Chapter Three – Embracing The Transformation

Under the first dim moments of an ultraviolet dawn the sharp edge of a thin numbing chill tingled across Rachael’s lithe, slowly writhing figure.  Faint shredded wisps of grey coastal fog began to disperse like fading specters on the firm offshore morning breeze pouring over the local Malibu coastal mountain range.

The silently rushing northeast wind descended,  swirling down between bold five hundred foot high vertical sandstone sentinels lording over the steep cave ridden rocky canyons, and in passing it was here the wind was given a voice and taught to sing as it raced over the jagged crown of each sheer, inaccessible rock outcropping.

The wind then gained speed, and dropping yet again jetted like some invisible river out of the wild sage and oak lined local ravines, fanning out across four miles of sweeping scimitar curves that connected the three jewel-like private beach lined coves that were her momentary mortal portion of Shangri-La.

At first Rachael’s swift, taut, short strokes garnered only gradual reward,  more a sensation of struggling, but with persistence she’d picked up a building natural momentum, her long slow repetitive pushing slowly becoming a heart stirring rhythm, one that felt as intimate as the fire of life inhabiting her overly sensitive skin.

The entire length of her half naked limbs surged with tiny throbbing pulses, pulses that empowered her to persist despite onrushing wet cascades that tossed her involuntarily shaking body from side to side.

It took only split seconds before she instinctively repositioned herself, hovering firmly over her shifting centerpoint of natural balance, regaining control of the hard, sleek pink stick that in her tightening wet grip she repeatedly forced into become an extension of her own body’s movements.

With every new onrushing surge, each more forceful than the previous, deeper strokes were both automatically compelling and physically reassuring.  Her trembling body responded with every ounce of deep female strength, her breath now coming hard & strong with each pull of her extended limbs.

Head down, eyes squinting and lost in the midst of this controlled, passionate frenzy Rachael struggled to focus, to pace her rhythmic strokes that naturally came harder, then harder still.

“Girl! Go for it!” she gasped, her head now madly bobbing up and down, hair drenched, salty rivulets running over her forehead and into her eyes and the corners of her mouth.

Temporarily blinded, she shook her head like a wild horse and continued stroking for all she was worth.  Rachael was immersed in the unrelenting grip of surging primal forces, forces that grew stronger moment by moment, stroke by stroke.

Somewhere deep inside she knew she could handle it, even if it was huge.  Sure.  She’d been here a thousand times, internally confirming the need to maintain her cool and hang on to whatever slender thread of control she could muster until that relief filled moment of being delivered.

Delivered into that freedom beyond, free to float for a moment in calm luscious ecstasy on the edge of it all, and then to get on with riding to her heart’s desire, eking out every wet rush the salt misted morning offered until, eventually spent from her thrilling summer fun she’d pass out in hazy golden slumber somewhere along the sunbaked beach, drifting in that natural sleepy opium glow until she could find the legs and the strength she needed to go back and do it all over.

Sure it was a dreamlike thing, a mental postcard mirage of simple bliss, but it was precisely the imaginary fuel she needed right now, the stoke that rev’d her physical engine, and it helped move her forward with driving determination.

Rachael lowered her head, and pushing down hard gave it all she was worth, launching herself over the last onrushing nearly vertical glass curtain.

Midway over she was suddenly lifted then released in a roaring diamond white rain, both her and her trusty bright pink surfboard momentarily floating through stinging spray laden air, then landing in a short rude slap down the thick wind smoothed backside of one of the biggest waves she’d ever seen here.

At last Rachael pushed far enough beyond the impact zone to avoid the waves pitching ruler edged grip.  In less than a half hour the entire coast had become engulfed in seemingly relentless south swells, a procession of waves that were increasing in both size & force as each new marching set swept under her and rolled towards the now distant shore.

The entire bay was wrapped in clinging mists generated by the wafting spray of roaring surf, and despite the wind covered the beach in a thin salty haze.

“Whoa, what a rush!” Rachael exhaled, her breath bubbling in temporary exhaustion as she lay her hair tangled forehead face down on the slightly submerged freshly waxed deck of her rarely used eight foot big wave board, intermittently submerging under a quarter to half an inch of salt water.

The bumpy translucent white surf wax had a tangy, pungent fragrance, a mix of refined petroleum, beeswax, and bright coconut that made it smell both deliciously edible & clinically disgusting.

Rachael wondered if this was what the flowers on her grave would be like; colorfully opulent and yet so sweetly rank as to be offensive in some better heaven.

It’d taken all of a half hour of hard steady paddling, duck diving, and being properly smacked around while having water repeatedly shoved up her perfect little nose before Rachael finally landed in the relatively calm zone far beyond what was the usual surf line, where a now momentarily exhausted surf babe rallied her drained composure under a crisp dawn sky streaked with thin high ribbons of hot pink and fading gold clouds.

Except for a small pack of other surfers  much further down the bay she was all alone in the new morning, alone on a wildly alive Pacific Ocean and determined to her core to surf like some kind of mad Poseidon enchanted siren until she could somehow manage to expend her avalanche of  mortal woes on the swirling salt water world around her.

The ocean, she was sure, was the perfect place to invisibly spill her salty tears, to ditch her overwhelming personal dilemmas, to directly confront nature’s impersonal, perpetual indifference. To surf like it was her last damn day on earth…

This Is A 1000 Word Excerpt From Chapter Three. The Actual Word Count Of Chapter Three Is 7500.

Chapter Five – Edward Heads West

More than any other street in Los Angeles, Sunset Boulevard personifies the essence of everything that’s L.A.  Sunset ties together sections of town so diverse they might as well be on different planets.

Stretching from the humming heart, the multi-cultural potpourri that’s the LA Civic Center’s bustling, tawdry, & intense downtown, to the sparkling waters splashing the wide beaches of Alta Santa Monica, Sunset Boulevard is the East/West meridian that carries the constant pulse of the City of Dreams.

Sunset Boulevard’s durable celebrity is destined to outlive and outshine even the brightest showbiz stars found rolling over this pulsing artery of culture disguised as a winding traffic cluttered four-lane thread of twisting asphalt.

Sunset’s a physical link that connects every kind of person imaginable – as well as inconceivable, twenty-four hours a day.  Something outrageous is always happening somewhere on Sunset.

The eighty-dollar hookers, Armenian pretzel vendors, teenage runaways from Nebraska, and busloads of camera-clicking Asian tourists that crowd the sidewalks of the Grauman’s Chinese Theater tourist trap section of old Hollywood (where the only stars to be found are the bronze ones sunk in the sidewalk) all share the same street with a world of swanky show folk they’ll likely never see let alone meet.

Sunset Boulevard connects everything;  Hard core rockers making the midnight scene at the Sunset Strip’s grungy music clubs; Entertainment executives lying through cosmetically perfect smiles while signing some starlet’s bar tab at Sunset Plaza; Ultra ambitious well funded Asian medical students using UCLA’s convenient North Gate; Near billionaire CEO’s and Truly Major Media Stars limoing to their Bel-Air or Holmby Hills estates for some lunchtime tennis or a swim & Jacuzzi, “exhausted” from taking late morning meetings at some Century City lawyer or talent agent’s offices; Legions of well-heeled Fiji water swilling Westside residents riding along Sunset in their Teslas & Range Rovers, fanning out on ritual shopping forays from pricey digs in Brentwood and Pacific Palisades; and the Transcendental devotees of Paramahansa Yogananda peacefully sniffing roses & strolling the Guru’s placid swan pond lake shrine way out at the west end of Sunset, a mere stone’s throw from the ocean’s edge.

And then there’s the daily two hundred thousand over-amped motorists using Sunset as their sneaky surface road/scenic route around L.A.’s relentless freeway traffic, and everyone else trying to escape the madhouse & smoggy heat, putting as much distance as possible between themselves and the riff-raff & the gridlock, stress levels gradually lowering as they head west out Sunset towards the sea breeze fresh coast of famous beach culture provinces like Topanga, Malibu, Point Dume, Zuma, and beyond.

Sunset Boulevard links them all through their shared yet separated fates.  It’s the Stairway to Heaven or the crossroads of Hell – all depending on who you know and where you’re standing.

It’s a place where people’s destinies intersect, and occasionally, collide.  Where strangers from across town or around the world find each other by what at first observation looks like random chance, but upon closer consideration turns into something far more significant.

Such was the random hand of fate and the relentless humming rhythm of Sunset Boulevard to intervene in the lives of a recently divorced, emotionally disenchanted, and brilliantly successful middle-aged surgeon, and an attractive, tragically cursed, & mystically inclined artist who loved the ocean with an unshakable passion.

Perhaps it’s the mild rocking motion of scooting around west Sunset’s tightly descending bends.  Perhaps it’s the trees.  Trees that at times crowd the road like leering curious voyeurs, providing in certain stretches the illusion of passing through a lush park-like landscape.  Whatever the reason, life just seems to get better the closer you get to the coast, and the farther west out Sunset one goes.

Lately, a leisurely drive across the west end of Sunset had become Dr. Edward Eastman’s drug of choice.  He’d slip on a Mozart Piano Concerto, a Paul Desmond Jazz classic, or some Steely Dan tunes and roll toward the Pacific, decompressing like a slowly ascending deep sea diver as the easy miles ticked off.  The life of a surgeon is anything but serene, Edward mused, especially a surgeon of his prominence.

Outside of the predictable nerve-wracking early morning and after work traffic that washes up & down west Sunset with the regularity of ocean tides a drive along “The Boulevard” can actually count as a pleasurable experience.

Somehow the trip over Sunset’s sinuous snake-like curves, swerving and sweeping and dipping their way through every canyon between Beverly Hills and the infinite Pacific, can dose your senses in a strangely soothing effect.

Without the usual traffic and with no urgent destination the drive west can turn itself into a full on lose-the-blues cruise, especially if you’re heading way beyond the city and towards the Malibu.

His finely crafted and smooth riding dark royal blue Rolls-Royce Phantom only amplified Edward’s relaxing moments behind the wheel. The car, for like so many in LA, had become a sanctuary, a place of independent privacy and literal escape.

These leisurely drives out to the beach had become a dependable way to avoid uncomfortably stressful confrontations with Delores, and the resulting all too predictable hours spent nursing Grey Goose martinis with The Guys at their club.

And after years of enduring Delores’s tragic/manic angry drunk passive-aggressive behavior, cocktails at home had lost something of their original panache.  Not that he’d ever been much of a drinker to begin with.  Edward loved his great vintages, but it was Delores who started him on the martinis so many years ago.

Once he’d witnessed the ominous side of her, the bitter cuckolding lush, he’d forever had enough of drinking to anything resembling excess.

Even from boyhood, Edward had always relished his solitude.  And ever since the woeful death of his first wife and child he’d perfected the practice of spending time well separated from the common preoccupations of high society.

Only Edward’s mother, in her timeless and seemingly infallible wisdom, had understood his natural tendency for solitude.  Understood that his independent streak was not the product of aberrant behavior, shyness, or alienation, but rather Edward’s genuinely strong sense of self, and a firm determination to express his individuality.

This Is A 1000 Word Excerpt From Chapter Five. The Actual Word Count Of Chapter Five Is 2500.