Bea looked out the window for the fourth or fifth time at a restaurant and tavern on the next block. A thought broke through and became suddenly conscious.
“While you go for your walk I’m going to go to that tavern and have a drink.”
Allie stopped tying her shoes and stared up into Bea’s face. As if Bea had just said she was going to pick up men on a street corner. But the girl said nothing.
“What?” Bea asked, to challenge the look.
“I just didn’t have you pegged as a drinker.”
“I’m not. Hardly. I might have a beer maybe two or three times a year. I just decided this is one of those times.”
Bea settled her tired bones at the bar and ordered that nice imported beer that came in the green bottles. The kind she and Herbert used to drink on Super Bowl Sunday. Bea had always hated football, but she had enjoyed its related rituals of good beer and mountains of empty-calorie snacks. That kind of indulgence had made her feel briefly content.
There was a restaurant on one side of the room, but it was neither lunch-nor dinnertime, and no one was eating. There was only one other woman in the place, a young curly-haired woman probably in her thirties playing darts with two older men. Three more men sat at the other end of the bar. Fortyish, all bearded. They had friendly faces that made Bea wish she was sitting with them.
She stared a moment too long, and one of them raised his mug to her, as if in a toast. Bea’s face flushed, and her eyes darted back down to her beer bottle.
“Traveler?” he asked across the empty expanse of bar.
She nodded.
“Welcome to our little paradise,” one of the other men said. He was wearing a panama straw hat over a thick and bushy head of hair.
“It is nice here,” she said. “The only thing that would make it better is if you could see the ocean.”
“Less than five miles that way,” hat man said. “Well, you know which way. It would be west, wouldn’t it?” He smiled at his own foolishness, and it made his cheeks dimple. “That’s probably where you’re staying tonight. Am I right?”
Bea felt her face flush again. She didn’t want to tell them that she planned to park on the street to save the camping fee.
“How do you even know I’m stopping here? I could be driving on.”
“We hope you’re stopping,” the third man said. “The coast route being what it is. We always like it best when people do their drinking at the end of the drive. Not so much in the middle.”
“I won’t be driving on,” Bea said, taking the first long pull of beer.
She could feel it go down, quenching her thirst, loosening her muscles, and soothing the inside of her gut. That was probably more than a first swallow of beer can do in reality, but that was how it felt to Bea.
“Car or RV?” hat man asked.
“More like an RV. Little one.”
“Okay. Then you’re in luck. You go west at this corner,” he said, pointing. “Road goes four, five miles and then at the end of it is the water, and a really big RV park. You can’t miss it. Acres and acres. It’s on a point of land right at the end of Tomales Bay. So you have open ocean to your right and still-water bay to your left. You can camp on the flat grass with just a walk over the dunes to the ocean, or you can go down to the seawall, which is on the bay. I’d go to the sea wall. You can put the nose or the tail of your rig right up to the wall, and if the tide is high I guarantee it’ll be the closest you’ve ever camped to water. Some people think it’s a little funky, that place. But if you’re not a snob about such things, you’ll be in heaven.”
“I’m not a snob,” Bea said, and took another long drink. The taste of the beer made her remember Herbert, this time in a positive light. “But I won’t be camping there.”
No one said a word. The bartender was washing and drying glasses, and the occasional light clink provided the only sound. Bea stole a glance at the men, who did not look back. The disappointment in the room felt palpable.
It’s just human communication. Wasn’t that what the girl had said? And how can people use it against you? They can’t. And I don’t know why we’re all so afraid of it.
Or, at least, irritatingly precocious words to that effect.
“It sounds wonderful,” Bea said. “But the truth is, I’m on a tight budget. I was just going to park here in town. You know. To save the camping fee.”
Bea was careful to stare down at her beer bottle as she spoke. When she was done the silence reigned again. Bea did not dare look up to see how her admission had been received. She saw one of the men get up from his barstool, but she didn’t look over. She could hear someone moving about the room, but did not turn her head to investigate.
For a moment Bea felt the urge to leave her half-drunk beer and run out the door. Her muscles disagreed, or never received the signal. Bea only sat.
A moment later hat man was standing at her left shoulder, but with his hat off. It was in his hand, upside down, extended in Bea’s direction. Bea looked at his head and saw that all that bushy hair grew on the sides of his head only. He was bald as a bowling ball on top.
She looked into the hat to see a collection of bills. Several fives and one ten.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“We took up a collection for you. We want you to stay in heaven tonight.”
“I can’t accept that.”
“Why can’t you? It’s from all of us. It’s a gift. We want you to go down to that point between the bay and the ocean. You’ll like it. Trust us.”
Bea stared at the money for a long beat or two, saying nothing. A moment later the bartender moved close and set another green bottle of imported beer in the hat.
“It’s a narrow road, and a bit twisty,” he said. “So go down there first and then pop that second one.”
It felt impossible for Bea to say no now. Not even because of her pride. More because she’d begun to anticipate the heaven of the described experience.
“I don’t know what to say.”
Hat man only gestured in her direction with his hat.
“Thank you,” Bea said.
She lifted the cold beer bottle by its neck and scooped the money out of the hat with her other hand. Then, much to her humiliation, tears rose in her eyes and spilled over for all to see. But no one stared, or said anything about her overreaction. Hat man just put his panama back on his bald head and sat down behind his mug again.
Bea pulled one more long sip of her beer and left the rest in the bottle. She slipped off her bar stool and hurried toward the door, carrying the money and the second bottle of beer.
“You all . . . ,” she said. Then she stalled. She knew what she was thinking, but not quite how to say it, or even if she could. If she was brave enough for such a thing. “You just changed the whole way I think about strangers,” she said.
Then she hurried out.
When she arrived back at the van, Allie was nowhere to be found.
Impatient, she decided to drive around and look for the girl.
Allie did not prove to be hard to find. Bea quickly spotted her around the corner.