Last Light in Paradise: Chapter 5

Editor’s note:

Every now and then, a story comes along that refuses to stay put. It lingers on your nightstand. It sneaks into conversation. For us, Last Light in Paradise is one of those stories, and we’re delighted to let it loose, one chapter at a time, in the pages of the Montecito Journal. Well, at least the first six chapters for the time being – then you can purchase the book at one of our local beloved bookstores (Chaucer’s, Tecolote, and Godmothers) or from the QR code below.

This book marks a first for us… Last Light in Paradise is the inaugural book published by MJ Media Group. Yes, we’re dipping a toe – perhaps a barefoot run – into the world of book publishing, guided entirely by our belief in a novel that is as cinematic as it is soulful, as local as it is timeless.

Set against the luminous backdrop of 1930s Santa Barbara, this is a tale of love and loss, mystery and reckoning, populated by unforgettable characters and infused with the kind of atmosphere that feels both dreamlike and deeply true. We invite you to settle in, turn the page, and join us at the edge of paradise… just as the light begins to change.

Chapter 5

He parked downtown and walked the block to the Sea Farer, enjoying the fog and the quiet emptiness of the town. He ate dessert at the small, nearly empty diner that looked out across an empty lot to a solitary pine tree and a dimly lit sign that read, Starlight Motel. There was no motel. A suspicious fire had burned it back to dirt and wild grasses that overlooked the small cove beach below. He ate the chili and cornbread and watched the fog roll past the sign.

The movie house was three blocks down, so he left his truck and walked, listening to the sound his boots made on the empty street. There were only a few people in the dark theater, and he liked it that way. As the movie played, he tried to watch, but all he could think about was Europe and Sandrine and her child. The movie in his head became the movie up on the screen, the shards of black and white light became his bittersweet memories.

A gunshot in the movie woke him. He tried to focus. In front of him, a woman stood, edged out of her row and began walking up the aisle. She was alone and tall and silky in the dim light. As she passed him, he could smell her perfume. He watched the sway of her dress as she went by. He tried not to turn and look at her. When he did, she was gone. He turned back to the movie and couldn’t figure out what had happened. It starred Coop. Creek liked Coop, liked that he seemed to be what he played, without too much posing – for a guy who had to wear makeup to earn a living.

The movie ended five minutes later, and he got up stiffly and left. The movie doors opened to a fog so thick he could barely see across the street. The buildings were enshrouded in silence. Heading for his truck, he heard the slow groan of an engine that wouldn’t start and knew before he saw the coupe that the battery would die. He walked by and was about to offer help when he saw that it was her, the woman from the movie with the nicely flowing dress. He walked on.

He heard the car door open, then close. Heard the clicking of high heels. He stopped. There was a phone booth beside the movie house, and he watched her step in and pick up the receiver. She held it up and worked the cradle, looked at it and tried again. A moment later, she left the booth and walked back to the car. He walked toward her. They met beneath the streetlamp.

“I can take you to a garage. Or, take you home. My truck is up ahead.”

She looked at him for a long time before she said, “Okay. Thank you.”

He waited, thinking. Then, feeling silly, he said, “Which?”

“Which?”

“Option.”

“Home.”

“Sure,” he said. He pointed up the block. “It’s up here. Or, I can come back and pick you up. Why don’t I do that. Come back and pick you up.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

He hesitated for a beat. She was dressed in a white silk dress and brown heels and had no wrap to cut the chill. She was way out of place, and he could tell this was scary for her. “It’s okay. I’m okay. I’m just a regular … I’m not a …” 

She only stared at him, waiting for what he might say.

“I’m not a road dog. I live here.”

“Road dog?”

“Vagrant.”

She smiled now.

He reached into his pocket, pulled out the wallet and showed her the shiny badge.

“Oh, my. Perfect, then.”

He got the truck, drove back, and leaned over to open the door. He didn’t want to get out and hold it for her. She stepped in, and he put it in gear and drove off.

“Where we taking you?”

“Oh. By the estuary.”

“So be it.”

They drove in silence along the coast road beneath the fog-laced pine and palm trees. A quarter mile past the gates to the big villa and beyond the crime scene down by the beach, she pointed to the side of the road.

“Here?” he said.

“Yes. Up there.”

She indicated a house across the street from the sea, set back at the end of a small sandy driveway. She stepped out but turned to him and held his stare.

“Why did you leave the movie?” he asked.

“I don’t like the ending.”

“She dies.”

“Yes.”

“I saw you, once. In Barcelona,” he said, then laughed, adding “from up in the cheap seats.”

She stared at him, harder now. He was impressed by her.

“Still,” he continued, “I can say I saw a ballet. I saw the great American ballerina.”

“That was a while ago.”

“It was in Eighteen. The autumn of ’18.”

“I was a girl. Just sixteen.”

“All I know is, I sure as hell couldn’t do what you all do.”

Again, she held his eyes, but she smiled now. It set off a starburst of nerves inside him. He felt stupid and bold at the same time.

“I mean,” Creek said, “all that runnin’ and jumpin’. The other part, all the poses, nobody could do that. That’s one in a million.”

“The jumping and running are important, too.” She had vaguely imitated him, and it made him smile.

She wouldn’t take her eyes away from his. “Spain,” she said, “how funny. Can I pay you?”

He stared at her, grinning, shaking his head. “Nobody charges for things like this.”

She took the insight, but she held his look. “Thank you, then. For doing this. Good night.”

She closed the door, turned away, and began walking down the drive, but rushed back before he could drive off and knocked on the window. He leaned over and rolled it down.

“I know I will see you again,” she said. “And, I do owe you something. For the kindness.”

He studied her, beguiled, and smiled. Finally, she smiled back.

She turned and headed into the shadows of the driveway. He was a ways down the road when he saw her in the rearview mirror steal back across the road and head off down the beach. He decided to let her keep her secrets and kept on driving. She had been famous in Europe where ballerinas mattered, and his squadron had carried the poster of her for three long years, tacking it to countless walls as they traveled with reassignments. He couldn’t believe he had just run into her on a foggy street in America. And not just any street. Two days in one week, beside this particular beach. While it was odd, things felt a little redeemed by the serendipity of her, how she seemed to freshen the air after the stink from yesterday.

He would see her again. He had to. Nobody in his life had looked at him like she had or landed so quickly past his defenses. And she had left without so much as a word about what she had seen. But she had not looked away. And he needed to know about that, about how a woman who looked like her, famous as she had been, could hold your eyes, make no small talk, drive alone on a cold night to see a movie, hitch a lift with a stranger, and disappear into a misty, moonlit beach without once asking for a coat or a cigarette or a shot of whiskey. Or his name, he thought, wondering exactly how he was ever going to see her again as she had told him she would.

• • •

Later, after he had given the horses some night feed and nodded to the ghost of his departed goat, he pictured every part of the evening, from the time he looked up and noticed her float up the aisle to the moment she stole across the road in his rearview mirror and vanished into the night. Then, he fell into a deep sleep.

Something startled him awake in the dark hours of morning. He rose and shuffled to the kitchen, half asleep as he brewed coffee, then took the cup and went out to the porch to read. It was a magazine with articles on the death of Bonnie and Clyde, the ravages of the Dust Bowl, and a new board game called Monopoly that rewarded greed.

Then a piece of a dream surfaced, and he knew why he had come bolt upright from sleep. Pony’s feet. They were laced with cuts. In the swelling and the white bloat, they might have passed for cracks in swollen skin. But they weren’t. In the dream, Pony was running. A flock of large shadowy things were chasing him, knocking him about as he ran for his life.

And Creek knew from this that the latticework on Charlie Russell’s feet was not the result of salt, dry skin, and bloating, but of cuts. He had run or slid hard on coarse ground. Then more details of a morning clarity assailed Creek: The body washes up beneath a famous villa. Someone watches from a high window. The sheriff twice twists his wattled neck to look up to the villa – nervously? Protectively? A lawsuit by the Indian reservation, contests the eminent domain deal and the movie people’s right to prevent entry. The rush to be rid of the body. The black dirt beneath Pony’s fingernails, a thing that could mean the difference between a rind of dirt or engine grease and the ebony tar you smoked to make the world turn dreamy. The bruises and bloody wire. A killer puma. A boat that did not make land. A head horribly absent.

It fell to him in the cold morning to see the cold truth – he could not avoid it. Without a boat, without a hard look at any evidence, he had to poke his nose in this enough to call it one way or the other. And he didn’t feel good about that.  

Click here for Chapter Six of Last Light in Paradise.