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Run For Your Life, a Love Story

by John Argo

Wildest Ride You'll Ever Read—Don't Miss the Adrenalin Rocket Thrills

= 2. =

"What are you going to do this summer?" asked Joe Logan, the only surfer at the rail inside the bar.

The question hung in the gloomy air like stale onion rings at the Surf & Suds Tap in Pacific Beach. You know the place: sort of a crab shack that always has at least one surfboard leaning against its weather beaten wood-shingle wall. Its faded gray-green door faces the sea from across a sand-strewn sidewalk and several hundred feet of dunes overgrown with air weed. Airweed is like seaweed, only airweed is on dry land instead of waving in the murky wet deeps. Airweed (whatever it is called by smart people at the U up the coast) is dry as paper, dark green, and tattered looking as it clings to life amid unforgiving sand and gravel. Everything smells of salt water, sea air, and broiling onions (burgers and cheese optional, fries mandatory).

It is always dark and cozy inside the Surf & Suds Tap. Sometimes young people when hungry call it Turf & Spuds, or Duds & Studs on a bad date night, at other times Harf & Barf around one in the morning after a long evening of too much imbibing.

Five old high school buddies were back in town for the summer with only one year in college left to go, and one major question hanging in the air: What are you going to do when you grow up?

"I dunno," Martin Brown said while picking paper off the label on his beer bottle. "Live at home."

"Sounds like a death sentence," Paul Lo the math major said.

"Geez, Marty, I’m grieving," said Rob Castillo, the pre-med student.

"Just about," Martin admitted. "Although it can always be worse. I could be taped to the ceiling in my baby sister’s bedroom while she is away at nursing school."

"In a very scary dream," said Paul.

"You didn’t snag a summer job?" Harry Markowitz asked. He was the accounting and business major.

"I almost had one," Martin said, raising a hand with thumb and index finger a half inch apart. "This close."

"Doing what?" asked Joe—phys ed major, surfer, and all-around athlete.

Martin felt strangely light-headed. "I was going to shovel shit at a tree nursery in La Mesa, but they went out of business last week."

Rob guffawed. "After three years of college? Maybe they misunderstood and thought you said tree years."

"Counting rings on trees," added Joe.

Martin shrugged. "I’m working on the Great American Novel, a work in progress. Meanwhile, I’m studying film and lit, and I’m starting to think I’ve been had. Like there are no jobs for people who study that stuff."

"You can always switch to Accounting," said Harry Markowitz.

At twenty-one years of age, the four guys at the bar were finally able to have a beer legally, and the reality of impending reality was starting to set in, like the tide seeping inexorably up the beach and turning the sand dark.

Martin with his poetic ear and filmogenic eye saw it most clearly, like a wall of black clouds (the famous San Diego marine layer) moving in—a weeping, ash-colored bath of cold tears.

They were just yakking, dressed for the beach and still strung out from finals. They had gone to schools together in a track stretching almost from kindergarten through grammar through middle through high school. They’d split up to attend various colleges, and got back together each summer. Something about this summer had a finality to it. Unless he went to graduate school after next year, there would be no more summers off from school. Apparently, people later in life worked all year with like a week or two off if they were lucky. That and a whole lot of other startling eventualities floated before Martin’s inner eye, his soul, as he tried to imagine what it would be like stuck at a desk like his dad, who owned an auto repair warehouse. Then there was Mom, who worked as a nurse and gave people injections in their buttocks when they came down with weird diseases. Actually, they were well-traveled as a family, including Martin’s younger sister Nancy. Dad’s business sometimes took him to Mexico, Europe, Japan, or Canada, and it made for a wonderful family junket at least once every summer.

"I am studying film and literature because there has to be something more in life," Martin said to nobody in particular.

At that moment, the other three guys whooped for some reason.

Into the bar walked two young women who’d gone to school with the guys since Pleistocene times.

Martin brightened. "Hey, Alicia."

The dark-haired, dark-skinned girl with a poofy Afro pressed close. She and Carol, a blonde, had been among those girls in high school who had been both cute and brainy. Not beautiful, not cheerleaders, not mean or whatever, but cute, like the girl next door, and smart. You could do homework with Alicia or Carol—poetry with Carol, math with Alicia—and be as impressed with their smarts as their looks.

Paul was tall and dark, not sure about handsome but pleasant enough; Joe was blond and muscular; Rob was a handsome Latino—a compact but strong college wrestler; and Harry was, well, hairy (arms, legs, neck, even the backs of his hands). Martin was medium everything, with short caramel hair combed to one side, large expressive greenish-brown eyes under long lashes, and pleasant enough features. The guys wore shorts or jeans, variously sloganed T-shirts, and flips or sandals.

The girls today wore dresses, light makeup, and sensible shoes. "We started working at {Utterly Boring Company} in Mission Valley," Alicia announced as they walked in with purse straps over shoulders. Carol Monegan was the quieter, with large blue eyes scouting about as she followed behind vivacious Alicia Washington—flashier darker eyes, redder lipstick, skin the color of dark coffee; she liked to say sugar, no cream if you like it dark and sweet.

They all got along great, and had done so since childhood in the Mission Gorge area east of Mission Valley, around Lake Murray and the (smallish) Fortuna Mountains. Not to mention hiking and rock climbing in Mission Trails Park, picnics near the San Diego River, and various student clubs at Patrick Henry High.

So bottom line, it was a family get together, like siblings. Their families all knew each other, along with other people in the tightly knit communities like Allied Gardens, Grantville, Lake Murray, and San Carlos. For Martin, it was a mixed blessing. On the one hand, he felt at home; he’d traveled around the world with his parents, and studied German over the years, and could get along haltingly in broken Spanish, simply because he lived a few miles from Mexico and had plenty of Hispanic friends. On the other hand, he was beginning to feel an urgency bordering on desperation—to break free, to make his own life, to stop living in that same old room at home where in a corner still stood the diaper changing table used for him and Nancy as infants.

Alicia sat across from him once they all decided to take a booth and order two large pizzas with the works, in addition to pitchers of beer.

"How have you been?" she asked. Despite the noise, they were able to have a cozy conversation by leaning their foreheads close together.

"Home," Martin said, as if that explained everything.

Alicia laughed. "I know. UCLA or maybe Venice Beach would be great this summer, but my parents have had a rough time with my uncle being sick—that’s dad’s brother—and so I’m home to help out. Carol found us these two jobs as insurance clerks."

Martin made a face. "Do they need anyone to mow lawns and rake leaves?"

"Martin!" Alicia was always upbeat. Except when she was being downbeat. "Martin, have you put in your applications and gone knocking on doors like a good boy?"

He shook his head. "I had a good outdoorsy job lined up at a tree farm."

"You need a real job."

"I know. So that would have been a real job, except they went belly-up last week. I have about eight weeks before I have to go back to Berkeley, so that doesn’t leave many summer career options." Martin had been an Advanced Placement (AP) student, like Alicia and Carol, and had gained a choice admission to the University of California at Berkeley, while Alicia had gone to UC San Diego and Carol to UCLA (a place of astounding networks and connections, as Martin was about to learn).

"Oh geez," Alicia said. "You’re not going to sit home and mope, I hope."

"That rhymes."

"You are a poet, and we all know it."

"Not to blow it."

"No, I’m sure you will find something to do and make a little money."

"I was even thinking about going back to Berkeley or San Francisco for a few weeks," he said half-heartedly. "I could get an early jump on my last year."

"And do what?"

"Research. I have two senior thesis papers to do for graduation."

"Yeah," she said with a grin, sipping at her root beer as the pizzas were delivered on tall, silvery stands. "Wow that looks good," she interrupted her stream of conversation with a glance at the peperoni. "But that’s fall or spring, Marty. This is summer. Maybe you can go surfing."

"I don’t know how to surf. I am also working on a novel."

"Honey, you’ve been working on that novel ever since I knew you."

"You’re feeling sorry for me."

"No, dodo. I love you as a friend."

"It may not be the Great American Novel," he said, "but it can be a Fairly Decent American Novel."

"You have to have faith in yourself," she said.

They ate. Pizza was good. Martin felt as much contented as he remained disquieted.

"What’s the matter?" Carol said, aiming those huge, sympathetic blue eyes at him from across the table, with Paul Lo’s visage between herself and Alicia. Paul was occupied in a conversation about hot cars with Joe Logan to Martin’s left, and Carol had to shoot underneath to reach Martin.

"He is going to stay home all summer and be miserable," Alicia told Carol.

"Oh no," Carol exclaimed.

"Oh yes," Alicia said.

"No, no, ixnay," Martin said. "What do you take me for? I’ll see about driving for Uber or a taxi company or something. I could drive a shuttle at the Hotel del Coronado."

"That’s the spirit," Alicia said. "Then you can relate your adventures in your novel."

"I have an idea," said Carol—and the second step in this journey began.

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