Outside on the sidewalk, Liv stopped a taxi and she gave the cabbie an address. Apparently, their destination was somewhere in Cabrillo Marine Aquarium, some thirty five miles away from their current location.
“Where are we going?” Antwone asked her.
“You’ll see,” she said. “You just wait.”
“Want to grab dinner afterward?”
Liv smiled and turned her face to the window, pretending to look out at the whizzing neighborhood of anonymous buildings and small shops overlooked by long electric poles. And everywhere, large sidewalks held a motley assortment of pedestrians on the go to their favorite night places.
“What’s so funny?” Antwone finally asked her.
She was still smiling and he could see her reflection on the door window of her side.
“Nothing,” she said. “I didn’t realize I was hungry. Until now that is.”
“So let’s have that bite then.”
“Do you go out a lot?”
“Not really. I’m what you’d call a homebody.”
“Really? You don’t seem shy of social contact,” she said.
“I try not to be shy. But sometimes I can’t help it. Especially when I’m nervous.”
“You get nervous around people?”
“It’s happened before, yeah.”
“Around women?” she asked him with an excess of female curiosity.
Antwone suddenly felt a pointed embarrassment to be discussing this subject with Liv. Sure she wasn’t a little girl. But in his mind’s eye, she hadn’t aged eight years since their very first encounter.
“That has happened too,” he supplied.
“Have you ever gotten nervous around me?”
Antwone looked at her. “Maybe,” he said, “maybe not. But think about it: If you did make me nervous, then this friendship of ours would have quite a few awkward moments. Have we had any so far?”
Liv seemed to quietly consider the question for a minute, then she gently shook her head. Her elbow was propped on the door and her eyes were sort of flat as if the streets light outside couldn’t get in to reveal their depths.
“I’m glad we met again,” she said after a moment. “I really am. I think it was meant to be. I really think that.”
Antwone did not say anything to that. The girl was getting sentimental. He had never looked up to the skies to find any sort of answer. But he could still appreciate the fact that some did.
Driving up on a grade, the taxicab took an exit and got off the roadway only to level down onto an eastbound lane which was not buzzing with traffic. The night was coating the rolling hills which seemed to drop and lift out of the country on either side of the lane, and up ahead stood ranges of mountains with no apparent tops.
Antwone meant to ask Liv again where they were going, but she broke silence first.
“By the way, I meant to tell you that I’m halfway through your last book.”
“Oh,” Antwone said. “Usually, when someone I know tells me that, I get goose bumps.”
“Well, you shouldn’t,” she said. “It’s not terrible.”
“Not terrible? I surely appreciate the honesty here. Was there something in particular that you liked or disliked?”
“I’m not through with it yet, but I liked the title.”
“I’m glad the title was above your critic standards.”
Liv let out a loudmouthed chuckle and the cabbie glanced at her through the rearview mirror.
“No seriously,” she said, trying to make her voice sound earnest. “I think Knight of Rain is a good title for a book.”
“You’re right,” Antwone said with humor. “It must have been the thing that earned me all the praise and accolades from critics.”
“Sarcasm doesn’t really suit you well.”
“We writers tend to watch and learn, so give me some time.”
“Okay… I’ll need some time as well,” Liv said. “So that I can tell you how I really liked it.”
“No fluff?” Antwone said.
“Only the honest-to-God truth,” she said, raising her right hand as if she was in court and was going to swear it on the bible.
The gesture sort of made her sensuous, Antwone realized; more so because her head was slightly tilted to the side and her neckline made a nice curve which, in many ways, added an element of tease to her current poise on the backseat.
“But just to give you the heads-up, I kind of don’t like the heroine,” Liv went on. “Mitzi Holloway. But I get why readers fell for her. I can tell it wasn’t particularly pleasant to write about her. Would you say it was a difficult book to write?”
“It took me some time and a few pains if that’s what you mean.”
“Anyway, she just doesn’t do it for me … sorry.”
“And here I was thinking she was by far the best thing I’d written.”
“You’re talking silly,” she said.
“Is that book such a drag to read? Because if it is––”
“Oh don’t worry, I’ll read it through to the end. I picked it up because I wanted to know you better, since you hardly talk about yourself. I always end up doing most of the talking.”
That was true. And Antwone nodded his head amusedly. Just now, he was suddenly feeling joyous and thankful for the friendship of this young woman who was carving out more and more meaningful room in his life.
“It’s because I like to hear you talk,” he told Liv. And he did not say it just to say it. He truly meant it. And he no longer wished to know where they were going. He only wished that the ride would last out the whole night.
Pretty soon, the horizon, which was dark and mainly made of strangely-shaped mountains, changed many times until it appeared more civilized as the car exited the interstate freeway to snake through the windy roads of a picturesque suburb. Somewhere a guide sign informed Antwone that they were well within the community of San Pedro. At that point, the smell of the ocean was in the air. But it could not be seen yet.
Further ahead, where there was some sort of barren expanse of land which looked like some kind of nature preserve; the smell of the ocean got stronger. The wind started to blow and you could see it blowing through the leaves of trees and shrubberies.
Down the road, the more turns the car took the more better-groomed estates strung out and, after passing more patches of grass rollers and barren plots hemming grids after grids of urban residences, Antwone saw the ocean and its rip-roaring lament came up and faded right at the car windows.
He was just guessing that they would probably arrive at their destination soon when the car stopped in front of an apartment building with no driveway. There was actually a row of it standing on the curb. And they were all identical, save for their body paint jobs which varied predominantly from white to blue.
Each building had two unenclosed floors connected to one another and to the ground through a pair of stairwells. Behind the row of apartment buildings cropped up a plateau of tile-roofed homes.
Antwone paid the cabbie who nodded appreciatively before pulling up the curb and going away with the wind.
The ocean was close. Really close. Its deep-throated lament could be heard distinctly just as when you stick a seashell to your ear and listen to the sirens sing.
“Come,” Liv told Antwone, making for the stairs of one the buildings. He followed her; they went up to the second floor.
The building fronted the ocean. As Liv knocked on a door, the wind seemed to rise.
“Where are we?” Antwone asked her.
Before she could answer, the door opened and a small woman stuck her head out through the gap to inquire about her visitors. But then she saw Liv and a smile came on her face and the door opened all the way.
“Oh my God,” the woman said beckoning Liv into her arms, “I did not expect to see you again.”
“Was just passing through the neighborhood,” Liv said, snuggling the woman at the shoulders.
Then she quickly made the introductions. The woman
was named Laurie and she was in her sixties. She shook hands with Antwone while expressing a warm welcome to her modest home. Liv explained that she had babysat the woman’s little nephew a while back when she used to live not far from there.
Liv asked about the nephew, Matthew. It wasn’t a school night but he was in bed and it wasn’t even eight o’clock. The woman explained rather effusively that he was running a little fever. And so Liv went in his bedroom to check in on him.
Left alone with his host, Antwone looked around the room he was in while keeping the smile across his lips to hide his unease.
The room was kind of drab-looking, though the walls were painted with a bright white that looked dirty under the fluorescent lighting. The furniture looked inexpensive, purchased at the local thrift store perhaps. And the chairs and the threadbare couch looked overused to death.
The woman was considering Antwone with curiosity. Even he felt curious and strange to be standing in the living room of this low-rent apartment, in front of this woman who was smiling politely at him.
Apparently, it must have then occurred to her that she was exhibiting poor house manners. Because next thing she did was to offer him a drink. She only had lemonade and soda. Antwone immediately accepted lemonade, only too glad of the respite the departure of those big, penetrating eyes of hers would procure.
While the woman was fixing his drink in the kitchen, Liv came back out to him, carrying a small boy on her hip. It was Matthew. For whatever reason, Antwone thought of him as a beardless gnome. He was maybe seven years old. And the way he hugged Liv only underlined the strong, endearing bond they shared.
“Say hi,” Liv prompted Matthew and he nonchalantly gazed at Antwone. Finding no interest in the unfamiliar man, the boy looked away without vocalizing any form of greeting.
“Sorry about that,” Liv apologized for him. “He usually warms up to new faces quickly.”
The woman came back with the drink, exchanged a few pleasant words with Liv, then excused herself because she was in the middle of cooking dinner. She retired back to the kitchen.
“I know you’re wondering why I brought you here,” Liv said to Antwone.
“Is that so obvious?”
“Okay, I’ll show you.”
She took him through a door that opened out on a small balcony. The wind blew down on them. Mathew tightened his arms around her neck. She rubbed his back to keep him warm. Then she nudged her finger in the direction of the dark water of the ocean.
Antwone looked and saw nothing at first but then realized what Liv was pointing at. There was a light out there, as white as the sun and as minute and far away as a star. It was revolving and, when it aligned with your field of view, it was the only thing distinguishable out there, for the sky was dark and moonless. And because of that, you could hardly tell it apart from the ocean. You could not even tell where it began or where it ended were it not for that light.
“It’s the Angel Gates Lighthouse,” Liv explained. “And here is one of the best spots from where you can see it. You once said that you felt lost, that the lighthouse by your childhood house used to be your anchor point. I think you get to choose whatever anchor point you want for your life. Trust me; I know it, I did it. And you know what: all in all, I think it’s a good thing if you feel lost because, in order to find yourself, you need to be lost first. And the way I see it, the discovery of oneself is one of the most important aspects of life.”
While she spoke, Antwone contemplated the revolving light shining in the dark. The last time he had seen one, he was still a deckhand at sea. But back then, it had never impacted on his emotional state. Looking at it had never provoked a reaction other than the squinting of the eyes when the light fell onto the retina. In those days, he knew he was a different person then. His situation was different. His mind was not bogged with things of the past and his heart was hardened against any pangs associated with his childhood memories, especially those which harkened back to the house where he and Mari had grown up.
But all of that had changed after he had left the seafaring life behind and slowly and surely had started out on a soul-searching journey as a writer.
“The discovery of oneself huh,” he finally muttered to himself. Maybe in all his waking hours, he was walking toward it or away from it. But he felt that it didn’t matter anymore. Nothing mattered except for this moment, here and now, that he was sharing with Liv.
Off yonder on the horizon, there was a dark quietness. And in it, the light revolved and shone.
“What’s on your mind?” Liv asked Antwone. He looked at her and saw that Matthew was beginning to slide off from her hip.
“We haven’t been together very long,” he started, “and yet it seems you know me better than most people.” He paused and looked out to the ocean again. “How do you do it?”
“Maybe you’re not as complex as the characters you create for your stories, you know.”
“That’s probably right,” he said. “I’m just a simple guy who thinks too much and lives too little. It’s funny actually because one would expect it’s the other way around for a successful writer.”
He affectionately patted Matthew on the back then on the head. The kid was dozing and warming to his touch.
Antwone said to Liv, “You must have met people who knew how to live, right?”
“I met all kinds of people in my time,” she said. “Good, bad, crazy––”
“—And yet in that chaotic cesspool of personalities, you blossomed into a fine young lady.”
Liv grinned.
“Those are nice words,” she said.
“They come from a true place.”
“Do you want to know what you and all those people I met after I ran away from home have in common?” Antwone nodded and she said, “They were easy to get along with; just as you are easy to get along with.”
Antwone smiled and gazed at the lighthouse and the ocean one more time as if to say goodbye.
“I wish my hotel room had a view like this,” he said and added, “It’s exactly the kind of thing a writer needs to feel … well, to feel inspired.”
“Oh, I can take you to places that’ll inspire you.”
They got back indoors when a breeze came through and did not pass, making the night colder to bear, especially for Matthew.
The woman told them she had just taken dinner out of her slow cooker and generously offered them a seat at her table.
On the menu was beef hotpot marinated with Worcestershire sauce. Without hesitation, Antwone accepted the invitation. The food was very good. It could have been excellent with wine to accompany it. But there was only soda and lemonade for drinks. The woman apologized many times for that. She was a good cook and a good woman with a motherly face and she seemed to enjoy the company of her two unannounced guests.
They spent some quality time at the dinner table and when they finally left, the woman told them to come back to visit whenever they pleased.
They found a taxi and the ride back was quicker. Antwone got off first at his hotel. And before going in, he gazed after Liv as the taxi sped down the street and disappeared around a corner. Afterwards, he was very tired and sleepy and felt good about it and so he hurried up to his room to sleep.
He dreamt about the lighthouses he had seen in his life and of the waters they shone their light upon. The rest of the night happened as in a dream.
13