off toward the brightening horizon, he pulled out his penis and pissed over a shrub of wild buckwheat.
“Good morning!”
The feminine voice caught Joseph midstream. Not daring to turn, he fumbled insanely to put away his dignity, letting out a sharp squeal of pain.
Katherine, suddenly aware of the consequences of her intrusion, shrank back.
“Oh, hell…er… I’m so sorry!” She exclaimed, turning her head away, the flat of her hand blinkering her eyes.
Joseph resisted the urge to look down at the damage. “Who the hell are you?” He growled over his shoulder.
“Katherine Robinson,” she said quietly, head bowed, unsure how to expedite a dignified retreat. “I’m terribly sorry; my car broke down. I didn’t mean to…er…” she stuttered, momentarily lost for words.
“Well, Katherine Robinson,” he snarled, knees clamped, attempting to disguise the excruciating pain. “If you don’t mind, I’d like you to fuck off immediately.”
“Of course… yes…sorry. Goodbye, oh wait, should I call someone?” Katherine asked, her body twitching uncomfortably.
“No, fuck off!”
“Yes, right, fuck off, I understand. I hope you’ll forgive me,” she said, walking backwards.
“You’re forgiven. Now get the hell off my property!” Joseph felt sure there was blood running down the inside of his leg.
Katherine would have turned and hurried away, but there was one more thing. “You don’t have a phone inside, I suppose? I’ve broken down a quarter mile up the road. There’s no signal to use my cell phone.”
Joseph’s face was pulled into a tight, albeit discrete, agony. “Lady…” he started to say, and just as he said, Katherine turned about, not wanting to hear what was to follow. The sharp stones hurt her feet through the soles of her shoes, and though she wouldn’t ordinarily leave a distraught animal, one caught up in barbed wire, but hearing the haughty, arrogant English accent, she let a mischievous grin widen across her mouth. ‘Serves him the hell right,’ she muttered.
A hoary veil of wetness crept stealthily over the rocks, slithered up and over the cliffs, covering shrubs in a silvery wet fleece and shading the sun’s early heat with its nondescript silence. The wetness alights on Katherine’s eyelashes, like a dream happening right before her eyes; a dream so swift, so soft and intense that all it needs, she imagines, is the advent of a funeral barge.
Minute by minute, the light is changing; haze becoming fog, and then haze again, mistily illuminating and running from the ubiquitous coastal trees, their branches blown like old men’s hair. The car was in sight; pulling at the band, holding her ponytail, and releasing her long tresses, she hurried. The light was perfect; she had two minutes to take a shot and set about framing and organizing a camera shot. The damp solitude mantled the harmonic elevations, opening a myriad of new images in her lens…a lens suddenly and mysteriously filled with the shape of a man.
“Jesus Christ!” She yelled, trembling with shock. “You just scared the shit out of me.”
“Really, well, you wounded me. I’m forever damaged,” Joseph said.
“After your behavior back at your property, you could fall down dead. I wouldn’t lift a finger to help you. Now, please get out of my shot.”
“I came to offer you a ride into town. There’s a garage; they will come and get your car,” he said, not budging one inch.
“Apologize… or get your own back?” She snapped, looking through her lens and waving her hand to get him out of the shot. “Thank you, I’ll be fine.”
Joseph nodded, turned, and walked away with hands set deep in his jean pockets, then paused on hearing her speak.
“…Unless…unless you could give me five minutes to finish up here.” She called after him.
Joseph hesitated and thought a moment. “Sure,” he said finally.
