Susan was having a wonderful day, and it was ending sooner than she wanted. She had bought an ankle bracelet and a toe ring at the jewelry booth. The jewelry gave her a subtle sense of stepping out from herself, for they were not work accessories, but just something that she liked.
The sky smiled a deep blue and the sea laughed against the shore in foaming waves. Brad had removed his cowboy boots and rolled his Levi's to his knees. Susan swung her sandals from a strap that dangled from her fingers. They walked on the cool wet sand at the waters edge, a sliver of ocean bubbling at their feet as the walked, then bashfully slipping back to sea again.
Susan found herself telling Brad about her life. Her adventurous dreams as a young girl and the workaholic she had become.
Pointing to a U-shaped cove that rose from the back of the beach, Susan said, "In that cove right there." she wiggled her finger for emphasis, "Is where we used to have some pretty wild beach parties when I was a teenager. He studied the cove as they walked passed it and then pointed in the opposite direction at the sea.
"See how much we have in common?" he said. "Right out there, in that pounding surf - " then swung his arm around and pointed at the cove. "In front of this very cove" he said with exaggerated enthusiasm, "in which you got rowdy, is where I used to surf when I was a kid."
They laughed as if it gave them some connection from a past covered in the dust of memories, a feeling that they unknowingly shared began to grow and warm within each of them.
As the white light of the sun began to fade into gold, it stretched shadows from trees like soft taffy. The hovering fog bank on the distant horizon of sea captured the parting light in reds and golds. They sat in the dry sand just beyond the waters grasp and watched the sun blaze into the fog bank, its light giving up the eastern sky to the first twinkling of stars.
"Manny's is just up the street." Brad said casually, still looking at the sunset, his forearms dangling over his knees.
"Are you inviting me to dinner, sailor?" she asked teasingly.
He let out a short laugh, "Do you think you found your sailor?" He asked.
"No." she said. "I think I found something better."
Brad hadn't thought that something was missing from his life. He had simply been too busy, and the life he had led the last twenty years wasn't really conducive to family life. He went through rehab after the bullet tore through his leg. When he came home, he went to work fixing the place back up again, as it hadn't been occupied in a while. He stayed busy.
Sometimes you can be missing something and not know it, not have a name for it. It just presents itself as a feeling with no words attached to it. Brad realized that was what happened to him. Susan seemed to fill a void he didn't even know existed. It had been there for so long that it was like a constant squeak in an old car that you get used to and stop hearing.
They both turned and looked into each others eyes, both reaching to the others face as they embraced in a tender kiss.
He pulled back and said, "If you think I'm better than what you were looking for, I can only hope that you're a good judge of character."
She smiled, "You're a character, all right."
- - - - -
Susan followed Brad in her Honda the few blocks from Rio Del Mar beach to Manny's. He found two parking spaces on the side street next to the restaurant and pulled up far enough for Susan to park behind him.
Manny's sat back in the shadows from the corner, where a gas station reigned brightly A neighborhood of houses filled the streets between Manny's and the beach. It was a dark building with warm, soft light filtering through the front windows. As they entered the smell sang through the air a song of wonderful food. A small bar with high stools wrapped to the left of the door. It was usually filled with people waiting for a table, but on this night there were two people at the bar who looked in no hurry to get a table. The room was dark wood, the floor two-tiered, the higher tier commanding the back third of the room. Both levels held tables with laced metal candle holders in the center of each table. Pools of amber from the candles warmed each table. Three men in traditional Mexican dress with large sombreros wandered around the room singing in Spanish while playing very large guitars.
Brad asked for a table in the back. "It's more intimate." Brad explained to Susan as the waitress led them to the rear of the room. It was also a good spot to view everybody that came in. He scanned the room's occupants as they were shown to their table and felt relieved to find nobody suspicious.
As they sat down a basket of warm tortilla chips and a bowl of salsa was placed in front of them. They ordered drinks and then discussed what was good on the menu as they waited for the waitress to return with a beer for Brad and a margarita for Susan.
Brad kept looking at her over the top of his menu as she concentrated on her choices. A day in the sun had given her color. She seemed to glow in the soft candle light. She glanced up at him, catching his gaze, a slight smile creased his mouth.
She smiled back. "What are you looking at, cowboy?"
"You." he said. "You look beautiful in candle light."
"Well, hold that picture." she said. "If you ever see me in the morning, you'll need it."
He laughed. "I don't scare easy."
"Good." she said returning to her menu. "We might make it then." She stopped reading and her eyes opened wide as she reflected on what she had just said. "I mean - - that probably didn't come out right. I mean - - ", she paused, her mind a blank as she searched for a way to twist the sentence into something less revealing, but revealing of what? It had just come out without thought.
"That's okay." Brad said, putting his hand on hers. "That didn't scare me either."
He could see that she felt uncomfortable. He did not allow a long silence to punctuate the moment. He started talking about some of the art they had spent time viewing at the art show that day, and went on about the things that they did. Susan relaxed and got into the conversation.
Brad could see the front door of the restaurant right over Susan's shoulder with just a slight shift of his eyes, which he did every time the door opened and someone walked in. They were half way through their meal when a couple walked in. Brad's eyes made a slight glance, and then they locked on to the couple. The lady had short blond hair and the man wore a baseball cap backwards on his head. They both wore black leather jackets, though it wasn't particularly cold out yet, and wouldn't be until the fog rolled in late in the night. They both wore loose jeans and running shoes, leaving them dressed for fast movement. Though her hair was different, Brad had no doubt that it was the same couple that he had seen at the art show that looked suspicious.
Santa Cruz and the little coastal villages that nestle up against it do not take up a lot of room. It isn't really surprising to see someone at a restaurant in Aptos that you might have seen at any of the beaches or events that take place in any of the surrounding towns, but this couple had looked suspicious before, and now he was certain that they could be a problem.
As the couple waited to be seated they scanned the room and then focused on the upper tier where Brad and Susan sat. As the man's gaze slowly swept across the tables, his head froze for a second as he crossed Brad's face and the back of Susan's head, and then continued on. All the tables on the upper tier were full. Brad was sure he was asking the waitress to be seated there. He pointed at a table on the lower tier that gave direct view of Brad and Susan, and slipped a fold of money into the waitresses hand. She glanced at her hand and immediately seated the couple at the table the man pointed to. The man sat at a chair that gave him a clear view of Brad and Susan's table.
Brad picked up the conversation with Susan, not looking at the surveillance couple again, but keeping them in his periphery vision.
Susan was telling Brad what a wonderful day she had when she suddenly said, "You have a distracted look on your face. Is something bothering you?"
"Oh, I'm sorry." Brad said focusing on her more, the glaze of thought clearing from his eyes. "I have a project I have to do, and it took over my mind."
The waitress came back and Brad paid the bill, requesting two coffees.
When the Mexican band finished a song at the table next to them, Brad cheerfully called them over to his table and handed one of the musician three ten dollar bills and said in Spanish, "Don't look, but there's a couple sitting up towards the front of the restaurant. She has short blond hair and her back is to us. They just got married, old friends of mine and I want to surprise them. I'd like you guys to go down and sing them a couple of songs, but I want you to stand directly between us, so that he doesn't see me, because he will know that I sent you."
"You don't want him to know that?" the man holding the money asked, sweeping back his mustache with his hand.
"No." Brad said. "I want it to be a mystery - a surprise."
"Si Senor." He said pocketing the money. "Gracia's."
The three men started strumming their guitars, singing in unison as they casually descended the steps to the lower level.
Brad turned to Susan as the musicians left and said, "We're going to leave in a moment, so get everything you want to take gathered, because we're going to leave fast."
"Oh, no." she said as concern swept her face. "Don't tell me the goon is back." She didn't turn to look, as if she instinctively knew better.
"No, but I think some friends of his have joined us."
"I assume that pensive expression on your face, and you not listening to me was you noticing them and figuring out what to do."
"Beautiful and smart." he said, emphasizing 'and'. "So, here's what's happening. In just a moment, those three guys are going to block their view of us, at which time we are going to go through that hall you see on your right and down the stairs, which leads to the rear of the kitchen and a back door.
"Our tails think that we don't even know that they're there."
"Well, they're right." Susan remarked. "I didn't know they were there until right now."
"They're in the middle of their dinner." Brad said, smiling at her seductively and holding her hands, "and we don't look like we're going anywhere. They're watching us, but not as much as they were before they got their dinner. As soon as the musicians block their view, we move.
"They can't just get up and run out of here without paying. The doorman and the bartender look like a couple of tackles and will stop them if they don't pay, so we should have a couple of minutes head start on them."
"You know, Brad." Susan said with a slight look of worry, "I sure hope that your not delusional."
"Our first disagreement." Brad said. "I'm hoping that I am delusional, but let's not take any chances."
"Do you think we're in danger?" she asked, an expression of concern on her face.
"Not yet." he said casually, "And I want to keep it that way."
He glanced over her shoulder again. The Mexican band was just coming up to the tail's table. The man looked at the band with surprise, glanced up at Brad and then to the blond. As the band blocked their view of Brad and Susan, Brad said, "Now, and stay right behind me. I know this place."
They rose from the table and moved quickly, but not so quickly as to be obvious, and went straight into the hall at the side of the room.
"Follow me." Brad said as they came up to the back of the Honda. "Wait a minute." he said as he came to a stop. "I didn't spot a tail. How did they find us?" Brad looked at Susan, then at her car. He dropped to his hands and knees and looked under her car. "I think I see it." He said, reaching far under the bumper, grunting as he yanked on something. As he came to his feet he opened his hand and showed Susan a small box with a blinking red light.
"What is that?" Susan asked
"Tracking device. Where ever this device goes, they know where it is." Brad glanced at the restaurant. The tail couple had not come out yet.
"This isn't quite how I was hoping we would finish our dinner." Brad said. He took her in his arms and gave her a quick kiss. "I was thinking more along that line, but as it is, let's get the hell out of here while we can. Follow me."
"To where?" she asked.
"We really don't have a lot of time to discuss this at the moment." he paused in a moment of thought. "My house. We'll go to my house. They don't know exactly where that is, and that's my territory, but I'm making a diversion first, so just follow me." Before she could say another word, Brad was in the Land Rover. She rushed back to the Honda, following close behind as Brad took off down the street towards the beach.
- - - - - -
The man with the turned around baseball cap kept trying to look around the three man band, but they stayed close together, creating a solid wall. He threw his napkin down and stood, trying to see over the musicians heads, but the sombreros, moving with the music, distorted what he saw in the dim light. People moved about, getting up and sitting down, waitresses rushing in between tables.
The man lost all sense of subtle decor and rushed pass the musicians, looking up at the table where Brad and Susan had sat.
"Come on." he said to the woman. She jumped up and they ran towards the door, only to be met by a 250 pound linebacker with a Golds Gym t-shirt stretching across his biceps.
"Hey there, pal, you still have to pay the bill even if you don't finish the meal." He said in a friendly tone with an edge on it.
"What!!" the man said as if surprised by the concept of payment. "Oh. All right." he said irritably. "Give me the damned bill."
The linebacker looked at the man with an eye of assessment. Still looking at him, he said to the bartender, who was standing to the side, "Give this man his bill."
It's going to take a minute." The bartender responded.
"Oh, the hell with it." the tail said. He pulled a wad of money out of his pocket, peeled off a hundred dollar bill and handed it to the man. "Here. That more than pays the bill. Keep the change."
They rushed out the door, running down to the corner, turning left where they knew the Honda was parked. It was gone. Their car was a half block away. They ran to it, got in and the woman opened a computer, bringing up a glowing map with a red dot blinking at the other edge of the neighborhood next to the beach. "Got her." she said.
All content - poems, posts & images - are ©2010 by John Evans. No permission is given to post, share, copy, print, e-mail, reproduce, distribute or link to. All Rights Reserved. Please contact John Evans at JohnEvansPoet.Com for licensing inquiries.
No comments:
Post a Comment