Endless Night

2

The morning sky was like velvet. An under hue of peach in the light blue found only in the early hours. A mighty fine day! a radioman shouted from a neighbor's window as Julia and I left the house for a morning walk along the canal. We pretended to be lost deep in the twists and curves of Venice as if looking for a lost lover from the past.

April was the moodiest month, at least where I was from it was. Spring was being nurtured; hardly there in feel but present in name. The atmosphere had a warm wetness to it, and when the wind sang a chill rattled in as a reverie of the season past.

1970 will be an odd year, it's a new decade, I declared the day after the new year while on the phone with Julia. I hadn't envisioned my coming to the west and hardly thought of the year being odd at all, it was just something to say. Perhaps a wish. Or manifestation.

Careful what you put out there, into the universe, Julia replied. She grew stern when dancing around such a topic. You're in control of your thoughts, actions, reactions, and emotions.

She made friends with old Beats during her time around California. Started to say words like dharma and mention Burroughs, Crane, Ginsberg, and Kerouac. We'd frequent jazz clubs dressed nicely and drink strong and bitter alcohol while smoking awful cigarettes and reminiscing on a false past in New York City.

My bare feet padded across the concrete, heavy, like honey, and left drips of myself as the fantasy of Italy refilled me. A lone man in a canoe nodded with a smile as he rowed by. I imagined he was a married man who found ordinary life lacking and decided upon an unusual activity to get in exercise despite the chuckles from co-workers.

Julia knew him by name. He'd taken her on his proper boat out on Venice Beach many moons ago.

"I've got a friend named Robby." My words had a melody to them. Romantic and happy. I was like a carefree love-stricken girl in a French film as I walked along the edge of the canal, one foot in front of the other like a ballerina, my mind's eye seeing nothing but that Jew fro and crooked scowl-like smile, my ears full of his love for blind blues artists and tales from his childhood, my skin still able to feel that chill from the night we roamed the city, and that light, sweet scent of grass he carried with him forever in my nostrils. "He wants us to go to the beach tonight."

"It's Tuesday."

"What do the names of days matter? Time is one long continuum."

Careful with your words, they grant your future. Julia's words a prophecy pulsing in my head with a heart of its own. If I gave the words much more thought they'd find a soul.

The beach.
Dark.
Loud.
Wet.
Orange.
Whispers.
Dry.

Half drunk and filled with drugs, I danced wildly to the banging of drums. Sand trembled beneath my feet. I was a force. Moonlight casted a spotlight on us, only the inhabitants of the beach. The wild children; shunned by straight America who loved to be spoon fed and believed they were free from all shackles. Their minds and souls a prison.

A bonfire roared and rippled. Orange danced over the sand and across body parts. Eyes, noses, lips, arms, the balls of ankles.

Brown eyes, green eyes, blue eyes, they were all the same until I saw a blue so dark I believed I'd walked into the ocean and drowned. Thoughts scattered. Shadows and silhouettes strange and cruel. The smoke and fire twisted between us as if he commanded it. It rippled and split, his face clear and the holder of my eyes. To dig inside of him.

"He's only a man." Julia. Near or far? Real or fake? Did her voice reach inside of me and become an inhabitant?

His other eye deepened my mirage.