89...

Alexis flicked yet another butt out the window of the Cadillac. She moved her head as though she was following the falling arc of the glowing smoke, but she was carefully looking around the parking lot once again. Two cars still remained, but there didn't appear to be anyone in them. She figured that this was the time.
She got out of the car, her knees popping. There was a tense moment when a quick sneaking head rush made her think that she might actually lose the strength to stand, but she closed her eyes and took a slow and deep breath of the salt rimed air. She mock stretched and again scoped the parking lot and the beach just beyond. No one appeared to be too close, still those bonfires a good distance away.
Walking slowly, but not too slowly, around to the back of the Cadillac, Alexis opened the trunk and looked down at the shadowed shape of Matthew's body, lying curled as if in sleep. Somehow, the trunk light had begun to short and it now blinked on and off intermittently. A flash of yellow and there was the sepia toned photograph of violence and a moment of banal evil. A restoration of moon spattered darkness and the calm feeling of smooth night sleeping
She reached behind the corpse and felt around for the sleeping bag. She felt it, grabbed it, and as she brought it forward the trunk flashed again. She caught the staring, dead eye out of the corner of her own and clenched her jaw. She unrolled the bag and began putting it over Matthew's still feet. She lifted his legs up and continued pulling the bag over up to his waist. Continuing to lift the body and pulling the bag, Alexis had him wrapped in about ten minutes. Just as she was pulling the open hole of the sleeping bag over his lolling head, the trunk flashed alight again, just in time to clearly show a scruff of hair disappearing into the dark hole of the bag.
She reached around the filled bag, prying her fingers underneath, and once again stealing herself against the strain, she pulled the impromptu body bag out of the trunk and let it fall to the parking lot's asphalt with a muffled thump. Without looking, she reached up and slammed the trunk closed.
Bending down slowly, and tunelessly humming the theme to TV's "One In The Hand", Alexis wrapped the roll straps around her hands, two or three times and began pulling.
The nylon shell of the bag whispered demonic threats as it dragged along the asphalt. She got it to the lip of the parking lot where the tarmac ended and the slight slope of the beach began and dropped the bag. She hunched over, breathing heavily and flexing her hands over her slightly bent knees. She glared down on the lump at her feet and blew a sigh through her nostrils. Alexis stood up straight and forcefully kicked the bag over the lip of the parking lot. It hit the graceful slope of California giving way to the Pacific and managed to roll a good six feet.
"Better'n nothin'," she sighed before following the bag and body down onto the beach.

88...

“And what’s keeping you from making the decision?” Alexis asked.
“Well,” Frank began, his eyes narrowed to near sleeping slits and his voice taking on the timbre of a dusty professor. “It’s a long, cold walk home.”
“Did you want company?”
“Are you volunteering?” He barely got that last word out, and his eyes remained closed to slits.
Alexis shrugged her shoulders suggestively.
“I get the feeling that you would lead me to a bad, bad place,” Frank said with a dry chuckle.
“You’re possibly right.”
“I also,” he let his head roll back and took another drag from the nearly done cigarette. “I also have to pee really bad, and that last time I tried that on foot, in this kind of condition, I ended up with a very wet shirt.”
“Charming.”
“Sorry.”
He went to take another hit off of the cigarette, and realizing it was at its end, threw it to the ground with frustration. Alexis reached into the small purse hanging off of her shoulder, pushed past the freshly purchased bottle of hair dye, and grabbed her pack of cigarettes. She opened the box and offered one to Frank.
Frank looked at the choice of cigarettes before him and once again swayed as if his own personal tropical storm were blowing him about. He looked into her eyes, as best he could with his own narrowed so close to closed, and laughed. He plucked a cigarette out of its crowd of brethren and placed it, eventually, into his mouth.
“We have not officially met,” Frank said around his newly gained, unlit cigarette.
“No we have not.”
Frank stuck out his hand. “Frank,” he said, as if he were slightly embarrassed in saying it.
Alexis smiled demurely, took his hand and curtsied slightly. “Alexis.”
“It is truly a pleasure,” he said.
Alexis reached back into her purse and grabbed her lighter. She lit his smoke and one for herself.
“Can I be honest with you Alexis?” he asked.
“Sure,” she smiled through a cloud of exhaled smoke.
“If I were to meet you again, I may not remember it. Part of it would certainly be that I’m fucking drunk as drunk, but a larger part would be this sick shield I carry around. I would convince myself we had not met so that I would not be hurt when someone as beautiful as you didn’t remember me.”
“Wow, I’m unsure how to reply to that.”
“Just take it easy on me when we see each other again.” He pointed his cigarette towards the road that would take him home, and began to move his feet to follow his hand’s lead. “And I hope it’s soon Alexis.”
“Did you want company for that walk?”
“Naw,” he turned his head back towards her. “I’m not sure I’m ready for that. Have a great night.”
Alexis leaned against that stairs and watched him stagger away. Just as he was rounding a corner and moving out of sight, she was finishing her cigarette.

87...

"Hey there," Frank said with a mirth touched slur. He put a cigarette to his mouth and inhaled as if his very life depended on the smoke getting where it needed to go.
"Hi," Alexis answered back. She tried her best not to smile, trying to adhere to a blank poker face on coming into the first contact with this guy. But she couldn't help it, there was something about the blurry eyed swagger that made her want to count him in a conspirator, something to the sideways smile that spoke of a home of some sort. "You look like you're up to something."
"I am," he said with dry giggle.
"And what are you up to outside of my boyfriend's place?"
Frank pointed with the glowing end of his smoke towards the window beside him, glowing blue with the flicker of a television. His eyes widened comically and questioningly.
"Larry?"
"Lou."
"Right. Well," he began, and then swayed hard enough to set his feet into a shuffling dance step. He righted himself, slapped his cigarette hand on the concrete step just above his head, and took a swig of the concoction in his plastic cup. "I belong to one of the ladies upstairs."
"Not Rachel?"
"I wish," he sad with an exaggerated eye roll. "Mary."
"Oh, she's..."
"A pain?”
“I was going to say nice, actually.”
“You are the one being nice." He took another deep drag, followed quickly by another swig of his drink.
Alexis laughed quietly and he gave her a questioning look.
"It still doesn't really explain what you're doing here underneath the stairs."
"No," he pointed at her with his cigarette. "You're right, absolutely right."
He took a deep breath, held it for a moment, closed his eyes and let out the breath slowly.
"I'm not supposed to be doing this," he said in a stage whisper, waving the cigarette in front of her face.
“And she can’t see you down here?”
“She’s…” He waved his hand distractedly as if that explained what she was and then took another large swallow from the plastic cup.
“She’s what?” Alexis asked with another quiet laugh.
“She’s passed out. So I came down here, to have quick smoke and make a decision.”
“A decision about what?”
“About whether or not I finish this smoke, chug this cocktail, go quietly back upstairs and wash my hands and my face, brush my teeth real good and then slip unnoticed into Mary’s pastel colored bed.”
Alexis waited for a moment. “Or?”
“Or I say screw that routine and walk the mile and a half home.”
Alexis put her arms behind her and leaned against the staircase that would carry him up to Mary. Frank leaned towards her like a conspirator.
“I’m leaning towards the latter,” he said in a whisper.

86...

Watching the movements of the waves, or more specifically, watching the white foam of brine catch the moon and ambient light as the mad swell of water crested could hypnotize a person. It was possible to drown in that water hundreds of yards from where it met the sand.
Alexis let it happen. If she let those waves overtake her, it would drown out the voices fighting for her attention; voices all full of snarls and sharp edges, voices that refused to let her forget. She cast her mind out onto the blackness, the extent of which made her feel a little dizzy, a little nauseous. She watched white crests birthed from out a seemingly seamless force, curling out and so full of immediate purpose. She saw these as ghostly white fingers, strumming an epic guitar in a heady lullaby. The fingers stretched, webbed out, and after a held breath moment on an edge, crashed to the brutal sand and chased further dreams, someone else’s dreams, until they were fully spent.
Occasionally, Alexis would shake off the tender, self imposed webs to steal a quick glance up and down the beach, a surreptitious look around the parking lot to see if she was in the clear. But all too quickly the seething anger within her would come calling and she fought her way back out through the surf.
She would actually hold her breath as she considered the feeling of falling down below the surging shelf of water, out where it undulated secretly without tell tale sparks of foam to direct the eye on where it all was going. She imagined it crushing around her, going from the comfort of a blanket to something tighter and more primal, but somehow so, so similar to that swaddling blanket. She imagined the continental shelf sliding below her pale, bare feet, falling and falling until it gave up any preconceived notions and simply fell away into an unimaginable abyss.
Her body would sometimes overtake her willful mind and force her to breath. This broke her reverie momentarily, but now instead of a chorus of demons awaiting her return, she would catch a glimpse of Frank's smiling face.
A couple came stumbling up into the parking lot from the beach. The guy had a tartan blanket slung haphazardly over his arm and he was stumbling violently. The young woman did her best to stabilize him, and would flash a patronizing smile when he spoke in what was undoubtedly one big slur, but when she looked up towards the car they were heading towards she had that look of tight lipped anger that could quickly shift to rage. After a few minutes of comic pushing and cajoling, the young women got the guy in the passenger seat of the car and slammed the door. She stormed around to the driver's side, got in and got the car out of there. That left three cars in the parking lot.
Alexis could see two bonfires down on the sand, both a pretty good distance from the parking lot. She would wait a little while longer. She rolled down the window and took a closed eyed moment to fully breathe the salt air. She lit up a cigarette and sent her mind back out to the waves. But try as she might, she could not escape the memory of Frank's smile; that drunken, shyly cocky smile he had on the night she had met him.
He had been standing beneath the stairs in front of Lou’s apartment, the stairs that led up to Mary’s place. He had been swaying slightly as if to a song from within him, a large plastic cup filled with God knows what in his hand, and that non-hesitating and open smile when he noticed her come walking out of the darkness.

85...

Prior to this, in a life that seemed to be someone else’s all together, Alexis learned the ins and outs of the southern Pacific coast. At one point, the winding line between Oceanside and Long Beach was more familiar to her than the lines in the back of her hand. The knowledge never really left, but as its usefulness became less and less over time, its prominence diminished. Now, riding the curves that the Cadillac seemed to grip like a rough lover, the knowledge slowly trickled back in.
She remembered a wide variety of trips, both north and south and in varying degrees of sobriety and rage, along this long strip of road that could sometimes get so dark. She remembered how the stretch between Dana Point and T Street in San Clemente had begun to feel like the driveway of a commuter must; familiar and safe. She remembered a number of trips cruising the narrow peninsula in Newport, so many of them seeming to end just as the hours cried their dawn tears over the rocky jetty that burst from the end and the water began to magically take on the lightness of the sky.
Alexis remembered beaches that were impossible to see the long hike down to from the highway. Alexis remembered beaches that were marked from the street, but the long trek down still made them unsavory to many visitors. Alexis also remembered many beaches that began with parking lots right off of the god damned highway.
This was what she needed.
But more importantly, she needed one of these that would be fairly deserted. There were beaches that were known as being heavily patrolled by the police. It was a trade off, but possible police activity versus a number a late night beach fucks and bonfires probably worked out a little better.
The Cadillac was taking a rising curve, the asphalt following the graceful shape of the sea. She knew it before she saw it. Just on the other side of the rise, as the road began to fall once again, was a wide expanse of beach. She pulled her foot from the accelerator as she decided.
It sat fairly unaffected by the crowds in Laguna to the south. She was still a good distance from the lights and maddening riches of Corona Del Mar and on into Newport. She could see three or four bonfires scattered along the sands, but these weren't of much concern. There were close to a dozen cars in the asphalt parking lot and this was the problem. She was going to pass the parking lot's entrance in a second.
She made a quick turn in. Alexis figured that after examining the scene, if this was not a place that suited her needs, well later on down the road girlfriend. There were more beaches than this one. She could wait till north of the peninsula if necessary, but then she'd be getting closer to Huntington Beach, to Long Beach and then the LA county beaches and where there just were not the long stretches of dark and deserted. Plus the longer she stayed on the road with what was in her trunk, the greater chance she took.
The Cadillac cruised the lot at a slow speed, moving towards a group of white lines not containing cars. Without the throttled roar of the engine, Alexis could hear the surf pounding on the shore and she smiled slightly, overwhelmed by a dizzying rush of memories all falling to the fore. She pulled into a spot, turned off the engine and sat staring at the black Pacific, her eyes seemingly lost behind that wistful smile.