I was up at seven the next morning, but that was Chicago time. It was only 5:00 A.M. in California, and the roosters in Bodega Bay were still chilling in their rooster haciendas. The restaurant across the street was open, though, and as I went to a booth, I eyed the lime pie sitting in the glass case. There was plenty left-my piece last night was the only triangle missing-and fruit is always good for breakfast. But it was a new day. I had whole-wheat toast and black coffee and felt the leaner for it. I did get a slice of the pie to go, though, in case I got stranded in the desert, should a desert appear along the ocean coast highway.
I walked back to the motel. As I paid my bill, I asked the counter clerk about Clarinda.
“Not much there,” she said. “Mostly it’s a hub for practitioners of the therapies.”
“Therapies?”
She walked around the counter to the tourist brochure rack, picked out a directory the size of a small phone book, and handed it to me. “They’re all in here. Whatever problems you’re having with your aura, your pet, your living room furniture, or if you just want to get more intimate with your plants, these people can take care of it.” She smiled a good, sane smile. I thanked her for the book and walked out.
The sun was brightening the sky behind the rolling hills to the east. No rain today. I put the top down on the convertible and drove out of Bodega Bay, site of the film The Birds.
Highway 1 was still empty of tourists and truckers. Clarinda was less than an hour away, even if I poked along, so I drove slow, and stopped at most of the observation points to watch the rising sun color the monstrous stone humps in the water first red, then orange, then yellow. I lingered at one particularly spectacular vista, listening to the ocean pound below, watching the colors of the coast change, second by second, before my eyes. I forced myself to remember the wires under the lamppost, and how likely it was that others just like them connected dozens, maybe hundreds, of highyield explosives throughout Gateville. It seemed impossible that something like that could exist on the same planet that offered the beauty I was seeing along the California coast.
Even with poking along, I got to the brown molded plastic sign welcoming me to Clarinda at eight thirty. The town was a hundred yards up, not much more than a wide place in the road, with a green two-island BP gas station, a small general store, and, fifty yards past those, a long white frame building with green shutters and another molded plastic sign, also brown, saying it was theClarinda Inn and Convention Center. I swung into the B.P. and filled up. The young girl inside was Asian and didn’t understand English. She gave me correct change for my twenty, but when I asked her about the Clarinda State Bank, she giggled and tried to give me the key to the men’s room. I smiled back and left.
The gravel lot in front of the Clarinda Inn was empty except for a rusted old Plymouth Reliant and a faded tan Volkswagen Microbus that looked straight out of the sixties. The bus was painted with red flowers and round blue peace symbols and had a POLLUTION-IT’S EVERYBODY’S WORRY sticker on the back bumper. I’d seen television images of the sixties, of dark swooping helicopters, bright flashes of ground fire, and men running with stretchers in Vietnam; of girls flashing their fingers in a V, for peace, as they put daisies into rifle barrels held by stiff-faced, trembling National Guardsmen; and of hippies, rolling down the road in Volkswagen buses adorned with flowers and peace symbols. Apparently, some were still rolling, and one had rolled to a stop right in front of the Clarinda Inn. I parked next to it, stepped around the oil it was leaking, and went in.
There was no one at the desk. The sign above the dining room entrance said to seat myself, so I did, at a small table by the window that looked out over Highway 1 and the ocean inlet just beyond. Only two of the other tables, both by the window in the long, dark hall, were occupied. A young girl, fresh-faced without makeup and wearing a red-checkered apron, came over. “Breakfast?” she asked.
“That would be great.” I was thinking of scrambled eggs, crisp bacon, and hash browns. Surely no one would count the dry piece of whole-wheat toast I’d had earlier as anything but a crouton.
“Coming right up,” she said, and left.
I sat and looked out the window while I waited for her to bring a menu.
There were four middle-aged women at the next table, dressed to varying degrees in faded denim and flowery blouses. None woremuch makeup. As they chatted, first one, then another would get up and go to a small table in the corner, to return with a glass of cranberry juice. Being tack-sharp from the top-down drive in the morning air, I looked around and noticed the coffee was kept elsewhere, on a sideboard, alongside glass pitchers of orange juice. I got up and poured myself a cup of coffee.
In a few minutes, my waitress returned, carrying a plate. She set it down in front of me. It held two little stacked pancakes, topped by a lone, shrunken raspberry.
I smiled up at her. “I haven’t ordered yet.”
She looked at me as though I’d said I left my lunar orbiter idling on the roof. “You said you wanted breakfast, sir.”
“I don’t recall ordering this.” I looked down again at the two tiny cakes and the puckered berry. If they continued to serve food that looked that small, they ought to start using smaller plates.
“We don’t cook to order,” she said. “We offer one entrée for breakfast. Today, it’s granola cakes with raspberry.”
I caught the singular on “raspberry.” “I’ll eat it,” I said. California was making me healthier by the minute.
She left, and I ate the poor raspberry in one bite, sparing it from further isolation atop the two griddle cakes. I cut the pancakes into tiny squares to make them last and looked out the window while I ate.
“I’m thinking of getting into reflexology,” one of the women at the next table said, as she returned with another glass of cranberry juice. Either my hearing was improving in the California air or the conversation at the next table was getting louder. The woman speaking was pretty in a natural way, blond hair with streaks of gray, and a rose blush on her cheeks. “Things are becoming so competitive, I can’t just do aromatherapy and massage. I’ve got to find another niche to survive.” I snuck a peek at the other three women at the table. They were nodding enthusiastically in agreement.
Another of them, this one red-haired, drained her glass with aflourish, got up, and walked over to the corner table for a refill. I wondered again why they kept the cranberry juice on one table, the orange juice next to the coffee on another. Then again, I was in California, and perhaps that was explanation enough.
I looked around the room. The only other occupied table was shared by a bearded fellow with a ponytail and an overweight girl in desperate need of a bra. They were also drinking cranberry juice. I caught my young waitress as she walked by. “Why do you keep the cranberry juice on one table and the orange juice on another?”
She looked where I was pointing. “Oh, no, sir, that’s sherry. We serve it during afternoon tea, but it’s there all day.”
“How convenient,” I said, sneaking another glance at the blond-gray lady at the next table. The rose blush on her cheeks had deepened. Nothing like a little toddy to give a glow first thing in the morning. I turned back to the waitress. “Can you tell me where the Clarinda State Bank is?”
“There’s no bank in Clarinda. I’ve lived here all my life, and there’s never been a bank in Clarinda.”