I smiled, happy with the outcome, too.
Gid ran a hand through his thick mop of hair. “Melody and her friends are headed to the beach this morning. Wanna go surfing?”
“Hmmm… sounds good. I thought you had other plans for us, today, though.”
“Plenty of time for that, later. Throw on some trunks. Surf’s up!”
__________
Of course, we had to stop and eat breakfast on the way.
Pancakes at a place called the Broken Yolk, on Garnett Avenue. Giddeon ate a large order and I had a small. Both meals were covered in maple syrup and washed down with lots of O.J. Then, we made our way over near the coast by the Ocean Beach pier, found a place to park (why we drove the car, I don’t know), and went to the beach, not bothering to lug along surfboards.
We found Melody and her two friends, Amanda and Brooke, just arriving with their boogie boards. When they stripped down to their bikinis, it was like something out of a movie. Her two friends were hot, but Melody was sizzling. The few males in the vicinity had their heads on swivels as they watched the girls rush into the cold, Pacific water.
Giddeon and I took our boards, which, along with wetsuits, had miraculously appeared. We followed the trio into the ocean. I had only tried surfing once, before, and never quite graduated to standing up. I could catch the waves, but by the time I was ready to get upright, my balance would be off, my momentum spent, and down I would go. Maybe some of the problem was that I had been on a short board, which is far more unstable than the lengthier ones. This time, I had a long board… a G2 limited edition by Tim Bessel… and Giddeon had given me some pointers in the car.
We sat on our boards out past the break, watching the girls for a while. They were having quite a time in the shallows and waves near the beach. Laughter and squeals could be heard as they paddled around and scooted on the foamy water towards the shoreline. Then, they would pick up their Styrofoam boards, run back into the ocean, splash down, and paddle out to do it again.
I was amazed that they were tolerating the cold water so well… I suppose youth and enthusiasm are exothermic. I never used to use words like exothermic, by the way.
Maybe Giddeon rubbed off on me during those four years.
I caught the first wave that I attempted. Amazingly, I actually made it to my feet and went quite a distance towards the shore before the energy dissipated. I’m sure I was grinning from ear to ear, even as I lost my balance and fell into the water for no apparent reason. I surfaced and called to Giddeon as he readied himself for the following wave.
“Did you see that? I did it!” I yelled excitedly, pulling my board back towards me by its tether.
“Good job! I told you that you could! Watch this!”
A big wave formed behind him and I could see him paddling furiously to match its speed. His short board caught the swelling water and he was on his feet very easily in what seemed like microseconds. Gid went straight down the front of the liquid surface for a few feet and then began to cut to my left.
He zig-zagged back and forth in that direction, showing total control of the fiberglass underneath him. Next, he cut towards my position in the water; when he was almost upon me, he jumped his board high into the air and over the back of the wave. He hung suspended for what seemed like a small eternity, and then, basically did a half-gainer into the blue-gray of the Pacific.
I was so enthralled while watching his performance that I forgot to duck beneath the wall of water and it smacked into me and my board and drug me halfway to shore. I came up sputtering and was torn between cursing and laughing, so I did neither. I paddled back out to Giddeon.
He had no problem laughing for me.
“Dude… that was awesome! I wish I had it on video. We could make a public service announcement… ‘Always respect the power of the ocean!” he exclaimed in a narrator type voice. “I thought I was gonna have to do CPR!” Again, he laughed, and also slapped his board to give it more emphasis.
“Glad you’re so entertained by my misfortune. My lip is bleeding,” I said as I reached up and wiped at it, gingerly.
“Don’t worry… sharks can’t smell it. Only dogs.”
“Great.” I was beginning to believe that maybe he wasn’t a guardian angel, after all. At least, not a very good one. “That was a nice ride you did, though. Gnarly exit,” I observed.
Giddeon lit up. “Now, you’re getting with it. Surf talk! Come on… I’ll show you how it’s done!”
We began to paddle back out, and I noticed my lip was back to normal. I washed the blood off of my face with seawater, and then kept going. We got to a good spot and sat on our boards to wait for a set to come in. Melody and her two friends were still cavorting happily in the distance, so we watched them for a while.
“The sea nymphs are certainly having a good time,” observed my subconscious.
I took in their shapely, wet forms as they glistened in the golden rays of the sun. “If you don’t get me back to her side, soon, I’m gonna explode,” I replied.
“Hormones starting to back up, are they?”
“I didn’t mean it like that… I just want to be with her.”
“Can’t say that I blame you… she looks good in that bikini.”
“She would look good in anything.”
“She would look good in nothing at all.”
I splashed water in his direction. “Don’t go lusting after my girlfriend.”
“I’m you, remember? Where you lead, I will follow. Here comes a wave! Now, when you catch it, try to stand up a bit sooner. You’re waiting too long to make your move. Trust the board to be stable… it’s big and sturdy. Just stay centered and go for it.”
We began paddling for all we were worth. I could feel the kinetic energy come up from behind us, and it began to augment our efforts.
“Now!” yelled Giddeon. I saw him in my peripheral vision as he started to upright himself. I placed my hands on the board below me and did my best to imitate his motions. After a few seconds of imbalance, I found the center and stood up almost fully erect, left foot forward and knees flexed. I rode straight down the face of the big wave, too scared to make a turn but totally enjoying the rush.
When I felt steady enough, I shifted my weight and actually made progress to the right, in Gid’s direction. I was skimming along at a good clip, and then I shifted back to the left, but overdid the maneuver. That caused me to fall backwards into the curling blue-green monster behind me and tumble around beneath it for a few seconds. I didn’t care. I was elated.
“Whoo-hoo!” I screamed when I surfaced. “I can’t believe it!”
Giddeon splashed in the water down from me, collected his board and paddled back in my direction.
“Stellar, man, stellar!” he exclaimed.
“That was so cool! No wonder people get hooked on this!” I shouted. We began stroking back out to our spot. For the moment, I had even temporarily forgotten about Melody and the girls.
“Surfing and golf! Two of the best sports in the universe, don’t you think?” queried Gid.
“Looking that way! Geeesh…I can’t believe I didn’t try this again after that time a couple of years ago!” We made our way out for the better part of a couple of minutes. Giddeon finally sat up on his board, signaling that we were where we should be.
He grinned. “You can’t give up too easily. Some things are worth going after over and over, till you get it right.” I saw him nod in the direction of Melody as he scooted his board around.
We watched the girls laughing and playing in the water about 75 yards away.
“I hear you, dude, I hear you.”
Soon, we caught another wave.
Chapter 30
After two and a half hours of surfing, I found that I had worked up quite an appetite. Melody and her two friends were on the beach; a few guys had tried to approach them, but thankfully had met with little success.
When we saw the three uber-maidens donning their over-clothes and collectin
g their gear, Giddeon and I made our way to shore. We ditched our boards and walked across the sands… I looked down and noticed that oddly, even though I could feel my feet digging into the silicon, no footprints followed my steps. Sometimes, I could see a flickering as my feet left or connected with the beach, but I had grown accustomed to that type of weirdness and ignored it. As we got nearer to the girls, we could hear them deciding to get fish tacos at South Beach Bar and Grill.
Gid gave a thumbs up, and I knew where we were headed, also.
He and I parted from the young ladies and walked towards the restaurant while they went to store their boogie-boards in their car. We made our way past people on the boardwalk… teenagers, college students, bicyclists and the homeless… all out enjoying the San Diego weather.
Just before we got to the pier, we took a left and went past a small parking lot. We then exited the sidewalk right into the bar. It was moderately busy; a few patrons were enjoying early afternoon cocktails and looking out of the open windows at the beach. We went into the adjoining room and took seats at a table against the far wall.
Giddeon blinked and two tall iced-teas appeared in front of us, whereupon I took a long, replenishing draught. We looked over the menus as we waited for the three women to arrive.
“I’m thinking a Wahoo and a lobster,” said Gid.
“I’ll go with a shark and an oyster, but, no rush. Wait ‘till they all get here.”
We relaxed in our seats; the wet suits were magically gone and we were back in dry shorts, t-shirts and flip-flops… standard Southern California uniforms. Someone dropped some money in the juke-box and Jimmy Buffet’s ‘Come Monday’ filled the air.
It was easy to forget that I was in a long-term care facility half-way across town.
“Not a bad day, so far,” I observed.
“Not bad at all,” replied Giddeon. “I want you to remember how you feel right now, and how absolutely fantastic it would be if you were ‘real’ and waiting on Melody after all of the sun, sand and surf we just experienced.” Again, he had made finger quotes in the air. “That would be pretty much a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10, wouldn’t it?
“Maybe a 12… hey, here they come!” They must have been parked nearby.
Melody, Amanda and Brooke entered the bar/restaurant, looked around, then came and deposited themselves at a table in the middle of the room close to us, naturally. I’m sure Gid had somehow sampled where they would most likely sit. They had on shorts and jerseys over their swimsuits, and dampness showed through their clothes. The co-eds all picked up menus and were pointing and talking amongst themselves, trying to decide what to get. A waitress came over and took their drink orders; they all went for iced tea as well.
Jimmy Buffet went off and was replaced by The Beach Boys… ‘I Wish They All Could Be California Girls’.
The California Girls at the table all bobbed their heads and sang along. Other patrons in the eatery were definitely enjoying the impromptu karaoke from the good-looking college ladies with the menus in their hands; the waitress, cute in her own right, danced over towards the end of the tune and took their orders. Everyone was smiling, and I felt the mood of the restaurant lighten perceptibly in sync with all of the happiness and music.
‘Wipeout’, by the Surfaris, came on the jukebox, next.
Amanda and Brooke couldn’t contain themselves. They jumped up from their chairs, began to dance, and succeeded in dragging Melody from her chair, too. Giddeon and I, along with every other male in the place, watched in amazement as three gorgeous women entertained the customers for 2 minutes and 36 seconds. Short and sweet. Just like my guardian angel said a song should be. Maybe he was on to something.
The day went to at least a 13, even being in a coma.
Our tacos arrived, and quite possibly, they were the best tasting tacos in the world.
Chapter 31
After the girls finished their meals and left, Giddeon and I walked outside into the afternoon sun. I was feeling pretty good about having ‘spent’ some time with Melody while learning to surf… also, from being with her while partaking of delicious seafood. The sky was crystal blue, and the water beneath it shades of a deeper blue, touching on green. A few clouds skirted the horizon, but for the most part the atmosphere was clear.
“Not bad, huh?” said Gid, taking in the view as the ocean breeze pushed the hair back from his forehead.
“No place like paradise,” I replied.
We stood there, in silence. My companion had a faraway look in his eyes. I remember thinking to myself that it was the first time I had ever seen anything close to sadness on his face. Finally, he said something rather cryptic…
“You know, heaven and hell have the same zip code.” Giddeon continued looking out at the ocean. Slowly, the sky began to darken.
There was a flicker, and then, everything around us changed. Well, not everything… the sea and the air were still pretty much the same, but the buildings to our right, our left, and behind us were all suddenly dilapidated and in various states of disrepair. The sidewalk had become cracked and shifted… grass and weeds were growing up through the gaps. A mangy dog foraged nearby; he stopped and sniffed at a dead seagull that was mostly feathers and bone, decided against it, and continued on with what appeared to be a quest for a meal.
“What happened?” I asked, quite alarmed.
“Just showing you a future.”
“The future…?”
“A future. There are so many. This one is about 17 years from our present, after a series of wars… both international and civil.” He turned towards me and his blue eyes were like fractured glass; streaks of cerulean radiated out from the dark, black centers.
Giddeon continued in a voice that was devoid of his usual inflections, “After the wars, famine and disease ensued. Weaponised bird flu, cholera, and something similar to smallpox were the worst ones. That plague resembling smallpox just came about on its own, by the way.” He turned his head back to the water. “Those three pandemics, along with other minor epidemics, have wiped out at least 70 percent of the earth’s population… oh, yes… before that, dirty bombs and chemical bombs had crippled most of the western economies.”
Gid shoved his hands in his pockets and I felt just a bit more breeze come in off of the water. It didn’t have the same smell that I had grown accustomed to. “All of these problems started a downward spiral into ubiquitous violence,” he said. “Many of the large urban centers, whether bombed or not, are now abandoned except for roving gangs. However, a few brave people come to places like this to fish… like that group over there.”
He pointed to the pier, or rather, what was left of the pier. A small cluster of people had lines in the water from off the northern side. We walked over in their direction and carefully made our way onto the damaged structure.
__________
The people on the cement construction were a scraggly looking bunch…6 adults, 4 teens and 2 small children. Some of them had pock-marks… apparently from the scarring, smallpox-like disease. They all wore rumpled designer clothes, and I noticed that two of the men had on expensive watches. Apparently, razors were in short supply; the males that could grow them had beards, and the women wearing shorts and sleeveless shirts sported underarm hair and unshaven legs. Several rifles were propped against the pigeon speckled railing.
Suddenly, one of the men exclaimed, ‘Got one!” The Rolex on his wrist flashed brightly in the sun as he reeled in a small sea-bass; the people around him cheered with delight.
“Plenty of luxury items around… just no running water, electricity or food,” said Giddeon. “Small bands of people group together for protection. Most stay near the coast or by rivers and streams, and nearly everybody carries a weapon… kind of like in the Wild West.”
We circled the group, and then stood next to the broken end of the pier. The water below could be seen from our location, sloshing back and forth as it had done for eons. My subconscious resumed his narrative, “A few
towns, mostly in Colorado, Idaho and the Midwest are making a comeback. Some even have sewerage systems and running water. The feudal system is basically how those areas manage themselves, and no one new is allowed in unless they have a skill to share… otherwise, they’re out of luck. They can’t get past the town perimeters.”
I looked over the poor little group for a while, and asked, “What about medical care… what if you get sick, or a woman’s pregnant?”
Giddeon shook his head. “Darwin rules. Most of the doctors and nurses died in the epidemics. They were on the front lines, so to speak.”
“Not good.”
“Not so bad compared to some places.”
Before I had time to ask what he meant… the flicker and light tunnel came and went, again.
__________
We were then in the remnants of a city. Without having to be told, I sensed that the destruction around me could only have been caused by a nuclear weapon.
Gid and I were near the outskirts of a devastated area, and I ascertained that we were somewhere in the Middle East by the remaining architecture still standing. Here and there, graffiti sprayed in a foreign print could be seen… possibly Hebrew, Farsi or Persian. The area was deserted. Not even a bird could be seen winging above the ruins.
“This is where one of the few actual nuclear exchanges occurred,” said Giddeon. I’ll show you what it looked like back then… 10 years ago… or maybe, I should say, 7 years from our normal, present time.”
__________
Abruptly, we were transported to high on a hill near the area we had just been standing. I could sense that we had been carried through time, again… a tremendous blast had obviously just occurred, and the sky was filled with yellow dust and a reddish haze. The remains of what must have been a mushroom cloud towered above us, and an eerie silence was punctuated here and there by the sounds of sirens.
Oddly, I thought I heard a call to prayer mixed in with the horns.
Then, from the periphery of the destruction came a terrible sight… a sight that I’ll never forget for as long as I live.
__________
They looked like zombies in a movie.
People were moving away, as best as they could, from the periphery of the blast zone… at least for the most part. Not everybody was able to do so. Some were walking in a daze. Others were trying to run. Many periodically stumbled, arose, and then continued on. Several crawled pitifully, and some just sat holding their arms out away from their bodies as if it was too painful to do anything else.