Page 51 of In a Far-Off Land
I watched him, the dark glasses making it easy. He leaned back and stretched one arm along the back of the bench, close to my shoulder. His hat was off, and his hair, teased by the wind, sprung into chestnut curls sun-streaked with copper. He might take after his cowboy father with his long legs and wide shoulders, but the elegant hands draped over the steering wheel were more at homewith a cigarette than a six-shooter, and the dark hair and golden eyes had to be from the mother he never spoke of. We all had secrets, I remember thinking back then. Max didn’t ask about mine, and that day he kept his confessions for later.
The coast highway was too beautiful to believe—cliffs towering on one side, the ocean and sky stretching to eternity on the other. Seabirds wheeled and shrilled. The sun was warm but the wind off the ocean cut like a blade. I hugged my bare arms.
Max glanced over. “Hold the wheel,” he ordered and let go just like that.
I leaned over and grabbed the steering wheel, as if I could do anything else. “What are you—” My heart jumped as we careened sideways. We were on a straight shot, and I got us back in the center of the road by the time Max had shrugged off his coat.
“Put that on.” He tossed his jacket toward me and took over.
“I’m not about to thank you for scaring me half into my grave,” I groused, but the satin lining of his jacket was warm and scented with his hair tonic and cigarettes.
Max seemed to relax as we ascended the flanks of the San Joaquin Hills. Stands of pine and juniper leaned on one side of the road. On the other, far below, the ocean waves shattered on dark rock. Occasionally, a small home could be seen in the bluffs or nestled close to the beach. Max swerved, and I looked back at the road in time to see a coyote—lonely and lean—staring at us with bright, intelligent eyes. We wound higher into the hills, the trees along the road sparse and twisted.
Max glanced over at me, his lips twitching. “You’re humming again.”
I stopped humming. “Am not.”
He laughed and slowed as we rounded a bend. “Close youreyes,” he said like a show-off kid. I shut my eyes and felt him pull the roadster over and come to a stop. “Now open.”
I opened my eyes to a sheer cliff dropping not two feet from my door and making my stomach lurch. Below, a crescent of sparkling emerald curved into the coast. Tiers of white-tipped waves broke on golden sand then retreated, leaving lacy trails of foam.
I let out a long breath. “It’s beautiful, Max.”
He looked for a few moments more, then zipped down the hill where a tiny store leaned into the base of the cliff. “Back in a jiffy,” Max said and hopped out. I listened to the crash of the waves and the call of the seabirds. He came back with an armload of packages and a couple bottles that he stowed in the trunk.
Minutes later, we pulled onto a sand-packed road flanked by sea grasses and pines. After a bumpy ride, the road ended at a bungalow just a hundred yards from a secluded beach.
“This is yours?” I looked at the decrepit gate, the weathered shutters.
“Dusty’s,” he said. I didn’t ask more.
He cranked up the top on the roadster while I waited, then grabbed the packages out of the trunk and led the way. He fished a key out of his pocket, opened the door, and motioned me inside with a flourish worthy of a bellboy at the Ambassador.
It wasn’t what I expected from Dusty Clark. He had been one of Cosmopolitan’s notorious bad boys, known for parties where champagne and whisky flowed like water, where cocaine and women were passed like party favors. From what I’d heard—not from Max, of course—Dusty had owned a mansion in the hills, a posh bungalow in town, and a ranch over the border in Mexico, replete with women, hangers-on, and plenty of illegal activity.
But this house was more like a home. No grand entrance, but astep down into a big room dominated by a fireplace of river rock. An overstuffed divan and comfy-looking chairs squatted on a slate floor strewn with a couple sheepskin rugs that had seen better days. The opposite wall held a line of shuttered windows. Homey, I’d call it.
Max unlatched the shutters to show the beach and pounding surf beyond. “We came here sometimes, before... everything.” He let out a breath and his shoulders lowered; his face softened. “Grab that bag, will you?” He led me through a short hallway. I glanced into two bedrooms—pine-framed beds covered in bright quilts—and a lavatory with a claw-foot tub. The kitchen was old-fashioned and dim, with an enameled gas stove and scuffed linoleum floor. I pulled the light switch. Nothing happened.
“Electric’s off. Set those here.”
I rummaged through the things he’d brought in. A bottle of wine, and one of gin. Tonic and some limes. Bread, butter, a wedge of some kind of cheese. My stomach grumbled. It was late afternoon, and I hadn’t eaten since my piece of toast and jam this morning. I lifted the wet towel from a bucket. Tiny gray clams looked like rocks and smelled like the ocean. “Are we going to eat these?”
Max gave me a nod. “Trust me, you’ll love them.”
A moment later, he’d brought me outside to a patio of uneven flagstone. A pair of weathered wood-slatted chairs cozied up to a stone firepit like old friends. A double chaise lounge—kidney shaped and with a striped canvas cushion—faced the ocean. Across a patch of sea grass, a sand path led down to the crashing waves.
Max faced the wind coming off the water, closed his eyes, and breathed in the salty air. “I love this place.”
This wasn’t the smooth Hollywood agent that I knew. He was somebody else. I didn’t want to break the magic of the moment, so I didn’t say anything. Finally, he turned to me. “Let’s eat.”
I frowned. How was I supposed to cook with no electric? And how did you cook clams anyway? But he patted a chair beside the firepit. “Relax. I’ll bring you a drink.”
He put a gin and tonic in my hand, and then—you could have knocked me sideways—he made us both dinner. A man, making dinner. He even seemed to enjoy it. I could see it in the set of his shoulders, in the way he padded back and forth, his feet bare, talking easily. And not about studios and Technicolor and how sound works, either.
“This—” he waved at the ocean—“is called Emerald Bay, and further down is Laguna Beach. Kind of an artists’ hideaway. Some writers. Real bohemians.” He lit a fire in the circle of stones and piled driftwood on top of the flames.
He disappeared, then brought out a tray of bread, cheese, and sliced apples. “There’s artists all over on a nice day, with their easels and sketchbooks.” He set the food on the small table between the chairs. “But the best part is the beach. There’s miles of it.”
