EVENTFUL

“Dear Linda,

“How are you? And Jim? And Psyche? And your little golden cottage?

“It’s been an incredibly eventful three months for me. Would you like a brief run-down? (On your mark…get set…)

“I quit Pan Am, shifted about Los Angeles, living with friends, families of friends, and friends of friends, applied to Long Beach State to study art, and moved to a tiny, secluded beach town. Now I’m settling in—finally!

“Sunset Beach is a strange place—two rows of houses along the ocean, just off the Pacific Coast Highway. On the beach side of the alley, the well-to-do, on the highway side, dilapidated beach houses and ‘heads’ (present company excepted). There’s a wooden shingled water tower at the end of the street, below that a tiny fire station (they turn their sirens on at 2:00 in the morning just for practice), bait stores, and an inlet full of boats. That’s it. The nearest grocery store is in the neighboring town.

“I share a modern, perpetually messy apartment with three roommates. One of them, Gloria, is at this very moment dismantling her fish tank, preparing to move. She works for the YMCA, while Carol and Michaela are undergrads at State. I sleep in the hot, stuffy, upper berth of a bunk bed, the mattress so hard that my body ached all over for the first week. Oh, and when Michaela moves, down below, it feels like earth tremors.

“I got a job as a noon supervisor or ‘narc’ at Marina High School—making sure the kids didn’t smoke in the johns, etc. Then my old boyfriend Pete, the guy I met in Spain, sent a letter asking me to come and stay with him in an adobe hut in the mountains of Guatemala. I almost went, even quit my job, but changed my mind at the last minute.

“The weather has been glorious the past few days, and our beach has been invaded by bikinis and black wetsuits. Still, there are uninhabited hours when you can pull off your sweatshirt and run bare-breasted in the surf. But the evenings are lonely, looking down on an empty sand-blown street, with the wind howling around.

“I hope you’re feeling chipper and accomplishing all you want to. You seemed a little depressed when I was in Berkeley. (I know I was.)”