We made a good fire on the beach just after sunset, scraps from other fires, small sticks, and tarry hunks that it took some time to gather. Pina went wild with industry as if she were native to wood gathering on a barren beach. We no longer wore masks and any delicacy about keeping our distance had passed. We’d yet to embrace, but once the fire roared we leaned into each other and faced the ocean. It had calmed since the afternoon. The tide was out as far as it goes, and the first stretches of water seemed like a distant continent.

“I’m famished,” Pina said, “I haven’t eaten all day. You know what I’d like,” she said, batting her eyes at me in a jokey way, “a hot meal on the beach. Anything, you know, just hot.”

I accepted the challenge, dashed to the pleasantly deserted if spooky Safeway, across the Great Highway, plucked out a small, sizzling rotisserie chicken, a pound of fingerlings, stick of butter. The all beef hotdogs appealed, with buns, jars of Dijon and sauerkraut, and a tall bottle of ‘spiciest’ pepperoncinis. I also got practical with tin foil, paper plates, napkins, and a six of Racer 5.

Pina had gathered more scraps while I was gone so we had a decent stash to keep the fire going a while. I opened a beer for her and offered the jar of pepperoncinis. “You wanted something hot.”

“That’s it?” She picked out a long twist of pepper and bit into the heart of it. Her eyes blurred on contact. “Ha,” she said, breathing fire at me. “What else do you have in the bag?”

Pina must have smelled the chicken; she looked ready to maul the sack like a bear cub. I pulled out the fingerlings and washed them in beer before preparing them with butter in the foil, finding a perfect spot for them in a belly of embers. Next came the hot dogs. I carved a pair of sharp sticks and affixed the wieners. We enjoyed roasting them, and smothered in kraut and Dijon, thick skin crackling, they were superb.

Before I had the chicken laid on a plate, Pina tore off a leg and thigh and went at it. I was happy to just watch her. After dispatching the leg and thigh, she tossed the bone in the fire and tore off a wing and a hunk of breast from the red rotisserie bird, which, along with all the other indignities it’s endured, appeared to have been assaulted with a tin of paprika. Pina’s fingers had taken on a greasy patina of red pepper. She glanced at me a moment. “You hadn’t known that I am a savage.”

“I had a clue.”

After we nibbled on the buttered fingerlings, Pina stood up and started stripping off her clothes. She said, “I’ll race you in. I need to cleanse myself.”

Her diction surprised me. Suddenly Pina sounded like an eighteenth century ascetic. I looked at her, naked in the firelight, her full breasts majestic melons above her slender hips. She shook her sweet ass at me, waiting for a response. I looked up and down the beach. There was no one within sight. A couple of distant fires sparked to the south.

I shook my head. “I’m not going in that November ocean; it’s witch’s-titty cold in the middle of the summer.”

Pina laughed deep in her throat. “Suit yourself, white boy.”

Yes, I thought, I am a white boy. I stood to watch her dash off toward the water. She ran forever, it seemed, and then I couldn’t see her anymore. A mist had risen over the water. I hoped she’d come back but it didn’t seem a certainty.

I’d gone off to pee and gather whatever fuel I could find, and I saw Pina running back from the water, no doubt cleansed, but wet and shivering, her feet and ankles caked in sand. I took off my green alligator cardigan, the one she loves to hate, and wrapped it around her as she kneeled at the fire. The sweater’s V-neck gave her a lovely plunging neckline.

“That sweater becomes you, Pina. You can wear it whenever you like.”

She grinned at me, her teeth chattering.

We spent the night together at the Seal Rock Inn. After showering together, we made love and talked half the night about distant things—by now everything that predates the pandemic qualifies as a distant thing—old relationships we’d had, even our childhoods.

In the morning I asked Pina to come back to Sonoma and she said she wasn’t quite ready yet, she needed a little more time alone. When I got home I spent some time with Roscoe. I haven’t decided yet what the next campaign with the parrot should be and don’t have much motivation for a new project.

Roscoe had the temerity to say, “You seem out of sorts, Charlie. What’s the matter, cat got your tongue?”

By late afternoon I descended into a dark place. Loneliness is something I tend not to suffer but since leaving Pina at the Seal Rock Inn this morning a wave of isolation washed over me like a fever.

I took a walk to town in the late afternoon just to see people and remind myself that I am of the same species. Who knew, I’d maybe run into an old friend. That wasn’t the case. It seemed like only tourists in town except for the locals, boisterous as ever, outside of Steiner’s Tavern. The establishment, which opened in 1927 amid the Prohibition, has dealt with the current prohibition of interior imbibing by lining up tables in the alley next to Earladi’s Menswear. I noticed an empty table and decided to treat myself to a pint of Pliny the Elder.

I hadn’t eaten since our strange meal on the beach last night. I’ve thought of that curious repast much of the day. How will I ever forget the night I lived with Pina at the ocean and watched her glow in the firelight after coming out of the sea? It was one of those rare times that you realize is iconic while you are in the midst of living it.

Now my stomach was reminding me of its presence but I couldn’t find anything on Steiner’s bar menu that tempted me. Not the Chili Cheddar Tots or the hot wings, certainly not the seafood cocktail, or even the Zucchini Sticks. I settled into the brash bitterness of the Pliny, which arrived in a tall Speckled Hen glass. The glass gave the guy sitting alone at the next table an opening; he clearly wanted to talk. He was a stout young fellow, not yet forty, in a handsome Pendleton tartan jacket and tweed cap. An Irish setter slept at his feet.

He leaned toward me over his table “Don’t you love the Speckled Hen glass?”

“Yes, they’re quite elegant.”

He held a glass of whisky in his thick hand; a short beer chaser stood dangerously close to his elbow. He’d already pushed aside the leavings from his chicken wings. “My wife and I filched a couple of Speckled Hen vessels aboard the Queen Mary II. That was our honeymoon trip back from London. They made a nice souvenir.”

“How was the trip?” I asked, glad for a conversation. “I always wanted to take a trans-Atlantic voyage. Don’t think I’ll make it on a cruise ship now.”

“Yes, a petri dish. We enjoyed it,” he said, modestly, pausing, it seemed, to remember it. “I found it exciting to not see land for seven days,” he continued, and I liked changing my watch an hour each day.”

“How was the food?” I asked.

“Quite decent. My wife and I had a table by our selves for dinner. We had the same waiter and same wine steward each night. Not only did we force ourselves to eat more slowly than usual, we pretended we were in love.” He grinned, a bit smugly. “On the other hand, the entertainment was strictly second-class. Not to sound snobby or anything, but it was really geared for the lowest common denominator. On top of that there was a preponderance of Germans aboard.” He took a considered sip of his whisky, and signaled to the passing waiter for another of the same. “Hope you’re not German. I don’t mind them in ones and twos, but when you get forty-five of them in a group, they get loud and they either have no sense that anybody else is around or they don’t give a damn. I mean they don’t spook me like they’re Nazis or anything, though they could be. Don’t get me wrong, the Chinese can be just as clannish, but at least they keep it pretty quiet. I try to keep my prejudice to a minimum, but sometimes it gets the better of me. I’m Gary, by the way, Gary Arnold, or you can call me Arnold, Gary, and the comma will be understood. On the other hand, you don’t have to call me a damn thing.”

“I’m Charlie,” I said, deciding it was probably wise to leave off my last name.

“How about you, Charlie, you look like you must be more virtuous with regard to this kind of bias. A little more evolved than me.”

“I’m older,” I said, and took a long sip of Pliny. Gary Arnold shot me a sideways glance. He wanted a better answer.

I relented. “Yeah, I think I still have the thing about Chinese drivers, that they’re a particular hazard.”

“Know what you mean. It’s the slant eyes, isn’t it?”

The comment made me uncomfortable, probably because I’ve been guilty of the same thought. As the waiter came through again, we ordered another round, and Gary asked for a hot link and sweet potato fries. I still could not link my appetite with the menu.

Once we had our order, Gary settled back in his chair and said in a quiet voice, “I’ve been going through a rough patch with my wife. She’s depressive. It comes and it goes, but when it comes it’s like a wet blanket over the household. I tell her that I’m not deep enough to get depressed. I’m a what-you- see-is-what-you-get kind of a guy. I think that that’s part of what depresses her—she takes a look at me and sees what she has. Last night I asked her if she’d be happier with another man, and she says, ‘You’re not so bad.’ Talk about damning with faint praise. Story of my life.”

Gary seemed as depressed as his wife. That’s the beauty of bar culture: people that you’ve never seen before spill their guts out. I’ve never been very comfortable with the scene, bereft, as I am, of the easy wit and jocular nature the popular patrons possess.

I nursed my Pliny as Gary inhaled his hot link and then bent over his dog. The smell of the food had roused him from his slumber. The beautiful creature stretched out its long limbs, unwound itself, and rose into a standing position, head high, majestic beside his master.

Gary gave an affectionate hug to the animal and fed him a handful of sweet potato fries. When the fries were devoured, the setter’s long tongue circled its snout. “Say hello to Charlie, Aloysius.” The dog nosed forward toward me. I petted him briefly and saw that he was ready to adopt me.

“Aloysius,” I said, that’s a good Irish name for a setter.”

Gary shook his head. “It’s actually Latin, although James Joyce was given it as his second middle name: James Augustine Aloysius Joyce.”

“That’s quite an auspicious moniker. Are you a Joycean?”

“No, no. I took a Joyce class in college. That’s all.” Gary smiles, wistfully. “Was an English major; I used to want to be a writer, but it doesn’t mix well with selling real estate. Hey, I’ll recite my favorite passage for you from Ulysses. Somehow it always gets a rise from Aloysius: ‘Mr. Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liver slices, fried with crust crumbs, fried hencods’ roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.’”

Aloysius whimpered during his master’s recitation.

“It’s as if he knows,” Gary said, “that it’s all about offal, his favorite.”

I thought of telling him about Roscoe, but decided against it. Instead, as Aloysius quieted, I offered my own confession. I suppose the two pints of Pliny the Elder had turned me a bit maudlin. “I’ve been going through a rough time with my girlfriend as well.”

“What seems to be the problem?” Gary asked. He rested his chin in his open hands, his elbows balanced on the table. Given his hulk, he made me think of the Buddha, the Buddha as confessor.

“The problem,” I said, unable to finesse the answer, “the problem is infidelity.”

Gary nodded his head. “On whose part?”

“Both of ours.”

“What? Are you swingers, Charlie? Good for you, at your age.”

“No, no. It was only once.”

“It’s never once, Charlie. So what are you going to do?” he asked.

“Ball’s in her court.”

“Do you want the ball to be in her court, Charlie?”

It was an interesting question for which I didn’t have an answer.

We both turned quiet and Gary stuffed the rest of his fries into his mouth, before downing his whisky.

“Really got to admire,” he said, “how an older guy like you stays so trim, drinking beers like that.”

“I don’t drink many of them,” I said, wondering how old Gary thought I was.

“Me,” he went on, “I’m kind of an anomaly, a fat guy who doesn’t sweat. They say that’s part of the reason I’m fat. The lymph nodes are hoarders; they retain water they should be flushing. Another thing about me—my farts don’t smell. Swear to God, Charlie. I almost wanted to ask my doctor about that. ‘Where’s my stink, doc?’”

In the annals of TMI from strangers this had to rank pretty high. I didn’t want to find out what was coming next, and yet, I wanted to tell Pina about this encounter with Gary Arnold. I thought it would amuse her, but I was going home to an empty house. The ball remained in her court. Last night I fed her when she was famished, but now I was going home to feed myself.