Sixty days and counting - Kim Stanley Robinson [62]
And yet nevertheless he was glad to be with them, slave as he was to Homo sapiens’ universal sociability. And also, to tell the truth, he was feeling under some kind of new dispensation with Marta: not that she had forgiven him, because she never would, but that she had at least become less angry.
As him with her.
Mixed feelings, mixed drinks; mixed signals. They ate in Del Mar, in one of the restaurants near the train station, on the beach. The restaurant’s patio and its main room were both flooded with sunset, the light both direct and reflective, bouncing off the ocean and the ceilings and the walls and the mirrors until the room was as hyperilluminated as a stage set, and everyone in it as vivid and distinct as a movie star. Air filled with the clangor of voices and cutlery, punctuating the low roar of the incoming surf—air thick with salt mist, the glorious tang of Frank’s home ground. Perhaps only Frank came from a place that allowed him to see just how gorgeous all this was.
Then again, now that he thought of it, Marta and Yann were just returning from a year in Atlanta, a year that could have been permanent. And they too looked a little heady with the scene.
And there was an extra charge in this restaurant, perhaps—some kind of poignant undercurrent to the celebrating, as if they were drinking champagne on a sinking liner. Because for this row of restaurants it was certainly the end time. This beach was going to go under, along with every other beach in the world. And what would happen to the beach cultures of the world when the beaches were gone? They too would go. A way of life, vanished.
Places like this first. Someone mentioned that high tides had waves running into the patio wall, a waist-high thing with a stairway cut through it to get to the beach. Frank nursed his margarita and listened to the others talk, and felt Marta’s elbow both metaphorically and sometimes literally in his ribs. He could feel her heat, and was aware of her kinetically, just as he had been years before when they had first started going out, meeting in situations just like this, drinks after work, and she the wild woman of the lab, expert at the bench or out in the waves. Passionate.
After dinner they went out for a walk on the beach. Del Mar’s was almost the only beach in North County left with enough sand for a walk; development meant all the southern California beaches had lost their sources of sand, but enough was left here to provide a fine white promenade for the sunset crowd. Surfers, shrieking kids in bathing suits, sandcastle engineers, runners, couples, and groups on parade. Frank had played all these parts in his time. All there together in the horizontal light.
They came to the mouth of the Del Mar River, and turned back. Marta walked beside Frank. Leo and Yann were chattering before them. They fell behind a little bit farther.
“Happy to be back?” Frank ventured.
“Oh God yes. You have no idea,” and all of a sudden she collared him and gave him a quick rough hug, intended to hurt. He knew her so well that he could interpret this gratitude precisely. He knew also that she had had a couple of margaritas and was feeling the effects. Although just to be back in San Diego was doubtless the biggest part of her mood, the boisterous high spirits he remembered so well. She had been a very physical person.
“I can guess,” Frank said.
“Of course,” she said, gesturing at the sea grumbling on and on to their right. “So—how are you doing out there, Frank? Why are you still there and not back here too?”
“Well…” How much to tell? His decision gears crunched to a halt with a palpable shudder. “I’m interested in the work. I moved over to the Presidential Science Advisor’s office.”
“I heard about that. What will you do there?”
“Oh, you know. Be an advisor to the advisor.”
“Diane Chang?”
“That’s right.”
“She seems to be doing some good stuff.”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Well, that’s good….” But still: “I bet you wish you could do that from here.” Gesturing again at the sea.