The next morning I was awoken by the drifting whiff of brewing coffee. I wiggled out of my sleeping bag to pull the bathrobe around my body. The floor of the porch was chilled my bare feet.

The summer days started out cold in Southern California.

The flower fields around the bungalow were obscured by the morning mist and an owl hooted in the nearby eucalyptus trees.

When I entered the low-ceilinged bungalow, Helen turned her head from buttering a piece of bread.

“Morning.” The slender brunette in paint-splattered overalls over a long-sleeved shirt greeted me with a genuine smile.

“A good one too.” I didn’t have a hang-over. “AK and Pam still sleeping?”

“Like babies.” She nodded her head toward the guest bedroom. “I get up early.”

“The smell of coffee was my reveille.”

“Help yourself.”

I poured coffee into a cup and added milk and two sugars.

“How’d you sleep?”

“Like a king of the road.” Roger Miller had scored a # 1 hit in 1964 about a richness of a hobo’s life.

“After hearing your adventures in Big Sur, you must have needed the sleep.”

“Oh, I forgot about that.”

Last evening a second bottle of wine had loosened my tongue and I had regaled my hostess and her two guests with my tale of wickedness among the redwoods.

“Hope I didn’t offend you.” My version of KING OF THE ROAD had turned out more X-rated than PG during my trip down the coast from San Francisco.

“No, it was pretty funny.” She spread the butter on the toast. “You running from two insatiable lesbians thinking they were ax murderers. Was it really true?”

“Yes.” I hadn’t left out anything about Jill and Joey; not the sex, not the hatred of men, not the fleeing the redwoods in fear of my life.

“Don’t be embarrassed. It was a good laugh, but it wasn’t really funny when it was happening, was it?”

“No.” I was somewhat embarrassed by the tale.

Helens’ other guest was my ex-girlfriend’s roommate. Whatever I had said last night would reach Jackie with the ease of a phone call.

“How so?”

“At first I was excited by being with two women and then keeping up with them became exhausting and finally scary with the constant demand for sex.”

“So your fantasy became a nightmare.” Helen read my mind like it was a comic book.

“Close to it.” I had read porno books about menage-a-trois. None of them ended with the man getting killed, although in the lesbian movie THE FOX the male character met a bad end.

“Maybe you were scared, because you had lost control.”

“Lost control?”

“Yes, you were no longer the dominant half of the species, because men want sex and women want love. They are not one in the same.”

Helen had a story that she didn’t want to tell this morning.

“No, I guess I wasn’t, but I was the faster runner.”

“A return to dominance.”

“More survival instinct than a desire for superiority.” I blew on my fingertips to battle the damp chill.

“Funny how mornings here are so foggy.”

“The locals call it the June Gloom. The fog penetrates the coast about a mile or two inland. The Indians used to call LA ‘Yang-na’ or the Valley of Smoke. The fog drives the people down here a little nuts. They aren’t used to any weather other than sunny.”

“It never rains in California,” I quoted from the 1972 song by Albert Hammond.

“But when it pours, man it pours.” Helen was familiar with the hit. “The rains come in the winter and this fog will be gone by mid-morning.”

“Same as Big Sur.” My right hand gripped the front of the robe. I wasn’t wearing any underwear.

“You want some toast?” Helen was a gracious hostess.

“Yes, please.”

“Your clothes are clean.” The young artist pointed to a pile of folded jeans and shirts on a chair. “Why don’t you change into something a little less comfortable.”

“Thanks.”

I went out on the porch to dress. My blue jeans and a white shirt smelled clean and I returned barefooted to the kitchen. I was retiring my boots for the summer.

Cat Steven’s OH VERY YOUNG was on KPRI at a very low volume. A plate with two slices on buttered toast lay on the table. My coffee cup was next to it. I sat down in the wooden table and Helen joined me with a coffee in her hand.

“The lovers are sleeping late.” Helen blew on her cup.

“AK didn’t say that they were lovers.” I wanted to protect AK. He had a girlfriend back in Boston.

“Just because a man and woman don’t have sex doesn’t mean that they aren’t lovers,” the brunette spoke softer than the music.

“Neither of them are Shakers.” That religious cult’s ban on intercourse had shrunken its membership to a few women in Sabbathday Lake, Maine.

“I’m not condemning their mutual attraction, but our friend has a girlfriend back east, who was my roommate in college. If those two were having sex, it would be bad for my karma.”

“I understand that, so why let Pam stay here?” Temptation made up 9/10th of a sin according to the nuns.

“I was told that her boyfriend had asked her to leave Mendocino.”

“Why? They were supposedly engaged.”

“She was getting stopped by the police all the time.”

“For looking like Patti Hearst.” Pam’s boyfriend was a hospital intern. “Harry probably thought her resemblance to Tania was a threat to his career.”

The renegade heiress was on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.

“Hearing that I felt sorry for her and once I met Pam I liked her.” Helen shrugged after this admission. “She’s a good person and wants to do good. I like her being here. It’s not easy living alone as a woman.”

“And what do you want me to do?” I rubbed my face.

“Make sure that our friend doesn’t do anything stupid.” Helen didn’t have to spell out her idea of stupid.

“We could lace his food with Saltpeter.” Authorities had supposedly laced school lunch with an anaphrodisiac to suppress the natural sex drives of teenagers since the 50s.

“Where would buy it?”

“A pet store.” I had seen one in Encinitas.

“I’m just kidding.” Helen laughed at my naiveté.

“I knew you were.” I wasn’t so sure.

Saltpeter was potassium nitrate, a prime ingredient in gunpowder.

“I like to let nature take its course.” Pam went to the sink and turned off the radio. “I’m going to practice yoga. By the time those two wake up, it’ll be time for me to go to my art class. Pam goes with me. She works as a model.”

“Nude?” I had never seen Pam naked and my imagination filled in the blanks.

“Sometimes and she gets paid good money for that.”

“I bet she does.”

Helen exited from the house to practice her movement on the lawn. Her languid gestures exhibited an oriental grace. She was no novice.

I ate my breakfast and returned to the porch to read more of SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION. Within minutes I was lost in the forests of Pacific Northwest. Logging was almost as dangerous as saltpeter.

Thirty minutes later Pam and AK emerged from the guest room. I remained on the porch. We had been a team driving across America. Now I was eavesdropping on their conversation to gleam out what had gone on behind closed doors.

Nothing they said at the kitchen table hinted at an exchange of intimacy. They didn’t hold hands or stare into each others’ eyes. After few minutes of speaking about the fog Pam went into the bathroom.

The door shut and I joined AK in the kitchen, first putting on my leather jacket.

The day was taking its time getting warm.

“Welcome to the escaped victim of the Redwood killers.” AK was sipping at his coffee, dressed in jeans and tee-shirt. The cool morning air didn’t seem to bother him.

“Very funny.” I sat down on the wooden chair.

Down the corridor the shower was running and out the window Helen was standing on one foot with her left arm stretched out before her and her right hand clasping the instep of her right foot.

“I probably said more than I should last night.”

“Are you worried that Pam will squeal on you to Jackie?” AK put down the coffee cup.

“Sort of?”

“Your secret is safe with her. She told me that.”

“And mine is with you.”

“What secret?” AK acted like he was a saint and I had to admit that he neither smelled nor looked like he had had sex last night or this morning.

“You and Pam?” It came out sounding more like an accusation than a question.

“I told you yesterday. There’s nothing happening between us. She sleeps on her side of the bed and I sleep on mine.” His disappointment was hard to hide. “You have to remember that Helen is my girlfriend’s old roommate. “

“That’s what she said.”

“If I do anything, Helen wouldn’t like it.”

“I don’t think that she would say anything.” Helen was walking toward the house. “And neither would I.”

“Everyone’s lips are sealed.” AK heard the turning of the doorknob. “For the moment.”

“Morning.” Helen’s face was glowing from her yoga session. “I’ll be ready to leave as soon as Pam’s ready.”

“She’s in the shower.” AK’s matter-of-fact reply cleared him of any suspicion. “I’ll take mine when we get back from driving you to your art lessons.”

“Goodliness is next to cleanliness.” Helen wiped the sweat from her face and sipped from her coffee cup. It had to be cold.

“I’ll get ready too.” I went to the porch for my journal and jean jacket.

Plastic flip-flops replaced my boots. I like the freedom of my toes. I took $20 from my wallet and swiftly counted the rest. $1480 was enough to last into August, if I was careful and a wastrel birthday gambling in Reno had taught me a lesson that I didn’t need to learn twice.

Returning to the kitchen I found the other three ready to go. Pam was wearing a bandana over her head and a cotton shift with a sweater. She found the temperature cold too. AK jingled the car keys in his hands and we left the bungalow to pile into Helen’s Volvo.

I sat in the back with Pam and rolled down the window. The sun was shredding the morning mist and patches of blue showed through the overcast.

“Looks like another day in paradise is on the cards.” AK started the car and drove to the main road. SUNSHINE by Jonathan Edwards was on the radio.

“That’s why I live here. Sun, sea, and flowers.” Helen admired the flower farms surrounding her house.
The awakening petals represented every color of the rainbow and competing fragrances rose from the vaporing dew.

“Wait till you see the beach.” AK veered right onto Encinitas Boulevard. Helen’s art class was on the PCH.

“I can’t wait.”

I had loved swimming in the sea as a child in Maine. That water was cold. I was sure that the beach beneath the bluffs was just as cold. The Humboldt Current coursed the coast from Alaska.

We passed under the San Diego Freeway and AK turned left at the stoplights. A San Diego County police car pulled up aside us. The driver stared at Pam. The cruiser fell behind us and switched on its siren.

One whoop and AK pulled over to the curb.

“I didn’t do anything wrong.” He turned off the radio.

“Hippies don’t have to do anything wrong to be wrong for the cops.”

Helen reached into the glove compartment for the Volvo’s registration.

“You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s me. The officer thinks that I’m Patty Hearst.” Pam lowered her head with resignation.

“Even here.” People had suspected the same thing on our drive across America, but Pam was more beautiful than the kidnapped heiress.

“It was worse in Mendocino.” She was almost in tears.

“Here he comes.” AK looked in the rearview mirror and then rolled down his window. Good manners were a necessity for any encounter with the police and he said, “Yes, officer, what can we do for you?”

“I’d like to see IDs.” The officer was in his twenties. His hand was on his gun. The holster was unsnapped for a quick draw.

Tania’s accomplices were wanted more dead than alive.

“Yes, officer.” We have our IDs to AK, who handed them to the officer.

He matched the names to the faces on the driver’s licenses and returned Helen’s, AK’s, and mine.

“Don’t move and keep your hands in sight.” He walked back to his black-and-white cruiser with Pam’s ID.

“This will take a few minutes.” Pam had been through this routine. “He’ll call his headquarters and ask about my ID. If we’re lucky, his superior will clear my identification, if not the officer will call for back-up, thinking you are armed and dangerous friends of Tania.”

“Armed and dangerous we’re not.” I had a towel in my hand and Helen was carrying her paintbox, but I wondered if AK was holding a joint. He lived for his weed.

“Here he comes.” AK announced with both hands on the steering wheel. Helen had hers on the dashboard. Pam and I placed ours on the front seats. None of us wanted to get shot, because of a misunderstanding.

“Sorry for that, miss, but you look like a fugitive.” The officer handed Pam her license.

“Patty Hearst, right?” She took it with her left hand. “It’s not the first time it has happened. I’ll be staying here for a week or two, is there any way to tell the other police that I’m not her.”

“I informed my sergeant about you being in this car. He’ll tell the rest of the officers later. You have a good day.” The officer strode back to his cruiser and we continued down the road.

“I hate the SLA.” Pam glared my way. She knew my politics. “I hate Patty Hearst too.”

“And I understand why.”

“It’s not easy being someone else.” Helen sympathized with Pam

“Especially if they are on a ‘kill on sight’ list.”

“If that was true, then we’d all be dead now,” AK shook his head.

The LAPD had killed all the SLA members at the house on East 54th Street with America’s biggest fusillade since the Civil War.

Patty Hearst wasn’t one of them and Tania was still at large.

Pam was not her.

AK turned on the radio. Joni Mitchell’s IN CASE was halfway through the record and Pam sang along with the chorus. The DJ followed it with Cat Stevens’ PEACE TRAIN. He was in a folky groove.

We pulled up to a ramshackle house next to the Beachgrass Cafe. A bearded older man in paint-splattered jeans stood at the door. Helen introduced me to her teacher. His handshake was an invitation for men only.

A middle finger tickled my palm.

I tried to pull away my hand.

Eddie had a strong grip.

“You know we need male models too.” Eddie looked at me like I was a pin-up from a beefcake magazine.

“I’ll keep it in mind.”

“Be careful with the sun. Too much is not good for you.” A long-sleeved shirt covered Helen’s arms and a scarf was wrapped around her head.

“Thanks for the warning.”

Southern California was a hard place to avoid the sun.

“If you’re heading to the beach, you should go to the nude beach down the PCH.” Eddie dropped his eyes to my crotch. “Black’s Beach. Park in the lot and walk about a hundred feet to the naked section. It’s cool.”

“AK told me about it.”

“Really?”

“Yes.” I let go of his hand.

“We’ll be back by lunch.” AK sat in the car.

“Looks like you made a new friend.”

“Looks are deceiving.

AK drove south from Encinitas.

“You want to try that beach?”

“Black’s Beach?”

“You like swimming naked.”

“I do.” The sun was free of the fog and the ocean sparkled with the morning brightness. “Why not?”

“Then let’s have a smoke.” AK lit up the joint. He changed the channel and caught War’s ALL DAY MUSIC.
“For a second I thought that cop was going to bust me.”

“Me too.” I was glad that he hadn’t shot us in a case of mistaken identity. “Pam looks nothing like Patty Hearst.”

“That $50,000 reward can make people see things that aren’t there. Too bad she wasn’t Patty. That money could help us start a new life.”

“You’d turn in Pam?” The weed was strong Acapulco gold.

“No, but if she was Tania, I’d think about it and so would you?”

“No, I wouldn’t.” I believed in the revolution.

“If the cops were beating you, you’d tell them quick where Tania was. Better to take the $50 thou and enjoy the good life, then end up dead in a ditch.”

“Never.” Boston boys weren’t brought up to snitch.

We drove by a tidal lagoon green with marsh grass and AK parked the Volvo in the parking lot.

“I guess this is it.” No one was on the beach, although about forty cars crowded the parking lot.

“It is.”

I kicked off my flip-flops and threw my shirt in the back seat.

Farther down the beach nude sunbathers were scattered across the sand. There were hundreds, both male and female.

AK and I walked to the first group.

Three women were oiling their bodies with sun lotion.

Couples strolled hand in hand.

I pulled off my jeans to join the clan of the sun.

The warm air fought the elemental chill emanating from the ocean.

“This is great.” Boston had no nude beaches.

“Yeah.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

The naked men were eying his body. AK played basketball every day. His muscles were defined as a Michelangelo statue.

“They guys want you to go naked.”

“No way I’m taking off my jeans.” AK was 100% straight.

“Pretend you’re with me.” I examined my scraps from yesterday’s dash through the woods. None of them were permanent.

“I am with you.”

“No, act like I’m your boyfriend.” Waves were curling along the sand bars.

“You want me to act gay? I don’t know how.”

“Me neither.” I laughed and pointed to the sea. Both of us loved the surf.

“Are you going to swim in your Levis.”

“No.”

“Then drop trou.”

“Okay,” sighed AK and we raced to the water. He was faster than me, but I was a stronger swimmer. We stayed in the ocean for over an hour.

“Let’s take a walk.” AK surveyed the beach.

“You want to stare at the naked girls?”

“It’s not a crime.” There were more men than women and most of them were gay. They were openly caressing their partners. AK spotted two women sitting under the cliff. They had a number of admirers.

“Let’s go talk to them.” AK hadn’t had sex since leaving Boston. He was better-looking than any of the men in the huddle. His penis was longer and thicker than mine too.

“Them?” I squinted in the sunlight and caught my breath.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

I raced into a crashing wave. The current dragged me some two hundred feet before I returned to the beach.

“Something is wrong. What is it?” AK caught up with me.

“It was them. The two women from Big Sur.” I was horrified that they were this close. “They came looking for me. Same as the police are trying to find Tania.”

“Are you sure it’s them?” AK had better eyes than me.

“Fat big one and a cute skinny one.”

“That could fit the description of most any two women.”

“But it fits them.” The men surrounding Joey and Jill were their potential slaves. They would do anything for sex. The cliffs were sheer. I was naked. There was no running from them.

He looked over his shoulder. “They look harmless.”

“That’s because you didn’t spend three days with them sucking the life out of you.” There was such a thing as too much sex.

“How bad could it be?”

“Bad.” The girls were making their choice. The men were unaware of the danger and I wasn’t risking my life to warn them. “If I had stayed another day, they’d be nothing left of me.”

“That’s crazy talk.”

“Maybe it is.” AK hadn’t seen Joey holding the ax in the firelight. Murder had floated in her eyes and he hadn’t recognized one of her admirers.

It was Bill.

He had shaved since we had picked him up in Boston and his face was sporting a huge black-and-blue from where I had hit him in the face with a rock in Haight-Ashbury.

“I got to get out of here.”

Bill and the two women were a murderous combination.

“We’ll have to walk right past them.”

“I know.” The ocean current was running strong to the south. “Stay to the right of me and follow my lead.”

AK shielded me with his body, as we approached the two women.

They were less than twenty feet away. Both of them were checking me out like I was a piece of meat. They probably didn’t remember my face, so I cupped my hands over my privates.

Bill checked their gaze.

He couldn’t see my face and I waddled away to where we left our things.

After pulling on my jeans I ran to the car, where AK laughed, “That was a good disguise.”

“It was the only one I could come up with.” I opened the door and said, “Let’s go.”

“The girls are going to think it’s funny too.”

“Say nothing.” Women were scared of men every day of their lives and now I knew that fear as well as Bill was in San Diego. If the drifter had recognized me, he would want revenge.

On me.

On AK.

On Pam.

“Why not?” AK started the Volvo.

“Because it sounds weird. My running from them a second time. I’d feel better, if this stays between you and me.”

“Up to you, but I think it’s funny.” AK backed out of the parking space.

“Maybe it is, but not today.” I could count on him to keep a secret. He didn’t have to hear that it was a two-way street. We were good friends.

We drove up the coast to Encinitas and picked up Pam and Helen. Eddie asked me to stop by some time.

The four of us had a late lunch at the Encinitas Dinner. I ordered a grilled cheese sandwich. They served a beans sprout and avocado salad for Helen.

“How was the beach?” Pam asked me.

“Naked, but we didn’t stay long enough to get sun burned.” No one was paying any attention to the blonde. She had come here enough for people to know that she wasn’t Patty Hearst.

We were safe for the moment and safe felt almost as good as being in California, but I had no future plans other than to go to the beach this afternoon.

Any beach other than Black’s Beach would do, since I had had my fill of naked for now.

Later was another story better left for later.