Central Valley and the Coast:  A Guide

Station Hill.

In the northwest corner of the neighborhood, in the retail-heavy district lining the freeway, you could find dollar stores, electronics warehouses, asian groceries, burger shacks.  Only the most stubborn features of that landscape that existed a hundred years ago remained now:  the creek that fed the irrigation lines now flowed through corrugated steel and under truss bridges.  The hills that once challenged horse-drawn carriages now provided "vistas" or "bluffs" for the developers.  All the dutch style white houses and interurban tracks, all the storefronts with their plate glass and elaborate signs, all the taverns with massive oak bars and unsmiling bartenders had gone for good.  The hard shell of applied technology had covered all and the rare glimpses of human faces were seen through a lens:  car windows, box store doors, bank airlocks.   So the life that animated Station Hill had gone underground, or more aptly under its own frozen mantle, dark gray fingers of liquid water under the ice.

Don Rosner felt his phone vibrating in his jacket while he scanned the candy aisle.  He'd learned to exit early on the way back from the coast to buy his hard candy at the dollar store.  There was a certain mix that only they carried and he ate them on his way to work.  Work was still a couple days off today, though.  He liked to have a couple days at the duplex to clean out his grip, detail his truck and all the other little shit you had to attend to before the busy work week.

He looked at the screen.  It was Bill.  They had been working together and Don liked his style.  He would even ask for him specifically when the foreman wanted him someplace else.  He told him he missed him at the coast, they could have double dated.  "Oh yeah?" Bill said.  "Who's that?"  Don told him about Carrie, the garbage compactor drinks, the scene in the parking lot, the night in his room. "You gonna see her again?" Bill said.
"I might at that."  Don said that maybe it was better Bill wasn't there, she may have turned his head.  Bill formed a picture in his mind:  a woman slightly heavy through the hips, big breasts, round face, sharp chin.  Around the eyes a secret knowledge to be released as reproof, disappointment or the gentle chiding of pillow talk.  This was the picture of a girlfriend of his own, a woman he had not seen or spoken to in years.  Her eyes had been green.  She was the closest double to Linda, Don's ex-wife, based on the little Don had told him.

This detailed picture, based on such shaky evidence, was in fact fairly accurate.  Don, however, had not seen her eyes on first meeting, but the way she bent over her work, the economy of movement of a person either completely engrossed in their work or so practiced that their motions were seamless and without hesitation or abruptness.  In the crew cab, as he watched the alder buds in a pink blur past his windows, he could say without hesitation that he loved her motion, from the very first.

Bill gave Don his news:  the project was on hold, some legal tie-up.  The crew was laid off for now.  "Shit," Don said.  "And here I'd psyched myself up to go back to work.  Not to worry, I have a neighbor who gave me some side work one time.  I think he's a professor or something.  I'll cut you in if I can."  Bill thanked him and said he had to go, his wife was waiting in the car.  "You do what you gotta do," Don said.  "Drive safe."

So when Don turned at Laburnum he was already thinking of Mr. (Professor?) Binder.  He noticed the pale grey square of sidewalk, the new fire hydrant.  Then he saw the old Brougham in Binder's carport.  You had to hand it to him, keeping up a classic like that.  In his own way, he had style.  He decided to clean his truck, so he parked at the end of his driveway, so that he and the truck were visible across the green chain link fence from Binder's yard.

Binder emerged just as he was finishing up.  He knew his man.     "Hi Don," he called.  Don crossed to the fence.  "Hi Gil.  How're things?"
"Pretty good."  Gil threw his shoulder bag in the car walked over.  "It's lucky I saw you just now."  Side work!  Don thought.  Right on Professor!  "I just signed some papers on a property on the coast and it's going to need a lot of work.  I was hoping you might be available, you and maybe a helper."
"That is lucky.  I just hear our crew was laid off, and I happen to know a very good guy that needs some work.  Where's the property?"
"It's in a little town called Belmar.  You know it?"
"That is weird.  I was just there, I mean, just north of it in Tie Camp.  I painted a Best Buy up there.  So you're buying a house there?  It's a beautiful area."
"Yes, I was there doing research and I kind of fell in love with it.  I had a little money put away and I just decided the place must have been what I was saving it for."  

Don didn't really know Gil all that well, but he guessed something signal must have happened.  He just did not seem the type of guy to be impulsive about a thing like buying a house.  He didn't look different.  Same parka, same tweed jacket, same glasses.  Same funny walk.  Same Brougham.  But something had changed.  They worked out the details and Don finished washing his truck.  Then he went inside, turned the game on, opened a beer and called Bill.  "Good news," he said.