Laguna Beach, California dozed under the late spring marine layer.
Steep steps of peeling white brick lead down the bluff from the motel to the beach. Salt air assaulted the iron railings.
They gave him a job painting, everything white. A stiff bristle wire brush with a smooth wooden handle to scrape away the salty crust.
It was before the season, good work under dull silver skies. Long lines of graceful pelicans sailing past on a light breeze over the empty beach.
He had a room over a real estate office on the Pacific Coast Highway. For dinner there was a decent Mexican place where a shy waitress who never had a night off brought him enchiladas in green sauce.
The waitress was an attractive Mexican woman. She presented herself with calculated plainness. Her light brown hair was tied back. She wore no jewelry other than a simple crucifix. No nail polish, no adornments. Her apron was always starched and clean.
She spoke softly with the faintest accent. She would gracefully close his attempts to open a simple conversation. He wondered who she was. Why a woman of her stature was determined to disguise it and why she ground it out as a waitress in a Mexican café in Laguna Beach, California.
One night as he was finishing up dinner, two well-dressed Mexican men came in. They took the back booth. Each wore a sullen look on the verge of giving way to something more menacing.
He watched the waitress take two menus over to the back booth. As she approached it, he saw her remove a snub-nose .38 from the broad front pocket of her starched apron.
There were two shots. She put the two menus down on their table. She walked with slow elegance across the room, out the front door into the salty darkness of Laguna Beach, California.
