Message of Love (35 page)

Chapter 43

July 1983

The sweeping sea and landscape spreads below. Wild yellow poppies shimmer as the breeze grazes the field sloping around us. While not even the northernmost accessible view, our perch on Mount Tamalpais looms over the bay. The land beyond it, behind Angel Island, could be our next home.

Perhaps it’s behind another island where he’ll go to school, just below the curve of hills, where I start working in a few weeks, if I choose, if we choose.

“So?” Everett smiles at me, his face already slightly sunburned as we sit on a blanket. “Do we just stay in Oz, Scarecrow?”

“Maybe.”

It took more than two casual weeks for us to cross the country. We slept in cheap motels or elegant suites, depending on our mood. Canyons, diners, rivers, the enormity of the land, exhausted us toward the end of our trip. And yet only a day after arriving, we’re exploring again.

Nancy and her husband told us we can stay in their spare basement room through the summer until fall semester, when Everett’s graduate apartment will become available. Basements are different in California. Sometimes they have views, and for us, even a small yard where our hosts’ feisty terrier likes to romp.

“We could just have our stuff shipped out,” I say.

Everett offers a studious look of agreement, as if it were a novel idea, since he probably already thought of it himself.

I hand him the binoculars and point as he peers over the distant hills and, below them, a jutting clock tower spire. Just uphill from that, somewhere in that speckled hillside, our temporary home lies nestled under oaks, evergreens and the occasional oddly placed palm tree. It’s a strange land, one of succulent plants, dry grasses, where almost everyone and everything is an invasive species. And here we are, plotting our own little invasion.

Over on the other side of the expansive view, the city with its own beauty lies beyond the blood-orange bridge. I wonder how much of its pleasures we’ll sample, and what we’ll have to avoid. It’s late in the afternoon, and although we’re still under a blast of sun, the brisk sea breeze tugs a blanket of fog, and beyond that, a dark bank of clouds.

As a child, I dreamed of living in the forest, of hiding among the trees to avoid the world of people and all their problems. Instead, I met a boy in the woods, and together we grew and somehow figured out how to become men.

We’re still working on that.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jim Provenzano is the author of the Lambda Literary Award-winning
Every Time I Think of You
, the novels
PINS, Monkey Suits, Cyclizen,
the stage adaptation and audiobook edition of
PINS
, as well as numerous published short stories. A journalist, photographer and editor
for more than two decades,
he lives in San Francisco. www.myrmidude.org

www.facebook.com/JimProvenzanoAuthor

www.jimprovenzano.blogspot.com

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Download the book trailer song, Dudley Saunder’s performance of The Pretenders’ “Message of Love,” at www.DudleySaunders.com